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: Does anyone know what song the kid sang when he came out from behind the tree on Drillbit's date? I feel like I should know the song, but I don't.

Answer: It's "Hero" originally recorded by Enrique Iglesias but preformed in the movie by Adam Ho.

Angela Brown

Question: Considering how small her role was (in relation to the film's running time), why did Penelope Cruz earn second billing behind Johnny Depp?

Cubs Fan

Chosen answer: A star's screen time does not equate to what position they are billed at on a film. It generally relates to the selling power of their name. The film's main star would obviously be Depp. Cruz however would still be higher than people like Liotta, Reubens, etc. as her name is more known. It also helps with selling the film to audiences than just a one actor film.

Lummie

Answer: While no official response from Fox as for its long delay, many have speculated the reason is due to the mixed success the series has had on DVD. The second season is generally used as the example, as the DVD set didn't contain any special features whatsoever. Generally a sign the studio is not confident of the DVD's success.

Lummie

Answer: All seasons have since been released on DVD.

Question: If Star Wars: Clone Wars happens between Episode II and Episode III, how can Anakin be a Jedi Master? In Episode II he is a Padawan. In Episode III he has the rank of Jedi Knight. But also in Episode III he says that it is an outrage how he is put on the council but not given the rank of master? So how could he have trained Ahsoka if he is only a Jedi Knight? Isn't that against the Jedi Code?

Answer: Both Jedi Knights and Jedi Masters can have Padawans apprenticed to them; the rank of Master is generally awarded once their first Padawan has successfully passed the trials and become a Knight themselves. While Ahsoka calls Anakin Master in formal circumstances, that's merely an indication of her status as his apprentice; Ahsoka being only his first Padawan, Anakin is still only a Jedi Knight.

Tailkinker

Question: Why would the filmmakers cast an English actor who tried to do an American accent badly when they could have just cast an American actor instead?

Answer: There's rather more to acting that getting the accent spot-on accurate. The filmmakers would have looked at many possible actors and picked the person that they thought was best. A better question would be "Why would the filmmakers cast an American actor when they knew that there was a Scottish actor out there who would be better in the role?" Has a simple answer - they wouldn't.

Tailkinker

Question: When Ricky's mum is looking at his test results, I think his score was 710. I don't live in America, so I have no idea if this is good or not. I'm assuming it is, but if someone could confirm this and just how good (e.g. very high or simply quite good) it is, I would appreciate it.

Answer: The scoring has been changed in recent years, but for the time that is a very poor SAT score, the average was probably between 900 and 1000, and 1600 was perfect. But at the time, you needed to score at least a 700 on the SAT to get into college, so he would have been able to go to school on a football scholarship, had he not been killed.

pross79

Question: In the trivia section, it's stated that the name Bruce Banner was changed to David Banner in order to avoid misleading audiences on the sexual orientation of the character. In which way is the name Bruce related to being gay? May be to obvious, but I'm not familiar with American pop culture.

www.translingua.com.mx

Chosen answer: There are many jokes, especially in the late 70's, equating Bruce with "gay." There's nothing that makes the name gay. But like "Lance" or "Percy," it's a stereotype perpetuated by popular culture.

JC Fernandez

Question: What was it in the book that Mulgrath was after? Something about destroying the fairies.

Brad

Chosen answer: The book was full of the secrets of the hidden world. If Mulgrath had it, he could destory all the other creatures.

Question: A trivia entry says Captain America's shield can be seen in Tony's workshop. Why is it there and how did it get there?

Answer: The shield can be seen when Tony is having trouble removing the Iron Man armour (when Pepper Potts walks in). No explanation is given for why it is there.

Show generally

Question: I've just started watching X-Files re-runs on TV. Years ago (when the show was still running), I saw a trailer/teaser for an episode that seemed to be about a woman who was jealous of a male character spending so much time with Scully. I thought perhaps she was Mulder's wife, but I've looked online and can't find anything about him having a wife. I think there was a scene of a woman answering the front door of a house and looking annoyed when she saw Scully there. Can anyone tell me what episode this preview might have been for?

