Tailkinker

Chosen answer: Dex's Diner was largely based on the diner seen in Lucas' 1973 film, American Graffiti. As that was a fairly typical diner, it's not surprising that other diners around the US bear a considerable resemblance to it as well.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: Jim fakes his death so that the IMF won't come after him. Jim's aim is to give the impression of a blown mission, but to ultimately end up with the NOC list himself - something that he succeeds in doing. He's selling this to Max for a LOT of money, enough to set himself up for life, but he needs the IMF to think that he died in the blown mission. He leaves Ethan alive so that Ethan can tell the IMF that he 'saw' Jim die, so that they won't come looking for him. He frames Ethan so that Ethan won't come looking for answers.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: In addendum, Jim actually had no clue that Ethan would not follow orders and abort mission, as planned. The girl Ethan was with had to die in the new, unplanned manner, because she followed the target. Seeing the other operative, she was caught off-guard, and he knifed her to death.

Answer: Agreed the Queen could have stowed the eggs away on her body as Alien bodies, especially one her size, could easily have a couple of eggs hidden upon her, and we would not know. They are masters of disguise these creatures and can merge in with their own environments or others...what's to say an egg can't look like part of the Queen's body? In addition, could Facehuggers not attach themselves to the Queen's body and merge with it somehow? Flatten themselves against her skin maybe?

Answer: As we don't know the precise details of the Alien reproductive cycle, we don't know for a fact that the Queen would be unable to produce eggs without the sac seen in the film. The only other possibility is that somebody got the egg up there somehow. The only possible candidate would seem to be Bishop, who would have had to somehow have got the egg from somewhere, and flown it up to the Sulaco while Ripley was off rescuing Newt. There doesn't seem to have been time for this, so the only remaining option seems to be that they did indeed arrive with the Queen in some fashion, either laid while up there or, possibly more plausibly, rescued intact from the destruction caused by Ripley and carried somewhere on the Queen's body.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: It's because that door was the principal route between the Dwarven realm and the Elven land of Eregion, who were on very friendly terms. Most of the visitors using that door would most likely be elven, so using elven runes could be considered a courtesy.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: It's never stated. Assuming that it survived the turmoil of Sauron's destruction, the Gondorians would have taken control. Whether they would allow such a place of evil to continue to stand is an open question.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: It's never stated. It's certainly unlikely that there were any survivors on the plain of Gorgoroth, the north-west part of Mordor where Mount Doom and the fortress of Barad-dur were located. The remainder of Mordor, the more-fertile lowland area called Nurn, where slave-farms produced food for Sauron's armies, probably fared much better, but precisely what happened after Sauron's fall is never mentioned.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: Arwen leaves Gondor after Aragorn's death, now ruled by Eldarion, their son. She travels north, to the now-deserted remains of Lorien, to Cerin Amroth, a grassy mound at the very heart of the realm where she and Aragorn first pledged their love to each other. She passes away there in 121 FA.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: It's not clear what happens. Minas Tirith continues to be the capital of Gondor. It seems likely that Osgiliath would be rebuilt to some extent, but it probably never regained its full glory.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: You're right, it's not Weathertop - looks totally different and completely the wrong direction. The Fellowship are heading south at this point, parallel to the Misty Mountains, so they're most probably in the land of Eregion, which, as a trivia point, is where all the Rings (other than the One Ring) were forged. Eregion and its largely Elven population were destroyed by Sauron during the Second Age, thousands of years prior to the War of the Ring - no placenames from that era are known, and the region is still largely uninhabited. The ruins that they pass are most likely the remains of some sort of outpost - it looks too small to be an actual settlement.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: The version that I've heard the most often, which seems the most plausible, is that the cast were pretty much aware of what was going to happen - the chestburst effect requires machinery, a fake torso and so forth, so it's a bit daft to imagine that they weren't aware of what was coming. What they weren't expecting was the sheer amount of blood squirted everywhere, so their reactions to being sprayed with blood are, to some extent, natural.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: You can't really say what a character is thinking, unless there's a voiceover or something, but, given that they believe that the Ring has been captured, it seems likely that most may well believe that Sauron has reclaimed the Ring. Whatever they actually think, it's clear that something must be happening, hence their attention being drawn. If there is an exception to this, it would be Gandalf - given that he's of the same race as Sauron (lesser Ainur, known as Maiar), and both have powerful magical abilities, it seems possible that Gandalf might be able to sense what has really happened before any actual physical signs became apparent.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/newline/lord_of_the_rings/.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: As Helm's Deep doesn't really have initial stages, as such, and, even if it did, none of those you mention would have been there, as they arrive at the very end, I'll assume that the question is really "who survived the Battle of the Hornburg?" The survivors obviously include Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas and Theoden. Gamling, Theoden's right-hand man also survives. Other than that, it seems fair to say that a number of the other human and elven defenders would have lived through the battle - some are seen to ride forth with Theoden, others presumably remained behind in the fortress. In addition, there are all those women (including Eowyn) and children who hid in the caves behind the fortress.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: Sauron's power affects Mordor - it's his power, for example, that prevents the forging chamber in Mount Doom from filling with lava. With the defeat of Sauron, Mordor is badly affected - the uncontrolled eruption of Mount Doom, the fall of the Black Gate and so forth. Aragorn's forces are outside the Black Gate, so the destruction doesn't quite reach them, but many of the Mordor forces are within that area, between the Gondor/Rohan troops and the Gate itself. The others simply run away when it becomes apparent that their master has fallen.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: Sauron's forces are attacking Gondor, their primary foe in that part of Middle-Earth - this is not a time for holding anything back; they're going to throw everything that they've got into the mix. Anyway, they may well have suspected that the Rohirrim were going to get involved - it seems highly likely that Sauron's agents would have noticed the lighting of the beacons calling the Rohirrim to battle.

