Question: I never really understood what the motive was when Clyde murdered his cellmate. Why did he do it? What did this act have to do with the plot of this movie?
Answer: To make sure he was placed in solitary confinement. The warehouse that he owned and operated out of that was next to the prison also had a tunnel connected to every cell in the solitary wing. Clyde needed to be in one of the solitary cells so he could leave the prison whenever he needed to unnoticed, which also served to make it look like he had an accomplice on the outside.
When Nick is talking to a spook later in the movie, he is quoted as telling Nick: "That cell-mate that he killed, you think that was random? No. That's a pawn being moved off the board. Anyone who had anything to do with that case, he's gonna be coming after you." Just as all deaths played roles in Clydes game, as the audience we are led to believe this inmate played a role, but were never given any resolution as to what significance it was. Not a big deal in grand scheme of things, but unexplained.
I don't know if you just didn't read the answer thoroughly or if you didn't pay close attention to the movie, but Clyde killing his cellmate was far from being unexplained. He can't leave the prison if he's in a regular cell with the general population, so he kills the cellmate in order to get placed in the solitary wing, because every solitary cell is connected to the tunnel in his warehouse that is next to the prison, which allows him to leave whenever he needs to.
Question: Why is Harry not punished by Snape for almost killing Malfoy in the bathroom?
Chosen answer: Snape wants to know how Harry knew Sectum Sempra. As shown by him using Occumelancy to see where his copy of Advanced Potion making is. But at the same time, if Snape punished Harry for a spell in a book, Harry could show it to Dumbledore, who would recognise Snape's handwriting. Additionally, Harry was certainly punished in the book - he got detention with Snape every Saturday for the rest of the term. The movie most likely had to cut this for time issues, and also perhaps because the scene is more dramatic if Snape only silently glares at him.
Question: Maybe I missed something, but how was Esther able to fool everyone practically all her life and hide the fact that she's a 33-year old sociopath? When Kate finally learns the truth by getting the phone call, they show a photo of the "real" Esther, so at least those records of her exist somewhere. How could the boarding school not have known her true identity?
Answer: The boarding school was going by the falsified records that Esther had with her. They did not suspect anything, so they had no reason to dig any further at the time.
Answer: High quality makeup was an important part of her disguise as the alternative ending make apparent. Her fake freckles were the master's touch.
Question: Just before Sherlock attacks somebody, he determines what areas to strike to incapacitate someone and determine how long it would take someone to recover from both physical and psychological trauma. Granted that he could figure out a person's physical recovery but, could he actually figure out a person's pyshological recovery? He noted that it would take six months if I remember for a guy to recover psychologically but, to me, Sherlock is just taking a wild guess. Especially, if the guy recovered in half the time.
Question: I'm confused about the ending. When talking to the journalist, the journalist looks to his right and he sees a young Nemo running to the train. Eventually, Nemo chooses to be with neither of his parents. Did Nemo's extremely long life actually happen or, was he actually still a child deciding what to do at that point and he only imagined possible futures?
Answer: This film is mostly open up for interpretation but I understand it that young Nemo thought up older Nemo and it actually happened, maybe in an alternate universe. Don't forget that Nemo could remember the future so most of what he imagines is probably going to happen. Unfortunately he can't predict choice so he doesn't know which life happens so all of them happen at once and they don't happen as well because he chose to make no choice (Zugzwang). Hope that explained it.
Question: Why, near the end of the film, does Caleb start writing numbers which are supposed to be predictions of future events, when the world is going to end?
Answer: Great question. Probably writing predictions for the "new" world.
So did someone decode the list? Just for s* and giggles :).
Answer: I think Caleb started writing the numbers so he could tell his father the coordinates of the location he needed to take the children in a last ditch effort, since the girl whom originally wrote the numbers didn't complete them. He un-"knowing"-ly made the same mistake and interrupted him again.
Question: Julie starts getting "stuff" in the mail from her readers. But when you do a blog, you wouldn't put your address in there, would you?
