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: Why did Alex's droogs turn against him? Did they plan to turn against him all along or was it a spur of the moment thing when the police came?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: The droogs didn't like how Alex was leading them, so he attacked them. It's never explained whether the plan was to set him up all along, but given that Din was ready with the bottle to smash him over the head, it seems like an opportunity to be rid of him came up and they took it.

Captain Defenestrator

Chosen answer: It's an extreme form of aversion therapy. The pleasant stimulus (violence in this case) is associated with an unpleasant stimulus (a drug that makes him feel sick). Eventually, it is hard to think of the pleasant stimulus without thinking of the unpleasant stimulus thus making the whole experience unpleasant.

Myridon

Question: What exactly is the Matrix for? Was it designed solely to keep the human mind sane? Or does it have other uses?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: Without it, the human race would effectively be locked in sensory deprivation tanks, their minds active, but with no stimuli, which would have a derogatory effect on their well-being. The Matrix is designed to keep them busy and, yes, sane, ensuring a good survival rate and decent longevity to stop the machines having to deal with a high turnover in their power plants.

Tailkinker

Question: If Skynet is so worried about its Terminators "doing too much thinking" then why not remove from them the 'read-and-write' learning capabilities and simply set them to 'read-only' at all times?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: Because the gathering of new information is still a key part to what they do. There has to be a write setting, even a restricted one, in order for the Terminators to assimilate new information that can assist them in their missions - possible target locations, voiceprints, even new mission parameters could not be uploaded without the ability to write to their CPU. Skynet can (and does) set restrictions on the Terminators' learning abilities, but, without those abilities, their effectiveness would be compromised.

Tailkinker

Question: John Connor knows about the future because of the experience he had with the Terminators sent to kill him and the tapes his mother left him. But what about Skynet? How does Skynet know who Kyle Reese and John Connor are and their importance on the future? How does Skynet knows that Kyle Reese will, or has, become John Connor's father? Because that isn't happening in the future, but in the past where Skynet didn't even exist.

Answer: Sarah Connor told her story to lots of people, the guerilla fighters and mercenaries she trained with, the psychiatric hospital she was locked up in, etc. Many of these could have left records (the hospital is even shown to have videotaped several of her sessions in T2). In addition, John himself could have told the entire story to resistance fighters, who were later captured and forced to reveal everything they knew.

Twotall

Chosen answer: Apparently a ribbon device can activate the gate to the address it was dialed from. Like a sort of "*69" on the phone.

Grumpy Scot

Question: Why did the scientists at Bartok Industries keep that poor dog alive in observation? what were they hoping to gain?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: They were studying the mutation. It was cruel to keep the animal alive, but they didn't care about that.

wizard_of_gore

Question: It appears Jason has upsized his shack in this version. He now lives in an abandoned house instead of a rundown shack we see in Part 2. Plus the house has an extensive tunnel system. Finally, where does the electric bill get sent?

Answer: It's the former summer camp. I would believe they had a generator or two.

Answer: It's possible that he has a generator.

newtrekkilover

Where did he get the generator from? Home Depot?

Chosen answer: Jessica is Niki's dead sister, so Niki somehow embodied the escence of Jessica and against her own will just switches to her sister's personality to take on another persona.

DOB100787

Question: What exactly is the lightning the aliens use to get inside the tripods? How does it work?

Socks1000

Answer: For this film, the Martian tripods were already buried deep in the Earth's surface, lying dormant for thousands of years (or more) and only waiting for the actual Martians to arrive. When they did arrive, the Martians did not "teleport" into the tripods, but they were carried down in high-velocity capsules. Fairly early in the movie, a television news crew captures video footage of lightning striking the earth; upon replaying the footage in slow-motion, the TV crew can actually see these high-velocity capsules (containing the Martians) riding down the lightning stroke and into the ground. Therefore, the lightning probably served a dual purpose: It physically bored shafts into the ground directly to the tripods; it then served to guide the high-velocity capsules to the tripods.

Charles Austin Miller

Chosen answer: Impossible to answer, there's no indication onscreen as to how.