Answer: There was a double episode called Dreamland parts 1 and 2, where Mulder switched bodies with a man named Morris Fletcher, after a time and space anomaly. Mulder has to live in Morris' home while Morris takes on Mulder's life. Nobody believes Mulder that while he looks like Morris, he isn't really. He mentions Scully and Morris' wife, believing Mulder to be her husband, becomes very jealous, more so when Scully comes to the house. This was in season 6, I believe.

Chosen answer: Well, she is the most liked sibling, so she can probably get more out of her parents, or get money from both of them without the other knowing, or as we saw in the Gary Grills episode she can get money from people easily by telling them all sorts of stuff.

Answer: She's just sneaky that's all.

Question: We learned earlier that he took up the name Hancock after a 1930s nurse asked for his John Hancock when signing out. Why doesn't Mary tell Hancock his real name, furthermore why doesn't he ask her.

Answer: It's not important anymore, him and Mary have been around for a long while and have probably changed their names many times to keep up with the times. Chances are her name wasn't Mary 80 years ago.

Question: There are two scenes in this movie where a man almost gets hit, first by a knife in the O'Connell's home, and the other in the museum, where he is shot at by a shot gun. In both scenes it's the same man, and he gives a kind of smug look before diving out the way to let someone else get hit. Any significance in this actor always surviving?

Answer: Seeing as people almost get killed in just about every action movie, it's highly unlikely that there is any special siginificance to it here.

wizard_of_gore

Answer: It's a gimmick. Towards the end, Jonathan ends up doing the same thing to the same guy when the Pygmies stab him with a spear.

Question: How are the chandelier and troughs of oils that light the treasure extinguished? If they are left to burn out, there would be no oil left to relight them.

Answer: You could do two things: let them burn out and refill them for the next people, or smother them and remove all the oxygen.

shortdanzr

Question: Why did everyone have to leave the city? Two boats, one for citizens, one for criminals. Was the entire city rigged to explode?

Answer: No, of course the entire city's not wired up. But the Joker's said that he's going to start killing people - would you stick around for that? Pretty much everybody wants out.

Tailkinker

Question: Why were the aliens protecting the Predalien? My dad thinks it's because the Predalien helped birth them, but I seem to recall them protecting her before she impregnagated those women. Did I miss something?

Brad

Chosen answer: The Predalien was a Queen, those aliens only exist because of her, so just like in Aliens, the drones protect the Queen.

GalahadFairlight

Question: Does Nick Nack die? Did he suffocate in the suitcase?

Answer: Likely not. He's still screaming that he'll get Bond as the junk sails away at the end. Presumably, either he and Bond came to an arrangement after the film or Bond turned him over to the authorities. At the VERY end of the movie you see Nick Nack is actually suspended high on the mast of the junk.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: When the joker escapes the interrogation room he has a sharp object against his hostage's neck. Is it a shard of glass or a knife? It looks like a knife, but there was a shard of glass behind him in an earlier shot (that had magically appeared).

Answer: It is indeed a piece of glass but it doesn't appear "magically." Batman smashes Joker's head into the glass window earlier in the scene. The glass shard came from the broken window.

Guy

Question: Do the Jedi know that Count Dooku is called Darth Tyranus? They continue calling him Dooku, but in the later movies, Obi-wan and Yoda considered Anakin to be "dead" and wouldn't think of Darth Vader as being the same person as Anakin.

Answer: No, they don't. At the beginning of this film they don't even realise that he's a Sith - they shoot down the idea of Dooku instigating the assassination attempt on Senator Amidala, describing him as a political idealist. While Obi-wan hears the name Tyranus from Jango Fett, he has no way to connect that name to Dooku. While they become aware of his connections to the Sith, there's no indication that they ever learn his Sith title, so they continue to use his normal name.

Tailkinker

Question: If Ash's job was to get the Alien specimen back to "The Company", why wouldn't he have just advised Dallas to put Kane in hypersleep, claim that it was too advanced for him to handle and let The Company gather the specimen when they arrived back to Earth? The way it was done resulted in a failure to get the Alien back and cost lives.

Answer: Ash tried exactly that, but Dallas overrode him. He was uneasy about putting Kane in hypersleep with a facehugger attached.

Grumpy Scot

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.