Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Answer: His full name was Richard Tracy, but it was used seldomly.

Chosen answer: It's a bit ambiguous. Tracy's creator, Chester Gould, originally named his character, "Plainclothes Tracy," until an editor suggested changing it to Dick Tracy. A "dick" is a dated slang term for a cop or a private detective. Dick appears to be Tracy's first name, but it is also descriptive of his profession. This is called a "double entendre." It's typical for authors to contrive a name that reflects their characters.

raywest

Question: What does Buster mean that he'll be put in a foster home with people who don't love him? What's gonna happen to him if he lives with them?

Trainman

Answer: He was just saying it pessimistically. Although, depending on which reports you read, 1 in 3 children are abused by their foster parents. In addition, many children in the system also get placed into several different homes during their childhood (since fostering children is not the same as adopting them), leaving the children to feel unloved by their foster parents.

Bishop73

I don't know the frequency with which it actually happens, but there are also neglectful foster parents whose sole motivation is the monthly stipend from the state, rather than a genuine interest in their wards' well-being.

Cubs Fan

Answer: Foster homes are meant to be temporary. While, hopefully, foster parents will be kind and caring to the children in their charge, they cannot form overly strong attachments that would only cause emotional trauma for a child when they transition to another living situation.

raywest

Question: Who is the actor playing Billy that was shot by Travis in the police station interrogation room?

Answer: Billy was played by Mark Pellegrino.

Bishop73

Question: How does Mrs. Smith get to know that her husband is the shooter?

Answer: She notices that he shakes his right leg twice after peeing, just like her husband.

Answer: It comes down to a deleted scene. And I remember it as clear as day from when I saw it at the cinemas. There is a scene where Jane is brushing her teeth at the basin. John walks into the large bathroom and begins to take a leak. As John finishes up, Jane looks over her shoulder at him, just in time to see him lift one leg and give it a couple of sharp shakes. Later in the movie, after the ailed assignment/shootout in the desert, Jane is watching the footage of the other assassin doing the very same memorable action. Right as she is in the middle of replaying it back a couple of times, John turns up at her building, and one of her agents who has answered the intercom says, "Jane, it's your husband." And that is when the penny drops! For some bizarre, unknown reason, they removed that very important key bathroom scene from every TV and DVD release, leaving people who did not see the theatrical release at the box office asking the question of how Jane realized it was her husband.

Answer: From the way he stands and moves, height, weight and general mannerisms.

Answer: They worked for different agencies and were unaware that they had been given the same target (Diaz?) to kill in the desert. Mrs Smith initially thought that Mr Smith was a civilian that just happened to interfere with her assignment. She was given 48 hours to identify and eliminate (kill) the "witness." While reviewing the videotape of the scene, all Mrs Smith could see was the back side of the "civilian." While still looking at him, a secretary or similar employee yelled from outside the room that Mrs Smith's husband was on the phone and was back from his trip to Atlanta. By the secretary saying, "It's your husband" during the time Mrs Smith was looking at his back side on the tape, plus the information that he was back from Atlanta, it became obvious to her... and she wondered how she could have been so stupid to not know before this time.

KeyZOid

Question: I read that Stan Lee greatly approved black Johnny. Is this true?

Answer: According to Entertainment Weekly, it's true. Unlike characters like Black Panther, Storm, Thunderbird or Shang-Chi, Johnny Storm's race has really nothing to do with what defines him as a character, which is why Stan Lee had no issue with it.

Phaneron

Question: In the final scenes where they are trapped by the Bolivian police in that little room, they're guessing how many men are out there when Butch says, "maybe its only one guy?" Suddenly 3 shots, too quick to be one gunman rings out. Sundance looks at Butch and says. "don't you ever get sick of being right?" Isn't Butch wrong? There's an army out there.

Answer: Sundance is being sarcastic. Butch is a know-it-all, and he's been frequently proven wrong throughout the film, usually to their detriment, but continues to think he's the "smart one" of the duo. Sundance is just ribbing him.

Question: How did Reavers fly those space ships while they are just zombies. How did they manage the whole Reaver community?

Answer: The reavers are not just zombies, they reacted to the drug in a way that caused them to become insane. They are angry, cannibalistic, violent, hysterical. You can't communicate with them, but they can still think. They do have a society, a community. Their community is based on pillage and plunder however, finding new victims to cannibalise.

lionhead

Answer: Yes, in the "Blacklist" series, it's said Christopher was 3 when he disappeared.

Bishop73

Question: How did Eddie find out about Peter and Mary Jane's relationship? He never saw them together and, when he kidnapped her, she and Peter were somewhat estranged.

Answer: The symbiote, traditionally, knows all of Peter's secrets including his identity. This is how Eddie knows who he is, as well as his relationship with Mary Jane.

Rob245

Question: How did Kirill know Bourne was in India?

