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: Can anyone translate what Adam and his dad are saying when Adam is a teenager and they are in the classroom?

Answer: Adam: Tempus fugit (Latin) = Time flies. Dad: Que les bons temps roulent! (French) = How good times roll! Adam: Geradeaus, dann links (German) = Straightforward, then left. Dad: Sorgen Sie bitte dafür, dass die [das] Gepäck sorgfältig behandelt werden [wird] (German) = Please make sure that this luggage will be treated carefully. Adam: Haben Sie etwas Nettes in Leder? (German) = Do you have something nice in leather?

Question: Early in the movie Max finds an abandoned truck with graffiti on its side saying "The Vermin Have Inherited the Earth". Is this a reference to something?

Answer: Maybe the Judeo-Christian bible "The meek shall inherit the earth" (Matt 5:5). Not much of a stretch that someone in that environment would change meek to vermin.

Nikki

Question: What is the little thing that flies in front of Gandalf's face right before the eagles come to the Black Gate?

Answer: It's a moth, the same (or of the same kind) as the one he sent from Orthanc to get the eagle to rescue him in the "Fellowship".

Ioreth

Question: Who turned off the lights near the end, when she's fighting all those men?

Answer: The lights are flipped on and off by the woman who owns the inn (with her husband). She's shown in brief jump-cuts throwing a big switch.

Carl Fink

Question: What is it that brings about a nosebleed? Rachael, Noah and Aidan all get them, but at times when they don't seem to be doing anything at all related to what the other characters were doing when they got theirs.

Answer: It's just a sign of the impending doom facing each of them.

wolfchild

Answer: It's when they have a physical interaction with Samara or the other 'entities' like the fly.

Question: I always partially catch this movie on TV. There's one thing I've never figured out. Near the end of the movie, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson are trapped on top of the bomb on the ship, and Willis gets free but Jackson drops the lock pick. Exactly how does he break Jackson out of the handcuffs? It always seems as if there's some sort of electrical jolt involved, but I just can't figure out how that's supposed to open the cuffs.

Answer: Bruce Willis use a couple of drops of the explosive residue and blows the handcuffs apart. Watch it again and see how he stabs the container.

Timothy Cheseborough

Show generally

Question: When the show started they were in the 10th grade. They graduated from the 12th grade at the end of the 4th season. Did they stay in the same grade for more than a season/year?

Answer: In seasons 1 and 2 they are in 10th grade, season 3 they are in 11th and in season 4 they are in 12th.

Answer: Yes. This is commonly done in many shows.

Super Grover

Question: Why does the guy in the prison have so many assistants, and live in complete royalty compared to the other inmates? I've watched it over and over but still can't understand why.

Answer: Because he is connected on the outside. Money and infulence can give you a much easier life in prison, though this movie greatly exaggerated the fact.

Grumpy Scot

Question: What was the whole pancakes scene about with Dennis? I just don't understand it.

Answer: The writer saw the boy's martial arts skills and wrote in that part just for him to be in the movie.

T Poston

Answer: I don't know if this will help or not but there is a scene close to the end where Paul is in the hospital. He is being wheeled in on a stretcher and he goes past a room that shows a person in a giant rabbit costume offering some pancakes to Dennis.

Answer: "Wicked Game" by Chris Isaac.

Jane Doe

Question: I don't know all the ins and outs of the law, but when Erin is in a car accident, she is going straight through a green light. The other guy rams into her as he tries to cross the intersection (it's not like he just cut her off making a right turn) so obviously he had a red light and not even an arguable right of way. I know money can buy you justice, but how is this not an open and shut case?

Krista

Answer: They would have had to prove he ran the red light, which would require video or witnesses. It seems like Erin had no witnesses backing up her version of the story, so they wouldn't have had anyone to say he went through the red light either.

Chosen answer: I have to admit that is a bit frustrating to watch. I think that?s how the producers wanted us to feel. Making us think, "Man this chick never gets a break". It was just an unrealistic way to set up the character's life.

JamesP

Question: I'm intrigued if anyone knows what the experiment was that Doc refers to at the start. He says "my experiment worked - all the clocks are exactly 25 minutes slow". The only thing I can think of is that Doc loaded them all into the time machine or something similar - is there any official answer, or is it just a random comment?

Jon Sandys

Chosen answer: It's just a random comment, and I suppose is also an early indicator that Doc Brown is performing experiments involving time. Whatever, it's certainly nothing that bears any relevance to the rest of the film.

Gaz

Question: What is the translation of what Wonka says, after getting off the boat, going into the testing room?

Answer: "My friends, please give me your attention. You have now come to the most interesting and, at the same time, the most secret room of my factory. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Inventing Room."

