Question: After Capt Miller gets briefed on his new mission to rescue Pvt Ryan and enlists Upham for the mission, there is a long shot of the beach. What are those Zeppelin-like things that are floating around, tied to the ground? What are they good for? (00:39:50)
Answer: These were barrage balloons, commonly used during the war. They are used to stop low level bombing and low level fly bys by enemy fighter planes. The cables attached to the balloons are designed to cut through the wings of the aircraft and to bring them down, so any pilot would have to fly above them, and the balloons would also restrict the view from above.
Question: What does the sequence with the fake Brill have to do with anything? I've watched this scene several times and can't find its significance in the film.
Chosen answer: The fake Brill is an undercover federal agent trying to find out what Will Smith knows about the video tape.
Poor writing though as that character is never spoke of again.
Question: Would someone please explain why they need a huge Gatling gun on the asteroid? Are they scared of aliens or what?
Answer: If you look at the deleted scenes on the special edition DVD, you will see a deleted scene in which A.J. asks what they needed a gun for, and Max explains that it's for debris elimination, in order to take out small rocks in the way.
Question: The full version of "imba windpo" or something like that, that they play at Ruth Young's funeral plays at the end of the movie. Could somebody listen to the full song and translate the lyrics to English?
Answer: The song was written for the movie and is called "Windsong". The lyrics were originally written in English by Will Jennings then translated into whatever language that is. The music is written by James Horner (Titanic). The original lyrics were: "Sing a song and for a moment you will be visited by the wind. Sing a song and for a moment dream sweetly of the wind. Sleep now until the night is dawn. The wind and the night song, they are there. However the song, my child, will go on forever."
The language used for the movie was Swahili, but yes this is the correct translation of the song.
Question: When Witt is in the clearing surrounded by Japanese riflemen, does anybody know what the Japanese soldier was saying to Witt before he shot him?
Question: At the end when the Russian vampire has his would-be victim in a choke-hold, she says something to him, and he says something in return, but neither lines are subtitled. What are they saying?
Chosen answer: I have taken the Russian subtitles and machine translated them, then edited for clarity. Here they are with and compared to the hard subs from the theatrical release of the movie. Russian version is in brackets. Here is the full conversation... MOSCOW Woman: (A good show. I'm glad we went.) Vampire: (It went well, I thought?) Woman: (Yes, keep up the good work.) Vampire: (I will try.) Woman: It's cold. Where are we going? (I'm so cold. Where are we going?) Vampire: It's a surprise. Woman: Surprise? (Surprise? Really?) Man: (Yes.) Woman: I like surprises. (You know, I like surprises.) Vampire: Then you'll like this - (Then you'll like it very much.) Vampire: (You have such sweet skin!) Woman: (Peter, what are you doing? You're hurting me!) Vampire: (You will live forever.) Woman: (Don't touch me!) Blade: (Hey, good evening.) Blade: Catch you at a bad time - Blade: - Comrade? Vampire then growls until blade draws his sword and it cuts to credits.
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.
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?
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.
Question: After they blow up Madison Square Garden, as they are standing outside Godzilla makes an appearance after previously being assumed dead. How did it manage to get back to Madison Square Garden without being detected by anyone?
Answer: Everyone was so focused on the nest in the Garden, they all forgot about Godzilla.
Question: What was the point of Sean Bean's role in this movie? I get that he is exposed as a fraud, but it doesn't really affect the plot one way or the other.
Chosen answer: It is true that it doesn't affect the plot. However Spence's (Bean's) failure can be contrasted with the professionalism of the main characters. Also it raises the possibility that whoever hired them isn't taking necessary precautions in planning and hiring. Earlier we heard Sam (De Niro) ask Vincent (Reno) if he was "labour or management" which suggests a theme of professional operators getting their hands dirty while their bosses play politics.
Question: In real life, do amusement parks actually have a master control room that controls all the rides?
Answer: No they don't, the rides are controlled individually by a ride operator at each ride. This was just made up for the movie.
Question: There is a scene where Canton says he believes the creatures were a strange offshoot of the ARCHAEA OTTOIA family. He then describes how big they get based on how deep down they are as well as what they do to their victims. Question is does the Archaea Ottoia really exist? If so is anything Canton said about it true? I tried looking for this creature in the search engine but with no luck.
Chosen answer: According to the DVD commentary, the monsters in the film are a combination of 3 different undersea creatures. All of them are microscopic.
Question: The ending apparently had to be reshot, because the original ending leaked out. What was this original ending?
Answer: The original ending features a huge shoot-em-up, involving more than 150 cops, but it was changed to a shoot-em-up on a much smaller scale that involves only Kevin Spacey, Samuel L. Jackson and Ron Rifkin.
Question: How and where did Quin get a hacksaw to cut the pontoons off the WWII plane that crashed up in the trees?
Answer: They were on the run from the pirates at that point, he didn't have his tool bag with him. I presumed he found it on the Japanese WW2 plane but I'm not so sure a hacksaw was standard issue to a Japanese WW2 pilot but eh who cares, love the movie anyway.
Question: In the beginning of the movie when the tanker truck gets blown up, why does the fully intact truck just get launched straight up with flames below it? The source of the explosion would be the truck itself, so when ignited, the truck should have simply been blown up into a million pieces, not launched straight up fully intact.
Answer: This was most likely done just to make the scene look that much cooler. Movies do things like this all the time.
Answer: The Chinese character on the necklace means, "good fortune."
sarvate3