Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: In the movie, AMEE is shown to have various settings, such as 'Navigaton' and 'Military'. It is also stated that AMEE is on loan from the marines. My question is, before giving her to the crew of Mars-1, why didn't the marines remove the the military part of her programming? What possible use could it have been to the crew?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: It was disabled. The part of her program that was in effect was merely the survival instinct, given to it so it could protect itself.

Knever

Question: What exactly are those little bug things on Mars and how do they produce oxygen?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: They aren't given a name. They act like plants, except instead of absorbing carbon dioxide and expelling it as oxygen, they eat plants and release oxygen from their bodies. It's probably more effective than using plants since they weren't expecting to be able to breathe on the surface.

Knever

Question: This applies to both Revolutions and the first Matrix film really - why do the machines have no security around the Matrix itself? In the first film, Morpheus and co. are able to fly near enough to extract Neo once he's been de-tanked, and in Revolutions Neo and Trinity fly right by it - do the machines not think Zion might ever try and disable their main/only source of power, thus beating them once and for all?

diesel123

Chosen answer: The vast majority of the machines live in one central "Machine City" which we see in this movie and is located somewhere in the middle east (The Animatrix:The Second Renaissance), the huge towers we see Neo in when he is first freed are scattered around the earth built on the remnants of the human mega-cities (New York/London/Tokyo/etc). This means that a) they are very very big and b) they are very spread out. The tower/cities are protected by Sentinel patrols (and possibly other defences) and the amount of damage one lone Zion ship can cause is insignificant at best and it's implied that the machines have control over the creation of new humans, so any pod-people lost could quickly be "manufactured" and replaced.

Sanguis

Question: In the scene where the hypertime QT agents are in Zak's house, one of them gets sprayed with liquid nitrogen, bringing him down to normal time. But, if he is in normal time, wouldn't Zak's mom and sister see him? Don't you think they would call the police after seeing a stranger in their house?

Brad

Chosen answer: Probably, but it's not essential to the plot so there's no reason to show it.

Knever

Answer: These are top agent like figures who likely don't want many people knowing what's going on. Those still in hypertime probably carried the normal-time agent out of the building before Zak's mom found him.

Question: Since Marty's actions led to him not existing, shouldn't no Marty mean that there would have been no Marty to get hit by the car in the first place, meaning that Marty would have just reappeared when he ceased to exist?

Answer: The simple answer is NO. According to the time travel rules established in the films, alternate realities are created when changes are made to the past. Marty continues to exist as long as there's the possibility that he exists in 1985. Small changes don't affect him. Marty only begins to disappear after the past has been altered so significantly that he would *never* exist in the present. But at the time he gets hit by the car, Marty hadn't impacted the timeline enough to assure his non-existence.

JC Fernandez

Answer: Technically, yes. He would still have one wish left. After being knocked out, Genie asks Aladdin if he wishes for his life to be saved. After grabbing Aladdin, his head drops down, which Genie takes as a yes, However, since Aladdin was unconscious the whole time, he never actually confirmed the wish. Genie only assumed he did. Also, since Aladdin was out cold, he could once again make a case that he never wished for his life to be saved since he wasn't awake to make it.

Chosen answer: Under the rules that the genie lives by, he can only use his abilities to grant three wishes per person. He's already technically broken those rules once, when he helped Aladdin escape from the cave, despite Aladdin not actually wishing for it, but that wasn't an intentional violation; it can be considered a mistake on the genie's part, a misunderstanding of what Aladdin actually said. As he said after that incident, he can't give Aladdin any more freebies; while he can stretch the rules a bit, he can't consciously break them again by using his power on another non-wish, even to save a life. The genie's taking Aladdin's unconscious "nod" as affirmation that he agrees to use his second wish to be rescued from drowning. By the rules that govern the genie's existence, even though Aladdin didn't actually say it, it has to count as one of his wishes.

Tailkinker

Question: Does anyone know if makeup/cosmetics or other beauty practices, such as women plucking eyebrows and facial hair, existed during this time period? I know that this is just a movie and the actresses are supposed to look attractive, but I'm curious if it would have really been around back then.

Answer: For Dark Age beauty hints look at the website of historical novelist Octavia Randolph, on https://octavia.net/ Your question is brilliantly answered in the section https://octavia.net/early-cosmetics/ The Pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons and Vikings were buried with grave goods, items they used in everyday life. Archaeologists often uncover burials of men and women who were buried with elaborately carved combs for hair care, tweezers for plucking out surplus hair, ear scoops and small wash basins. There is good evidence that people processed herbs and flowers as cosmetics and make-up.

