Question: Why do people in the film refer to replicants as androids and machines when (just like normal humans) they seem to be made of flesh and blood and are not mechanical?
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.
Answer: The replicants are indeed androids/machines; like Terminators, they are made to look human by adding human parts, such as skin and blood and even organs ("surrounded by living tissue", if you will). Unlike Terminators, however, they are not programmed simply to kill/destroy humans...they are simply "upgraded" versions of humans, who like all of us want to live with freedom and self-actualisation.
Question: Mr. Partridge's new job does not start until next month, and they will not receive the insurance pay-out until Mrs. Partridge has been missing for seven years. But Mrs. Partridge says the landlord will evict them on Monday if the rent is not paid. So how does Mr. Partridge stay in the house? And how can they afford to get a secret apartment and new glasses for Mrs. Partridge?
Question: Why didn't they need more than one pill? We take pills daily. These people took one dose the first day and then never again. They were there for about 50 years with one dosage but somehow they still worked?
Answer: The people were only there for about a day. The beach they were taken to rapidly aged them at the rate of one year every thirty minutes. The pharmaceutical company used them as test subjects by continually spiking their drinks with experimental medications for various health conditions to simulate a 50-year long drug trial within a 24-hour period.
Answer: A number of online explanations said it was because Lowe was already contractually tied to another project while this one was being filmed. Another explanation is that he was left uncredited so his appearance mid-film would come as a "surprise" when the plot took a different turn.
I read where his contract with the mini-series "The Stand" left him unable to take any credited roles. However, it seems "Tommy Boy" began filming after "The Stand" aired and he was credited for his role as Jesse James in "Frank and Jesse." However, it seems to be an Internet story where the source isn't credited.
Question: Who are all the dictators Peter invites for a pool party in the episode?
Answer: Peter mentions receiving 3 telegrams from Libya, Iraq, and North Korea. At the pool party we see Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, wearing a green beret; Saddam Hussein of Iraq, wearing a red beret; and in the pool Kim il-sung (or possibly Kim Jong-il) of North Korea. Slobodan Milosevic brought the coleslaw. Also, playing Marco Polo in the pool are: Fidel Castro wearing military green cap and smoking a cigar; Yasser Arafat wearing a checkered keffiyeh; Idi Amin wearing a purple hat; Ruhollah Khomeini (or possibly Ali Khamenei) with a grey beard wearing a black turban. Stewie talks to Achmed (wearing mustard gas T-shirt) and calls out to "Manuel" which could refer to Manuel Noriega of Panama, but he's not seen.
Question: When Hans is interrogating Takagi, why would he remove a silencer to fire the weapon indoors without hearing protection? Wouldn't it be more menacing to put a silencer on in that situation?
Answer: I think he's just subtly showing Takagi that he's in control of the situation - there's no need to hide behind a silencer, which they were using earlier. They've taken over and can do whatever they want, including loudly executing people. It's a very subtle power-play.
Answer: They used guns with silencers to access the building and take control swiftly and quietly. Now that they no longer need to do that he takes off the silencer. A silencer affects the gun's accuracy. It is also highly likely he wanted the people in the other room to hear the shot.
Question: If the government killed everyone regardless if they were infected or not, why didn't they save themselves all the trouble and just nuke the town from the get-go?
Answer: Probably because using a nuclear weapon on a single small town within the US would a) call a ridiculous amount of attention to what happened and invite the kind of speculation/investigation the government wants to avoid; b) destroy or contaminate a huge area beyond the "problem" zone, killing tens of thousands, if not millions, of innocent people; and c) be considered, at best, a horrendous accident and at worst a terrorist attack, and either way would lead to who knows what consequences. For these and probably hundreds of other reasons, in this and literally every other scenario in movies and in reality, nuclear weapons are never considered the "from the get-go" option.
Question: As JJ and his new love interest are discussing needing more money, after the idea of JJ getting a second job fails, JJ comes up with an idea saying to her, "No problem - you can get a part-time job" (which she refused to do). After JJ suggests her getting the part-time job, the audience started whooing and screaming loudly. What was it about the idea of her working that made the audience react that way?
