Question: How is Megamind's robot able to do exactly what he does? We don't see him push any buttons or anything, so how is this possible?
Captain Defenestrator
28th Jul 2015
Megamind (2010)
Answer: Because he trained him.
Answer: I could be wrong, but I always figured that Megamind had created I device that would be able to have Minion control the robot thing with his mind.
28th Jul 2015
Doctor Who (2005)
Question: What is River's exact timeline? I think it starts at "A Good Man Goes to War" and ends in "The Name of the Doctor."
Answer: For TV episodes only, her timeline is as follows: spoilers ahoy! Baby Melody, "A Good Man Goes to War." Child Melody, "The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon." Mels, regenerating into River, "Let's Kill Hitler"/ River, "Closing Time." "The Wedding of River Song", simultaneous with her appearance as the mysterious astronaut in "The Impossible Astronaut." Adult River, "The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon." Adult River, "A Good Man Goes to War'." "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang." "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone." Her appearance at Amy and Rory's house at the end of "The Wedding of River Song." "The Angels Take Manhattan." "The Husbands of River Song." "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead." As a ghost in "The Name of the Doctor."
Chosen answer: River's timeline does start in "A Good Man Goes to War" but ends in "Forest of the Dead," when the 10th Doctor sees her die. Have fun piecing it together from there. If it helps, the BBC adventure games are considered canon, so her appearance in "The Eternity Clock" is also part of her timeline, as are the mini-episodes of "Night and the Doctor."
15th Jul 2015
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Question: Why is Professor McGonagall so shocked that Harry would accuse Draco of cursing the necklace? She knows that Draco's father is a Death Eater, as well as some of his friends' fathers. Professor Snape is there, but they are both in the Order of the Phoenix (and she has no reason to not trust Snape yet).
Answer: She's likely incredulous at the idea that Draco could perform a curse that well.
16th Jul 2015
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Question: Why was Captain America unable to hold Thor's hammer? He fought to protect his country. He saved the lives of innocent people and wasn't afraid to back away from any kind of danger so he should have been able to lift it. Ultron said that the reason none of them could lift it is because they were all killers but that's really just speculation.
Answer: He can pick up the hammer, he didn't want to upset Thor.
Answer: He's able to move it just barely, enough to impress Thor. It's an enchantment on the hammer that requires a combination of strength and righteousness. He might not be there yet, but he's on the way. Thus the hammer moves more than anyone else could.
8th Jun 2015
Manhunter (1986)
Question: How did Graham know that Dollarhyde was the man committing murders, and that he drove a van just because the home videos were processed at the lab where the latter worked?
Chosen answer: He figured out earlier that the Tooth Fairy drives a van. Graham noticed that at one of the houses, the Tooth Fairy knew everything he had to do and bring with him and at the other house, he didn't know about the new lock on the door. He concludes that this is because the Tooth Fairy got his information from the same home movies that Graham was watching. Once the films were traced to the lab where Dolarhyde worked, it was easy to link them back to him as the only person who'd had access to both families' videos and also drove a van.
30th Apr 2015
The Truman Show (1998)
Question: If Christof didn't want Truman to escape on his boat, rather than trying to kill him with huge waves, why didn't he just leave the water completely flat? With no wind Truman would not be able to reach the edge and leave, but he still would've lived.
Answer: He'd been hoping the waves would discourage Truman and make him turn back. It's a lot easier to agitate water than it is to calm it, so by the time he saw it wasn't working, even if he's thought of that, it would have been too late.
23rd Mar 2015
General questions
Just saw "outbreak" on TV, also saw it several years ago. There's a scene where the camera is passing through the various levels of a bio lab increasing in danger to the higher levels. I remember as the camera passed through each door it would list the various viruses (Ebola, anthrax, etc) that were worked on. When I saw the movie recently it did not list the viruses as it passes through each level. Did something change or am I thinking of another movie?
Answer: Movies tend to get edited for television not only for content, but to fit the standard US television hour: 45 minutes of film, 15 minutes of commercials. Outbreak is 127 minutes long, which means they had to lose 7-12 minutes for American television. The scene you describe doesn't sound particularly important to the plot, and thus, safe to cut. You might be thinking of the mini-series "The Stand," which begins with a similar scene on the base that the virus escapes from showing that everyone in the facility is dead. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108941/).
18th Mar 2015
Casino Royale (2006)
Question: Why does Le Chiffre torture Bond for the code when the Swiss banker would obviously only allow Bond himself to punch in the code in the banking briefcase?
Answer: If Le Chiffre is willing to torture Bond to get the code, he's certainly willing to torture the banker into letting him use it.
Answer: It's reasonable that the Swiss banker would have dispensed the money to anyone with the account number and code, just like how Swiss bank accounts can be accessed with just the number and why you keep it safe. Their "different" security is what makes them so useful to some.
16th Mar 2015
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Question: When the man was hanged on the fan, what exactly happened? It seems like he was cut by the fan, but then there's no blood or anything. How exactly did he die? And why did the fan suddenly stop when he hit it?
Chosen answer: His neck was snapped by the whip getting caught in the fan. There isn't always blood with a hanging. Since the fan wasn't designed to hold a man's weight, the motor in it would have stopped or given out.
16th Mar 2015
Batman Begins (2005)
Question: Why would Falcone's assassin kill Chill in front of many cops? Why would she choose to go to jail just to protect one person who was already in jail? And if she was so intent on protecting him, why would she say "Falcone says hi"? That would just make Falcone even more indictable.
Chosen answer: Falcone has the entire justice system of Gotham in his pocket. He'd believe he could beat any charge and probably convinced the assassin that he'd do the same for her.
