Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: In the initial (or present) timeline, Claire dies; the ferry blows up; Doug is recruited by the FBI and subsequently find himself at the terrorists' camp where an ambulance is sitting in the destroyed building. The presence of the ambulance suggests a future Doug had to come back in time, but then Claire would have been saved. What's up with that?

Foot2cranium

Answer: Another version of Doug tried to save her but he failed. He realised this and it was shown by his last second decision on the ferry.

Answer: Flawed theory. Doug would have to be recruited previously for that to happen. The time frame for look back most likely would not line up.

Doug from previous timeline failed to rescue Claire. We know what happened to Claire. But the question is where is that "previous" Doug? My guess: a human that was being eaten by croc that current Doug sees was the previous Doug.

That doesn't work. The hand in the alligator pit was white.

Previous Doug died while trying to disarm the bomb. He failed to disarm it in time and was killed when the bomb exploded. Remember at the beginning of the film when Doug arrives at the site, and he's looking at the bodies of the victims in the body bags? He hears a phone ringing and assumes it's his because it has the same ring tone as his. It's not his phone that's ringing but past Doug's phone. The one that went back, failed and died. Previous Doug is now in one of the body bags on the shore.

The other version of Doug died on the ferry in the beginning of the movie. He hears his own cell phone ringtone coming from one of the body bags and looks at his own phone because he thinks it's his.

Doug's phone didn't go back in time. There may be multiple copies of Doug, but there's only one phone.

Question: When Arnold Schwarzenegger is in a solitary cell and pretending to go on a psychotic rant, he says in German, among other things, "I'll rip your eyes out!" Does anyone know what the exact German words he is saying are? I can only make out "augen raus!"

Phaneron

Chosen answer: He says "Ich reiss euch eure Augen raus!" The full text from when he starts speaking German is "Ich kann's nicht aushalten! Arrgh! Ich kann es nicht mehr aushalten! Ich kann nicht mehr! Helft mir. Hoert auf mich zu quaelen. Ich Kann Nicht Mehr!" At this point Stallone opens the tunnel and focus is back on Schwarzenegger. "Ich kann das nicht mehr aushalten! Ich halte die Hitze nicht mehr aus! Ihr bringt mich um! Helft mir! Hoert auf mich zu quaelen! Hoert auf mich zu quaelen! Ich sterbe! Ich kann nicht mehr!" Here camera malfunction is detected. "Mein Herz!" Short break while others are yelling. "Ich hoere euch. Ihr Schweine! Ich hoere euch! Ich bring' euch alle um! Ich reiss' euch eure Augen aus! Ich schneid' eure Eier ab und stopf' sie euch in den Arsch! Oh ja, da sind Sie, oh ja!" Lights are switched off. "Oh nein! Nein! Ich fürchte mich vor der Dunkelheit! Ich habe Angst!" Warden enters the box. "Oh Gott, bitte hilf mir!" Here he starts praying The Lord's Prayer. "Vater unser im Himmel, geheiligt werde dein Name, dein Reich komme, dein Wille geschehe, wie im Himmel, so auch auf Erden. Unser tägliches Brot gib uns heute, und vergib uns unsere Schuld, wie auch wir vergeben unseren Schuldigern, und führe uns nicht in Versuchung, sondern erlöse uns von dem Bösen." He starts yelling again. "Du bist der Böse! Du bist der Teufel!" Stallone climbing, then back to Schwarzenegger. "Habt ihr nicht von jenem tollen Menschen gehoert? Der am hellen Vormittag eine Laterne anzuendete und auf den Markt lief und unaufhoerlich schrie 'Ich suche Gott! Ich suche Gott!'" Translation is: "I can't endure it! Arrgh! I can't endure it any more! I can't endure it! Help me! Stop torturing me! I can't take it any more!" At this point Stallone opens the tunnel and focus is back on Schwarzenegger. " I can't take it any more! I can't bear the heat any more! You are killing me! Help me! Stop torturing me! Stop torturing me! I'm dying! I can't take it any more!" Here camera malfunction is detected. "My heart!" Short break while others are yelling. "I hear you. You pigs! I hear you! I'm going to kill you all! I'm going to rip out your eyes! I'm going to cut off your balls and shove them up your asses! Oh yes, there you are, oh yes!" Lights are switched off. "Oh no! No! I'm afraid of the dark! I'm afraid!" Warden enters the box. "Oh God, please help me!" Here he starts praying The Lord's Prayer. Then he starts yelling again and points at the warden. "You are the evil one! You are the devil!" Stallone climbing, then back to Schwarzenegger. "Didn't you hear of that great man? Who lit a lantern in the bright morning, went to the market place and yelled non stop 'I'm looking for God! I'm looking for God!' "

