Question: Where did Superman get the spaceship to go looking for remnants of his planet? And couldn't he have just flown there instead?
Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
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Question: When Doc and Ringo meet at the location by the trees, and have a showdown, Doc shoots Ringo then says to him, "Come on, come on!" What was that all about?
Chosen answer: It's a sadistic challenge to Ringo, because Holliday's shot was so precise and the fight was over too soon.
Answer: Doc already viewed himself as a dead man, with nothing left to lose and believed that he was destined to 'die with his boots on'. I believe this was a challenge to Ringo to come ahead and kill him.
Answer: Doc was encouraging Ringo to breathe in order to prolong the glory of his victory.
Answer: Ringo wanted the Earp's and Doc spitting blood...Doc was urging Ringo to do the same.
Answer: There was much speculation at the time that Ringo died from a self inflicted wound. That scene was staged to show how he could have been shot by Doc but still end up in a position that it might look like suicide to those to found him. The urging him to walk forward was part of that.
Question: Is the garbage man near the start Sid from Toy Story 1?
Answer: Yes, he is. He can be seen wearing the same black t-shirt with a skull motif that his younger self wore in the first movie and Pixar have confirmed that the character's intended to be Sid.
In addition, they are voiced by the same person.
Question: Why didn't Arnold and the rest of the commandos take thermal goggles or sensitive listening devices with them on the mission; wasn't the technology available?
Chosen answer: It's the jungle: thermal goggles would have too much interference due to the high ambient temperature and sensitive listening devices would have picked up too much ambient noise from the wildlife. When filming the movie they had to hose the area down with ice water just to cool it off enough to get the footage for the Predator's heat vision. Presumably, his technology is more advanced than our own, so the high jungle temps didn't interfere. Plus of course, their original mission was meant to be very straightforward, with no need for high-tech equipment.
Answer: During the 1980's thermal googles worn on the face had not been produced. As far as the team wearing night vision goggles (infrared) that wouldn't have given them an advantage against the predators cloaking device. Infrared works off ambient light and they do not detect heat; there isn't much ambient light at night in triple canopy jungle and they are worthless during the day. The spectrum the predator used in the movie is thermal not infrared.
Infrared and ambient light are different. Night vision goggles use ambient light, amplifying whatever light there is, from the moon, stars, etc. Infrared and thermal are the same thing, working on heat rather than visible light.
Question: Does anyone know why Marty takes a book of matches off of Biff's desk when Biff isn't looking? I know that the matches come in handy at the end of the film when he burns the sports almanac, but what was his original reason for swiping the matches? Unless he knew beforehand that he was going to have to burn the almanac.
Answer: It seemed more like a reflex action than a deliberate decision. Marty saw Biff's name on the matchbook cover, causing him to pick it up for a closer look, then just stuffed it into his pocket. As you pointed out, they came in handy later. That and when they changed the timeline in 1955 after burning the alamanac, it would also change back to "Biffs Auto Detailing." Gotta make sure you cover your bases when dealing with the future, make sure that everything changes back to normal.
Question: If Charles was so smart, why didn't he think to make a bow with arrows to kill the bear instead of spears? They had the wood (the spears) and the rope (used in the trap).
Chosen answer: Bows have to be quite carefully constructed if they're going to be remotely effective - you can't just throw one together using a few bits of wood and some rope. Making spears may expose them to far more danger, but, given what they've got to work with, they represent the best chance of being effective against the bear.
Question: First, thank you to the individual that answered my question: "Why did they wear helmets in the first alien and not Aliens?" However, I am still puzzled though with my question: "How did the facehugger get through Kane's helmet?" The answer given was: "It secreted an acid that "burned" through the helmet." If this is true, wouldn't the acid still on the facehugger have burned Kane's face when it attached itself?
Answer: In the Alien novel it pushed its way into Kane's helmet using just brute force and not with acid.
The question was about the movie, not the novelization. And yes, in the movie the facehugger secretes acid: you can hear a sizzling sound as the creature latches onto Kane's helmet.
Sorry I was wrong about the Alien novel, it did indeed use acid to burn its way into Kane's helmet.
Question: I remember Cobb saying that he spent time in Limbo for about fifty years. Was he referring to the time that he spent with Mal, or something else that we weren't shown?
Chosen answer: He's referring to the time spent there with Mal - remember that we see, towards the end of the film, a scene with the pair of them in their Limbo-built cityscape, both of them old-aged.
Question: There is said to be a curse on the Defence Against The Dark Arts teaching job, something like the professor will die within one year of teaching that subject. In a previous question somebody stated that Professor Quirrell was only starting to teach that subject the year that Harry started Hogwarts. But during the feast after the first years have been housed, Harry asks Percy Weasley who "that man" (Snape) is. He tells him that it is Snape, Professor of potions and then goes on to say "Everyone knows Defence Against The Dark Arts is what he really wants. He's been after Quirrell's job for years" This implies that Professor Quirrell has been teaching that subject for years. How is Quirrell an exception to the curse?
