Question: Does anyone know how the war between the Predator and the Alien began? Is there any story about it?
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Question: Why did they use actors who couldn't sing in the leading roles? Wouldn't it be easier to cast people who could sing instead of dubbing with other singing voices?
Answer: People would not come to the theater to see Marnie Nixon despite the fact that she has sung the lead roles in West Side Story, The King and I, and My Fair Lady. They'd rather see that darling girl from "Miracle on 34th Street" again (or Deborah Kerr or Audrey Hepburn) than an unknown with actual talent.
Answer: Natalie Wood was more well-known. And Wood actually COULD sing, she just couldn't hit the high notes perfectly. In fact, she was told only some of her singing would be dubbed.
Question: What's the whole deal about Captain Hook playing the piano in the bar?
Answer: It's a joke - the concept of a man with a hook for a hand playing the piano, something that requires considerable dexterity, is quite funny.
Question: This may be a bit stupid, but when Pippin is singing to Denethor while he's eating, is him eating supposed to mean anything symbolically?
Answer: Well, the fact that Denethor IS eating in the first place during such a highly emotionally charged dire moment, coupled with the fact that he actually asks Pippin to sing, serves to demonstrate Denethor's cruel heartlessness. As we hear Pippin's stirring voice, the spurting red tomato is used to add a shocking visual as it represents the blood of the many men who are riding to Osgiliath to their death.
Question: What was the whole point of the girls doing that dance number at the show?
Answer: The show was a talent quest held by the school, and lots of students entered. The woman with glasses, shown in the audience a couple of times (she nods during the girls' performance) is a talent scout from the show where the girls perform, when they fly to California. They have just received the news of their selection to perform on the show when the other news about Jim Cunningham comes in (we see Kitty Farmer jubilant, as the secretary brings the newspaper over to her).
Question: With the Eomer crying question, the answer says that he could be grieving for Gamling. Why would Eomer be so emotional of his uncle's right-hand man?
Answer: After the deaths of their parents when they were very young, Eomer and Eowyn were taken in by Theoden, and grew up in his house. As such, it's quite likely that Eomer has known Gamling for many years and regards him as a close friend, possibly even a brother.
Question: Where are the hieroglyphs of C3PO and R2D2 in the Well of Souls? I have spent years searching for them, but have never been able to spot them.
Answer: Here's a picture so you'll know what to look for: http://www.starwars.com/episode-i/snapshot/1999/11/snapshot19991102.html. They're not hugely prominent - they're to the left of a man and a dog-headed man, and to the right of a man in a chair. C3-P0 is facing left, reaching down to R2-D2.
Question: At one point in the movie, Rogue flies the X-Jet. I noticed that this appears to put her in a state of heightened emotion, just like when she is draining a person's energy, and she has to be pulled off the controls almost like she is unable to let go. Is this a clue to how she gains her flying ability in the context of the movies? I see similarities between this the comic where she permanently gained the ability to fly from another mutant when, for some reason, she was unable to let go of them whilst draining their power.
Answer: Rogue doesn't know how to fly the jet. She's screaming because it is out of control and she is frightened by the spinning, which is forcing her body to one side. She can't let go because to do so would release the jet from any control whatsoever, a conscious choice not related to her powers. Rogue can't draw energy from things that aren't alive.
Answer: It wasn't another mutant, it was the original Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers.
Answer: Rogue attained the ability to fly from another mutant. She accidentally drained too much and the powers became permanent. It gave her the streak of grey in her hair and put the mutant in a coma.
Question: I don't get the joke where K pokes his finger inside the alien globe and the little alien guys running away from it screaming, "All is lost." Can anyone tell me the meaning?
Answer: The tiny globe is an entire alien world. His small investigative action threatens to destroy them all.
Question: What style hat does Indiana Jones wear?
Answer: The original Indiana Jones hat was custom-crafted by world-renowned hat maker Herbert Johnson of London, England. It was based on a style of wide-brimmed beaver hat called a "Poet" (this style had already been in production since the 1890s). Using Harrison Ford to model the hat as it was customized, Herbert Johnson deliberately made the crown much taller and more square than a conventional fedora, and they deliberately made the brim an oval shape, narrower on the sides, to accommodate the lighting in profile camera shots. Herbert Johnson made 45 identical customized Poet hats for the original Indiana Jones films, including hats for Harrison Ford's stand-ins and stunt-men. The Jones-style Poet hats became so popular that Swaine Adeney Brigg continues making them to order to this day. Http://www.swaineadeneybrigg.com/store/herbert-johnson/poet-hat/poet-hat.