Question: How did all the colonists get relocated to where the queen is? Do the aliens paralyze them when interacting with them? I can't imagine Hudson going there to be cocooned without struggling.

Answer: In the original script, yes the aliens have a barb at the end of their tails which is used to sting their prey and paralyze them. This was deemed unnecessary, however and the idea was dropped. We are shown an alien grabbing Dietrich and carrying her away and they do indeed just seem to strong-arm their victims and carry them, kicking and screaming the whole way. Bear in mind that a xenomorph is considerably stronger than an average human. It doesn't appear to be any more difficult for them to carry an unwilling human than it would be for a parent carrying a toddler throwing a tantrum.

BaconIsMyBFF

Could be even more than that, they could concuss their captives or release some sort of odour that causes sleepiness. Could be anything. The captives always wake up cocooned before being impregnated so they are anesthetized at some point. We know the facehuggers anesthetize their victims, so the fully grown xenomorphs must have still have the same chemical compound as well.

lionhead

The comic books and novels go into great detail regarding the chemical the facehuggers use to put people to sleep. It has a name and everything. This chemical is what causes some people to have nightmares while they are subdued. Curiously, I've never noticed them saying the adult xenomorph also uses the chemical but like you say, it stands to reason that they do. Why the movies and novels etc. ignore this element entirely is anyone's guess. It seems like an interesting element that has been consistently left out and, like you also say, people just seem to "wake up" after being cocooned but before they are impregnated so obviously they were put to sleep at some point.

BaconIsMyBFF

Answer: This is explained a bit more in the book. When Stanley and Zero made it to the top of God's Thumb, Stanley sang his families song to Zero. Zero was a descendant of Madame Zeroni, who had cursed the Yelnats family to bad luck when Elya, the Russian ancestor of Stanley, decided not to carry her up the mountain and sing the song to her, which would have rejuvenated her. By singing the song to Zero, Stanley had (by extension) sung to Zeroni, and removed the curse. Then, in the scene directly after, we see Stanley's father find a method of repairing shoes immediately, eliminating the requirements of harvesting a massive amount of resources when you could repair the shoe instantly. Stanley's dad marketed this technique and made a large amount of money quickly, enabling him to get a lawyer. The lawyer interviewed his classmates, who backed up Stanley's alibi, making him innocent.

Question: Spoiler: It's revealed that the first smaller predator was coming to bring a weapon to the humans to fight back against the bigger Predators. If this was the case, then why was it killing people when it first crash landed? It came across a completely different situation going on with soldiers taking out other humans, and it starts killing them, giving Quinn a chance to fight back and steal it's stuff. But why was it killing people to start with if it was bringing us a weapon to help?

Answer: The Predator had landed in the middle of a group of hostile Earth soldiers, who it judged would likely have just shot it immediately. It would have defended itself. And there's also the fact that it could just be for fun because, hey, old habits die hard.

Question: The movie Predator, is supposedly canon to only the first Predator film and never acknowledges the second film from even happening. Sort of a Superman Returns deal where it's a sequel to an earlier film, retconning the later films. This movie, however, acknowledges both of the first films but nothing about Predators is ever mentioned. But considering the premise of Predators, maybe just nobody in the film researching these aliens knows about the events of that film, however unlikely. So my question is this movie canon with all 3 previous films, or does it not count Predators?

Quantom X

Answer: Well, in the case of Predators, it was violent criminals, mercenaries and military being randomly kidnapped and dumped on an alien planet. From the perspective of humans, it would appear that the criminals and mercenaries had gone missing in a more mundane fashion or simply died. If the Predators were covert about it, the Predator researchers would not be suspicious at all. So it's entirely possible it's canon.

