Question: Why does Wallace spit out the pain killer that the princess gives him?
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.
Answer: Because it's a reference to what his Father's last words to him were at the beginning of the film before he was killed, 'I know you can fight but it's our wits that makes us men'. That's why Wallace says to the Princess, 'It will dull my wits and I must have them always'.
Question: Is it known if there is still an ongoing feud between Peter Jackson and Christopher Lee? I ask because they had a well documented falling-out after the original LOTR trilogy, stemming from Jackson cutting Lee's character Saruman from the theatrical release of ROTK. In this movie, there's an odd part where Galadriel and Gandalf have a telepathic communication, basically ignoring Lee as he is delivering his lines. This happens more than once and I found it to be unintentionally comical.
Answer: While Lee was unhappy about being cut from the theatrical cut, the character's restoration in full to the Extended Edition, generally deemed to be the definitive version of the movie, went some distance towards settling the issue; most allegations of an actual feud between them are considerably exaggerated, mostly by irate Lee fans. While Lee did ask Jackson for assurances that he wouldn't be cut out this time, assurances that Jackson was more than happy to give, given the key nature of his scenes in The Hobbit, any feud between them is long gone. After all, Lee could easily have just refused to appear if there was a real issue there. He didn't.
Question: Although Tywin is Cersei's father, she is Queen Regent. Isn't she still in a higher place of power than him, and able to refuse to marry Loras?
Answer: As Hand of the King, Tywin is the second most authoritative person in Westeros behind only the king. The Hand's duties include sitting on The Iron Throne and dispensing order, justice and judgment, similar to what Ned Stark did in the Season 1 episode "A Golden Crown" while then-king Robert Baratheon was out hunting. It's also worth pointing out that Tywin's enormous wealth makes him the de facto most powerful person in Westeros, which he demonstrates in the Season 3 episode "Mhysa" when he sends King Joffrey to bed without his supper and remarks to Tyrion "You're a fool if you believe he's the most powerful man in Westeros. Do you really think the crown gives you power?"
Answer: The position of Queen Regent is largely a cipher as the Hand of the King is the actual regent for the king, handling day to day affairs and heading the small council. Tywin is still the leader of House Lannister and commands the army. Cersei's power derives from him, mostly. This is why she cannot truly counter Tyrion when he is acting Hand of the King or Master of Coin, both given by their father. She only starts acting like a queen when Tywin is dead.
Question: When Moody is demonstrating the Cruciatus curse in front of Neville, does he know who Neville is and that it'll cause a reaction? I'm only asking since Moody is Barty Crouch Jr (who tortured Neville's parents) at this point and surely he would have realised that the demonstration could have jeopardised his whole plan by causing conflict amongst the student body, which would have led to him being found out earlier by the teachers.
Chosen answer: Moody (Crouch) knew who Neville was and who his parents were because he was one of the wizards who tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom into insanity. The demonstration was geared more toward Harry than it was Neville, however, though Moody knew it could affect Neville the way it did. It probably wouldn't create conflict among most students, as most were dismissive and unconcerned about Neville. Most students would probably welcome being taught something they knew went against school policy. Only Hermione was really concerned about Neville.
Answer: Moody's demonstration was geared at Neville Longbottom. He needed Neville to get upset so that he could invite Neville back to his class for a cup of tea and give him the herbology book that describes gillyweed in it.
Question: If every former Hogwarts student who goes bad was in Slytherin, why has Hogwarts kept the house over the years? Why not disband it?
Answer: Because it is too firmly entrenched in wizard society and it wouldn't be allowed. One-fourth of the wizard population would probably revolt if there was any attempt to disband it. Ron's comment that every bad witch or wizard was from Slytherin was a child's over-generalization and actually untrue. For example, Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor and Prof. Quirrel was a Ravenclaw. Slytherin House itself is not evil, but those who are drawn to the dark side possess Slytherin traits in abundance, including resourcefulness, intelligence, cunning, ambition, self-preservation, exclusivity, and so on. These are not evil qualities, but they do help drive evil wizards. It is pointed out in the books that not all Slytherins are evil or support dark magic. Those following a dark path would likely do so regardless of what House they were sorted into.
Question: When Billy is walking down the steps towards the door he escapes through, the prison guard throws him the keys for the door. What would Billy have done if the prison guard didn't throw him the keys? What was his plan, or did he even have one?
Chosen answer: Billy's plan was to bribe a guard to help him escape, using the money his girlfriend had smuggled to him. That plan failed, and he was almost raped by a sadistic guard. When Billy accidentally killed him, he used that as an unexpected opportunity to disguise himself in a guard uniform and walked out the front door. If he had been caught, he did not have an alternate plan and would have been severely punished, probably even executed.
