Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: In the Canyon, when Immortal Joe tells Nux to kill Furiosa and return his treasures, what does he mean that he'll personally carry Nux to the Valhalla gates?

Answer: Immortal Joe is trying to inspire Nux to complete the mission, and that he would be honored to deliver Nux's soul to Valhalla, the ultimate heaven for the warriors working for Immortal Joe.Everybody in the film fears and reveres Immortal Joe, to the point he is almost a god and some of his warriors are excited when Immortal Joe even glances at them. For Immortal Joe to tell Nux this is the highest honor and recognition that Nux could receive from Joe.

Scott215

Question: Why did Mary get angry when the boy in the audience said that he could see her mouth moving? When a close-up of Mary is shown, she's moving her mouth.

Answer: Because he is heckling her and belittling her performance.

Phaneron

Question: Did people actually care about figure skating? I wasn't alive when this happened, but apparently it was one of the biggest sporting controversies of all time. Well I find that quite hard to believe, since before this movie came out, I'd never heard anyone talk about figure skating, I barely even knew what it was. Was figure skating ever actually a big thing, or do people just like controversy?

MikeH

Answer: It used to be a lot more popular. The Harding/Kerrigan Winter Olympic figure skating competition was the 6th highest rated program in TV history as of 1994, with 48.5 million viewers, no doubt helped by the controversy. It's slowly declined over time - from 1998 to 2018 viewing figures for the US championships declined by 1/3. Opinions about its loss of appeal range from a change in the scoring (used to be judges rating out of 6.0, now it's a more complicated points system), to a lack of "star power", with recognisable names grabbing people's attention. In the UK at least, skater team Torville and Dean were household names for a long time, but I'd imagine a lot of people would struggle to think of skaters with that level of popular recognition nowadays. That said, viewing figures for the 2018 US championships were 60% up on 2017, and membership of the US figure skating organization has risen for the last four years - these things wax and wane like any other.

Jon Sandys

Question: Why would Sam and his friends go to the library?

Answer: Possibly because it was the closest building with height to it as they are about to be hit by a gigantic wave of water. There was no snow yet, so I don't believe burning books or snow was on anybody's mind yet. It turned out to be a great idea as snow soon starts to fall and those books were literally a life saver.

Susan D. Santos

Answer: It was the closest building they could access. While the smarter move would have been to just go back to JD's apartment (which Brian and Laura suggest) it may have been too far a walk to get out of the flooding streets.

Answer: Big building with lots of space and lots of books to burn for heat.

Ssiscool

Why did they burn the books and not the wooden shelves that the books were on?

As for burning books rather than shelves, it was just easier. They would have had to expend more energy to break down the shelves into manageable size.

Answer: According to the 2017 book Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia, Luke Skywalker gave Lor San Tekka the map fragment to his location before he went into hiding on Ahch-To.

Sierra1

Why? Didn't he want to stay hidden?

Question: Would Rick have regenerated that quickly (overnight) after the blood loss from the giant mosquito and tick that he suffered?

Answer: It would depend on how much blood he lost and his general constitution. Of course, this is a movie, and reality is often fudged in order to tell the story. Having a character take days to recover would unnecessarily slow the plot.

raywest

Question: Right before Frank dies and turn into a zombie, he said to Kenneth, "You want every single second." What does he mean by that? (00:55:35)

Bunch Son

Chosen answer: I interpreted it as a reflection on his life and the lives of all those around him as his life drained from him. And that reflection is that as people we are always chasing something - goals, desires, a nice new car, a better job, a family with kids - but we are always left wanting something more. It's what keeps us alive and moving forward. As he dies, everything becomes illuminated and he realises this truth. I think it could also mean that he wanted to live every single second to experience as much as he could in life. But I prefer my first interpretation, so that's how I picture it.

Answer: I interpreted it as meaning a person wants every possible second to remain as a human.

raywest

Didn't it sound weird? He could put it in another way. A natural way.

Bunch Son

I'd agree that is sounds weird, but this is written by a screenwriter, and they often use embellished and unrealistic dialogue for a more dramatic or emotional effect.

raywest

Answer: I assume this is a very old question, but I always thought it meant with your kids. He wanted to wait to be killed until after he turned because he was all his daughter had left. So he wanted every single second with her, but it could just mean as human as mentioned here.

Question: I was wondering how the buffalo hunt was actually done. Were the buffalo actually shot (for meat or to cull the herd) or was there some computer graphics involved (I can see a truck running along side next to the cameraman with a tranquilizer gun to make the animal fall)?

