Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.

Question: Why does Daniel's karate skills regress in this movie? After fighting a Karate champ in the first movie and a Japanese fighter in the second, surely he must have gotten better as a fighter, not worse?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: First he could have just been out of practice, but the point they made in the movie was that his moves were old, so they knew how to counter the things he did in the past to win.

pross79

Question: Perhaps I'm missing something here but given what we see in the opening montage it's public knowledge from the get go that Sally Jupiter is the Silk Specter (given she's seen holding a certificate from the police with both names on it and the bomber plane we see has her actual surname painted under her portrait on its fuselage rather than her crime fighter moniker). While I'm aware this is a carry over from the graphic novel, the logic of this still makes no sense. She's supposed to be a masked superhero like the other Minutemen, reliant on her mystery and sexual appeal to subdue villains, why put herself at the unnecessary risk of being even more vulnerable to retribution by letting everyone know both of her identities?

Answer: The concept of "dual identities" is a convenient story device for comic books. However given the ways in which the "masked vigilante" phenomenon evolved in the Watchmen universe, it is often little more than a policeman on steroids with a mask. Given that mentality, it makes sense. Policemen do not work in anonymity. And while they may worry about repercussions on their families from time to time, in general most of their personal lives stay safely away from their professional lives, aside from the time they have to devote to being a keeper of the peace.

Garlonuss

Question: Surely a mothership as huge as the one depicted in the movie would have some sort of gravitational effect on Earth?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: While that is a possibility, the fact that they don't mention it should not necessarily be interpreted to mean that there wasn't one. They had bigger things to talk about at the time. Of course the power of the effect would also depend on the distance from the earth as gravity is defined as proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the centers of their masses.

Garlonuss

Answer: That ship is much smaller than the moon.

Question: At the end, how did they vanquish Vigo? As far as I could tell all they did was blast him with their Proton Packs and Slime gun.

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: Yup, that's pretty much it. They were unable to defeat him with the proton packs alone because his power was being boosted by the mass of negative energy from the slime that had been building up beneath the city. By spraying him with their positively charged slime (as Ray mentions later) they are able to negate that effect. The proton packs then force him back through the dimensional gate that had opened within the painting.

Garlonuss

Answer: Why? Because her father was possessed by an evil entity. How? Blunt force trauma.

ChristmasJonesfan

Chosen answer: Laura was killed by her father Leland, whilst he was apparently possessed by the spirit BOB. The exact manner of her murder is not clear, as several injuries found during her autopsy we later discover occurred during a separate incident before her murder. We know that she was beaten and killed in an abandoned train car, and her body was then wrapped in plastic and thrown in the river.

pinkwafer

Chosen answer: It is strongly implied that Lisa was murdered by her brother-in-law Hoyt, with whom she had been having an affair. When Nate confronts Hoyt about Lisa's disappearance, Hoyt shoots himself dead before the question is finally resolved.

pinkwafer

Chosen answer: Killer BOB is a demonic entity that emanates from a realm of pure evil known as the Black Lodge, a place that exists on an alternate plane of reality. BOB feeds on human pain and suffering and can travel on earth by possessing human beings and also as an owl. While possessing humans, he commits horrible acts to elicit pain, fear, and suffering from those who are around him, using that as nourishment. BOB possesses Leland Palmer, later forcing him to abuse, rape, and eventually murder his own daughter, Laura, and later to commit suicide.

raywest

Season 3 generally

Question: Why did Arthur Petrelli steal Peter's powers? Was it because he simply wanted them, to add to his collection as it were, or because he saw him as a threat?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: Both, really. Peter is undoubtedly powerful enough to cause a serious problem, so nullifying him makes sense on a tactical level. It's also understandable that a power thief like Arthur could hardly resist the temptation to obtain so many new powers in one go when he's used to stealing them one at a time.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: He's certainly been shown to use it to levitate, so full flight is probably within his capabilities. His exact limits are unknown, but are undoubtedly pretty high - he throws a police van around with no obvious effort towards the end of season one and has shown himself to be skilled enough to manipulate many different objects at once, as when he used the glass fragments against the invisible Peter Petrelli.

Tailkinker

Question: During the scene where John has the conversation with the woman in the corridor, what does she mean when she says, "I knew I could rely on you", have they met before?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: No, she has not met Lennon before, and she's unsure if it is really him. The whole conversation is written so that their bantering does not make any real sense, and it humorously depicts how famous people are sometimes perceived by the non-famous. Basically, the woman doesn't know what she is talking about but wants to sound like she does.

raywest

Question: I don't know anything about identical twins, so this is why I'm asking this question: how likely is it that Louis and Phillipe would have the exact same speech pattern?

