Question: I know that the studio chose James Cameron to direct due to the strength of his script, but why wasn't Ridley Scott offered the chance to direct? And was the studio considering a sequel before Cameron joined?
Chosen answer: The studio was considering a sequel before Cameron was involved, but regarding directing it, Ridley Scott told "The Hollywood" in a 2008 interview, "They didn't ask me! To this day I have no idea why. It hurt my feelings, really, because I thought we did quite a good job on the first one." The studio liked Cameron's script and at that time he had enough clout to be able to insist on directing it.
Question: One of the early posters of this film shows a bearded guy (who is not in the film) coming through a wall crack and holding puppet strings with one hand. Who is this guy supposed to be and what does he represent?
Chosen answer: He does bear a striking resemblance to Stephen King. King was both the writer and director of this movie, and as such, was certainly the guy in charge of all the character's fates and pulling all the strings.
Answer: It is Stephen King.
Question: Paul Ruebens does the voice of Max but why in the credits does it say that the voice of Max was done by Paul Mall?
Answer: According to IMDB, Paul Mall is just another one of his names people know him by.
Answer: It was Paul Reubens' idea to use a pseudonym, so as to keep the voice of Max a mystery and to surprise any fans of his.
Question: Near the end of the song "I am a dentist", is Orin saying "and a success" or "and I say sit"?
Answer: He says "and a success". He's singing about his mother telling him he'd become a successful dentist.
Question: Why is the secretary was so rude to Howard when he tried to find the job?
Answer: As she said to Howard, she believed that he was using his "outlandish" appearance to be unable to find work and collect money through unemployment. She's probably dealt with people who did the same thing and was eventually sick of it.
Question: What are those devices we see disappear from the wraith's arm and after the second and third race supposed to be?
Chosen answer: I believe they are markers to show how many people are left to take revenge on for his death.
The problem with that answer is that the Wraith had to kill five people (Oggie, Minty, Skank, Gutterboy and Packard) and he only had four of those metal braces. If he had one for each gang member he wanted revenge on, he would have had five. I think he was only given four chances to crash his car and reassemble, and once they were gone, that was it. That's why he killed Skank and Gutterboy at the same time.
Question: Would the interference from the plutonium keep the RC car from working?
Answer: Radiation wouldn't necessarily affect a remote control car. It would contaminate it, but beyond that the car would continue to work.
Question: Kirk and crew deliberately disclose crucial technological secrets, extend the life of a random stranger, deliver future technology to a primitive military power, abduct a cetacean biologist, and actually contribute to the extinction of a species during their brief stay in 20th Century San Francisco. Specifically: Scotty reveals the secret of Transparent Aluminum 150 years too early; McCoy arbitrarily uses 23rd Century medicine to cure a seriously ill 20th Century woman; and Kirk chooses to remove Gillian from the 20th Century. Perhaps most importantly, Chekov leaves behind a Starfleet Communicator and a Type 2 Phaser in the hands of the U.S. Navy (who would undoubtedly dissect the devices and try to exploit the technology a couple of centuries too soon). Beyond all that, Kirk and crew abduct two breeding humpback whales, one of which is pregnant, and that certainly contributes to humpback extinction in the 21st Century. Given what we think we know about disrupting linear time continuity (many instances are cited in Star Trek canon), how did Kirk and crew return to anything even resembling their own timeline after such blatant and deliberate interference in Earth history?
Chosen answer: This question has been answered a number of times by various individuals, all saying pretty much the same thing. The answers have been most satisfactory given the question revolves around a fictitious situation and the answer (s) need to be accepted as complete for this purpose. Any dispute or non-acceptance should be addressed in a Star Trek forum. Any ignoring of the Prime Directive was done to save the future of Earth, as the probe would have wiped out all life on Earth. Essentially, nothing that was done in the past resulted in major changes that would make Earth 300 years later appear any different, and no major futuristic technologies were revealed. The major one, Chekov's communicator and phaser being left behind did not result in anybody learning secrets. In the film, the phaser didn't function because of the radiation. It's presumed then the radiation permanently damaged the equipment so it appeared to be nothing but a toy or prop. However, in the novel "The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh", Roberta Lincoln was sent by Gary Seven to recover the items from Area 51 before any secrets were learned (and as stated before, additional corrections to Earth's timeline could have been done that aren't addressed in the film.) The subsequent loss of a suspicious "ruskie" would have hardly affected the era that was already in the midst of the Cold War. McCoy even questions that giving Dr. Nichols the formula for transparent aluminum could alter history to which Scotty replies what if Dr. Nichols is the one who invents it, to which McCoy agrees (in a later novel it is reveled that Scotty already knew Dr. Nichols invented transparent aluminum, so history was not changed.) The miraculous recovery of the old lady (growing a new kidney) was done by a pill so that any examination of her would not reveal the futuristic method involved. She would be a bewilderment to the medical community at best, and most likely misdiagnosis would be to blame. And just because she got a new kidney does not mean her life would have been extended, she could have died some other way in both timelines. And as stated before, Gillian simply wasn't vital to Earth's history. She could have contributed nothing of importance to society and died alone and childless. And a missing pair of breeding Humpbacks would hardly affect the extinction of their species, however in the future, they are already extinct, so little changes would occur. As for any questions about people seeing the Klingon ship in the past, who would believe them? People have long been claiming to see spaceships and aliens to little or no avail, so why would anyone believe a handful of people who said they saw aliens in a spaceship steal 2 whales? However, as with many time travel situations in films and novels, it's possible the events of the 23rd century as they appear in the beginning of the film are a result of Kirk and company's actions in the 20th century since the events already occurred even though Kirk and company had not yet done it themselves (this is where a discussion forum on the film would be advised, or a discussion forum on the theories of time travel).