ChiChi

Question: When does Rachel realise if she shows the film to someone else she won't die? And if she knew, is that why she showed it to Noah, to kill him on purpose?

Answer: Rachel doesn't know that showing the film to someone else will cause you not to die until death skips her. She remembers that Samara wanted to be "heard". She never meant to kill Noah.

Ginger Painter

Answer: At the end of the movie, she is crying about why she wasn't killed and Noah was. She vocalizes "What did I do, that he didn't?" That's when she sees the copy she made. It wasn't that she just showed it to someone else. She made a copy and Aiden watched that copy. Aiden is why it skipped her.

Almost right. It's just the copy. Copying the video makes it skip you. That's why she has Aiden make a copy as well.

lionhead

You have to show the copy to someone else as well. That's why Aiden asks Rachel at the very end "What about the person we show it to? What happens to them?"

Phaneron

But doesn't he have less than a day left by then? Hardly a time to relax, they need to make a terrible decision, quickly. I always had the idea making a copy was enough because of that.

lionhead

He watched the tape the morning of either Rachel's 4th or 5th day, so he should have at least 3 days left by this point. Though it appears the film was being inconsistent with the markings that Samara leaves on the tape's viewers, since Rachel noticed Samara's hand print on Aiden's arm and then his nose started bleeding. For Rachel, she got her nosebleed before receiving the mark on her arm.

Phaneron

Actually, you need to do both: make a copy and show it to someone else. This is further explained in The Ring 2. At the beginning, the guy had made a copy but since the girl covered her eyes and didn't watch the whole thing, he was still killed by Samara. So making a copy is not enough in itself to be spared if no-one else watches it. The same goes for Rachel. She made a copy on the 2nd day, but Becca tells her she only has 4 days left when she visits the psych ward indicating she hadn't been spared yet. It's only after Aidan watches the copy she made that death skips her for good.

Answer: No, it's wrong. Just making a copy won't save you; you need to show it to someone else, and then this someone else is cursed instead of you. The Japanese movie explains it well. Plus, in the official second movie, a man dies from Samara after making the copy because nobody watched it. Also, at the end of the 1st movie, Aiden asks from the copy, "What will happen to the one who will watch it?"

Question: How do the hockey mask, clothes and machete appear when Jason is reborn through Diana's body, not to mention how was he was reborn to the exact decomposed state he died in?

Dan Moat

Answer: Of course he would be reborn exactly like he was before he was blown apart. Which is why he needed a blood relative to do so.

Chosen answer: Evil magic.

Grumpy Scot

Show generally

Question: Who can use the holodecks at their discretion? I've never seen a holodeck numbered higher than five. Lieutenant Barclay can obviously use them whenever he likes, though he got in trouble for it. Are they just for officers? Does an ensign have to surrender a holodeck if a Commander want to use it?

Answer: I'm sure there are more than 5 holodecks. Also, judging from DS9, you generally would schedule use on a holodeck. Finally, though incredibly cool to us, that's pretty routine for the TNG crew. They read, play instruments, take fighting classes, dance lessons, put on plays, do personal research projects, etc to fill their off-duty time. Getting in holodeck time might be pretty easy! We never see average crewmen using the holodecks as the stories just aren't about them. I'm sure they use them too. I imagine the only way someone has to surrender a holodeck is if the officers need it for research (like the episode where the subspace aliens were kidnapping them or Geordi turned into one of those glowing blue aliens) or when using it in conflict with accepted StarFleet conduct (as Barclay did by using the crew in his fantasies).

Grumpy Scot

Question: Samara made pictures while in the psychiatric ward (the tree, horse and person). Why is there a person with all of the hardware? And what is the relevance of the burning tree? I understand that Samara burned it into her wall, but how is it important?

Answer: The burning tree represents the sun going down behind that tree in the field near the cabin.

Timothy Cheseborough

Question: At the end when the girl 'dies' you can see someone in the corner. Who is it?

Answer: It is Mike. If you remember from earlier in the movie it was said that one person was made to stand in the corner while the other person was killed.

Tallicame

Question: What are the Eagles' purpose and where did they come from?

Answer: The Eagles live in Middle-Earth, generally in the high mountains. They act as the emissaries of Manwe, leader of the Valar (the local deity equivalents), and will intercede in events at his behest, or at the request of one of the Maiar (a race of spirits that includes Gandalf, Saruman and Sauron among their number).

Tailkinker

Question: Private Joker asks the gunner on the chopper about how he is able to shoot women and children, and the gunner replies by saying 'it's easy, you just don't lead them so much'. Does anyone know what that means?

Answer: To lead means to aim ahead of a moving target. His statement means that women and children don't run as fast as men, so you don't need to aim as far in front of them to hit them.

jle

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