Question: Nikolai comes across the colorful plant, which Edwin identifies to be poisonous, and he even knows its scientific name. But if the plant is known for Edwin, then it must be native to Earth, since there is no reason to believe that the doctor has studied extraterrestrial flora. Why is this plant growing in there? Have the predators maybe prepared the planet to be more "interesting", by adding some toxic plants from another worlds in there?
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: When Fabrizio finds Jack, Rose and Tommy and the bottom of the main stairwell after they have been told they cannot get up that way, why when Jack is informed that "the boats are all gone" and then told by Fabrizio that there is an exit, why does Jack not go that way?
Chosen answer: Fabrizio says "There is niente this way." Meaning, there is nothing. He doesn't say there's an exit.
Question: At the end of season six, Grace told Robert E she was pregnant. Throughout this series finale, which is fast-forwarded three years, there is no such child. Do we assume she miscarried?
Question: Is that man with the pirate code Jack's father? He sure looks like it and Jack asks "How's mum?" but it's a very hard tell/guess.
Chosen answer: Yes, he is. This is Captain Teague, Jack's father, played by Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, who was one of the primary inspirations for Depp's performance as Sparrow.
Question: When Jack and Rose go to dinner, Rose is pointing out many first class people. Then she explains that the richest man on the ship's wife is Rose's age. Isn't she a little young to be married to him?
Answer: Some people may have the opinion that she is too young, and you may have that opinion yourself. However, the technical answer to your question is yes, she is much younger than her husband. If two people are consenting adults, they are legally allowed to be together if they wish. Madeleine Astor was eighteen years old and her husband was forty-seven. A large age gap is not what many people prefer, but this couple wanted to be together anyway.
Chosen answer: Well of course she is too young. Men, regardless of their age, typically prefer young attractive women. Wealthy and powerful men like John Jacob Astor (who Rose is pointing out) are able to attract beautiful young girls who want a rich husband, regardless of how old, unattractive, or physically infimed they might be.
Question: I know different vampire movies have different rules, but one that is always true about vampire folklore is that sunlight kills them. How is it that sunlight doesn't kill them in this movie, yet only makes them sparkle?
Chosen answer: Actually, you're wrong about the whole sunlight thing. While it is commonly believed to be a fundamental constant in the vampire mythos, in Bram Stoker's original Dracula book, which can be seen as a primary progenitor for much of the modern vampire stories, the character of Dracula is not harmed by sunlight, although it reduces his powers. Likewise the character of Carmilla in the 1872 novella of the same name (which influenced Stoker's work), who can be seen as the prototypical female vampire, is merely weakened by sunlight. So there is considerable precedent for vampires who are able to move about freely in sunlight. Meyer decided to make them sparkle because the idea for Twilight came to her in a dream, I believe the concept of vampires sparkling was part of said dream.
Question: If The Fallen can only be killed by a prime, and Megatron killed Optimus prime in the forest, doesn't that make Megatron stronger than the Fallen?
Answer: No. We don't know exactly what limitation means that only a Prime can kill the Fallen, only that such a limitation exists. Given the demonstrated ability possessed by the Fallen, it certainly seems unlikely to be a question of raw power, so is more probably a question of the nature of that power, some aspect of being a Prime that's unique to them. It certainly doesn't follow that if somebody can defeat a Prime in combat, that automatically makes them stronger than the Fallen is.
Question: In the scene where Tony takes strawberries to the office, there is a cool 'thing' on the desk that doesn't stop turning. It looks like it's a holder with a metal stick on top, balanced by a loose stick on each end. Does anyone know what that thing is called? I can't find it on Google (but I'm probably using the wrong search strings).
Question: What does the mineral the RDA is after do? It's probably a superconductor, but it could also be a catalyst for hydrogen production (explains the floating mountains), or elements from the Island of Stability*, which are super-nuclear-fission fuel. Is it added to other materials to make them stronger and better, like platinum? Does this mineral make practical fusion possible, or even antimatter reactions? Is it an actual anti-gravity mineral? What is it? *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium_(Star_Trek)Fictional_elements_and_materials.
Answer: It's described as a room-temperature superconductor. That's all we get. Its primary purpose is to drive the plot.
Question: Where are Dave and Linda McFly in the alternate 1985? They don't seem to live with Biff and Lorraine, and they are too old to be packed off to boarding school (like Marty), so where exactly are they? Biff mentions them when threatening Lorraine into staying so its not like they've been rubbed out like George was.
Answer: If you have the Blu-ray or DVD, watch the movie using either trivia track or watch the deleted scene where Marty meets his brother Dave and turn the commentary on. Dave is a homeless drunk and Bob Gale states that Linda ended up becoming a hooker. However, since Wendie Jo Sperber was pregnant at the time and couldn't appear in this film, it was decided to cut both of them out.
Answer: It's never stated in the film where they are. Biff makes a reference to having Dave's probation revoked if Lorraine leaves him, so Dave has apparently run into trouble with the law. He does appear in a deleted scene, where he has become an alcoholic and appears to be homeless with little contact with his family, likely because of his dislike of Biff, as he appears pleased to see Marty. No scenes with Linda were filmed, as Wendy Jo Sperber was pregnant at the time of filming, although scriptwriter and producer Bob Gale has stated that, had they included Linda in the alternate 1985 scenes, she would likely have become a prostitute, which would tie into Biff's threat to have her thrown in jail.
Question: Can someone please explain how each and every totem works? We understand that Cobb's will not stop spinning if it is a dream, but how does Arthur's and Ariadne's work?