Answer: In the script, Kirill shows a photo of Marie when he poses as her brother and says there has been a death in the family. He does this at a specific telegraph office, and says that they know Marie called from there. Kirill was a Russian FSB agent, so presumably he used that agency's resources to tap the phone of Marie's brother and traced her call to the telegraph office in Goa. This is not clear in the actual film, where Kirill shows a photo of Bourne and says he is a friend.

Sierra1

Answer: Was this bought on by her husband dying or something she always had?

Answer: Her mental disorder is never identified. She exhibits extreme emotions, impulsiveness, promiscuity, difficulty with relationships, among other symptoms, which can indicate a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

raywest

Question: Why is Ben wearing a wedding ring?

Show generally

Question: I recently watched the series for the first time on Hulu. (I'm located in the US if that makes any difference.) And I'm confused about something: the first three seasons are in 4:3 full-frame, before switching to 16:9 widescreen for the final four seasons. I know there is an infamous "HD remaster" that botched the series with bad cropped widescreen and poor color-correction work. But I've also heard the series was shown in widescreen in the UK for seasons 4-7. Is the version of seasons 4-7 on Hulu the HD remaster or the UK version?

TedStixon

Question: What happened to Lydia's biological mother? Was this mentioned in a deleted scene? I once watched the movie with someone who said that Delia actually is the biological mother, but Lydia feels so disconnected and misunderstood, she pretends that Delia is her stepmother. (When I was a kid myself, I actually met a couple of kids who pretended that parents were adoptive or someone was a step-parent).

Answer: Her mother died and Delia is indeed her stepmother. We are not told in the film how her mother died. In the musical we're told Emily Deetz is her biological mother.

Bishop73

Question: How are Thanos and the Black Order able to track the infinity stone throughout the galaxy?

Answer: We aren't given a specific answer, but as Thanos himself tells Tony Stark, "You're not the only one cursed with knowledge." Thanos has probably studied the Infinity Stones for most of his life, and with the exception of the Soul Stone, every Stone presumably gives off some kind of energy signature that can be tracked.

Phaneron

Answer: He probably has spies everywhere and he can probably gain their location through interrogating his victims.

lionhead

Question: Is there any reason why this is the only film in the American "Ring" series to not have an R1/A Blu-Ray release? It seems so weird that the first and third films are available in HD, while this one isn't. Is it like a studio issue or something?

TedStixon

Answer: Whelp, just to update my own question, the movie is finally getting a Blu-Ray (and 4K) release in October through boutique company Shout Factory. Presumably, it just wasn't seen as a necessity until more recently, with boutique physical media labels becoming more and more prevalent and being successful in the collector's market.

TedStixon

Answer: More and more studios are not releasing films on Blu-Ray because of the higher risk on the return of their money. It's more expensive and home media sales continue to decline, especially with streaming services available. DreamWorks Pictures was the distribution company for the first two films while Paramount Pictures was the distribution company for the third film. I don't know specifically why DreamWorks opted out of the third film, but it seems they didn't think the third film would be worth it financially and probably has similar thoughts about the 2nd film's home release. There's much more to it, including parent companies involved and whom they contract out for disc distribution, that I don't have answers to about why DreamWorks hadn't released "The Ring Two" on Blu-Ray.

Bishop73

Question: Two questions involving the whole flossing thing earlier in the movie; One, why was Vivian trying to keep it a secret and felt so embarrassed about it? And two, why was Edward so surprised by it?

Answer: She was embarrassed to be doing something so mundane and non-sexy when her job is to seduce him. He was surprised because he assumed that since she was a prostitute she was a drug user. He didn't expect a prostitute to pay attention to personal hygiene while on the job.

Question: Why was Vivian wearing a wig at the beginning of the movie? Was it just part of her job/hooker persona or something?

Answer: As the other answer indicated, it was part of her cheap hooker persona, but it also makes a greater impact on the audience when they see Vivian undergo her "transformation" with the classy designer clothes, toned-down make-up, and her own nicely-styled hair.

raywest

Answer: Yes.

Question: Why exactly did Edward need a date so badly for the week? He made a big deal about it to his ex-girlfriend earlier in the movie about her going with him to something. Did he just not want to go alone or was there something that I missed?

Answer: Edward always needed to project a certain image of success, including having a beautiful woman by his side. His previous girlfriend dumped him because she was fed up with him treating her as nothing more than someone to cater to his needs and to be a prop to aid his business deals. He hires Vivian for the same reason and to charm the men he wants to conduct business with. Presumably, he would find a new girlfriend later on, but needed someone in the immediate interim to fill that role.

raywest

Question: Did the 'Ahab' feature AI? If not, it would have been very ridiculous if it hit something on the water they couldn't possibly have accounted for.

Answer: It was very likely programmed to be able to detect and avoid obstacles in its path.

TedStixon

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