Question: In the final battle scene, the samurai army is shown as having several dozen footmen who were not casualties. Additionally, the archers did not appear to have taken more than light casualties. Yet the final charge was made by by a small group (30-50) samurai. Why would Watanabe have used only a small portion of his army with so many support troops left?
Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
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Question: What happened to the family at the end of the TV series?
Answer: Presumably, they're still "Lost In Space." The series ended before a final episode was shot. In the 80's, series creator Irwin Allen considered doing a TV reunion movie with the original cast to bring the Robinson family home, but with the unfortunate passing of Guy Williams, the idea kind of fell to the wayside.
Question: What I don't understand is: Dumbledore has the brilliant idea of using the Mirror of Erised to hide the stone in. Yet the mirror is in some room in the castle, where Harry eventually finds it, and not inside the guarded area, where the stone is hidden, until very much later into the movie. Why is that? Even if it was there to teach Harry its secret, it would mean the stone was less efficiently guarded. Or did Dumbledure just get the idea of using the mirror later into the movie ?
Answer: Presumably, Dumbledore came up with his idea after catching Harry in front of the mirror, after he explained the mirror's "power" to Harry. It is safe to assume that the stone was stored in some other magical manner that was less secure before Dumbledore decided to use the mirror.
Question: How exactly does the father kill the wife? I noticed when she comes down the stairs she comes out of a bloody bag. So how is she killed?
Answer: Well, in the Japanese original (Ju-On: The Grudge), it shows that Takeo, the father, killed his wife by shoving a knife down her throat or something similar to that. When he was killing her, she tried to scream, except her scream came out all messed up (because the knife hit the vocal chords), which explains the horrible croaking noise. There's no doubt about it that it's the way she was killed in this version.
Answer: Another website states that after pushing her down, Kayako sprained her ankle and crawled down the stairs, only to realise Takeo was slowly following her from behind watching her suffer. He then snapped her neck, but she was still alive and could only make the croaking noise. It is also implied that he stabbed her multiple times afterwards, which could explain the bloody corpse.
Question: In the scene where Malfoy is sitting in the great Hall (after the Hippogriff attack when he's cradling his arm), a black-haired girl says something like, "Does it hurt terribly, Draco?" Who is she?
Question: In the Extended Edition of "The Two Towers," it obvious that Denethor has a liking of his now-deceased older son Boromir and a disliking of his younger son Faramir. This is more evident when Denethor boldly said to Faramir in the throne room that he wished that Faramir and Boromir had switched places so that the former dies and the latter live. Is there a reason in the original novel why Denethor has an unfavorable opinion towards Faramir, his younger son?
Chosen answer: No, no really. Denethor's wife, Finduilas died early, and the grief turned him into a grim and humourless man - one suggestion is that Faramir takes heavily after his mother, and Denethor dislikes him for that reminder; another suggestion is that it's actually Boromir who takes after the mother, and that Denethor favours him for that reason. Whatever the issue is, it seems likely that it started early on - Boromir translates to "Faithful Jewel", whereas Faramir seems to translate to something like "Adequate Jewel". As even their names appear to reflect the prejudice against Faramir, whatever the problem is, it goes back a long way. Maybe, once Boromir was born, giving Denethor an heir, he really wanted a daughter and was disappointed by the arrival of another son. Compounded by the death of his beloved wife (making a daughter impossible), that disappointment could easily grow into the dislike that he shows in the film. There's also the point that, although unseen in the film (unless the Extended Cut touches on it), Denethor has been using a palantir, which has allowed Sauron to affect his mind - it's not unreasonable to think that Sauron could have determined that Faramir was actually the stronger-willed of the brothers, and had deliberately influenced Denethor's mind against him to hamper the younger man's efforts against Mordor.
Question: When the teacher is pouring her Vodka, she freaks out all of a sudden when she looks inside her cup. Why does she do this?
Answer: The cup has the high school's crest on the side of it - she is freaked out because, as she explains in the previous scene, everything is reminding her of the school and thus of the crash in which she should have died.
Question: This may be a stupid question, but is it just me that thinks the Gondorian soldiers are poorly-trained to fight or in poorly defensive formation against the Orcs and trolls? Also, are the soldiers of Gondor conscripts, as it seems that there is no able-bodied male civilian in Minas Tirith, and those who are able-bodied are soldiers?
Chosen answer: That's because they were under the rule of Denethor who was very foolish and didn't care about the consequences.
Question: What does the judge say when the ref asks him if there are an odd or even number of tees in his hand? "Bald"? What am I missing here?
Chosen answer: The judge says "odd". He was quessing at whether the ref had an even number of tees in his hand or an odd number of tees. This is a common and fair way of determining who will go first.
Question: I don't understand why Spock insists that the magnetic boots must be on the Enterprise and not on the cloaked bird of prey. Spock points out that someone involved in the assassination conspiracy must be on the Enterprise, because this person must have altered the data banks. I agree with him. But why does that prove that the assassins who boarded the Klingon ship must have beamed from and returned to the Enterprise? How can he assume that the assassins and the computer hacker are the same person/people? Maybe there are assassins on the cloaked bird of prey and only a hacker on the Enterprise. Or, maybe the assassins might have beamed from the Enterprise but then carried on to the bird of prey, once their work was done, instead of returning to the Enterprise. And finally, if Spock does think the assassins beamed to and from the Enterprise, why is no one looking at transporter logs/records for evidence of unauthorized beaming to Kronos 1?