GalahadFairlight

Actually the movie does explain how the beam works but as for what it's made of? Who knows.

Answer: I'm sure that's their teleportation beam.

Except that, if the Martians possessed extremely advanced matter-energy teleportation technology, they could have destroyed the entire human population without the Martians ever setting foot on the earth.

Charles Austin Miller

Chosen answer: This has been answered before. The liquid, which is apparently a mixture containing human blood, is a defoliant that destroys Earth's foliage and replaces it with alien vegetation.

raywest

Answer: If you're referring to the liquid that pours out at the end when the alien piloting the tripod that was shot down dies, it may stand to reason that since the tripods themselves are built the same as the aliens (three legs and the same shaped head) it's a type of liquid that allows them to neurologically connect to the tripods and control it as though it's a dream. Sort of Pacific Rim-esque except no suit is needed.

General_Gigan

Answer: I believe that this orange liquid has nothing to do with the red weed or something like this. As this liquid is only visible when tripods are being attacked from inside or seriously damaged, this may hint that it is blood from the creatures or some kind of liquid flooding the whole habitable spaces inside the tripod, as the creatures look a little amphibious. Both theories fit the fact that in the last scenes, the liquid comes from the same door the alien puts his arm out.

Chosen answer: The aliens, who had no resistance to Earth's germs and microbes, were falling ill and dying, causing the tripods and the shields to fail.

raywest

Chosen answer: Dooku didn't fight Anakin at his full strength in his final duel. The plan, as Dooku understood it, was to turn Anakin to the Dark Side, not to kill him. After defeating Kenobi, which he did relatively easily, he held back, prolonging the fight and taunting Anakin, trying to get him to tap into his anger and hatred. He believed that, once Anakin succumbed to temptation, that Palpatine would step in to stop the fight, reveal himself as a Sith Lord and complete Anakin's induction into the Sith. As such, he wasn't fighting to win, merely to prolong the fight as long as it needed to be to serve their purposes. Effectively, he took a fall against Anakin, believing, incorrectly, that his Master would save him. As such, you can't use Anakin and Obi-wan's fights against Dooku as a reliable indicator of their respective power levels.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: It comes down to the simple fact that Halle Berry can't do accents worth squat. Storm comes from Kenya, so Berry is attempting some form of Kenyan accent in this first movie, but even here it is uneven and inconsistent. The decision was apparently made in 2 and 3 not to use the accent at all.

Garlonuss

Question: What was the ultimate fate of Jim, Selina and Hannah? were they rescued?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: That seems to be the impression. European nations would be searching for survivors once the infected started to die off.

Sanguis

Question: How did the virus that was uploaded into the mother ship affect all the other ships millions of miles down on earth? also, David said that the virus would last a matter of minutes, yet we see it last considerably longer that a matter of minutes. How can this be?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: The ships are in constant communication, exchanging data, power and so forth, so the virus simply filtered its way along the alien communications network. As for "a matter of minutes", (a) David is estimating and (b) define "a matter of minutes"? Two? Five? Ten? Twenty? No clear figure is given at any point, and the finale sequence of the film takes relatively little time. His statement doesn't seem unreasonable.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: There are 4. The big room that DJ and Stephanie used with the big bay window. Next to that (closer to the main/front staircase) was the father's room (rarely seen). Across the hall were the rooms used Uncle Jesse (in the beginning of the show) and Michelle's baby room.

shortdanzr

Question: What was the motivation behind the alien's genocidal nature and attack on earth?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: They intend to plunder Earth's resources. That's easier to do if they eliminate the population first.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: They are most definitely NOT the same actress. Patricia Quinn was born in 1944 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Patricia Heaton was born in 1958 in Ohio.

wizard_of_gore

Chosen answer: There's never any confirmation one way or another in the film. It's established that alien craft have been in the vicinity of Earth since the late forties, presumably scout ships investigating resources, likely level of opposition and so forth, which would quite likely have included a few abductions to establish human physical capabilities. Best we can really say is that it's possible that he was.

Tailkinker

Answer: Yes, as aliens do exist in this scenario.

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.