Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: Does young Forrest start school a couple of years later than the other children shown on the bus? He appears to be older than five or six, the age when most kids go to kindergarten and first grade.

Answer: He starts some time later than the other children, since the principal won't let him in school until he sleeps with his mother. We're not told how much time passes before this happens, so it could be a year or more. Kindergarten is optional in the US. A school in the Deep South in the 1950s may not have even offered a Kindergarten, so Forrest would be going into 1st Grade, probably a bit older than the other kids.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: Being a huge fan of the Back to the Future movies, there has been something in this movie I've always wondered about. In this Austin Powers movie, Frau says that Scott is a test tube baby. However, The Spy Who Shagged Me reveals otherwise, and that Scott isn't a test tube baby. Can we assume that in the first movie, Frau knows that Scott isn't a test tube baby, and that she is lying so that Dr. Evil can continue the timeline unchanged? Or was Scott actually a test tube baby in the first movie, and in the second movie the timeline is changed so that he isn't a test tube baby? Hope I worded this right.

Answer: Frau was lying. Of course she would know that Scott wasn't a test tube baby: she carried him to term and delivered him! She kept this from Dr. Evil because she knew he would have no recollection of fathering Scott since he hadn't done it yet. That's a lot of pressure to put on a guy.

Phixius

Question: Do we ever find out what the rash was on that guy? And why it was spreading so badly.

Awesomo

Chosen answer: Nope. It was just a reaction to the meteorite. It could have been an alien bacteria causing it, or it could have been an allergic reaction to one or more materials in the meteorite itself.

Phixius

Question: Is there a reason why when they're in the past they can't catch up with the present, but when they land a little into the future, the present can catch up with them? Are they not moving along on their own timeline? And if not, why are they not left in that moment and stand there to see the present come and go without taking them?

Answer: Think of time as a gear with only one tooth, and think of them as a gear with only one notch. In the past, the one tooth has forever passed their notch and they'll never be carried along in the flow of time again. In the future, the tooth comes along, snags their notch, and they're back in the flow of time.

Phixius

Show generally

Question: Something I read on Wikipedia made me wonder: were all six seasons planned out together in advance, or did each season develop naturally as it progressed?

Cubs Fan

Chosen answer: While there has been a certain amount of development as the series has gone along, the creators have repeatedly stated that the basic mythology and major plot points for the show's intended run were put in place from the beginning.

Tailkinker

Question: This movie left me with more questions than answers. Even after watching it more than once. 1.) Was the fake wall built during the robbery or before? If it was built before, how was this done without the bank employees knowing about it? 2.) What was the purpose of the hole they dug in the floor? I thought this was where they stored the diamonds, but Clive would have had to tear up the floor and dig them up again later, which doesn't make sense. Why couldn't Clive have just brought the diamonds with him behind the wall during the escape? 3.) Wouldn't it have made sense to give each person who came out of the bank a lie detector test to try and weed out the ones who may have been involved? I realize that those tests are voluntary, so that in itself may have helped the police.

Answer: (1) The fake wall was constructed during the robbery - that's why they dragged things out, to give them time to finish the job. (2) The hole in the floor is so that Russell has somewhere to go to the toilet, serving the dual purpose that (a) he doesn't have to sit among piles of his own excrement for a week and (b) no unpleasant smell will build up in the storeroom, which could lead to his discovery. (3) Polygraph tests are notoriously unreliable and can be defeated by a suitably disciplined individual. As a result, the NYPD do not use them as a matter of policy. Even if, in this fictional storyline, they did, the unreliability of the tests and their tendency to give false positives is sufficiently well-known that it's likely that many of the witnesses might refuse to avoid the possibility of being incorrectly incriminated by a bad reading. So it wouldn't be likely to help them much anyway and could actively harm their case if it indicated somebody innocent.

Tailkinker

Question: When Neytiri's father dies, he gives her his bow. Does that make Neytiri the chief? Or is Tsu'tey the chief now? And who's the chief after Tsu'tey dies? I read somewhere that Jake has got the face markings of a chief in one of the final scenes, suggesting he's the new leader. Though that seems a bit weird, given his lack of experience.

Mithcoriel

Chosen answer: After the death of Eytucan, Tsu'tey becomes the chief - he was established as chief-in-waiting earlier in the film. After Tsu'tey is killed, the implication is that Jake becomes the new leader - while, yes, he lacks experience, he nevertheless has the respect of the clan for his taming of the Toruk and his role in subsequent events. Also, bear in mind that the Pandoran wildlife entered the battle en masse, something that Neytiri interpreted as Eywa, the Na'vi deity, answering Jake's pre-battle prayer. Between his status as Toruk rider, his actions in the battle and his apparent endorsement by Eywa, that would be more than enough for the highly spiritual Na'vi clan to make Jake their new leader.

