Tailkinker

13th Jun 2006

X-Men 3 (2006)

Question: What is the juggernaut's actual power (in the film, not the comics)? It says he can't be stopped if he has built up momentum, but that would be based on mass and velocity, neither of which seemed to change when he approached Leech, yet he was knocked out by the wall.

Answer: Yeah, well, that's it - he's unstoppable once he gets underway. The mechanics behind this aren't clear, but it's clearly based on more than just his mass and velocity. It seems likely that it's a combination of something resembling super-strength (but tied directly into his movement) and something to protect him from the effects of the impact. Within range of Leech, both of these are disrupted, so he neither penetrates the wall nor is protected from the impact, and thus is rendered unconscious.

Tailkinker

13th Jun 2006

Spider-Man (2002)

Question: If Norman Osborn owns Oscorp, why is it that the board members decide that the company is going to be sold? Shouldn't it be Norman's decision?

Answer: No, that doesn't always follow. Osborn founded Oscorp, but that doesn't mean that he has sole control over the company. Presumably at some point in the past he's had to bring in outside investors, who have taken up seats on the board and have a degree of control over the company. If the directors, working together, possess a greater share of the company than Osborn himself does, then they can overrule him completely.

Tailkinker

13th Jun 2006

X-Men 3 (2006)

Question: Could someone please tell me what happens in the extra scene with Professor X after the credits roll? I made the stupid mistake of leaving before they were over.

Answer: We see the hospital bed of the man mentioned earlier in the film in the ethics class, the one who has no higher brain function - Xavier asks if it would be ethical to transfer the mind of somebody dying into his body to keep them alive. We see Moira McTaggert checking on him - as she does so, he turns his head towards her and we hear Xavier's voice saying "Moira?" She's clearly shocked, then the scene ends as she says "Charles?"

Tailkinker

13th Jun 2006

X-Men 3 (2006)

Question: When Mystique is tied up and she keeps changing into different people, why can't she merely turn into something small, like a rat? She would easily be small enough to be free of whatever was keeping her tied and could crawl through the bars.

Answer: There are limits to the size changes that she can perform. She's known to operate within the standard size ranges for adults and, up to a point, children, but there's no indication that she's capable of going down to rat-size - assuming that her mass remains constant, the density required at that size would probably make it impossible to function.

Tailkinker

13th Jun 2006

X-Men 3 (2006)

Question: In the danger room (the simulation place), is it a sentinel robot that Wolverine beheads?

Answer: Not specifically, it's an adversary created by the Danger Room, but it's certainly a nod towards the Sentinels, which, so far, don't appear to exist within the movie series.

Tailkinker

13th Jun 2006

X-Men (2000)

Answer: It's there in the comics, although it's largely been replaced with a mutual respect after working together for as long as they have in the comic stories.

Tailkinker

13th Jun 2006

X-Men 3 (2006)

Question: What's the quote that Beast tries to say when he and Logan are fighting versus the mutants in Alcatraz? (The Churchill one)

Answer: The full quote is taken from a book written by the US author Winston Churchill (not to be confused with the British politician of the same name) called 'Richard Carvel'. The full quote, spoken by a character in the book, is "I fear there are times coming, my lad, when every man must choose his side, and stand arrayed in his own colours".

Tailkinker

13th Jun 2006

Charmed (1998)

Show generally

Question: Series 8 started airing in the U.S in September of last year and the U.K early this year. It will end in the US 3 weeks before the UK. Why if there was such a large difference in original airdates are they finishing so close together?

Answer: This is down to the ways that the respective countries show series. The U.S. will often stop in mid-series and show repeats, dragging out a series of twenty-odd episodes over forty or more weeks, whereas the U.K. will just run straight through a series from beginning to end. As a result, the U.K. tend to catch up, or, as has happened on a few occasions, actually overtake the U.S. schedule.

Tailkinker

13th Jun 2006

X-Men 3 (2006)

Question: Why didn't Logan just cure Jean? Did she really have to die?

Answer: Logan barely made it to Jean in one piece - only his healing factor's keeping him alive. Even if he had a vial of the 'cure', which he doesn't, then it would never have survived the onslaught that he has to walk through to get to her.

Tailkinker

13th Jun 2006

X-Men 3 (2006)

Question: What was it that Beast said in the jet when they looked upon Alcatraz in the air? He noticed the bridge, and the mutants facing off with the soldiers. Everybody in the theater was laughing, but it wasn't audible enough for me.

