Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.

Question: Why were the zombies in a huddle?

Answer: The creatures in this film are not true zombies. They are still humans still alive, but mutated by the virus and in an altered state of mind. They still have their own society and social circles. They often go into a trance like state when dormant and would just be around each other for comfort.

Quantom X

Question: How the did the cases carrying the money survive intact after being dropped from so high?

Answer: For one, they fell into snow which would have softened the blow. Also, as common in aviation or even just cases that are meant to contain valuables like money, they are designed to withstand impacts or attempts to break them open.

Quantom X

Wouldn't the bad guys have to spend what could be weeks trying to find the money if the cases were to break open?

Probably yes.

Quantom X

Potentially, yes. However, in the film they remained intact.

Snow softened the blow? I thought objects went through snow.

Question: Why did they burn the Mariners boat? Wouldn't it have made more sense to capture it and use it for themselves? They know they are gonna run out of "Go Juice" at some point so why not use the fastest sail boat to find dry land?

Answer: Most likely to make sure that the Mariner and Helen couldn't follow them and rescue Enola. They were trying to find Dryland and if Enola was taken from them, they'd never be able to find it. Also the smokers ship was filled with people and using the Mariner's boat and constantly going back and forth from Dryland to the ship would have taken too long. Better to use the ship they're all on and get them there quicker. Also, none of the Smokers could read the map that was on Enola's back.

Answer: If they'd have captured it and took it for themselves then they wouldn't have been able to follow them either. They could have used the Trimaran to find dry land a lot faster than using the tanker. Once they'd found dry land, simply go back to the tanker and tell them where it is so the tanker can make its way there too.

Question: Can Sauron sense when the ring is near him?

Answer: Frodo entered Mordor and came close to the tower whilst carrying the ring and Sauron didn't notice it, so this ability is either not there or highly limited. He can only sense it when someone puts it on. It's possible he can sense it when it's inside his tower though.

lionhead

Answer: This is never revealed.

lionhead

Answer: It's been inferred that she died from a sickness.

Answer: NYPD police pin.

Answer: Because they were trying to kill him and take the One Ring for Sauron.

Why didn't the nazgûl simply take ring from Frodo?

They tried, but they were interrupted by Aragorn.

lionhead

How was one of the nazgûl able to stab Frodo when he put the ring on at weathertop? Considering that people who put the ring on are usually invisible.

To mortal people, yes. But the Nazgûl can sense when someone is using it. Note how they immediately changed directions when Frodo put it on at the Prancing Pony.

Brian Katcher

Answer: It's been years since I've seen the film, but as I recall it was because head lice was so prevalent and that was how the prison population avoided getting it.

raywest

Question: At the end of the wedding celebration, Jess is sitting in the car when her sister says 'Don't you want all of this?' What does Jess mean when she replies 'I want more than this'?

Answer: She means she wants more than a conventional life of being an average married woman. She wants more out of life.

raywest

Answer: It was never revealed in the film series what happened to him.

raywest

Question: Do phones on planes really exist? I've never seen one.

MikeH

Answer: Yes, they were called "Airphones." They provided air-ground telephone services, although they were pretty expensive to use. They were more popular in the 90's, but by mid-2000's their use started to decline. In 2008 only a handful of airliners kept them in their planes, and even those were limited.

Bishop73

Show generally

Question: I never saw the whole episode but a young girl tells MacGyver that she walked into a garage and witnessed two men torturing another man strapped in a chair by making him listen to a high pitched sound that ended up killing him. Later, when she goes back to the house, the garage is empty and two old people living there say that they were the only ones there and that the girl must be mistaken and in the wrong house. What is the name of this episode and what really happened?

Answer: Perhaps s02e13, "Soft Touch." Penny Parker (player by Teri Hatcher, who would have been 22 at the time) crashes at Mac's place. She performs singing telegrams and takes Mac's Jeep to her next job, but goes to the wrong house and sees 3 men torturing someone. She drives away and the men chase her, noting the license plate of the Jeep. Penny convinces Mac to help, but she's unable to remember which house it is. Later, the men find out where Mac lives and kidnap Penny and a Serbian (a guy from the beginning of the episode), Mac follows and he reveals the bad guys' plot to kill someone at city hall involved in a drug case. The three rush over to city hall and prevent a bomb from going off and the bad guys are captured.

Bishop73

Question: Would everyone have been saved if the lifeboats had been filled to capacity properly? Mr Andrews yells at one of the officers about the boats not being full and how they were tested with the weight of 70 men, so won't buckle under the weight of only 15 or 20 people. So since women and children don't weigh as much as men would, if they had filled the boats properly, would everyone have been saved in the actual tragedy?

