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.

Chosen answer: Because unlike everyone else, they know EXACTLY where it is! They are their friends, of course they know how to get to the turtles' home easily.

Carl Missouri

Question: Was the possibility of putting Asajj Ventress into the movie ever considered?

Answer: No, but before the character of Count Dooku was developed, the Art Department for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones developed a female Sith as the film's villain, as seen in concept art by Dermot Power in The Art of Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones. Since Dooku replaced her as Sidious' apprentice, she was put in to the animated series.

POKER

Question: What did the cafe server mean when he said to Marty "I can't give you a tab unless you buy something"? I know that Marty was referring to the Tab soda (which didn't exist then), but what was the other guy talking about?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: A tab is the same as a bill. The server guy thinks Marty wants a bill for whatever he's ordered, although because Marty hasn't eaten or drunk anything yet, he can't give him one. Even though a bill for a restaurant meal can be referred to as a "tab", this term is more commonly used in bars. When someone "runs a tab," it means they pay the total cost as they're about to leave, rather than pay for each drink separately.

raywest

Question: During the credits, in the voices category, there are two actors listed for the voice of Baby Alex. Why were two actors needed?

Movie Guy

Chosen answer: There's two reasons. Firstly, infants are only allowed to work for short periods of time, hence why when you see babies onscreen that are heavily featured, invariably twins are used to alternate to not fall foul of the rules. Secondly, it may be that one of the voices didn't give the filmakers as much diverse dialogue as they needed so they brought in another actor to get the rest they needed.

GalahadFairlight

Answer: It could be kind of like the thing from the "Wimpy Kid" movies, but with voice acting. The voice actors could be infants or toddlers, which don't behave well. So the filmmakers have two of them (It doesn't have to be twins since they're doing voice acting) that way they can swap out one with the other.

EnderCube

Question: I don't understand why Alex waits until Mrs. Alexander has unchained the opened front door and fully opened it, before he and his droogs break in. I'm sure the four of them could easily have broken the chain off with a bit of force. Is it simply part of Alex's nature to be invited in, before he starts his attack?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: It's part of the "fun element" of the crime to get the victim to open the door themselves.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: Nero destroys Vulcan, because he believes Spock caused the destruction of Romulas. In the movie, 'The Journey Home' when the Enterprise crew go back to find the whales, the movie starts off with the crew on Vulcan with the stolen Klingon spacecraft, also Spock is talking to his mother as he regains his memories. How can that happen if Nero destroys Vulcan and Spock's mother dies in that event? Also, in 'Star Trek Nemisis' the movie starts with scenes on Romulas, but it was destroyed, how can that be?

Philip Myers

Chosen answer: As elder Spock speaks to Kirk, it is mentioned that in the 'real' timeline George Kirk actually lived for many years, long enough to see his son, James, become Captain of Enterprise. It is in that timeline that 'Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home' and 'Star Trek: Nemesis' occur. There are numerous changes to the 'real' timeline, including the fact that James never knew his father. As to the "how", when elder Spock tells James of his failed effort (120 years in the future) to save Romulas from being obliterated by a supernova (after the events of Nemesis), he explains that it results in the black hole that transports Spock (in his ship) and Nero (in his ship, the Narada) into the past - which changes the timeline.

Super Grover

Question: If Spock easily destroys the Romulan drill in his "Jellyfish" ship, and Kirk and Sulu nearly take it out using hand phasers, why couldn't the Starfleet garrison on Earth, or some other planetary defense weaponry destroy it? Surely there was a single ship with minimal armament that could have taken it down.

Answer: Spock's ship is from 200 years in the future, and is likely quite a bit more powerful than its size would imply. Kirk and Sulu were able to land on the drill because of their significantly smaller size to a ship, i.e. they were invisible to scanning. And finally, as was so amptly displayed by the Nerada, it destroyed seven Federation Starships in a matter of minutes, I think its fair to theorise that a much smaller ship would fare little better in sneaking a shot at the drill.

GalahadFairlight

That's a stretch. Kirk and Sulu were able to shoot hand held rifles at the drill and disable it. There wasn't a single ship on earth that could compare to the firepower of two hand held rifles?