Answer: While the fallen buffalo were furry dummies on wires (there were only a couple, filmed from several different angles), the buffalo stampede was real. A private herd of 3,500 buffalo in South Dakota was prompted to stampede five times, as seven cameras captured the action over eight days of filming. The illusion of arrows piercing the animals' sides was accomplished with simple special effects (including arrow shafts attached to body straps). The massive bull charging the little boy was a docile animal that was tempted with Oreo cookies. No animals were injured or traumatized in filming the scene; in fact, the only near-injury occurred when Kevin Costner himself (who did his own stunt riding) fell off his horse during the shoot. Https://ew.com/article/1991/03/08/filming-dances-wolves-stampede/.

Charles Austin Miller

Answer: I did a little Internet research. It does not appear that any bison were killed for the hunting scene. Dummy bison were mounted on moving dollies and yanked off by attached straps to look like they'd fallen. Two live domesticated bison were used for certain shots. I can remember watching one of those, "Making of..." TV documentaries on this movie. They showed realistic-looking bison dummies lying on the ground and compressed air being used to simulate the "wounded" animals' breathing. A tranquilizer gun could not have been used on live bison for this purpose. It's a misconception that animals immediately fall unconscious when darted because it takes time for the drugs to have an effect. Films in the past have actually killed animals for films, but they were often ones selected to cull a herd.

raywest

Question: When Harry finds Eliot tied up, he removes the tape and tells him that the kidnappers have been caught. Why did Eliot confess to being the actual mastermind behind the kidnapping? Harry had no idea it was Eliot behind it all so he could have gotten away with it if he didn't say anything.

Answer: Eliot mistakenly believed that Harry had figured out what his part was in the kidnapping, and, exasperated by Harry's dumb luck, Eliot stupidly confessed. He was then arrested.

raywest

Question: Can the Djinn only give bad wishes according to his interpretation of them or does he just do it because he is pure evil and "enjoys" giving people exactly what they asked for, just not what they actually meant? For example could he, if he wanted, have given the shop assistant a lifetime of beauty without turning her into a mannequin?

The_Iceman

Answer: The Djinn is a demon, it only knows how to hurt people. The wish he offers a person is just a way for the demon to buy the soul of that person, making use of the emotions inside someone to have them wish something. The wish works how the Djinn wants it to work, not what the victim wants it to do, that's irrelevant to him. Yes, he has the powers to give people what they actually want, but he doesn't as he doesn't care about people.

lionhead

Question: Why are Ali's friends with Johnny, Dutch, and Tommy at Golf and stuff? Surely they'd stay away from them out of respect for Ali?

THE GAMER NEXT DOOR

Answer: Ali and Daniel are really the only ones that seem to have a problem with Johnny and his friends. Other than that, Johnny is well liked and popular. Even Ali's parents are fond of Johnny. Also, to be fair Johnny does seem to be genuine when he invites Ali to come along with the group and even invites Daniel along as well, though he does make a rude comment about Daniel while doing so. The Cobras have stopped harassing Daniel and only Daniel and Ali know the real reason why. Johnny and his group are still friendly with Ali's friends so they see no reason not to hang out with him. Ali's friends also unfairly dislike Daniel from the beginning because he lives in Reseda, so they are not the best judges of character to begin with.

BaconIsMyBFF

Answer: They are in the same friend group and Johnny and Ali's break up doesn't really affect any of them. In the Cobra Kai series, Johnny said that they got into a fight before his senior year and figured things would blow over. So it sounds like them fighting was a regular thing and their friends were probably used to it.

Question: Wouldn't Kharlamov have been penalized for knocking the USA goalie Jim Craig down?

Answer: Not necessarily. Hockey was a much more physically bruising game in 1980, and this kind of aggression (intentional or not) was rarely cause for a penalty. And, since he wasn't penalized in real life, he is not penalized in the film, either.

That doesn't mean knocking goalies was legal. Players can only knock players besides the goalie down. Knocking a goalie down is a goaltender interference penalty. This kind of aggression was rarely a cause for a penalty because it rarely happened.

Question: I can't remember if this is covered in the books, but at the start of this movie, the Dursleys are seen packing up and leaving (because Harry has turned or is about to turn 17 so they can't protect him anymore), but since they've always not wanted to get involved with the magical world side of things (Petunia hating Lily for being a witch, Vernon not wanting Harry to be happy or going to Hogwarts etc), why would they just pack up and leave on Harry's word that they can't protect him anymore by living with him because of what will happen when he turns 17? Was it all explained to them in the letter Dumbledore left with baby Harry in the "Philosopher's Stone" about how Harry had to live with them until he was 17, and that Lily and James had been killed by this powerful person who they needed to protect Harry from or was it another way?