Tailkinker

Question: What do they need masks for when Pandora has enough oxygen to sustain fire?

Ivan-sama

Chosen answer: First, oxygen isn't the only gas that burns. But more than that, they specifically say that the atmosphere is toxic. If that's the case, it doesn't matter how much oxygen there is. They simply get poisoned.

Garlonuss

Question: In the scene where the T-Rex attacks, Lex takes a flashlight from the back seat and flashes it at the dinosaur! The T-Rex then attacks the kids in the car. Why did she take the flashlight out and get the dinosaur's attention?

salieri2121

Chosen answer: She's just a kid, the eldest thinking shes doing the right thing. She hasn't grasped that the T-Rex will now home in on them until it's too late. She didn't deliberately try to get the T-Rex's attention.

GalahadFairlight

Answer: She wasn't trying to get the Rex's attention, she got scared as she's just a kid and was trying to signal the other car in the hopes that Dr Grant could do something.

Question: How old is Anakin in this movie, at least when he and Padme get married at the end (depending on how much time passes throughout the movie)? I've read both eighteen and twenty.

Answer: Anakin was born in 42BBY and the events of the film take place in 22BBY, making Anakin nineteen or twenty when he marries, depending on precisely when it occurred in the year.

Tailkinker

Question: What is the name of the first song that plays in the trailer?

Brad

Chosen answer: It's "You're a God" by Vertical Horizon.

Madstunts

Question: How much did Louis and Valentine make after they scored at the commodity exchange?

Answer: Without knowing precisely how many stocks Winthorp and Valentine sold at the beginning, there is no way to get an exact figure. But we can make some educated guesses. Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice is sold in contracts, with each contract containing 15,000 pounds. By the end of the day, Winthorp and Valentine were making at least an 84 cent profit on each pound, and $12,600 on each contract. If they sold 20,000 contracts, their profit would be $252 million. Considering the Duke's lost $394 million, that estimate seems to fit (and is likely even a little low).

Question: Does anyone have any clue as to why the aliens are vapourising people when they first appear? They never seem to do it again after that one scene (instead opting to grab them and drain them). Any help would be appreciated.

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: The aliens saw the humans as an immediate threat to their ship getting out from underground, so opted to vaporise anyone in the near vicinity so that it could leave the ground unimpeded.

GalahadFairlight

Answer: In the movie there are 3 different Tripods 1. Fighting Machine 2. Brute (Seen at the ferry coming out of the water) 3. Harvesters which take the humans.

Answer: My guess is that they are in search of a specific blood type needed for the growth of the vines that is why some people are harvested and other people with "useless" blood types are killed off.

Question: I saw a trailer for the film in which the scene in the hotel (between Holmes and Irene Adler) appears to be different - she's wearing a short black and red outfit instead of the peach coloured one, and she physically knocks him out instead of drugging him (she first tries to use her hairclip as a weapon). Why was this changed, and is it on the DVD?

cherry_girl

Chosen answer: Oftentimes scenes that appear in a trailer don't appear in the final movie. The trailers are sometimes created months in advance of the release of the movie, and sometimes scenes are removed for pacing reasons or to reduce the overall runtime, or are only intended for the trailer. Occasionally those scenes might be put back into a movie on its DVD/Blu-ray release, or might be included in a 'deleted scenes' section, or often are simply omitted altogether.

GalahadFairlight

Question: From what I understand in this movie Michael Myers is some psycho kid that grew up to kill again. How is he surviving direct gunshots? Is he somehow bulletproof? I don't get it.

Carl Missouri

Chosen answer: In the original "Halloween" movie series, the Michael Myers character is evil personified. He is SO evil, in fact, that he is bulletproof and killproof. He survives all attempts to destroy him much like Jason Voorhees in the ALL the "Friday the 13th" a series.

CCARNI

Yes, but that is because of all that cult of Thorn crap that is revealed in part 6, The Curse of Michael Myers. In Rob Zombie's version, Michael seems to be a "normal," as in human, kid.

But the cult storyline wasn't in their wheelhouse when they made the original. Michael would have had to been a regular child before the murder of his sister. He wasn't regarded as super human in the first two movies. In the original and Rob's remake, Myers survives being shot multiple times.

Answer: He is still a human, but in John Carpenter's version he can't die because of the curse, and in Rob's version though, he's practically a tank.

Show generally

Question: In a few episodes, I've noticed a small black 'Reserved' sign on the coffee table that the friends always hang out at, is this how they always manage to get that sofa every time they go to the Central Perk? I didn't know that you could call and reserve tables at coffee shops.

