Question: How exactly does the Merovingian protect the obsolete programs such as the twins from deletion?
Question: Why were the enforcers called sandmen?
Answer: In popular American lore, the Sandman is responsible for putting sand over your eyes to make you go to sleep. In this context the "sleep" is a euphemism for death, and the enforcers are responsible for making sure that everyone dies on time.
Question: Me and my friend have debated this each time we have watched the movie and I finally decided to ask the question here to see who is right. When they are discussing their plan and saying they need the plane for it, Saito says "I bought the airline... It seemed neater." My interpretation of this is that he bought out all the tickets on that particular flight so the plane would be empty and weed out risk of interruption from other passengers, as doing that made it so there are no other passengers. But my friend thinks he means he bought the entire brand of the airline, so that he now owns the company that has that plane. Like buying out SouthWest Airlines as a company or something. So who is right? What did Saito mean? Did he buy out all the tickets for that flight, or did he buy the whole airline company?
Chosen answer: He bought out the actual airline company. If he'd bought out all the tickets for that specific journey he'd have said "I bought out the flight" or similar. It's a deliberately over the top moment of exuberance to highlight exactly how rich Satio is. I'm afraid that it is your friend who is correct, sorry.
Question: What was Lindsey referring to when she called Coffey "Roger Ramjet"?
Answer: Roger Ramjet was a 1960's American cartoon character who was extremely patriotic, but dimwitted.
Answer: She's comparing the overzealous, gung-ho Coffey to the 1960s cartoon character, Roger Ramjet, a frenetic, extremely patriotic, though not particularly bright American-hero guy. He worked for the U.S. government and routinely saved the world, using energy pills that gave him brief increased strength.
Answer: Dudley Do-right, Inspector Clouseau or Maxwell Smart, only in a '50's space cartoon, that's Roger Ramjet (I imagine Buzz Lightyear is the nearest pop cultural successor).
Question: One of the early posters of this film shows a bearded guy (who is not in the film) coming through a wall crack and holding puppet strings with one hand. Who is this guy supposed to be and what does he represent?
Chosen answer: He does bear a striking resemblance to Stephen King. King was both the writer and director of this movie, and as such, was certainly the guy in charge of all the character's fates and pulling all the strings.
Answer: It is Stephen King.
Question: Is the reanimation of dead people the purpose of the virus, or an unforeseen side effect? If it's a side effect, what was the original purpose of the T-Virus?
Answer: Actually the T-Virus was originally meant as a cure for a genetic disorder that Dr. Ashford and James Marcus daughters suffered from. The reanimation was a side effect and James Marcus was killed by Dr. Alexander Isaacs so he could take control of it and turn it into a bio-weapon.
Answer: The original virus was a "Fountain of Youth" type of thing. Reviving dead cells so the host would stay young. It was so powerful that it reanimated the dead.
Answer: Wait, wasn't the original virus meant to control the scientists daughters genetic disease, not an eternal life serum.
Question: Does anyone know what the NASA employee says to Lev the cosmonaut the first time we see him? It sounds like "stasveecha"
Chosen answer: It's close to "zdrasveetsya" phonetically, which is a colloquial greeting like: "how are you doing".
Question: How old are the Tracy boys and Tin Tin in the movie? Obviously they are younger then in the show, but how much younger?
Question: I heard that the marble ashtray that Bedelia uses to kill her father Nathan in the "Father's Day" segment appears in all the stories. Does anyone know the specific scenes it shows up in in the other ones?
Answer: Besides being in "Father's Day", it showed up in "The Lonesome Death Of Jordy Verrill" right next to the cash box at the Department of Meteors. In "Something To Tide You Over" on the nightstand next to Richard's bed. In "The Crate", it was on the writing desk when Henry writes the letter to Wilma. In "They're Creeping Up On You", Upson Pratt uses it as a soap dish. And in the epilogue, it appears on Billy's desk when he starts stabbing the voodoo doll.
Question: When Jackson and O'Neill send the nuclear bomb up to Ra's spaceship, why didn't he simply send it down again? Sure it wouldn't have made it back to ground before detonation, but at least his ship may have been spared.
Chosen answer: When Ra saw the bomb, he realised that it was a few seconds away from detonation. There wouldn't have been enough time to send it back.
Question: Why was Beethoven arrested? He wasn't doing anything illegal.
Answer: While it's not unusual for musicians to try out new instruments (playing a few rifts and even entire compositions) in a music shop, Beethoven's extended sampling-keyboard performance went wild, drawing an enthusiastic mall crowd into the relatively small music shop. The shop manager no doubt felt overwhelmed and called in mall security to clear out the shop before any damage and/or theft occurred. Keep in mind that the security team was already scrambling to respond to several simultaneous disturbances throughout the mall, all caused by 7 strangely-dressed oddballs (more than half of whom only spoke obsolete dialects and ancient languages). The time-travelers were, thus, probably all perceived as one group of pranksters or escapees from a mental institution.
Question: Okay, so the three astronauts are on the run but only James Brolin makes good his escape. What happened to the other two? They're shown as being caught, but what happened after? Anybody know?
Chosen answer: It's never stated in the film, however, as the astronauts have been declared officially dead and therefore cannot ever be allowed to contact anybody, they were most likely executed as soon as they were captured.
Answer: How were they able to fire their flares, then?
Answer: O.J. Simpson would have had time to shoot his flare to show he was caught. With Waterson harder to believe, he had climbed the side of the mountain and was just coming to the top with the planes coming into view. Either he would have been dropped and died on way down, not getting the chance to shoot the flare, or he was grabbed from the edge. Unlikely to have time also to shoot the flare before being intercepted.
Question: If Sasha really is blind and she is Alex Trusk but she IS a computer hacker.What good is a computer hacker that blind wouldn't she not be able to see the screen or anything of the sort?
Chosen answer: Blind people use computers all the time. There are Braille monitors that interpret the visual images on the screen into Braille. They can also use speech synthesisers to convert the images into audible information.
Question: Malcolm asks Roland why he'd kill a T-Rex. Roland proceeds to tell a story about a guy that went up a mountain and came back barely alive, and when asked 'did he go up there to die', responded 'no, he went up there to live'. I sort of get the point of the story, but could somebody clarify it for me?
Answer: It's basically about facing one's own mortality. Many humans feel that they 'feel the most alive' when facing (and overcoming) dangerous situations, the more challenging, the better. Roland is a big game hunter, to him, the ultimate challenge would be to hunt the biggest and (presumably) most dangerous predator ever to exist. Facing the danger of the T. Rex would make him feel better and mightier than he had ever felt in his life.
Question: In the openings scene, the prehuman drinks a tar-like fluid (like the one poisoning Halloway later on), while looking at a spaceship hovering above. He then dies, falls into the river and disintegrates. I do not understand this scene, is he the last of the surviving prehumans committing suicide and the ship above is the others leaving the planet?
Answer: The giant ship has landed on Earth to drop off the Engineer so that he can terraform the planet and make it sustainable for life. He might drinks the black stuff to break down his own structure and spread life on Earth through his own DNA.
Chosen answer: Obsolete programs are given the choice of deletion or exile. The Merovingian takes them in and, with his abilities to code the Matrix, allows them to stay under his protection.
Captain Defenestrator