Question: I don't quite understand why Dr. Manhattan had to kill Rorschach. That is, I don't quite get why that was the only solution. Rorschach was a valuable member of the Watchmen, and in the type of world they were in (chaos, corruption, murder, etc) one would think that they would want to keep as many of themselves banded together as possible. Couldn't some sort of negotiation or compromise have been reached/agreed to by Rorschach instead of him being killed?
Answer: He has spent years as a costumed vigilante despite the fact that it was illegal. He has a very strict idea of what is right ("never compromise") and has proven himself incapable of doing otherwise. So no, there was no real chance of negotiating with him - Rorschach himself made it clear he'd have to die if they wanted his silence.
Death was not the only choice. Doc M could easily have teleported/banished Rorschach to Mars/anywhere secluded in an oxygen bubble. He could have spared his life and just made him mute or manipulate his brain chemistry/atoms to remove the memory of what happened. The point is Doc M is all powerful and could manipulate matter at his whim; death was just a plot device creating a chance of an emotive martyrdom/sacrificial ending.
Ethically speaking, exiling him to Mars or erasing his memory of the event can be considered just as cruel as killing him, because then his agency is being taken away from him. Rorshach's malcontent with the situation poses a problem for the other heroes, and since Dr. Manhattan isn't willing to let him tell the truth of what happened, he obliges Rorschach's demand that he kill him instead.
Question: How come a high tech ship would be unable to start its engine merely with the reason that the gate is unable to close?
Chosen answer: Its a safety device so the ship doesn't put to sea and ends up flooding the ship. The passenger ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized in the port of Zebrugge in 1987, precisely because the doors were not shut properly.
Question: If Susie's body had been in a bag in the safe, how did people who went into his house (Lindsey when she broke into his house through the basement window) not smell her dead body?
Answer: The dog could smell her body even from outside, and he barked and hesitated as he passed near the killer's house. Dogs can smell people from a long distance.
Question: Can someone please explains this? When Marley visits Scrooge, it's Christmas Eve. Marley tells Scrooge that he will be haunted by three ghosts. The first ghost would appear tomorrow when the bell tolls one. Meaning that the first ghost would appear on Christmas day. The second would appear the next night at the same hour. December 26th. And the final spirit would appear the following night at twelve o'clock. December 27th. When Scrooge is talking to the boy outside his window after the visitations, the boy tells him it's Christmas Day.
Answer: It's basically the magic of Christmas. While, to Scrooge, three full days have passed, in reality his whole experience took place in a single night, allowing the reformed Scrooge to enjoy Christmas Day.
Question: I'm fairly positive that one of the African-American female terminated employees, who has a very small but significant role in Up in the Air(trying to avoid spoiling the plot), is Elise Neal. Elise Neal was D.L. Hughley's wife in The Hughleys and also starred in Hustle and Flow. Any reason why she is not credited on the film? imdb.com and other sites do not list her as a cast member.
Answer: It's not Elise Neal, it is Tamala Jones.
Answer: It is not unusual for actors to appear in films in uncredited cameo roles. There's many reasons. Their appearance is not significant enough to warrant a film credit, it is a surprise for the audience, they do it for fun or as a favor to the director or producer, it avoids contract obligations, and so on.
Question: Why can't Henry save his mother from being in the car crash? Couldn't he have warned her when they met on the subway?
Answer: He could have had Claire distract her long enough to delay her car ride and miss the accident.
Answer: Of course not. Why would she listen to him? He's a total stranger. And if he tells her he's her time-travelling son, she'll think he's a nutjob to boot. It's well-established in the book that he tried everything to save her but could never do so, which made him recognise a well-accepted convention of time-travelling lore: big past events can never be changed. Diana Gabaldon wrote an excellent and extensive essay on time-travelling laws, which is probably still available somewhere on the Internet.
Question: Why didn't Chris want the cure to spread in the end?
Answer: Just like the humans, he had a fear of becoming extinct.