Answer: Not everyone, no. Even with all the boats at full capacity they still couldn't hold all of them. It had 20 lifeboats in total that could carry a maximum of 1178 people, at full capacity. The ship was carrying 2208 people (passengers and crew). Even if you would cram as much people in them, you still couldn't fit them all in and there will be risk of sinking. The 2 major problems were that they measured lifeboat capacity in cubic meters rather than number of people, if the ship was in full lifeboat capacity (64 instead of only 20) it could take everybody twice over. Secondly it wasn't considered necessary according to the safety regulations to have more lifeboats because of the tonnage of the ship, regulations that maxed ships at 10,000 tons (whilst the Titanic was over 46,000 tons). Eventually only 710 people were saved, because of incompetent evacuation procedures and panic. Almost all first and second class women and children were saved, third class and crew were not so lucky.

lionhead

Answer: In a word, no. More lives would have been saved, but as an earlier scene points out (and accurately reflects what happened in real life), there was only enough lifeboat capacity for roughly half the people onboard, even if they were filled to capacity.

Answer: There were not enough life boats for all passengers, and it was because it was never believed everyone needed to be in them at once during an emergency. While it's true that cruise lines didn't want too many boats blocking passengers' view, their intended use was to ferry passengers in turn from a stricken vessel to a rescue ship. After the disaster, new maritime regulations were enacted, including enough lifeboats for all passengers.

raywest

Answer: Also, even if there were enough boats, there was not enough time to get all the boats filled and lowered.

Yes there was. It took over 2 hours for Titanic to sink. Plenty of time to get everyone on the lifeboats, if they had known the urgency.

lionhead

In one of James Cameron's documentaries that he did after making the movie, they timed him lowering a lifeboat, and it took him twenty minutes to get it swung out and lowered while it was empty. Add additional time to actually fill them would bring launching one to at least 30 minutes. So no, even if they had enough lifeboats, there wouldn't have been time to launch them all. They didn't even launch all the ones that they did have.

They weren't launched one by one, you know.

lionhead

Question: When Déagol finds the ring, Sméagol asks to have it. When Déagol asks why, Sméagol says because it's his birthday and that he wanted it. Was it really Sméagol's birthday or was he already so quickly drawn by the ring's power that he only claimed it was in hopes that Déagol would hand it over?

Answer: In the book, it absolutely was his birthday.

Brian Katcher

What chapter in the book where smeagol kills deagol?

DFirst1

The Fellowship of the Ring, chapter two 'The Shadow of the Past.'.

Brian Katcher

Answer: It probably wasn't his birthday on that exact day, that would be too much of a coincidence. But close is definitely possible, or at least closer than Deagol's. Both were immediately drawn by the ring, heavily enough that they fought over it and Smeagol becoming the ultimate winner. Both did everything to keep it.

lionhead

Show generally

Question: What's the episode where Barbrady rides with a cameraman from COPS? He talks of how people who assume small-town police have nothing to do are wrong.

Answer: It's Season 2, Episode 4 "Chickenlover".

LorgSkyegon

Question: Why did Thor let Cap have some of his drink that he said mortal men can't have. I know that Cap's super soldier serum makes him stronger, but he's still human.

THE GAMER NEXT DOOR

Answer: By mortal men, he probably just means ordinary. Since Cap has super powers, Thor doesn't consider him ordinary (plus the we learn in Captain America: The First Avenger that his advanced metabolism prevents him from getting drunk). Since Thor also relents and allows the WWII veterans to partake in the drink as well, it's safe to assume he doesn't consider it to be deadly for humans to have.

Phaneron

Answer: Cap now has a superhuman metabolism, as shown in the first Cap movie when he was unable to get drunk after Bucky died.

LorgSkyegon

Question: When Maximus was sold as a slave and was then attacked using a sword why didn't he fight back, and what did Proximo mean when he said that his time will come?

Answer: Maximus didn't want to be forced to fight. "His time will come" means he will either be forced to fight when put into the arena or he will die.

LorgSkyegon

Question: What kind of vehicles were the guys driving while being chased by ostriches?

Answer: It's a Polaris RZR sand rail.

LorgSkyegon

Can it be used on sand dunes as shown in the movie?

Yes, that's why it's called a sand rail. It's a similar term to dune buggy.

LorgSkyegon

Question: How did blood drop reached Marta's shoes, even though it was too far from Christopher Plummer in the suicide scene? (00:53:50)

Answer: To add slightly to the other answer, evidently some of the blood in the scene had to be digitally removed for the film to secure a PG-13 rating, which explains why we don't see any actual spray/gush. But we are to assume that a drop managed to splash onto her shoe when he slit his throat.

TedStixon

Answer: The rationale is that blood can travel quite far from an artery and her shoe therefore got the droplet on it even from the doorway - however it does seem to me that the filmic portrayal is lacking, since you don't actually see any instance of spray. Rian Johnson' script says "Blood gushes." What we see in the scene is that it is trickling down his cut - a bit.

Sammo

Question: After Alan Krumweide starts spreading misinformation about Forsythia curing MEV-1, we see a scene in a pharmacy being flooded with desperate customers. But if Forsythia is a homeopathic drug, then why is it being sold in pharmacies in the first place? As the characters say later on, it takes months just to get a drug approved, let alone sold.

Answer: Many pharmacies in the US sell homeopathic supplements.

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