Question: How did Kirk and Scotty manage to teleport onto the Enterprise, through its shields, when it had obviously traveled many light years? It is safe to say that Kirk was marooned on the planet at least an hour before teleporting off it (in reality it would have taken much longer to walk 14km in the snow, meet Scotty, figure out the equations, etc), so the Enterprise would have traveled an extreme distance at warp speeds in even one hour, as the ship can go much faster than the speed of light. Even if Scotty figured out how to teleport onto a ship moving at warp speeds, it doesn't explain how they managed to teleport such extreme distances.

Answer: Scotty mentions early in his first scene that he believes distance is not a factor in teleportation, contrary to popular belief. He uses an example of transporting a grapefruit from one planet to another (a pretty massive distance), and this is before Spock gives him the formula for mid-warp transport. After looking at it, Scotty says he never thought to consider that space is the thing that moves. If he's already certain he can transport between planets, and then he sees a formula that lets him bend space, distance shouldn't be a factor at all.

Question: Why wouldn't the Adamantium procedure that Wolverine undertook, work on Sabretooth? To my knowledge they both have the ability to regenerate. So why not?

MusicalPurist

Chosen answer: Sabretooth's healing abilities are not as good as Wolverine's. As we can see in the movie, Wolverine himself almost died from not healing fast enough from the trauma of having metal grafted to his bones. Sabretooth would have taken even longer to heal, meaning that the process would have killed him.

Twotall

Question: Why would Agent Zero shoot the drink, then the old people who took care of Wolverine? He could just shoot both of them as they are closer enough to kill with 2 shots.

rockmandrum

Chosen answer: His first shot went through the woman and broke the glass.

SexyIrishLeprechaun

Chosen answer: He never really wanted to kill him, he wants him on his side again. Wolverine is a great agent with many talents. He just wants him back on board. It's only when Wolverine makes it very clear that he's not coming back on board (voluntarily at least) and that Wolverine is planning to kill Stryker that Stryker starts trying to kill Wolverine.

Gary O'Reilly

Question: What did Eugene say or do to support his claim in the movie Gattaca?

cruzazul

Chosen answer: Please be more specific. To what claim are you referring? The only one I can think of is at the end when he is claiming to be himself. And then he only needed to give his blood and he was done.

Garlonuss

Question: I have played through the game several times and viewed this movie at least five or six times completelty, but there is something major I still don't understand. What is the fountain of "water" that appears in the Church and cures the geostigma near the end? The pool that appears right after Kadaj blows a hole in the ground. Is it lifestream energy from the planet? It is the presense of Aerith? What is it? It plays such a huge role but isn't explained at all.

Answer: We're lead to believe that it's the Lifestream of the world.

Knever

Question: When Evan went to see his father when he was young (not when he came back), why was his father trying to kill him? When he was young, he had no idea about his ability, so he couldn't talk about it and make his father try to kill him.

rotoplo

Chosen answer: Every time that Even blacked out was a moment that he would later return to as an adult. He couldn't remember them because he hadn't experienced them himself. It is a little confusing, but he basically skipped over those blackouts in his childhood. So just before he spoke to his father, his future self stepped in and spoke to him.

Knever

Answer: Evan's father is trying to kill him because he has the same ability as Evan, and is trying to kill him to prevent him from hurting himself/anyone else.

Question: What was Nero doing for the 25 years between his attack on the Kelvin and the one on Vulcan? Additionally, how did he know when and where Spock was to appear? Did he sit his ship in front of the black hole for 25 years? And why was his ship armed to the teeth? It's supposed to be a mining vessel.

Answer: There was a scene cut from the movie that shows Nero being held in Rura Penthe, the klingon prison planet that was attacked in the transmission that Uhura intercepted and translated. The attack was the Narada crew coming to free their commander. And if you were to read the Countdown comic book that is used to give back story to Nero and his relationship with Spock, you'd see that the Narada originally looked nothing like what we see in this film. It was more utilitarian. But after the destruction of Romulus, Nero and crew come across a Romulan space station that is taking in refugees from the doomed planet. They had been working on some technology reverse engineered from Borg technology. Nero offered his ship as a test candidate as they were looking to start field testing it on a ship at that time. And as far as waiting for Spock, it could have been a simple thing to calculate the time and place of Spock's arrival using temporal mechanics based on the size and intensity of the singularity that sent them there, and an educated guess of when Spock entered the anomaly based on the telemetry they had at the moment they entered in themselves. They've had 25 years to wait and calculate what they needed to know.