Answer: Wasn't there a shelf near the door with keys on it?
Answer: He had a gun on him.
He also had most of the money in his shoe - he only offered one $100 bill to the guard and he hadn't undressed him yet.
Answer: In the book Billy escapes in a completely different way. If memory serves me he was on a work detail and escaped using heavy rain as a cover.
Actually, there was an episode of "Locked Up Abroad" where the real William Hayes told his story, and what he really did was swim off the island prison. He got to a boat, then snuck into the boat and sailed about 17 miles to shore. Then he took his shoes off to throw off any scent that the dogs would have picked up and made it across another river to Greece, and it was within a few hundred feet of the guards on the bridge separating the two countries.
Question: I've had arguments with one of my friends about this line in the film when Scarface says "the only thing in this world that gives orders is balls", my friend thinks he says "the only thing in this world that gives orders is BOSS" (which wouldn't make much sense). What does he say, balls or boss?
Chosen answer: You are correct. It's balls. You can find it in the script.
Answer: The official script says "Boss". It's a reference to Frank Lopez not being Tony's boss anymore. "Balls" is completely incorrect and out of context.
Question: In the scene with Butch and Esmeralda in the taxi (right after he kills the other boxer), does anybody know why Quentin Tarantino made the view out of the rear windscreen look so fake?
Chosen answer: Tarantino is big on tribute to older films and filming techniques, hence the projection-style background.
Question: What is the meaning behind both Snape and Lily having a doe as a Patronus? Why does Dumbledore *not* find it "curious" (during the scene after Harry's "death")?
Answer: Snape loved Lily all his life, despite her choosing another; his Patronus being the same as hers is a mark of how his heart always belonged to her. Dumbledore was well aware of Snape's feelings for Lily, so their shared Patronus comes as no surprise to him at all.
Answer: As mentioned, Snape's patronus took the same form as Lily's because he was in love with her. Dumbledore always knew what Snape's patronus was. He was just surprised by the continued depth of Snape's feelings for Lily, so many years after her death. Dumbledore asked Snape if he was starting to care for Harry after Snape expressed disdain over Dumbledore's always having known that Harry was destined to die. He cast his patronus to show Dumbledore that he is only motivated by his love for Lily, not Harry.
Question: In the scene where the children are singing 'So long, Farewell', Kurt sings in a very high voice 'goodbye'. Is he really singing this or is someone else singing this?
Chosen answer: Darleen Carr - the younger sister of Charmian Carr, who played Liesl - sang that line, according to Charmian's autobiography "Forever Liesl".
Question: Why did Professor Snape insist on teaching Professor Lupin's class about werewolves (when he takes over the class)? If he or any other staff members suspected Lupin of being one, it seems that they wouldn't want to cause any panic or distraction among the students.
Answer: Severus Snape hates Remus Lupin because he was best friends with Sirius Black and James Potter, who used to torment Snape when they were all students at Hogwarts together. Snape is teaching the class about werewolves in the hope that one or more of the students will recognize Lupin for what he is, tell their parents about it, and then Lupin will be fired from his position. Snape takes this roundabout course of action most likely because all the faculty had promised Dumbledore to keep Lupin's nature a secret from the student body for this very reason.
Question: Why is he called a Blade Runner?
Chosen answer: It's simply a term used for the police detectives who specialise in tracking down and "retiring" replicants. The origin of the phrase is not given in the movie. In reality, Hampton Fancher, who wrote the first draft of the script, encountered the term as the title of a movie that was never made, that centred around a supplier of illegal medical equipment. He and Ridley Scott liked the phrase so much that they acquired the rights to use it for their movie.
Question: Forgive me, I haven't read the books yet. Do they explain how new Hogwarts students are able stop going to regular school in the Muggle "world"? It seems unlikely that several children, year after year, could suddenly miss school at age eleven (when they start going to Hogwarts) without the Muggles noticing.
Answer: In the UK, the age of eleven marks the point where children leave primary school and move on to secondary school. They do not all go together; children from a single primary school will end up separating and going to several different secondary schools located in their general area or even further afield in some cases. As such, the age of eleven is a very good point for children to surreptitiously drop out of their local system to attend Hogwarts, which could be explained to Muggle relatives and friends as a boarding school or other special educational facility without touching on its true nature. Hogwarts draws its pupils from all over the country, with only a hundred or so per school year. Given that a large proportion of these will be the children of wizarding families, who are generally home-schooled, then we're likely only talking about at most one or two children from any given area, which would be highly unlikely to be noticed. In the event that somebody does somehow pick up on it, it would be a relatively simple matter for the Ministry of Magic to make them forget all about it.