Answer: This is better explained in the books. The Durselys did not wish to leave their home, but the Ministry of Magic convinced them it was imperative that they vacate the house or else risk being killed by Voldemort. He would target them simply because they were Harry's relatives. The Ministry arranged to move and hide them until Voldemort could be defeated. Aunt Petunia hated the wizarding world, but she knew what Voldemort could do to her family once Harry's magical protection lapsed on his 17th birthday.

raywest

And as much as she hated the magical world, she knew the importance of following the instructions as Voldemort had killed her sister and left Harry without parents. She would do anything to protect Dudley as demonstrated in Order of the Phoenix.

Ssiscool

Question: After Ripley has set the ship to self destruct, she grabs Jones and hurries towards the shuttle. She then runs into the alien in the corridor, drops Jones and runs away and then tries to stop the self destruct system. Now she'd set the ship to self destruct, needed to get the hell out of there, the alien was in her way, why didn't she just blast it with her flamethrower? Ripley is not like Lambert, she's feisty and brave and I think Ripley would have done just that.

Answer: Ripley is, for the majority of this film, not "feisty and brave." She is written to be an intelligent, capable, but otherwise average person. She is for all intents and purposes an "everyman" character. She does not become the tenacious, bold heroine that defines her in popular culture until her last battle with the alien, and these character traits are solidified in the sequel. For most of the film, she is very much terrified of the alien and the prospect of fighting it head on is the furthest from her mind. At that moment in the corridor, her fight or flight response kicks in and she flees. All of this serves to make her fight against the alien in the shuttle more poignant, as she is forced to literally face her fears and defend herself. Note that while she is trying to get the alien to come out of its hiding place on the shuttle, she is soaked in nervous sweat and is singing a song to calm herself down. Would the Ripley of later films have blasted the alien to kingdom come? Of course. The Ripley in this film has yet to become the no-nonsense, composed heroine we remember at that point.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: Why did the last three remaining crew members split up? Surely it would have made better sense to stay together as up until that time the alien had only attacked people when they were alone.

Answer: They felt like they didn't have enough time. Parker and Lambert stayed together to get coolant while Ripley was to prepare the shuttle and set the auto-destruct. They wanted to escape as soon as possible. Staying together would have, in their minds, lengthened the time they were on the ship with the alien.

BaconIsMyBFF

I would add to that the fact that Lambert and Parker were actually killed while still together. By splitting up, the alien could only attack one person or group at a time. This actually increased the chances for Ripley.

Garlonuss

Answer: Fair point but I don't think that the Alien would have attacked three people because when it moved in to kill Lambert it didn't know that Parker was behind it.

You're basing that on what you know about the alien from watching the films. The characters at this point have no real idea how the alien would behave. For all they know, it could start reproducing asexually and there could be six more of them on the ship.

BaconIsMyBFF

Don't understand what you mean, sorry.

You are saying that you believe the alien wouldn't attack three people together. That's because you've probably seen the films and have a pretty good understanding of the creature's biology and behavior. The characters in the film have no idea how it behaves or how it will behave the longer it stays alive. The biology of the alien is so different from anything they've seen and they want to get away from it as soon as they possibly can.

BaconIsMyBFF

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.

Phaneron

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: Towards the end when George is at the bridge looking to jump in to kill himself it's snowing. However, after Clarence shows him what the world would have been like without him, he runs back to the bridge and it is not snowing. George is then begging Clarence to let him live again, and just like that it starts snowing just as it was when George was looking to jump in and kill himself. What did George's life have to do with changing the weather?

DrLoomis1978

Answer: It's just a cinematography thing. It's snowing in the real world, the weather is clear in the alternate world. When the snow resumes, it shows us that he's returned to his real life.

Brian Katcher

Very good answer.

DrLoomis1978

I agree, a good answer.

raywest

Answer: Most likely it had nothing to do with it. This is probably a plot inconsistency.

raywest

Question: At the end, would McClane really have been able to hit that electrical wire with the piddly little model 36 revolver he was holding? Would it even be able to shoot that high? (00:21:05)

Answer: He could have but probably not. It would be a very lucky shot. Chalk this up to "movie magic."

raywest

Answer: Because they were just having a bit of fun at Ron's expense. After saving Sirius and Buckbeak and going through a rather harrowing ordeal, they can now relax and enjoy themselves. The levity provides an "end point" to the main story, indicating to the audience that it has reached its conclusion.

raywest

Answer: He asks what time they're going to the horse racing.

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