Question: What does the Latin chant in "Oh What a Circus" translate to? (The "salve regina" bit?)
Answer: As I recall they sing the English right after the Latin, but, in any case, it's a variation of a well known Gregorian Chant. The English from the movie is: Hail, oh queen, mother of mercy / Our life, sweetness, and hope / Hail, hail, oh queen / To you we cry, exiled sons of Eve / To you we sigh, mourning and weeping / Oh clement, oh loving one.
Question: Okay, I don't get what happened to Victor exactly. Was he tortured? I get that his fingers were somehow used for fingerprints, but I don't get what else. And if he was (technically) still alive, why would all of those air fresheners seen in his room be necessary? What was done to him to make him be only technically alive? And - which victim was he and do we learn what exactly he'd done to earn the killer's malice?
Answer: John Doe simply strapped him to the bed for a very long time, keeping him alive while his body wasted away. Even though Victor isn't dead, the smell would probably be pretty horrendous - he won't have washed for a year and parts of him would start to decompose, hence the need for the air fresheners, to avoid the stench drawing unwelcome attention prematurely. The psychological effect on Victor would be horrific - trapped, unable to move, at the total mercy of a lunatic, fed only enough to keep him just above the point of death. There would have been no mental stimulation at all, except to wait in fear for Doe's next visit - Victor's mind would have snapped long before he was found. His body was alive, barely, but any capacity for rational thought would be long gone. Victor was the Sloth victim, hence the method of killing him by trapping him in a bed. His crimes were listed by Somerset (Freeman) once his prints are matched up. He's the drug dealer John Doe (Spacey) mentions in the car at the end.
Answer: Doe was forcing Sloth to continue his stagnant life, as attrition.
Answer: I believe that Doe had Victor drugged constantly as well, contributing to the mind-mushing.
Question: They use a pinch in this movie to cut the power. How does a pinch actually work? Why did they need one in this film?
Chosen answer: They needed to shut off the power in order to turn off the detectors in the lift-shaft. There was no way to do that locally, so shutting down the entire city was the only option, using an EMP, a massive wave of electromagnetic energy that disrupts electrical equipment. In real life, pinches are generally used to create high-intensity X-rays for scientific study, and they're very large - much larger than the one seen in the film. It is true that they cause electromagnetic interference when fired, but nothing like on the scale seen in the film. However, given that the only source of an EMP with the strength to really black out the whole place would be a nuclear explosion, it's understandable that the makers of the film decided to play around with the laws of physics a bit.
Question: Is David Lynch a Roy Orbison fan? He seems to use Orbison's songs in most of his films. If he's not a particularly avid fan, can anyone tell me why he uses the songs with such frequency?
Answer: He's a fan now, but David Lynch only first heard "Crying" by Roy Orbison just before shooting "Blue Velvet", and wanted it in that movie. However, he bought Orbison's Greatest Hits CD and liked the song "In Dreams" so much that he ditched "Crying" until Mulholland Drive.
Question: Why does Evelyn get a Purple Heart? As far as I understand, the only way to get it, is if you are wounded in combat.
Answer: From Dec 7, 1941 to Sept 22, 1943, the Purple Heart was also awarded for meritorious performance of duty. For wounds, "in combat" is much more restrictive than the actual requirements. Any injury caused directly or indirectly by a hostile foreign agency counts, including friendly fire if it was intended to hit an enemy.
Question: In the film, Jesus has several visions of Satan, beginning in Gethsemane with the snake scene. These visions are not chronicled in the Gospels. Is there another source, or should the visions be considered artistic license?
Answer: In addition to his own artistic license, Gibson actually uses several sources besides the Bible including St. Anne Catherine Emmerich's "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ" and Mary of Agreda's "The Mystical City of God".
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Answer: They're not at war. The Predators discovered the Aliens and realized that they make for excellent, challenging hunting. However, they could not morally sacrifice their own race to provide the incubators for the Aliens to be born, nor could they allow the Aliens access to advanced technology and spaceships (they could spread). So they found a world on the outer edge of the galaxy inhabited by technologically backward people capable of incubating Aliens and created an elaborate system of initiation rites for young Predators to test their worthiness. This and other worlds like it are the only way that Predators interact with adult Aliens.
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