Answer: The second film is actually subtly acknowledged by Jake Busey playing a scientist named Keyes, implying that he is the son of Peter Keyes from the second film who was played by his father Gary.

Phaneron

Question: Why did they decapitate Wallace after he said "freedom"? I thought they implied that if he said "mercy", they'd give him a quick death, but if not, they'd continue to torture him. So what would they have done if he said "mercy"?

MikeH

Answer: In the end, they just gave up. They realised he was not going to say it before dying anyway, so they ended it. If he would have said "mercy" they would have done the same thing, but it didn't matter anymore. They couldn't break him.

lionhead

Question: While at the high school, after the witches arrive, Max says "This is your host, Boris Karloff Jr." Is that a real person or a name made up for the movie? With the witches thought to be burned alive, why did Binx snap at Allison and Max for opening the book. With the witches gone, he wouldn't have anything to worry about, right?

Brandon York

Answer: Boris Karloff was a real actor who is mostly famous for playing Frankenstein and The Mummy in the 1930's. He had many other roles in classic horror films of that era.The young host is naming himself after the actor. Binx may have been concerned that the witches were not truly gone, and therefore wanted to exert some caution. His concern was warranted.

raywest

The answer is true, but the question asked about Boris Karloff Jr, who didn't exist. Boris Karloff had only one child, a daughter named Sarah. As for Binx, he was angry about them opening the book and even states that nothing good could ever come from it. He was not only cautious about the sisters (and any concern he had there was valid), but he also knew that everything in the book was evil and didn't want to risk other issues it causes whether the sisters were involved or not.

dewinela

Question: The 3 of them escape the T-1000 after the mental hospital and end up in the desert. Arnold explains the history of Skynet to Sarah and one line of dialogue that has confused me for so many years is me is that he says Skynet became self aware at 2:14am Eastern time. That would be 11:14pm in Los Angeles. Why does the film imply the bombs were dropped during the late morning or early afternoon?

Richie

Answer: Skynet became self-aware at that time, but didn't launch the attack until the humans got scared and tried to pull the plug on Skynet.

Answer: The only indication of the time of the bombing was Sarah's nightmare, which was based on the story told to her by Kyle Reese. Despite this, even with Skynet becoming self-aware in the late evening / night, it doesn't mean it launched the missiles instantly. It may have chosen to wait before attacking.

Question: What happened to Terry, Tommy, Karp, Peter and Tammy?

Answer: Their absence is never explained so it can be assumed they either moved away, lost an interest in hockey, or couldn't participate for some other reason. Terry's brother Jesse is still on the team so he probably hasn't moved.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: In the scenes with the fighter jets flying besides the airliner, the fighters are depicted running with the afterburners (re-heat) on. This surely would not be the case for flying at a low speed of around Mach 0.8?

Answer: This is an error. The fighter jets depicted could easily keep pace with an airliner without the need for afterburners. However, this very well could be an intentional error. The sight of afterburners gives the audience a sense of high speed which heightens tension.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: How did Han and Chewie get off the desert planet at the end?

Answer: Or they could've hitched a ride with the Cloud Riders.

Answer: By the end of the movie, Han and Chewie have been left with some items of worth, plus their smarts and charm. We don't see how exactly but we can assume that's enough to get them into their next adventure.

Answer: I would classify this as the traditional movie serial "cliff hanger" ending where the audience is purposely left pondering what happens to the protagonists and must wait until the next installment to learn the outcome. Considering Solo underperformed at the box office, there is the possibility there may not be another independent Han Solo film. However, the characters would likely reappear in another stand-alone Star Wars film, thus answering how they escaped their situation.

raywest

Question: How long has it been since the last movie? It is said in the fake mission briefing in the beginning that Ethan has been tracking the Syndicate for "the past year", a mission he received at the end of the last movie. Yet I've also heard that the movies are set in the years they come out (2011, 2015, etc) In either case I find it hard to believe that the IMF has not received a new secretary yet if it has been well over a year since the last one died. At the end of Ghost Protocol the IMF is already up and running again. Why haven't they appointed a new head? And who is giving orders/missions in the absence of one? Who gave Hunt the mission to investigate the Syndicate at the end of GP for example?