Rob Halliday

Answer: The historical sources from the time in question are scant - it's not called "the dark age" for nothing. Having said that, beauty practices like plucking eyebrows and make-up have existed since ancient times. We can safely assume that there were certain ideals of beauty, and ladies of all times strove to meet them. These ideals have changed frequently over the times, so plucked eyebrows may or may not have been the fashion in early medieaval Britain.

Ioreth

Question: Why did the author of the book, that this movie is based on, hate this movie version so much?

Android Kaeli

Chosen answer: He felt that it took too many liberties with the story. In the original agreement, Dahl himself was to write the screenplay (he was, by that point, a not-unsuccessful screenwriter), only to find that his version of the script was subsequently heavily re-written, including what Dahl felt were a number of unnecessary gimmicks, such as Wonka's penchant for literary quotations. Even the title of the film was changed from the original "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", in order to tie into the launch of the "Wonka Bar", a new candy bar made by the Quaker Oats company, who co-financed the film. Annoyed at all the changes, he ultimately disowned the film and refused to sell the cinematic rights to the sequel, "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator".

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: As of season three it has not been explained. The characters gained powers after the solar eclipse of the first episode and temporarily lost them during "The Eclipse". It could be some form of cosmological radiation, Hiro and Ando make Superman analogies (who only has special powers because of Earth's yellow sun), Suresh believes it may be coincidental, or it might possibly be related to the catalyst, or it could be influenced by an as yet unseen character.

Sanguis

Question: World War 3 may have been the reason for the nuclear war, but what caused World War 3?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: It's never stated what caused it (in this movie, at least). So much time has passed that historical records have been lost or destroyed, and the remaining humans are no longer literate, nor do they have any inkling about their species' past. The apes also do not appear to know the reason, only that mankind somehow destroyed their own civilization.

raywest

Question: Why does Ben need to find the city of gold to beat the kidnap charge? The President's story of "We got trapped and he saved my life" would work just as well without the discovery.

Answer: I've wondered that myself. It is a rather obvious plot hole, but it appears that the writers thought it added to the story's "suspense" by having Ben eluding the federal authorities while racing to find the treasure.

raywest

Answer: Ben lured the President to the tunnel to ask him about the Presidents' Secret Book, knowing the President wouldn't admit its existence in front of anyone else. This also means the President couldn't tell secret service what really happened. Ben told him he needed to see the book "to lead us to the discovery of the greatest Native American treasure of all time." The President doesn't know if this is true or if he has some other criminal plan for the book. Finding the treasure shows the President that Ben was telling the truth. Had Ben been lying, the federal charge of kidnapping the President would put Ben in prison for life, effectively punishing him for the kidnapping as well as for lying to the President. Considering Ben had already discovered a massive historical treasure once before, and knowing the recently tarnished name of Ben's family, the President was willing to trust that Ben wasn't lying about his intention and gave him the information needed.

Question: What has ended up with Max? Billy promised to go back and release him, but we never see that happen, and no explanation is given for that in the Epilogue. Is Max a real figure? If he is, what has happened to him? Did he manage to escape, or did he die in prison?

Answer: Max WAS a real character, and a Dutchman in real life, rather than an English one as portrayed in the movie. He eventually got paroled and later treatment for a severe drug addiction he had too.

Answer: It's never stated what happened to Max. The film was a heavily fictionalized version of Billy Hayes' book, and the Max character appears to be fictional as well or at least a composite of other real-life imprisoned Westerners that Hayes met while in a Turkish prison.

raywest

Question: I know there is one quick shot of a real iguana when Robert Davi puts it on the couch, but are all the other shots fake? And why did they use a fake iguana and not a real one in the rest of the shots?

tattoojunkie

Chosen answer: Reptiles are difficult to train and handle, and can hold up filming by being uncooperative. Using a reptile model would simply be easier and faster. Long hours on a movie set is also stressful on animals. There may be other shots with the real iguana, but I can't say for sure.

raywest

Show generally

Question: I know that this is such a small detail, but it's been bugging me for a while and google has been no help. In the original series, the command uniforms were gold and security was red, but in Next Gen and everything thereafter, it has been reversed to command being red and security being gold. Anyone know why the change was made? I'm looking for a real world explanation, not a continuity one as I already found one of those. Thanks.

