Question: I don't know whether this is a mistake or if there was a certain reason for it but, at the end of the movie when Maximus tells Quintus to free his men, Quintus turns to the line of guards standing behind him and says, "Free the prisoners, go!" Two of the guards standing next to each other immediately go to free the prisoners, and the rest of the guards don't budge. How did those two guards know that the orders were given directly to them?
Question: Was Roman just playing dead in the coffin or was it a dummy? Hard to believe that he could be pretending because Gale checks his pulse.
Answer: No it was Roman. There is a technique you can do where if you apply pressure on the correct artery you can stop the pulse. EXTREMELY dangerous though.
Question: After the dog and Prince Wendell have been switched, why does the Queen even care about having the dog (who is really Prince)? She doesn't know that Tony can talk to him, so as far as she knows, no one can understand the dog at all. Why would she be concerned?
Answer: Because if Wendell and the switched dog somehow came in contact with each other then they would switch back. She does not want to risk this happening.
Question: The only way that the valley could be flooded by rampaging water is that a dam was broken up river. Otherwise the water rises very slowly. Does the movie explain this? If so I missed it. In which way was that river flooded?
Answer: Probably they have dismantled the coffer dam that was used while constructing the main dam. Hence, the flooding.
Good and reasonable last resort explanation - have the Coens ever addressed it?
Question: Does anyone know the story behind the "Creepy Thin Man?" Like why he likes to pull hair and smell it? Anything that helps me understand his character is appreciated.
Answer: This character gets a backstory in the sequel (Charlie's Angels Full Throttle). Supposedly he was a runaway from a circus, who found refuge at an orphanage. He didn't much like haircuts when he was little.
Question: How did Carolyn get out of the cave and make it to the ship without being killed?
Answer: She had a jar of the light bugs that kept the creatures away.
Question: What happen to Diane Lane's character in real life?
Answer: Diane Lane played Christina Cotter, Bobby Shatford's girlfriend. As of 2007, Christina was living with her new boyfriend in the White Mountain area.
Question: What is the significance of the very last shot? We see see Jen (Zhang Ziyi) flying into the clouds and then a mountain/forest shot, in which nothing happens, for about a second and then the credits roll.
Answer: It is an open question. Interpretation of the last scene is really left to the audience. But to those of you who completely missed the whole point of the jump, it refers to the "Legend of the Mountain" as told to Jen by Lo "Dark Cloud". He told her that if a person makes a wish and jumps from the mountain, the wish will be granted and, occasionally, the jumper's life will be spared. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is actually a fourth book in the series of five books. In the book, Jen survives the fall, but never returns to Lo, fearing her parents shame and prosecution. Popular opinion seems to be that Jen was in fact in love with Li Mu Bai and the jump was an attempt of escaping the live lover towards the dead one.
Question: Does anybody know exactly what sort of flowers Domino holds and uses as weapons? I know she calls herself the Black Tulip, but I watched Mewtwo's Return in Japanese, and she called herself the Black Rose. They do look more like tulips, but they could be rosebuds. so were my subtitles wrong, or was this changed for the American dub?
Answer: 4Kids Entertainment (The US Distributor) has been extremely notorious for changing alot of Japanese References and "Americanizing" them (e.g. Riceballs = Doughnuts). Perhaps "Black Tulip" sounded better than "Black Rose."
Question: What is the alternate ending and start to this film as shown on the DVD version?
Chosen answer: In the alternate beginning, Richard is sitting in front of the large Buddha statue when a taxi driver stops and prompts him to take a ride with him. He explains that they celebrate New Year's by spraying each other with water guns, and gives one to Richard. While riding in the taxi, Richard sprays others and gets sprayed, having a lot of fun. It ends when Richard enters the "mall" where he will eventually meet the guy who offers him to drink the snake blood in the regular movie beginning. In the alternate ending, Sal turns the gun on herself and commits suicide. It ends by having a large ship rescue all of them when they're stranded at sea, banned from the island. The final words by Richard are something to the effect of "I have a lot of scars," which from what I recall is the actual ending of the novel by Alex Garland.
Question: What is the translation of the Chinese drinking game Roy and Chon play?
Answer: One crab with eight feet, painted horns - what a big crab./ Blinking eyes, shrinking head,/ crawling, crawling everywhere./ Two and Two, who should drink?/ Three and three, who drink first?/ Five and Five, who should drink?/ Two and two, you drink first.
Question: Why didn't Ethan just give Nyah one of his guns after she infected herself? She could have easily killed Ambrose and others with a surprise attack since they were more interested in keeping her alive and she wanted Ethan to kill her anyway. She had better odds of surviving that way than the impossible plot that followed. She could have killed everyone but Ambrose and he may have let it happen in order to still have a chance at selling the virus.
Answer: Ethan did not want her to kill herself. Giving her a gun would allow her to do so.
Question: What are the chances of four guys of their age ACTUALLY passing the physical to the required standards? I know they all kept reasonably fit but they struggled with running etc. so it seems unlikely they would pass all the tests. I know movie rules dictate suspense of disbelief to a certain degree, I'm just wondering what their chances would be in reality.
Answer: Eastwood would be out on height alone and the rest probably have high blood pressure. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/606877main_FS-2011-11-057-JSC-astro_trng.pdf.
Chosen answer: It wasn't a matter of how physically fit they were, but that their particular combination of knowledge, skills, and past experiences were needed for this specific mission. The physical criteria would be amended in order to recruit them for that mission.
They were specifically told they wouldn't be given an easier ride and would need to pass the exact same tests as the younger astronauts. The physical criteria wouldn't have been amended to suit them so is it possible for 4 guys of this age to pass?
Remember that at some point in the process it became a political issue - the old cowboys were wanted for their PR value, so physical test results would have been "fudged", if not ignored altogether.
Agree that the physical requirements were a major plot point and part of the 'deal' for the team to go, but there was some relaxing of requirements and politics. In general, the answer is YES, old folks can go to space without major fudging of the requirements as was demonstrated by lots of astronauts in their late 50s, a few in their 60s, and John Genn at 77. Just recently an 82-year-old woman flew on Jeff Bezos' tourist rocket.
Question: Is this movie based on the fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen? (02:17:20 - 04:00:45)
Answer: No, not in the slightest. The names are similar, but it's an entirely new and different story.
Question: Why didn't Beth or Josh report Jacob to the faculty for everything he was doing in terms of bothering Beth? Jacob tells Josh to back off because Beth is "spoken for", he tries to win Beth at EL's party, but gets ignored by EL after Josh can't outbid him anymore, so Josh ends up winning, and he even tries to get Josh expelled from Ithaca University by pretending to be his Ancient Philosophy teacher and telling him that he can take his exam at a later date when Josh phones him from a payphone whilst on the road trip to Austin.
Answer: It's funnier if Jacob constantly bothers the characters and gets away with it, and receives his comeuppance in the end in an over the top manner (he forms a suicide cult but is the only member that actually kills himself).
Question: Before Cale starts to rebuild the ship so he can pursue Corso, he says, "Good, 'cause we launch yesterday." I have no idea what he meant by that statement.
Question: Can anyone tell me the name of all the themes that are used in the trailer?
Answer: The music used in the trailer was created specially - it's based on the music from Romeo + Juliet.
Chosen answer: Because they would be the ranking soldiers, and accustomed to being given orders. Being disciplined, they would obey Quintus without question. The legions would necessarily have soldiers assigned to following orders at different times, similar to how a captain would give an order to a full room, and the first mate would be the one to carry out the order.
rswarrior