Chosen answer: Firstly, yes, there is said to be a curse on the Defence Against the Dark Arts teaching position, but the teachers do not "die within one year of teaching that subject" as a result of it. You see, Voldemort applied for the DADA position twice, once after Tom Riddle's graduation from Hogwarts and was refused, then years later as Lord Voldemort, and was refused again by Dumbledore. After Voldemort's second refusal to the Defence Against the Dark Arts teaching post, no DADA teacher held the position for more than a year due to a curse that Voldemort placed on the position. Dumbledore stated "You see, we have not been able to keep a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor for more than a year since I refused the post to Lord Voldemort."When Snape first became a teacher at Hogwarts, he requested the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, but was denied it and made the Potions Master. Then every year, as each of the subsequent DADA teachers left the school, Snape reapplied for that position, but was denied year after year. By the time Harry came to Hogwarts, Professor Quirrell, who held the position of the Muggle Studies teacher for some years, had been made the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor after his year off (traveling to Europe, where Voldemort got hold of him). So when Percy says, "He's been after Quirrell's job for years" it means that for many years Snape has been after the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, which is Quirrell's new teaching position that term.
Question: How did the first facehugger get through Kane's helmet? In 'Alien' the people searching the alien craft wore helmets, in 'Aliens', Newt's parents didn't wear helmets. Can anyone explain the discrepancy?
Chosen answer: It burned its way through Kane's faceplate by excreting some acidic substance - that's why it appears melted. As for the helmets discrepancy between the two films, when the Nostromo landed on LV-426, the planet's atmosphere wasn't capable of supporting human life, forcing Dallas, Kane and Lambert to wear full suits. By the time Newt's family locate the derelict ship, fifty-seven years later, the human terraforming process has been running for twenty years, altering the atmosphere enough to make it breathable.
Question: I'm watching all of West Wing in order. I thought I remembered the scene of the drunk Ainsley meeting the president occurring before she's actually introduced to the audience in the TV program and subsequently hired. In which episode does the drunken dancing occur? Thanks for the help.
Chosen answer: We're first introduced to Ainsley in season 2, episode 4, 'In This White House', during Sam's appearance on the show Capital Beat, where as Josh puts it, "Sam's getting his ass kicked by a girl (Ainsley)." Then later, during the same episode Leo hires Ainsley. It's not until episode 13, 'Bartlet's Third State of the Union', that it comes to Sam's attention that Ainsley still hasn't met President Bartlet, even after she's been working there a few months. Later in this episode, when Sam goes to Ainsley's office he finds her wearing a White House gym robe (she had sat on the bench's wet paint just as CJ had earlier), drunk, dancing and singing. A moment later President Bartlet shows up at her basement office and that's when Ainsley first meets him. Priceless.
Question: How come Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) didn't recognize Saito (Ken Watanabe) on the plane, especially if the two are supposed to be bitter business rivals?
Answer: Saito's rivalry is with Fischer's father, not with Fischer himself. With Fischer and his father not being on particularly good terms, it's hardly unreasonable that Fischer might be unfamiliar with his father's competitors. Equally, it's not particularly clear that Saito and Fischer Snr are necessarily bitter rivals - the whole reason for the inception is that Fischer's company is so much more powerful that Saito's that Saito needs Fischer to break up his father's corporate empire so that he isn't pushed out of the market. Saito may have a bee in his bonnet about Fischer Snr, as you'd expect from a smaller competitor looking at a more powerful opponent, but it's quite likely that Fischer Snr gave little thought to Saito, dismissing him as being little threat to his empire. In which case, there'd be even less reason for Fischer to recognise him on the plane.
Question: Towards the end, before the confrontation with Kimble and Nicholls, the guy who was tracing Kimble's phone records tells the Marshalls that Kimble telephoned Sykes on the night of his wife's murder. But obviously it wasn't Kimble calling Sykes, it was Sykes using Kimble's phone. But why would Sykes be calling himself?
Chosen answer: He didn't. A key plot point is that Nichols borrowed Kimble's car on the night of the murder. The call to Sykes, which is expressly stated by the marshals as being on Kimble's car phone, was from Nichols, presumably arranging to meet so that he could give Sykes Kimble's keys to get into his house to lie in wait for him.
Thank you for explaining it. I've seen it several times and never realised how it went down.
And Tommy Lee Jones tells Kimble that they knew Nichols called Skyes from his car, but how? Wouldn't the more logical answer have been that the US Marshals thought that Kimble called Sykes from his car to tell the killer his wife was home alone? There is no way the US Marshalls would have known that the Kimble let Nichols borrow his call - that's the mistake in the movie! It actually should have made the Marshalls suspicious of Kimble, not exonerate him.
The Marshals know Kimble let Nichols borrow his car because Kimble told the police when he was initially interviewed following the murder. He gave a detailed account of his actions and whereabouts that night and mentioned that Nichols had borrowed his car. It didn't seem suspicious to the police at the time because Richard claimed he fought with a one armed man he didn't recognize; a story the police did not believe because there was no evidence of this and Kimble's wife "identified" her attacker as Richard. Gerard puts everything together when he realises that Nichols lied about knowing Lentz.