Answer: There would be both genetic similarities and individual differences, and their vocabularies would have developed differently by education and experience. However, Phillipe was heavily tutored before the switch took place, and as "king" he would be able to distance himself (physically, mentally, and emotionally) as much as needed from members of his court until he perfected his role, along with the continued help from those in on the deception. Also, the audience and readers of the novel are expected to employ a certain "suspension of disbelief" in order to allow the story to be told.

raywest

Question: After the scene where John has his "you look just like him" conversation in the corridor with that woman, George goes to the "canteen and production offices" and sits down in some sore of reception. The receptionist says, "Oh there you are". Could somebody please tell me what the hell goes on in the scene that follows, where George is given those shirts? Did he just stumble in accidentally?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: Yes, George just happened to wander into the office by accident. He is then mistaken for someone else they were expecting who was to give them their opinion as a "typical young consumer" about the latest trends and fashions they are test marketing. These "experts" are actually so out of tune with what is actually happening in the current youth culture that they do not even recognize someone as famous as George Harrison, who criticizes their products (the men's shirts) as being "grotty" and ridicules their model spokesperson, who he calls, "a well known drag." That is when George is thrown out.

raywest

Question: Ref. the switching of stilettos to flat soles during action sequences (as in Watchmen/Silk Spectre), is there really any way round this in practical terms? Even if the heels were to be put on as CGI, the actors' stance would have to be altered as well. Anybody got a way round this problem at the moment?

Answer: A good editor will catch shots that too clearly expose the flat heels. In this film, that simply didn't happen because they are woefully obvious throughout the jail fight scene. Another choice is to have the stunt woman wear high heels. This will limit her options during the action, but in this example, there was little shown in the fight that was very risky. Spectre threw a kick here and there, in slow-motion- no fast-moving sequence of multiple martial arts moves. The last option would be to CGI the fight- which is expensive and puts the stunt woman out of work.

johnrosa

Question: In the comics, Magneto can use his magnetism to achieve a wide range of effects, such as super strength, supersonic flight, invisibility, radiation manipulation etc. Is there any indication at all as to why he can't do any of these in the movie?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: Probably the primary rationale is that they'd then have to somehow explain exactly how you use a magnetism power to do that sort of stuff - let's face it, it's not immediately obvious how, for example, you become invisible using the power to create and manipulate magnetic fields. Comics have captions and thought bubbles to explain the (often very dodgy) science that goes into these things - in a film, all they can do is have a character verbally explain, which would (a) sound pretty ridiculous and (b) require even more exposition in a film that already has a fair bit. As a result, it would make a lot of sense to restrict his abilities to those that obviously stem from his magnetic power and thus avoid too much explanation.

Tailkinker

Answer: In the original War of the Worlds book and movie, they were called heat rays. They (the tripods) generated incomprehensible amounts of heat, hence the laser's white color. They forward the heat in coordinated blasts of energy, that energy contains the heat. That's why the victim disintegrates so fast. The heat quickly evaporates all the liquids in the body and turns everything else (except the clothes) into ash. The ray blow burst of the air around it down at the ash remains of the victim, blowing the rest of the victim away.

Chosen answer: This question is beyond answering here. There is nothing to go on other that what we can see onscreen. Anyone's attempt to actually answer this question would be purely speculative.

GalahadFairlight

Or from clues we have from the book. I would have to agree that it is most likely a heat laser. It makes sense with the color of the beam and the destruction it causes.

Answer: In the book the heat ray is described as being generated in a vacuum and the heat ray is invisible. Also in the book the heat ray is just that: a heat ray, it simply burns things leaving its victims as charred corpses. The 2005 version of the heat ray vaporizes flesh but not clothes (from what's seen), caught a tree on fire and sent stuff flying (cars, buildings, elevated road-ways, you name it) and is visible. Don't exactly know what it is other than an energy weapon of sorts.

Answer: If it is a heat ray, then why are the victims' clothes left behind? In the original movie, that might be right but I think the new version has something we can only speculate.

Show generally

Question: From her incarceration in "Sanctuary" to her break out in "Salvage", how long was Faith in prison, in terms of days, weeks, etc.?

Cubs Fan

Chosen answer: The exact length of time can't be determined with any precision, but, as each season in the Buffyverse is intended to represent about a year in real time, it seems likely that she was imprisoned for about two and a half years.

Tailkinker

Question: How does the so called 'cure' work exactly? I thought it was supposed to be perfect, yet at the end of the film we see Magneto's powers return even though he's been injected with the cure.

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: Exactly how it works is never explained. As for it not being "perfect", there's no indication that the long-term effects of the "cure" have been studied in depth. It would seem, from the final scene, that it ultimately wears off.

Tailkinker

Question: I haven't seen the series finale, but what did Mulder do to make him a wanted FBI fugitive?

Cubs Fan

Chosen answer: Fox Mulder is accused of murdering Knowle Rohrer and is found guilty. Mulder is sent to prison and escapes with the help of Scully.

RLN

Question: In the last battle, Upham is seen running around with cartridges of ammunition. Why don't the people who need it just have it close by, instead of having him carry it all over the place?

Answer: Because before a battle gets underway you can never predict exactly who's going to need it. You could split the available ammunition equally between all the soldiers, but then you could easily find yourself in a situation where the enemy attack from a particular angle, so only certain soldiers can shoot back. End result, those soldiers run out of ammunition while other soldiers still have a full load that they can't use. Far better to give each soldier a moderate amount, but keep a quantity in reserve along with a soldier assigned to resupply those who run low.

Tailkinker

The Slicer - S9-E7

Question: In this episode Elaine gets trapped in her apartment and while in there she turns up the radio. What music is playing on the radio? What is the name of the band? This same music is played during 'The Little Kicks' episode, when she dances at the party.

rose

Chosen answer: Slow Ride by a band called Foghat.

William Bergquist

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