Tailkinker ★

Chosen answer: He falls and is dragged abruptly into the cage - the most likely explanation is that the velociraptor has grabbed his leg to pull him in. As it's a very sudden movement, it does look rather as if he's been sucked in, however, velociraptors are pretty much pure muscle, which would give the female in the cage the strength to pull him in that suddenly. Anyway, now that he's closer to her, she can now bite his torso, which would give her enough leverage to lift him off the ground in the manner that we see. As to why she'd do that rather than just turn her slicing claws on him, well, who can predict the actions of a really annoyed raptor.

Tailkinker ★

Chosen answer: Reportedly they simply ran out of time. Stephen Sommers, the director, was really quite embarrassed by it.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: No, it's not true. There's a vague suggestion in the film that the change from human to skeletal form (or vice versa) causes wounds to be healed. Barbossa, for example, dies of Jack's gunshot, despite the curse being in effect when he's actually shot - he doesn't change during that timeframe, therefore the wound is still in place. Jack, on the other hand, has shifted form multiple times since being run through, so his wound has been dealt with. Likewise Pintel, who was shot through the heart by Barbossa earlier in the film, is seen to survive, as he has shifted several times since then. Only a few of the pirates actually seem to die on the Dauntless - any wounds sustained during the battle should have been healed by their final shift back to human form (when the curse lifts). Any subsequent deaths can be put down to the pirate in question continuing to fight for a brief moment after the lifting of the curse and being run through or shot, unaware that they're no longer invulnerable to harm.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: It's most likely to do with the fact that the ships in the films enter the atmosphere in a highly controlled manner, unlike our ships, which, to all intents and purposes, simply fall through the atmosphere, using atmospheric friction to slow themselves down, causing the intense heat buildup - Star Wars ships don't need to do that. The other factor is that the majority of ships in the Star Wars universe have shields of one sort or another - these may have some effect in dispersing any possible heat buildup.

Tailkinker ★

Answer: I don't think we ever see a ship in the actual moment it penetrates a planet's atmosphere, it's always shortly before or after.

TonyPH

Answer: There doesn't appear to be any significant overlap. Scott is hardly an uncommon name and seeing an actress from one film in another isn't exactly uncommon either - neither implies any greater link.

Tailkinker ★