How did Sam figure out that Nichols borrowed the vehicle and made the call to Sykes and gave him keys, etc? I know in the laundry he reveals that he knew this but when/how did he figure it out?
Answer: This is more of a question really. What kind of defense attorney did this high dollar, Dr. Kimble hire who do not show their defendant pictures of the one-armed men the police question? How do his attorneys not ask him "OK, which of these one-armed men did you fight with in your house?"
The prosecution is not required to inform the defense of every person the police interview or question. They are only required to give the defense whatever evidence they have against the accused. Simply questioning someone in a perceived dead only counts as evidence against the accused if the prosecutor mentions it in court. If the prosecutor were to say "We interviewed a one-armed man named Sykes and he says he doesn't know you", then Kimble's defense would be required to be given access to Sykes. We can assume this never happened.
The Chicago police DID question Sykes after the Kimble murder. Review the scene where Sykes returns to his apartment after Kimble has been there. Girard starts asking Sykes questions, at first Sykes says he doesn't know anything about Kimble but then "remembers" that he had been interviewed by the police right after the Kimble murder. However, Sykes says that he gave the police an alibi, with 15 people supposedly confirming that Sykes was on a business trip and not in Chicago. The movie then implies that Sykes had been a Chicago cop and lost his arm "in the line of duty." Remember that the Chicago police focused on Kimble pretty quickly. Their investigators may have interviewed Sykes, but they likely didn't even come close to considering him as a potential murderer. Even with Sykes likely matching Kimble's description of the one-armed man, the police likely saw Sykes as a former cop... A former cop who had an alibi confirmed by 15 people. As I understand it, prosecutors don't have to tell defense attorneys about everyone that the cops question. They only have to tell the defense about potential witnesses that might be called in connection to the criminal trial. In this scenario, Sykes wouldn't have been part of the criminal trial (Again, supposedly on a business trip confirmed by 15 people on the night of the murder) and thus Kimble and his lawyers would never have known about his existence.
Question: How is the predalien able to kill the predators that are on the spaceship where it births, when it shows in the first AVP that there are at least 15 predators on it, not a single one is able to kill it?
Chosen answer: The predator that was sent to kill the predalien, knowing full well what it was going after, was still only able to do so by pinning the predalien down and blowing itself up. Add to that the element of surprise, where the predators 1)did not know there was a predalien on their ship and 2)how powerful the predalien was, and it becomes all too easy for the predalien to pick the predators off.
Question: How did Jack get the Doctor's severed hand?
Answer: He might have requisitioned or stolen it from Torchwood London, or he might have been ready down below once it'd been severed, searching for "the right Doctor" and not knowing that the newly-regenerated Doctor was the one he was looking for.
Question: Can anyone please explain to me the end of this movie? Why did 'they' send an agent into the Cube? Was it just to get information from the hacker girl? Or to get her necklace? Why wouldn't they just kidnap her and shoot her with sodium pentathol? And who are the men at the end, and why do they shoot their own agent?
Answer: They sent the agent in to retrieve some sensitive information from the blind girl. The girl hid inside the hypercube as she knew they wouldn't come after her and by the time they figured out where she was it was too late to stop her and so they sent the agent in. They shot their own agent as the information she has is that sensitive that they can't let anyone know anything about it (even the fact that it exists).
Question: If they are in a dream and they can imagine and create things (like, for example weapons, or modify the environment) why can't they imagine to create a bunker where the subconscious guys can't shot at them? Or, some kind of any other protection? Or mega-destructive weapons so they don't need to drive and escape all the time in the first layer?
Answer: Possibly the more you change in the dream, the more aggressive and powerful your target's subconscious becomes. Like how in the beginning of the movie, when Cobb warns Ariadne to stop changing things, and then all of a sudden a large group of people, including Mal attacks her. Still, this maybe because of Cobb's subconscious training being so advanced.
Answer: Aside from the obvious "the movie would boring if that were so," if they change too much in the dream, it would collapse. They only have one chance of making it work, so they can't afford to change anything drastic that might be noticed.
Question: When Gail and Dewy are trying to find the killer, Dewy says "white male, 3'0 clock" and Gale says "your clock or my clock?", what are they talking about?
Answer: It's a way of indicating direction. If you consider yourself to be standing in the centre of a clock face, with 12 o'clock directly in front of you, then the different times indicate different directions, so when Dewey says that the man he's spotted is at 3 o'clock, he's referring to somebody standing directly to his right. Gale asks him to clarify whether he means his 3 o'clock or her 3 o'clock because they're not facing in the same direction, and thus their 3 o'clocks are not the same.
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Chosen answer: The ship was likely created for him by the Fortress. As to flying there, yes, he probably could have done, but there are advantages to using the spacecraft. He can relax on the long flight, rather than having to focus on flying. He doesn't risk running low on energy light years from the recharging effects of an appropriate star. It's also possible that the ship is simply faster than he is - no comparative statistics are given for their relative speeds. Certainly it's not unreasonable that he would choose to use a ship rather than travel under his own power.
Tailkinker ★