Answer: He says "Oh, my stars and garters" - it's one of Beast's stock phrases from the comics.

Tailkinker

Question: What species of aliens are performing in the scene where Anakin and Palpatine are in the theater? All I see are large bubbles.

Answer: They're Mon Calamari, the same species as Admiral "It's a trap" Ackbar in Return of the Jedi.

Tailkinker

Question: In the scene where Marty's recently purchased sports almanac drops out of its plastic bag, Doc says that he did not invent the time machine for financial gain. In Back to the Future's first Twin Pines Mall scene, Doc says that he'll get to see who wins the next 25 World Series. Can we assume Doc would not have tried to profit from knowing those results in advance?

Answer: It seems that, yes, we can assume that. Doc's very clear on the dangers of meddling with the timeline - it's fair to say that he's intelligent enough not to risk it.

Tailkinker

Answer: He never intended on betting on it, he just wanted to see who won the 25th world series.

16th May 2006

V for Vendetta (2005)

Question: In the last scene where all the people pull their masks off, we see Stephen Fry and the woman from the cell and the little glasses girl, all of whom were supposed to be dead. How did they come back? It's not Evey imagining them, because she's not seeing them, she's in a different place.

Answer: You don't have to be in a specific place to imagine that somebody else could be there. V did what he did for freedom and for the victims of the regime that he hated. It's entirely appropriate that Evey should imagine those victims standing among those who chose to rise up against the government.

Tailkinker

11th May 2006

The Truman Show (1998)

Question: At the start of the film, where the stage light falls from the 'sky', it says Sirius on it. Are we meant to presume that this stage light lit up the place in the sky where the star Sirius would be in real life?

Answer: That would seem like a logical deduction, yes. The light was presumably on some sort of track to allow it to simulate the movement of the heavens caused by the rotation of the Earth.

Tailkinker

Question: Why was Benicio Del Toro's character killed in the film, what was the point if he was doing the job as well, surely it just makes it harder with less men?

Answer: Fenster was running away, making it entirely clear that he had no intention of going through with the job. As such, he was killed, both as revenge for crossing Soze and to make it clear to his erstwhile cohorts that attempting to flee was not a viable option.

Tailkinker

11th May 2006

Lost (2004)

Show generally

Question: I still cannot understand the dynamic of the plane crash. I mean, the tail breaks off at mid-air, and crashes into the let's say 'south' side of the island. The mid-section will end up at the other side ('north') and the cockpit crashes in the middle of the island, between the tail and the mid-section? I know this island is weird and full of mysteries, but this crash seems a little too bizarre. Any thoughts?

Answer: One plausible sequence of events is as follows. The tail section breaks off first and hits the ocean on the 'south' side. The plane is obviously not flying in a stable fashion at this point, and the loss of the tail is only going to make matters worse - it begins to tumble in mid-air, flipping end over end. Under those circumstances, it would be entirely plausible that the nose section could end up between the tail and the mid-section.

Tailkinker

11th May 2006

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Question: Does anyone know if Mary Jane and Peter will have a daughter in the movies (as they did in the comics)?

Answer: Given that, in the films, they're only just starting their relationship, it can be safely said that any thoughts of starting a family are likely to be some distance off.

Tailkinker

Question: What happened to General Grievous? Was he badly injured and put inside a droid-ish body?

Answer: That's pretty much it, yes. Grievous originally refused to take up the leadership of the Seperatist armies, so Dooku secretly planted a bomb on a shuttle carrying Grievous leaving behind enough evidence to implicate the Republic in the assassination attempt. The critically injured Grievous was then reconstructed into his cyborg form by the Geonosians. Filled with rage directed towards the Republic that he thought had maimed him, Grievous finally agreed to lead the Seperatist forces in battle.

Tailkinker

Question: What music is played in the scene of Norrington's promotion ceremony, where he receives the sword from governor Swann?

Answer: It's an instrumental version of the song Rule Britannia.

Tailkinker

11th May 2006

Star Wars (1977)

Question: What's with Obi-Wan disappearing when he dies? I mean, I've never seen anyone else in the Star Wars 6-logy do it.

Answer: Yoda does it as well. This is linked to the bit at the end of Episode 3 when Yoda tells Obi-wan that his old mentor Qui-gon has managed to 'return' through the Force and instructs him to learn how this can be done. As such, when they die, both Yoda and Obi-wan are, in some unexplained manner, absorbed into the Force - this is what allowed Obi-wan to continue to communicate with Luke during the subsequent films.

Tailkinker

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