Eclipse

Chosen answer: Obviously, you can't. But this is a TV show and much of the action takes place around the sofa and coffee table. This employs the viewer using "suspension of disbelief" to allow the plots to play out.

raywest

Question: Couldn't the events of the movie have been avoided if Frank just let Donnie get hit by the jet engine and die from the beginning instead of waking him up and taking him out of his room?

sccrkeepa00

Chosen answer: In short: no. Because of the films themes of wormholes, time travel, alternative dimensions/parallel universes and meta-physics the events of the film had to happen the way the did or else they wouldn't have happened at all! It's very difficult to wrap your head around but it's one of the many many paradoxes caused by time travel (cause and effect becoming effect and cause).

Sanguis

Question: Do the Avatar alien creatures on Pandora connect with horses, dragons, the soul tree or whatever with their tail or a pigtail in their hair or both?

Answer: The connect with the pink fibrous tentacles contained in their hair.

Sanguis

Question: I'm really confused, and need help with this. I saw the second BTTF, so I saw the scene when Doc explains the two timelines and changing the future, but I'm still confused. If what Doc said was true, when Marty got hit by the car, he would have changed the future by preventing his parents from marrying. Therefore, there are now several timelines in the movie all going off at the same time. According to the movie, the first one is a timeline where Marty goes into the time machine back to 1955, and he has a loser for a father. There is also a timeline just like the first one, but George punched Biff, making him cool in the future. Another, alternate timeline is also present where Marty's parents haven't married, Marty doesn't exist, and none of the events from the first two timelines happen in this timeline. However, if this were true, all three timelines would have to be there, as Marty jumps from timeline to timeline in the movie and then in the end, watched himself do it again. First he would be in the regular timeline, then as he prevents his parents from meeting, he is in the other timeline. As he puts his parents back together and goes to 1985, he is now in the "cool father timeline". That is how I see the movie. Can somebody help shed some light on the subject for me?

Answer: To be honest, it sounds like you've got a reasonably good handle on the situation. Initially Marty's in a 1955 where his parents will marry after George is hit by the car, but his father will be the loser we see in Marty's original 1985. The moment that Marty gets hit by the car, the future is changed and he's now in a timeline where his parents will never get married and thus he will not be born. The timeline begins to slowly alter (time is shown to have a resistance to change in the series), giving Marty enough time to reengineer his parents' meeting before he's erased from existence as the new timeline exerts itself. The way he handles it creates a third timeline where his parents do get married and go on to be cool and thus when he returns to 1985 at the end of the first film, that's the timeline he's in. The other Marty that he sees there is one who grew up in that third timeline, with the cool parents, and thus may be a bit different, but who still met Doc at some point, rendezvoused with him at the mall and ultimately went back in time after encountering the terrorists, where he'll encounter the young loser version of his father and will have to turn him into the cool, confident man that he grew up with. In the second film, old Biff goes back in time and gives his younger self the sports almanac, which changes the timeline again, now creating a fourth timeline where George and Lorraine still marry and are cool, but George will subsequently be murdered by this timeline's rich and powerful version of Biff, leading to the 1985 we see in the middle section of the second film. When Marty and Doc go back to 1955 from there, they arrive in the same timeline, the one where Biff will go on to be rich and powerful. As a result of their actions there, stealing the almanac from young Biff and destroying it, they technically create a fifth timeline, one where events in 1955 played out slightly differently but which is otherwise effectively identical to the third timeline, where Marty's parents are cool and successful in the present day. It is quite a complicated situation, with several different timelines involved, and I have no idea how well I explained it, but hopefully that helped a little bit, at least.

Tailkinker

Question: Why is it that when the Trojans invade the shores at daybreak to initiate the second battle, it is quite obvious that Brad Pitt was playing the role of Patroclus only until his throat was cut? First, you can see Pitt's face in Achilles' helmet in the close-up shots when he is about to start fighting with Hector. Second, you can see the significant change in Patroclus' physique before and after Hector cut his throat.

Ivan-sama

Chosen answer: Watching the scene carefully, I would say that Garrett Hedlund plays the character throughout. Hedlund does bear a notable resemblence to Pitt - he was undoubtedly cast as Patroclus for that reason, both because their characters are cousins and because of the requirement to successfully pull off the masquerade as Achilles during the scene - and thus could readily be mistaken for him, given that his face is rarely seen clearly throughout the scene. However, it's not unreasonable that they might have used Pitt in a couple of key shots, in order to preserve the illusion that this really is Achilles fighting, to bring the audience along in making the same mistake that the Greek army have. As for the physique, it can be seen in their introductory sword-fighting scene that Hedlund and Pitt have roughly similar builds - any perceived change in physique is most likely an illusion caused by the shift between standing in a fighting stance and lying limply on the ground.

Tailkinker

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