Question: Why does Billy not tell anyone about his teacher's attack?
Answer: Gremlins have hatched and are about to start attacking the town and he's trying to stop them. Reporting a corpse is relatively low-priority in comparison to that.
The gremlins didn't start attacking the town until late at night but Mr. Hanson's murder occurred during the daytime. There would still be plenty of time to call the police and inform them of Hanson's death.
Again, it's low-priority, and there is definitely not "plenty of time." Billy realises that the cocoons have hatched and has to rush home to save his mom, and then Stripe immediately escapes, so he has to follow Stripe and try to stop him... and then Stripe multiplies and Billy realises the town is about to be overrun. Reporting a corpse can wait. Would you stop and take the large amount of time needed to report a dead body when your mother is in mortal danger or the town is about to be overrun?
Question: I think I can recall seeing a shot from Scream, maybe during a trailer or a promotional image with Ghostface swinging from a rope by his hands and smashing through a glass window, it seemed to be set in an industrial factory or something. Obviously I have never seen this scene again. Was it ever filmed or is this just a false memory?
Answer: To my knowledge, there isn't a scene like that in this film. It almost sounds like a shot from the movie "Saw 3D," where the Billy doll (whose face looks ever-so-slightly looks like the Ghostface mask) crashes through a window in an industrial-like setting in a cage attached to a wire. But at the same time, this isn't exactly an uncommon thing to see in movies. People swinging through windows from ropes and/or crashing through windows is very common, so it's probably just a false memory or your brain combining details from different movies.
Question: Why does Mason give Goodspeed the location of where he hid the top secret microfilm? I thought the whole point of why Mason was locked up was because he wouldn't tell the FBI where he hid it, so why divulge this information to Goodspeed? Does Mason think Goodspeed isn't going to hand in the microfilm to his superiors?
Answer: Mason got a clean slate, no more secrets for him because of Goodspeed. So, as a token of appreciation he tells him where he hid the government secrets, to do what he pleased with it. It was no longer his burden.
Chapter 16: The Rescue - S2-E8
Question: What are those "prongs" appearing and disappearing on R2D2's shoulders? AFAIK they never appeared before in any life-action rendition of Star Wars material. I thought I remembered them from a Toy-R2 (Jabba's Sail Barge version where they aligned the accessory) but couldn't verify that. (00:37:10 - 00:37:50)
Question: Did Frank actually die when he cut the rope? Did they not find another way into the Galleria to check on him in case he only had a fractured leg, or did they just decide to leave him?
Answer: Frank fell several stories through the skylight of a mall. Even if he somehow survived the fall, Jack and Jason would have no way of rescuing him as the mall was buried under several meters of snow and the glass roof was precarious at best. Frank sacrificed himself so Jack could go to New York and rescue his son.
Question: How were the two Spanish galleons placed inside the cave?
Question: How did Jason leave the hospital without anybody seeing him?
Answer: There was no-one to see him. Remember? After he murdered Axel and the nurse, they were the only two employees left in the building.
Question: How did Ethan Hunt know he was going to switch places with Hugh at the end of the film requiring him to take two masks with him to swap different faces?
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Answer: This could start getting metaphysical but ultimately it's semantics. An android is a humanoid robot. A robot is "a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically". A machine is "a physical system using power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action". Note none of those definitions specify metal parts, or even being artificial. Human beings are machines, in the same way that human beings are animals, in literal terms, we're "just" biological machines, but we tend not to think of ourselves as such, because "human" is a more specific definition, and people like to feel that humanity confers a higher status of sorts. So it boils down to us vs. them, really - despite all of their many human traits, a lot of humans don't want to be conflated with replicants, so different terminology is used. There's also an argument to be made that as with a lot of dehumanising terms used in the present day, calling them machines helps to justify mistreatment, even though the replicants are just as capable of life and thought as humans are.