Question: I've read that all 5 children in the story represent one (or more) of the seven deadly sins. What is the exact rundown of this?
Answer: There's some debate over this one, but certainly there's some lining up between the characters in the movie and the seven deadly sins, although whether this was necessarily intentional is entirely open to debate. Some are pretty clear - Augustus Gloop is obviously Gluttony, Violet Beauregarde is Pride, Mike Teevee would be Sloth and Veruca Salt Greed. Charlie himself is Envy although unlike the other children he ultimately overcomes his sin and therefore escapes punishment. Wrath is less easy; Veruca Salt shows elements of it, as does Mike Teevee (especially in the Tim Burton remake), but arguably Wonka himself is the best representative, with his outburst at Charlie towards the end of the movie leading to him ultimately begging for forgiveness. Finally there's Lust, which, when interpreted as an intense desire for something rather than something strictly sexual, could readily be assigned to quite a number of the main characters or indeed the world in general, where we see people going to extraordinary and ludicrous lengths to find one of Wonka's golden tickets.
Question: When John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to protect his mother, Reese then becomes Connor's father, how could John Connor be the same person he is if a different man's sperm produced him?
Chosen answer: The whole thing's a paradox, which, as time travel doesn't exist, we have no way to determine how it would work out in reality, and thus any movie dealing with time travel can make up its own rules. Effectively an infinite loop has been set up - Sarah gives birth to John, John grows up, meets Kyle, sends Kyle back to meet Sarah, they make love, Sarah gives birth to John and so on and so on. There may have been an original father to John at the beginning, but he was supplanted in the loop by Kyle and thus, in the timeline the film presents, the John who sent Kyle back is the one fathered by Kyle himself. Alternatively, maybe John Connor wasn't the original resistance leader, that some other leader sent Kyle back the first time, leading to the birth of John Connor, who then became the resistance leader instead; thus Kyle has always been John's father. This is the nature of a paradox, that there are things about the situation that don't necessarily seem to fit together, but they somehow come about anyway. The detail can be debated ad infinitum, but no concrete conclusion can be drawn, because that's just how this works.
Question: Who was John Connor's father before he sent Kyle Reese back in time to protect his mother?
Chosen answer: Kyle was. It's a paradox, an infinite loop; Kyle goes back, fathers a son who later meets the younger Kyle and sends him back to father a son who later meets the younger Kyle... etc. etc. There are no hard and fast rules governing this sort of thing, so there doesn't necessarily have to have been an original father who kicked the whole thing off before being supplanted by Kyle. Or maybe there was. Or maybe there was originally a different resistance leader who sent Kyle back, leading to the birth of John who became resistance leader instead. This sort of thing can be debated until the cows come home, but ultimately the only answer is "it's a paradox".
Question: Approximately what year is the film set? The adamantium would place it after the Origins film (which I believe to be set circa 1979) in which he loses most if not all of his memories. This begs the question, how is it that he remembers WWII and the atomic bomb?
Answer: The chronology of the X-Men film series is, to put it mildly, somewhat screwed up. The first movie was released in 2000 and is described in an on-screen caption as being set in "The not too distant future", which isn't the most helpful statement, could be two years, could be ten years, who knows. The Wolverine is set about two years after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, which is in turn about a year after the events of the first movie, so think about "the not too distant future", whatever that means, and add about three years onto that. This does mean that, yes, it is indeed set some decades after the events of the Origins movie, during which he lost his memories. It is, however, also set after a period during which he worked with Professor Xavier to regain some of his memories. It could therefore be suggested that Logan remembering his experience at Nagasaki represents that they had at least a partial success in recovering some of his memories.
Question: How is Kyle Reese younger than John Connor in this movie? I thought Reese was Connor's father.
Chosen answer: It's explained in the original "The Terminator" - Kyle Reese volunteers to be sent back to the 80s to protect John's mother Sarah, before John is born. They get romantically involved and he fathers John in that time period.
Question: Why did Roy kiss his his maker just before killing him? Same-sex kisses on screen were far more unusual at the time the film was made, so the filmmakers presumably did it for a reason. What is that reason? And why, in the context of the plot, did Roy kiss him then kill him?
Chosen answer: He's kissing his father, thanking him for what life he has, before punishing him for making it so short.
Answer: It could be the "kiss of death", similar to the kiss Michael gave Fredo in "Godfather II."
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Chosen answer: Just like he said, it would dull his wits and not leave him fully lucid the next day when he had to face the torture.
LorgSkyegon
He wanted his full awareness so he didn't accidentally yell for mercy.