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 the villains kidnap Jodie Foster's daughter? The item they were smuggling was well hidden in the casket, and they could easily retrieve it after they landed. Nabbing the kid only drew attention to what they were doing. Can anyone explain this?

Answer: The bad guys needed Jodie Foster to open the casket (combination locked) to get to "the goods" (a bomb they needed in mid-air, not smuggled goods - it would be useless after landing). They concocted a plan to kidnap the daughter but make it look like the daughter never existed. This was the only way that the casket would be opened without reasonable suspicion on the bad guys.

Jason Feng

They wouldn't have needed to worry about suspicion among them if they asked mortician for the code, the mortician would have known the code too, not just Kyle.

Dinsdale - S2-E1

Question: In the late part of the show, the reporter is interviewing the Piranha brothers' former schoolmaster, but their conversation is deliberately inaudible. Can any lip readers out there tell what they're saying, presumably improvised dialogue?

Answer: Other than the teacher asking "I'm sorry?" at one point, it's complete gibberish.

DaveJB

Chosen answer: During the several years it took to construct the ship probably, or in any of the supplies/food brought on board, or in the furniture brought on board. A single pregnant female rat can be responsible for thousands of rats in a very short space of time (the offspring are not too choosy about who they breed with).

Soylent Purple

A pregnant female rat could have made a home in a underneath a third class couch and had the other rats then all the females would have baby rats quickly.

Answer: In addition to the other answers, rats can easily get on ships by climbing the mooring lines that tie vessels to the dock and also go up unattended gangways. They can also use temporary overhead cables attached to ships while in port.

raywest

Question: What exactly happened to Koskov at the end? Pushkin said something like "Put him on a Plane in a diplomatic bag" but was he just being sarcastic or what?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: He says, "Put him on the first plane to Moscow...", making Koskov think he was going to live, but then Pushkin adds, "...in a diplomatic bag." He is being transported back to Russia in a bag...hence, he will be quite dead.

Question: In the opening scene, when Hummel passes the four soldiers in the graveyard he salutes them but they pay him no attention, even though he is a general. I was thinking it could have been because they are taking part in the funeral procession, even though Hummel probably couldn't tell that, as they weren't carrying the coffin anymore at that point. Also, it seems a bit strange for a funeral as they're not victims' family or any other participants. Is there any explanation for this?

killin_kellit

Answer: When marching with a rifle a soldier rests the rifle on the right shoulder. In order to salute with the rifle the soldier holds the rifle vertically, with both hands, in front of himself/herself. This is known as "present arms." As the Honor Guard is approaching the General you can see them move their weapons to the present arms position and hold them there until the General returns their salute.

Chosen answer: I'm no expert on military protocol, but those soldiers (marines?) are marching with their rifles as part of some tradition or honour guard, and so are probably not required to salute.

Soylent Purple

Negative on that they present arms with their rifles.

Chosen answer: The film takes place over a considerable period of time, as Palpatine works on turning Anakin, Anakin grows increasingly dissatisfied with the Jedi Council, the search for Grevious goes on and so forth. There's enough time for Padme to have only had a relatively small pregnancy bump in the early scenes.

Tailkinker

Question: Just before Frodo leaves middle earth, he tells Sam about why he must leave, what does he mean when he says 'the shire has not been saved for me, Sam'?

Answer: He means that the memory of the Shire (as his home) was always what he clung to, his motivation for doing what he did. However, in the end his experiences had changed him so much that he did not feel at home there anymore, and could not fit in among all the people who had no concept of what he had gone through and what he had sacrificed. Essentially, because his outlook on the Shire is lost, he feels almost as if it really was gone and another had taken it's place.

Twotall

Question: When Remer is showing Squeak around the house, they walk into a bedroom. Squeak sits on a pull-out bed, and Remer says 'That's Jenkin's Bed'.Who is he referring to?

Answer: Jenkins is their dog, the one that attacks him earlier in the film when he walks into the back yard.

Gary O'Reilly

And also attacks him seconds after this conversation.

Question: Right before they get killed, what are the Jamaicans trying to do to the guy hanging from the ceiling?

Answer: They are doing a voodoo ceremony to take his heart out and sacrifice it. It's a terror tactic to warn other dealers off their turf.

Grumpy Scot

Question: If Lucy's father was the one that gave Henry the Beach Boys CD, how could Henry take that as a sign that Lucy remembers him?