Answer: No details are given within the film. However, Arthur's totem is a loaded dice, so it seems logical to assume that it will always come down on a specific side, one that only he knows. As for Ariadne's chess-piece, we only see her working on it, never using it. Probably it has some specific and unusual weighting built into it, allowing her to determine, in some unspecified manner, maybe by tipping it to a certain angle, or simply by feel, that it's the genuine article.
Question: For Silk Spectre 2's boots during the prison fight scene, being an alternate universe with very different technology, could she be able to remove her heels from her boots to do the fight scene, then reattach them afterwards?
Chosen answer: Technically possible, however, with absolutely nothing in the film to support such a supposition, something that speculative could not realistically be considered a credible correction for the current mistake covering the topic.
Question: When Old Biff arrives back in 2015, after going to 1955 to give his younger self the almanac, he is in pain due to being shot by Lorraine in the alternate past he created, which causes him in turn to fade from existence in 2015. But once Doc and Marty have changed the timeline back to the original 1985 etc, would Old Biff still exist in 2015, or was his fading from existence permanent when it happened?
Answer: He'd have come back into existance. The only reason Marty's fading in the first movie was so critical was because Marty himself was the only one who could fix the timeline. So if he faded before he fixed it he'd have stayed faded because there was no one else who would have been "in the know" to bring him back.
Question: At the end of the movie, Kim says that she wants Edward to remember her as she was. She obviously didn't turn into an elderly woman overnight, though. Couldn't she have secretly gone to his house if she wanted to?
Answer: I think that visiting Edward would be problematic. Kim could most likely visit the property once - however, she and Edward love each other, and both would be tempted to spend more time together. The longer that she continued to see him, the greater the risk of her being found out by someone. If the town knew that Edward was still alive, they would want to persecute him. Aside from that, I could imagine long-term complications if Kim ever wanted to attend college, pursue a certain career, etc. while hiding her association with Edward.
Answer: Maybe she didn't visit him to avoid the town realizing he was still alive after she told them Jim killed him.
Answer: Maybe she didn't visit him to avoid the town realising he was still alive after she told them Jim killed him. And she wanted Edward to remember her as she was in her youth.
Question: In the episodes where Harm flies F-14s, what does it mean when pilots are told to "call the ball"?
Chosen answer: When landing on an aircraft carrier, a pilot "calls the ball" by confirming to the landing signal officer (LSO) that they have the carrier, and more specifically its landing guidance systems in sight. Carriers use a Fresnel lens system which is a light only visible at a certain angle, so if a pilot sees the "ball" they are at the correct altitude and glide slope for landing.
Question: One thing I don't understand about the movie is why kryptonite is so harmful (almost making him drown in a pool), yet he was born there and he didn't die. Kryptonite did come from his home planet, Krypton, right? How come he didn't die when he was born?
Answer: When Krypton exploded, the resulting debris was chemically altered through nuclear fusion, converting it into kryptonite. Bits traveled through space, some eventually ending up on Earth, where it is now lethal to anyone who was from that planet.
Pieces of Krypton that exploded in the Red Sun were made radioactive, and the Red Sun is one of the weaknesses of the Kryptonians.
I thought the Red Sun was poisonous to Kryptonians and caused the remnants of the planet Krypton to become radioactive and also absorb some of the solar energy from the Red Sun. I was under that impression, maybe I'm mistaken.
Question: As far as I know, there were no plans for another trilogy after the first one released over 30 years ago. My question is, did Episode V always appear during the opening credits or was that added later in the special addition? If it was always apart of the credits, didn't people wonder why it was called episode V when it was the second movie? Would seem confusing.
Chosen answer: "Episode V" was in place right from the beginning, and the "Episode IV" tag was added to Star Wars in a re-release the following year. By this point, Lucas was already talking about doing a prequel trilogy covering the rise of the Empire at some future point, with allusions to a possible sequel trilogy consisting of Episodes VII though IX to follow.
Question: In the scene where Quint and Hooper were drunk and comparing scars, at the end of the scene Chief Brody lifts his shirt to reveal a scar. The significance of the scar was not revealed in the movie. What was the scar from?
Chosen answer: It's an appendix scar, from when he had it removed. It's of no great significance other than a jokey moment where Brody realises that he doesn't have any stories to tell the others about any scars he has, other than one he received through a fairly common operation.
Answer: It is a scar from a gun shot wound he received whilst on service for NYPD. He doesn't want to talk about it. It could explain the whole reason he moved to Amity from NY.
Answer: The chief was going to show the scar from his gunshot wound that he got as a police officer while working in New York.
Question: When Harry finds the Sword of Godric Gryffindor in the frozen lake, why doesn't he just use the Wingardium Leviosa spell to levitate it out of the lake instead of diving in to get it himself? I assume that this is how J.K. Rowling wrote it in the book, but does this still count as a mistake?
Chosen answer: It is not a mistake. Harry does attempt to summon the sword with a spell, but like the locket horcrux in the sea cave in (in HP and the Half-blood Prince), all the horcruxes, as well as other particularly strong magical objects (like the three Deathly Hallows), are impervious to all types of summoning charms. They therefore must be retrieved by other means.
Question: I saw a great similarity with various parts of the movie Herbie: Fully Loaded. There was an exploitation of ideas between the two films?
Chosen answer: There's no particular reason to suggest that there was any plagiarism or idea-sharing going on. Both films simply take the idea of an underdog coming to the fore in a particular field, doing well and learning some truths about themselves in the process. Very much an archetypal story and one that many, many films share. While a few factors can be considered similar, none of them are unique to these two films and thus the suggestion that ideas were either shared or "stolen" cannot be realistically accepted.
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Chosen answer: Indeed, it's an interesting question, and not one to which any answer is given. In the absence of any other information, your speculation that the predators have taken various plant species from other worlds to study and just make their hunting environment more interesting is as good an explanation as any other.
Tailkinker ★