Garlonuss

Question: Why would Nero insist on drilling to the core of Vulcan and Earth to deposit the red matter, when it could just as easily envelop the planet by creating a black hole on the surface?

Answer: Since we don't know much about the red matter in question, its tough to say, but it stands to reason that they wouldn't have done it without a reason. It is conceivable that a small amount of it would only be able to create a black hole and destroy a planet if exposed to enough heat and pressure, say at a planet's core. They make reference to "igniting" the red matter, which is what causes the final black hole, and that only happened by igniting all the remaining matter.

roboc

Chosen answer: Yes, the character he plays is Chris Bradley (Bolt) who is able to create and manipulate electricity.

Question: After Palpatine orders the clone troopers to execute order 66, they are shown killing the Jedi. When Palpatine gave the order to the clones, several of them were in the midst of a raging battle. After they killed the Jedi, what happened to the clones? Did the battles continue uninterrupted? Were they killed also?

SeekerOfAnswers

Chosen answer: The battles continued. Some clones would undoubtedly have been killed, many survived to fight on until the cease-fire order came in after Vader slew the Separatist leadership on Mustafar.

Tailkinker

Question: When they discover they have no gasoline for the DeLorean, they go through all sorts of trouble to get it up to 88mph. Now it's obvious things fade away and into existence in this movie, as it did with the newspapers and matchbook. Wouldn't it have made more sense to go to the mine where the time machine was buried and write on the wood, "Bring can of gas"? Wouldn't a can of gas then materialize in the trunk of the DeLorean and they could go home?

Carl Missouri

Chosen answer: There's already been enough meddling with the timeline without deliberately resorting to that sort of thing. If they can get the car up to speed with the stuff they've got available to them in that time period, it's the safest option to take.

Tailkinker

Question: We see Biff groan in pain as he returns to 2015 with the stolen DeLorean. In a deleted scene we actually see Biff fade away as he is erased from existence by his actions. I assume this is because an alternate Biff now exists (or could have been killed) and so he is erased from time. If this happens to Biff, why doesn't this happen to Marty, Doc, and Jennifer? They too are replaced by alternate versions of themselves when they return and even before they return to 1985a. 1985a Biff even says in the film that Marty was in school in Switzerland, and Doc has been committed, so they too should fade away as Biff did, shouldn't they? I would say "time" was giving them time enough to correct things like in the 1st movie, but Biff faded away almost a soon as he arrived back in 2015a.

Carl Missouri

Answer: I read somewhere the reason Biff faded away was Lorraine shot him in the alternate timeline for murdering her husband, George.

I hadn't heard that one, could be in a novelization or something. This is entirely my own speculation with nothing official to support it; however, it could be that because Doc and Marty are trying to correct the timeline, he and his siblings' removal from history happens gradually, as they get closer or further from the act of their trying to set things right. Biff doesn't know or care and is actively trying to change history, so the moment he returns to 2015, he vanishes all at once.

Captain Defenestrator

If you have the DVD or Blu-ray, watch the deleted scene of Biff vanishing and turn on the commentary. It will confirm that Biff was murdered, which is why he was erased from existence.

Chosen answer: Biff faded away because he completely changed his own past. When Marty, Doc, and Jennifer return to 1985, they're returning to the alternate timeline that Biff created. They still exist and remember their own history because without it, Biff's timeline couldn't exist and a paradox would be created.

Captain Defenestrator

Answer: The comics answer this question. In 1986 in the alternate timeline, Biff forced the committed Doc Brown to send him forward in time to get more sports results, but Doc tricked him and sent him back to 1884 instead, where he was shot by his own great-grandfather Buford. When he reappeared in his current time (that's how the time machine worked in this timeline), he was dead. Old Biff faded from existence because Biff never grew up to become Old Biff (because he was dead), so Old Biff no longer existed.

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.