Matty Blast

Chosen answer: Lucy's father previously told Henry that she only sings on days that she meets him - then you see a flash of her painting in the garage, singing a Beach Boys song. Right before he hands Henry the Beach Boys CD, he tells him that she's even singing again. Henry realized as he listened to CD - maybe if she is singing again, she is thinking of him, hence, remembering him. (It happens to be the same song that she was singing in the garage that's playing on the boat when Henry turns around to go back. It's called 'Wouldn't It Be Nice').

Why wouldn't the father just tell him directly "hey she's been painting and singing again, so she probably might remember you"

Question: The T-1000 kills the cop at the beginning. He takes his clothes, but he never takes shape of the cop. So why don't other cops get suspicious? After all, they might have heard a news report that Officer Austin died, and they see a completely different looking man in his uniform.

Answer: Why would they? Throughout the film the T-1000 keeps to himself and only once or twice even comes close to meeting the police. The first is when he tells one officer, "Say, thats a nice bike" and the other when he gets rid of the pilot in the helicopter. We don't know if other police even noticed him or even realised that he wasn't an actual policeman. Being that it had no bearing on the films plot line it was never an issue to discuss further in the film.

Lummie

Chosen answer: No real artifacts were used but they did use real film taken of the actual ship in the movie.

Disney-Freak

Answer: The thing that Rose is laid on is an original bit of the piano from the Titanic wreck.

Question: Was Rose a real passenger on the ship. I know that there was a crew member called Joseph Dawson but was Rose a real person. If so, how did the real life Rose react to herself on screen?

Answer: Both Rose and Jack are entirely fictitious - the similarity of names with the crew member is purely coincidental. Many of the bodies that were recovered were buried in a cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia that is called the Titanic Graveyard. One of the headstones reads 'J Dawson'. When James Cameron learned about this victim having a similar name to one of the main characters, he said it was a purely a coincidence.

Tailkinker

Question: Why does Flora only just notice at the end of the film that Aurora's dress is blue? She saw it on her loads of times before then, and never said anything.

Answer: Because she wasn't paying any attention to the color.

Disney-Freak

Question: What was in the attic if there weren't any rats making the noises?

Answer: It was the demon moving objects around. This is seen later as well when object in Regan's bedroom are manipulated.

wizard_of_gore

Why doesn't the mother freak out when Regan is showing how to use the ouija board and the planchette moves into Regans hands by itself? It magically slides across the board into Regans hands by itself, and the mother isn't particularly startled by it? Doesn't make sense to me.

The movement of the planchette was so fast during Regan's insistence that it can be operated by one person that her mother thought Regan "must" have somehow done it.

Erik M.

Answer: She thought that there MUST be a thin filament or something that Regan was manipulating...why ELSE would the game act that way?!

Erik M.

Question: This is a very strange question but I cannot think of anywhere else to put it. In the UK, a poster-advert for this film that is stuck on phone boxes has me confused. The bottom half of the window has Danny (Jet Li) lying down with his face to the camera, looking up slightly (as he is seen during the film sometimes), but the top half has an arm/fist with what looks like a Christmas pudding (on fire and all) on top of it. What is the thing on his fist, and what's its relevance to the film? I've seen the film but I can't remember anything like it.

Gary O'Reilly

Chosen answer: If I am thinking of the same poster, it is someone's foot standing on his wrist. The shoe is really shiny.

James Storck

Question: In the final scene with Bourne and Landy, we find out Bourne's real name is David Webb. As this scene was only added after previews, was the audience originally going to find this out?

Answer: The original final scene, Jason walking through the snow, was described as "dismal". Something slightly more upbeat had to be added, paralleling the happy ending of "The Bourne Identity".

scwilliam

Question: In the scene where Fannie is having trouble giving birth as the baby is breeched, how does Azeem deliver Fannie's baby?

Answer: While it is never explicitly shown, it is implied that Azeem performed a Cesarean Section.

Guy

Answer: It was never revealed what caused Frank's death.

raywest

Question: Does Magneto understand that his special radiation machine kills normal humans or not? He ignores Storm when she tells him she saw Sen. Kelly die. Is his plan to make the world leaders mutants so they'll become sympathetic to the mutant cause, or is it to just kill everybody?

Answer: No, he doesn't realise that it ultimately kills them. His entire aim is to turn the world's leaders into mutants, thus getting them onto his side. If he killed them, he'd simply put new leaders into office who now had even more of a reason to hate mutants, which really isn't going to help matters. When Storm tells him that Kelly died, he simply asks her if she really saw what she thinks she saw - a certain degree of denial, but one that's understandable. After all, he wouldn't want to think that all his planning was for naught.

Tailkinker

Answer: Magento didn't care if the Senator died. They either become mutants or they die. Either way he considers it a win win situation.

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