Answer: The vampires were now everywhere, with very few humans left in their blood farms. Their food supply was dwindling and it was getting to the point that they were facing extinction by starvation. The only way to keep life going was for the vampire disease to be cured and everybody to turn back human.
Then why didn't he want it to happen?
He successfully created a substitute.
Question: I must have missed something, but when Dillinger and his accomplice (can't remember his name) are escaping from the lodge, they both hitch a ride with Baby Face Nelson on the dirt road. Later Purvis and his men run Nelson's car off the road and kill him and another guy. Then we see Dillinger and his wounded accomplice with a car in town getting medical supplies. How's that possible?
Chosen answer: Baby Face Nelson doesn't pick up Dillinger. He picks up the characters played by Stephen Dorf and another associate. Dillinger and Hamilton escape through the woods and steal a car from an older man they come across in the forest. After the shootout, Dillinger and Nelson are never in the car together.
Question: In the Iowa bar where Kirk meets Uhura, he says something about her being from another world. Is Uhura from another planet, other than Earth? I can't remember anything from the original series that states this.
Answer: Kirk's never met Uhura - he wouldn't know where she's from. When he asks her name, she says that her name is "just Uhura" - Kirk's expecting to hear two names, first name and surname (just as he introduced himself as "Jim Kirk"). As such, his first question is to ask whether they don't have surnames on whatever world she comes from. As it happens, she is from Earth, she just doesn't want to tell him her full name; he doesn't know that, so he's making assumptions that are, in this case, completely wrong.
Question: Are they completely ignoring the events of the second movie? I was given the impression that Brian and Roman were going to open a garage together with the money they took from Carter. Plus Brian was on the outs with the FBI. Yet in this movie, he's suddenly an FBI agent.
Answer: No it doesn't ignore 2 Fast 2 Furious, Brian even references it a couple of times. In that movie, Brian was promised a 'clean slate' if he helped them out which presumably gives him the option to rejoin a law enforcement agency. That he chose not to open a garage with Roman is pretty much redundant, Brian simply got a better offer, and as he stated in Fast & Furious with his conversation with Mia, "I'm a good liar".
Question: When Langdon and the Italian cop are trapped inside the sealed room of the Vatican archive and the air is shut off, how long could they actually survive in a space that size? In the movie, they start to suffocate almost immediately. (There is no long time lapse because the movie's plot depends on defusing the bomb within a few hours).
Chosen answer: In reality, they would have perished from CO2 poisoning long before the room ran out of breathable oxygen causing them to simply suffocate. Without knowing the exact dimensions of the room it is impossible to give any time more specific than "several hours" for this to happen in a room as big as that one appeared to be.
I just re-watched the movie, and as Langdon and Vittoria enter the room, it's mentioned to them that the oxygen levels are always kept at a bare minimum to protect the ancient tomes and documents stored there. That helps to answer my own question about why Langdon and the cop were so quickly affected when the power was shut off.
Chosen answer: The newspaper article saying she was still at large was 20 years old. It can safely be assumed that she was caught and put into the institution during that 20 year time frame.
rswarrior
What? I'm still so confused. Are Rachel and Mildred the same person? Who killed the three children?
Anna has a disorder, which is another reason she was in a psychiatric institution and not jail. Her personality disorder is called dissociative identity disorder, where she takes on alters, aspects of her personality who handle stress, when she cannot. Alex and Mildred were alters of hers, which is why Anna thought Rachel was Mildred. The MIldred alter did the things she couldn't do, killing Rachel because she thought she was evil. And a Mildred alter can be thought of wanting to revenge her capture, so why not make a mini Mildred out of Anna?
So Mildred told Anna to kill Rachel?
No... Mildred was in the mental hospital with Anna and told Anna stories about her murdering the children I'm sure (since she asked when Anna left the hospital who she was going to tell her stories too). Anna wanted to kill Rachel to begin with and when she faked being mentally health enough to escape, her intention was to be home to kill her. She did and then goes back to the hospital, where the real Mildred Kemp is.