Answer: The M:I films seem very careful not to show any specific dates (covering up Benji's opera tickets for example). The only thing I could see in this film was the newspaper Atlee has when he meets Ilsa was an actual Evening Standard issue from 16 June 2014. Regarding the IMF Secretary, there could have been one or more appointed since Ghost Protocol, we don't know, there just isn't one at the time of the hearing. Even if there hadn't been one since the Secretary died in Moscow, IMF would have had enough of a command structure to have acting or deputy directors assigning missions.

Sierra1

Question: In the opening of the movie, the Grimm brothers meet the elderly queen in her castle. Several people in the castle are crying and dressed in black. She herself is wearing a black veil, as though she is in mourning. Why? Who was supposed to have died? These things are never addressed in the script.

Answer: She's listed as Grande Dame in the credits and is addressed as "Your Majesty" by her servant and by Jacob Grimm. Many believe that the Grande Dame may be the fictionalized version of the real Marie Therese of France, a descendant of Henry II. It's in the last scene, when the carriage is leaving with the Grimm brothers, that we see in the overhead shot the Grande Dame's chateau is the very same royal palace where Prince Henry had resided. During the first scene, as Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm enter the Grande Dame's chamber, when the camera pans slowly from right to left we see a man (behind the candles) who has been leaning over the Grande Dame at her right side, then a servant leans over at her left side announcing, "The Brothers Grimm," and just as she greets the brothers the two women dressed in black are seen standing nearby, one of whom is weepy. At the start of the next shot we see a man exiting in the background, and he may be the same man who had been leaning over the Grande Dame in the previous shot, so perhaps he is her doctor. After they've had tea, offscreen, we see the Grande Dame is sitting up in bed, and there are apothecary bottles on the bedside table. She herself is not dressed in black, she's wearing white/grey ruffled lace, with only one piece of black lace over her white lace cap. I don't get the impression that she's in mourning. It seems reasonable to infer that the Grande Dame is ill. This is strong motivation for her to have written to the Brothers Grimm. Her desire to tell the truth of her great-great grandparents' romance and life, so she could set the record straight about her great-great grandmother, before she herself is gone.

Super Grover

Answer: The woman is not a queen but a grande dame who tells the brothers Grimm that Danielle was her great-great-grandmother. It's unknown why she is dressed in black other than it appears she is in mourning for an unknown person.

raywest

Question: Right at the end, a former co-worker of Dick's drives alongside and says he's working for a great new company that trades in oil and gas. It's called Exron. Dick looks at him and says "oh" and the look he gave is one as if he knows something bad or it should have meaning (if that makes sense). What is the look on Dick's face for?

The_Iceman

Answer: He says he works for "Enron", a notorious company that was involved in a major fraud scandal.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: When Tommy was shot, Henry said they shot him in the face so his mother couldn't give him an open casket. Why would they care about that?

MikeH

Answer: Family, and respect for the family, is deeply ingrained in Mafia culture (and in Sicilian culture). Denying Tommy a funeral wherein his family can pay their last respects (the purpose of the open casket) shows the extent to which Tommy angered and alienated his bosses and cohorts.

Question: C-3PO tells Han that he noticed earlier the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged. Didn't he try to tell Han this earlier?

Answer: Tried to, yes. But C-3P0 is so annoying and talkative that they tend to ignore him, especially in high stress situations.

Quantom X

Question: At the end did they ever actually survive or did all those Z's on the island kill Kenneth and everyone else?

Answer: It's left ambiguous and for the audience to decide. We don't actually see what happens and there wasn't an official sequel. So maybe they did, maybe they didn't.

Quantom X

Show generally

Question: When Elena and Damon were turned into rippers they were confined because they fed on vampires. Why was Lily not a threat, yet she was a ripper and never fed on vampires.

Alana paulatte

Answer: Because Lily's humanity was not turned off as Elena and Stefan's were...therefore she had some control over her actions and had a conscience whereas the other two did not at the time.

Question: When Mark leaves from the city with his dad... how come the family all beat him to Midland? You see them meet him at the station.

Answer: The train could have multiple stops between their home in Chicago and their old home in Midland. Lots of trains stop at many different towns and cities to let people on and off so this train could have made stops as well.

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