2nd Feb 2015
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Question: Near the end of the movie, Obi-wan does not seem at all convinced that Darth Vader has any good left in him. But in "Return of the Jedi", Vader tells Luke that Obi-wan once thought as Luke does (regarding the possibility of Vader being redeemed). What was he referring to?
2nd Feb 2015
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
2nd Feb 2015
Burn Notice (2007)
Question: Where is the bathroom in Michael's loft? I have seen every season, every angle, and I never see anything resembling it?
Chosen answer: It might not actually have one, in which case, he'd have to go down into the club and use theirs. As for showering, going to his mother's house or a gym membership would take care of that.
22nd Jan 2015
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Question: OK, so I get nearly everything in the film except one thing. Who is the man in the hospital (60% of skin burnt) and how does he know the portrait of Keyzer Soze. Doesn't that mean he saw his face? Also they say there is another guy who escaped the fire unharmed. Who is that?
Answer: One of the Hungarians from the ship who survived the fire. He's the only person left in the world who's seen Keyser Soze's face. The unharmed guy is Verbal Kint.
Answer: Keyser Soze, being built up as the meticulous mastermind that he is, would not have gone through all that just to kill the wrong guy. The man he shoots in the head twice is the only man who can ID him. The cops found that body and identified it as the rat who named 50 criminals including Soze. The Hungarian with the burnt skin likely was one of the people buying this guy from the Argentinians. He was on the boat when it blew up and saw the true events of what happened that night (Verbal killing Keaton and presumably everyone else). Considering the fear and mystery shrouding Keyser, it's a pretty easy conclusion to make that the only man who survived, the man he witnessed kill everyone, was Keyser Soze. The Hungarian becomes the only man to be able to identify Soze (a mistake on Verbal's part for unknowingly leaving a witness), but by then it doesn't matter. Verbal/Soze said it himself; he wouldn't come this close to getting caught and then stick his neck out again. He's gone.
Answer: The man in the hospital is "The Man" the Hungarians were protecting...he is the man that knew and could ID Keyser Soze. Now back in the boat Keyser shoots twice in the head a man that was being protected. This was was a decoy. You find that out when they say they pulled a man from a drain pipe...the real one didn't speak English, only Hungarian, and he ran for it once the fight erupted.
The guy shot on the boat wasn't a decoy. It's the same guy we saw Keyser Sose let go in the flashback. The burnt guy was one of the soldiers who fought them, saw Keyser Sose's face, but didn't manage to escape the following explosion, although he survived.
22nd Jan 2015
Goldfinger (1964)
Question: How exactly did Tilly die? I know she got hit in the neck by Oddjob's razor-rimmed hat, but it doesn't make sense. Why didn't it cut her head off or at least cut her? There wasn't even a mark or blood. If it didn't even cut her, how did she die just from getting hit by it?
Chosen answer: Oddjob's hat has a metal brim that's razor sharp under the cloth. It's possible for the hat to have hit her neck in a way that she didn't get cut (I've commented elsewhere about the number of factors that have to be just right to sever a head with a single blow), but the metal object hurled with Oddjob's strength was enough to snap her neck.
9th Jan 2015
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Question: In season 7 episode 10 we are introduced to a vampire that other vampires fear, called the Turok-Han. Buffy finally destroys the only one released after a long fight, but still gets many cuts and bruises whilst doing so. In the final episode of season 7 when all the slayers are activated, one slayer is fighting more than one Turok-Han without a problem. Why do they find it easier once all the slayers have been activated?
Answer: The first thing that happened to them when all the slayers were activated was a big surge of confidence. They stopped being afraid of the Turok-Han, making it much easier to fight them.
23rd Dec 2014
Doctor Who (2005)
Question: This whole finale never made sense to me because of these plot holes. If all the stars were supposed to supernova when the Doctor was locked up, then why was the Earth not destroyed by the sun exploding? He says the world carried on relatively normal due to the TARDIS exploding being a light and heat source to replace the Sun, but the supernova should have decimated the planet regardless, shouldn't it? Also if the TARDIS was exploding at every moment in time and space (as the Doctor states) then shouldn't it also have exploded on earth every time it has been here in the past? Destroying the Earth that should have been destroyed by the supernova?
Chosen answer: The stars didn't supernova, the rest of the universe ceased to exist. Earth still stands because of it's place in the eye of the storm and the TARDIS explosion providing the heat and light that the sun that now never existed would have, but history is still collapsing. Because they are all temporal anomalies, it buys them some time for the Doctor to pilot the Pandorica into the TARDIS explosion, restarting the universe.
3rd Dec 2014
General questions
Why do I remember a scene where Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz tries to turn the hourglass over? She then says she can't, it won't move. Is it one of the later remakes like The Wiz?
Chosen answer: I don't recall a version of Wizard of Oz where this happens, however, there is a scene in Flash Gordon where Dale tries to turn an hourglass over and is unable to. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080745).
14th Dec 2014
General questions
Why do so many shows, especially cartoons, end or get canceled after 13 episodes. Its like it really is the unlucky number for shows. More often than not, if a show is canceled early on, it's right after episode 13. Why is that?
Chosen answer: Generally, 13 episodes is, depending on the network, either a half-season or a whole one. If it's a half, by the time they finish the 13th episode, they have a decent enough sampling of the average ratings to determine if they want to buy more episodes or not.
3rd Nov 2014
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Question: Gandalf would not give the ring to a powerful character for safekeeping, because the character was apt to forget to protect it or misplace it. The character was supposed to so powerful even Gandalf was leery of him. What was that character's name, please?
Answer: Tom Bombadil, who is not named because he's not in the films.
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Answer: Mad Science. There's an old science fiction writers' saying that "Poorly explained science is better than DUMB science, " so exactly how it works isn't important, it just works.
Captain Defenestrator