Answer: When ST:TNG went into production, television had changed drastically from the time the original series aired in the 1960s. Not only were special effects far more advanced, but editing, camera angles, set design, lighting, color schemes, types of film used, and so on, were all very different. It was likely a decision of what looked best from an artistic-design point-of-view to give the series a fresh, updated look as well as to reflect how much Star Fleet had changed since Captain James T. Kirk's time. Red is also a very prominent color, and it draws the viewer's eye to it, and to the character wearing it. Therefore, that became the command color. Also of note is that the "old" uniforms, as of the Star Trek original series movies, had more or less universally switched to red uniforms with smaller department insignia. Thus, chronologically they removed colour coding in favour of pure red for everyone, and then decided to bring back colour coding - but retained the red for command instead of switching back to the old way.

raywest

Question: What exactly do the machines do on a day-to-day basis? What's their reason for existing? Is it solely to maintain and perfect the Matrix, develop more efficient programmes and hunt down the remaining humans? Are they planning universal domination? Or just designing more cute inquisitive little metal spiders with which to fill their cities?

diesel123

Chosen answer: The machines tried to peacefully found their own nation before the war that sent the last of the human race underground. So their society would not be entirely unlike our own. They perform tasks similar to a society based on agriculture would. They are not planning any sort of domination. They just wanted to be free and respected as mankind's equals. Humanity wouldn't have it, so they did what they had to do to survive.

Phixius

Question: It wasn't addressed in the movie, but did NASA intend for Lev Andropov to go on the mission, assuming the RSS didn't blow up? It seems odd that later on, he has his own pressure suit and spacesuit without any explanation.

Darthbane2007

Chosen answer: No, he was not meant to join the team. The pressure suit and space suit he uses are spares brought along in case one of the others had a malfunction.

Phixius

Question: In the end of the movie just after Ron sacrifices himself to the Queen to win the chess game, he falls to the floor unconscious. But before the scene cuts, a rock flies past his head, he winces, and it leaves a red mark. Did he really get it by a rock during filming or was it added in later?

Answer: The debris from the exploding chess piece was not real; this looks like a combination of computer-generated special effect (CGI) as well some type of a light-weight material (such as Styrofoam) made to appear real and is tossed at Rupert Grint (Ron) from off-screen. Considering the stringent safety standards and precautions that are employed in today's film industry, particularly regarding child actors, and also the multiple times that scenes are shot to get it right, it is unlikely that this was anything that actually could have hurt him.

raywest

Question: During Neo's final fight with Smith it looks as if Smith has turned every living person (including other "human" programmes) in The Matrix into versions of himself - have The Merovingian and Persephone also been captured and morphed? It's an odd thought that these two seemingly powerful figures would have given up without a fight, although The Oracle was turned too so it might not be implausible. Any mention of them again in any other media?

diesel123

Chosen answer: ##The Oracle deliberately choose to be assimilated so she could help Neo in the final fight. The Merovingian (and Persephone) had access to the Trainman and so, most likely, would have either hid in the machine world or in the Trainman's half-way Mobile Station. The both played a large role in the (now defunct) Matrix Online Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game.

Sanguis

Question: If the machines have managed to locate Zion, wouldn't it have been easier for them to try and find the main door through which all the hovercrafts fly and blast their way through that, as opposed to digging through a HELL of a lot of pure rock to get into the city?

diesel123

Chosen answer: To do so, they'd have to search a vast labyrinth of tunnels under the earth, contending with human ships, booby traps, dead ends and so forth, plus they can guarantee that they'll be facing a defensive bottleneck of apocalyptic proportions. Once they establish the location, much easier to just take the direct route and drill straight down to it, rather than waste time and resources attempting to locate the entrance used by the human ships. Plus the drilling method has the added advantage of bypassing most of the Zion defence grid and putting their forces directly into the dock, rather than having to battle their way there.

Tailkinker

Show generally

Question: This might be a silly question, but is Jessi really the person who attacked Lori? Even though Jessi had Lori's necklace and then the necklace reappeared in Lori's locker at school, the attacker wasn't actually shown. I think that Declan even mentions in one episode that the "evidence" is questionable. Is this one of the things that was left unanswered, like many other things in the show's last episode?

Answer: Later in the series Jessi is reproached for attacking Lori several times. Her answer usually is something like "Yes, but I have changed since then". Not once does she deny doing it, once the truth is out. So, most likely, she did it.

Ioreth

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