Possibly the most convoluted and poorly-reasoned series of answers I've seen on this site. So far.
I think they're pretty logical actually.
I think your opinion would be in the minority. There is nothing exceptionally convoluted, nor poorly reasoned in the response.
Answer: They were extraordinarily lucky. The crew quite often defies all odds and encounters literal miracles. For a period of time this even happened on a roughly weekly basis.
Question: In the director's cut (which seems to be the most widely available version these days), what's the deal with all the backflips in the opening fight? The editing is very awkward. Fasil goes from running, to doing backflips, then back to running, then back to doing backflips several times, seemingly between shots, during a short section of the fight. Is it just bad editing? Or is the movie trying to suggest that it's a different person doing the flips? Or... what? It's so confusingly edited.
Answer: The Director, Russell Mulcahy, started his career making music videos. He was known for using fast cuts and tracking shots.
Answer: I always felt the idea was given he was trying to move very rapidly whilst also being silent. In a garage with those shoes on your footsteps are very loud. Perhaps he was trying to confuse MacLeod as to where he was.
I'm not asking why he's doing backflips. I'm asking why the editing is so confusing, since he goes from doing backflips, to running somewhere completely else, then back to backflips at the first location between edits. (Look up the clip "The Highlander (1986) 1080p : Underground parking Fight Scene. Epic!" on YouTube and pay attention around 4:20.) He also loses his sword whenever we see him doing backflips, even though he's carrying it when he's running. The editing makes absolutely no sense.
Question: Well into the movie, Seth's computer, which uses voice recognition, can no longer recognize his voice due to his transformation. How then, did he hook up the three telepods and execute the final sequence if he couldn't get into his computer?
Chosen answer: He just used the keyboard. We see him typing on it several times before this scene, so the computer is not voice command only.
Question: Why was the robot who comes to life called "Number 5" when it seemed like there were only three others like him? Shouldn't he have been called "Number 4"?
Answer: There were always 5. You see the 5 during the demonstration. Then, before the lightning hits, we see 4 of them in line, but number 5 was still attached to the generator and not in line. When they go inside, there's a weird cut that makes it look like only 3 made the turn, but if you watch closely you can see there's 4 followed by number 5.
Answer: OK then...what ever happened to Number 4? Why does the Army only send numbers 1-3 to get Number 5 back?
Question: Are Blaster and Soundwave in any way related like Sideswipe and Sunstreaker are? They transform into tape-playing devices, they both have cassette robots and so on, so does any one know the answer?
Answer: Alpha Trion seems to have created these two robots with special abilities concerning sound. As all Transformers received new Transformation Forms from the arc after their "sleep", it might have been intentionally from the arc to give them Transformation forms similar to their abilities. However it is not mentioned in the series.
Question: Was Keenan Wynn actually ill when he made this film, or was that just good acting?
Question: How was Biggles able to land the helicopter on a moving train despite only just learning to fly it?
Question: If Lea Thompson wasn't strapped in during a launch, wouldn't she have suffered more than a couple of bruises from her body being wrapped around a steel column and being under 3G+ during the launch scene?
Answer: Not necessarily. The 3 G's pretty well kept her pinned, so she wasn't bouncing around. If someone can fall 18,000 ft out of an airplane with only a sprained leg (one of several examples) then yes it's theoretically possible. If the guy in this story could withstand 42 g's strapped in, the yes Katherine could've survived 3 g's.
Https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/gravity-forces/.
Answer: It really was all down to James Cameron having already written the script and proving himself capable of directing with 'The Terminator.' It was just a quicker, easier, and almost certainly cheaper decision to let him direct his own script rather than get someone else, even Ridley Scott. While the producers had wanted to make an 'Alien' sequel almost immediately, at the time the head of 20th Century Fox didn't want to pursue it fearing it would be seen as an obvious cash-in and flop. When a new executive at the studio came in a couple years later, the project was put back on track, and I believe Cameron was the first to be approached to write the script.
TonyPH