Answer: It's fairly simple - somebody good enough to hack the weaponry databanks on the ship would undoubtedly be able to alter the transporter logs, so, while they were undoubtedly checked (we do see Chekov investigating the transporters - he would certainly have looked at the logs), they'd be unlikely to glean anything from them. They'd also be good enough to cover their tracks, so they're not going to get very far investigating the computer breach. As such, the only specific thing that they can look for are the gravity boots - this does make the assumption that the assassins came from the Enterprise and returned to it, but, at that point, all they have to work with are theories. However, while the only specific items that they can look for are the gravity boots, the search might also turn up other items that could indicate complicity in the events on Kronos 1 - the hacker probably used some specific computer tools which could be found.
Answer: Also, as mentioned in the movie, gravity had not yet been restored to Kronos 1 when the assassins beamed back over. If they had not been wearing the boots, they would've floated off the pad. Spock even says something to the effect of that if they were from enterprise, they couldn't dispose of the evidence. If not, whoever altered the data banks is on board. So what they are looking for is there. (I don't remember the exact wording).
Answer: They found the Klingon Blood on the Enterprise transporter pad. That alone proved that the attackers were from Enterprise.
Question: What did John said to the spider Smith after he said, "Remember the Proteus," and what did he mean by that?
Answer: He meant (as he says shortly after) that the spiders on the Proteus (that infected Smith) eat their dead/wounded, so when spider Smith's egg-sack is ruptured, the babies eat him.
Question: Did anyone catch what Mac is talking about thrust? Or is she just mumbling?
Answer: The first bit is "Thrust! I went over my calculations, hen, and I figure that the key element we're missing is thrust". Rocky says that he didn't catch a word of it, and Mac replies "Thrust! Other birds like ducks and geese, when they take off, what do they have? Thrust!"
Answer: Mac said, "Thrust! The key element is thrust! Other birds, like ducks and geese, when they take off, what do they have? Thrust!"
Question: When they are getting on to Platform 9 3/4, why don't the Muggles notice them running through a brick wall? And if a Muggle did notice them, could he/she get on to Platform 9 3/4?
Answer: Most likely this is part of the magic of Platform 9 3/4 - provided that they're careful and don't do it blatantly in front of Muggles, the Muggles won't pick up on it. Muggles certainly can get onto the platform - after all, quite a number of students have at least one Muggle parent, who would want to see them off. Whether this would be possible for Muggles in other circumstances is unclear.
Question: When talking to Ramius via Morse code, why does Jack tell Ramius to turn south to the Laurentian Abyssal?
Answer: The trench is too deep to recover anything from the bottom of the trench. They were going to fake destroying the Red October, so they need some way to explain the lack of evidence of its destruction (because the remains were on the bottom of this deep trench).
Question: Violet's force field is a dome when she stops Dash. If Dash is running around in a circle, how can the force field stop him? The only thing I can think of is that as the force field expands, it slams into Dash.
Question: At the end of the movie, as Rick, Evie, and Johnathon are leaving Humanatra, we see that Rick's bag is filled with gold from the city. How, where and when did Rick find the time to get some of the gold if him and his friends were fighting for their lives?
Answer: Beni (the bad guy serving the mummy who eventually gets killed by the bugs) can be seen carrying the gold out of the city. He then returns to get more, but can't get out any more. Rick and Evie just take the camel that Beni planned to use for the transport of his gold; they don't bring any gold out of the city themselves.
Question: What was the original plan of the Trade Federation and Darth Sidious? I saw TPM six times in the theaters and a few times at home and I still don't know why they were blockading Naboo. What was with the treaty that they wanted Amidala to sign? If their plan had worked and she signed this treaty that gave them control over the planet what good would that do?
Chosen answer: You have to bear in mind that the Trade Federation and Darth Sidious probably have very different views of what the plan actually is. From the point of view of the Trade Federation, they're probably under the impression that the aim is to get the treaty signed, with the likely effect of bringing Naboo into the Trade Federation. This would allow them to exploit the natural resources of the place, and benefit from any trade carried out from that planet. Sidious, on the other hand, doesn't care in the slightest about the Trade Federation - he has carefully manipulated the situation to get Amidala to call for the vote that will remove Chancellor Valorum from office and force the election of a new chancellor, allowing Palpatine (who either is Sidious or is some sort of clone under his control) to advance to the leadership of the Senate. That's pretty much the sum total of his plan, which, as we see, is a complete success.
Question: When asked if she would allow a group from the senate to go to Naboo and investigate her claims, Amidala says "no" and asks for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum. Why? Unless I interpreted this incorrectly they were offering to go and look into the situation. Why not say, "great, let's go" and they would have seen what was happening? Also, what would have been an acceptable course of action for her? This didn't make any sense to me.
Chosen answer: She was sick and tired of no action being taken. She wanted them to do something about it now, not send people out there to investigate, that would take too much time. This is coupled with the notion that Palpatine was somewhat brainwashing her into believing that Valorum was a poor/incompetent leader, and that following Palpatine's cause/actions was the best way for help.
Question: I've seen some different Spiderman-magazines and on some of his costumes they have very large white eyes and some are significantly smaller, more like the costume in the movie. So is there anything that differs between the two costumes? Or is it just that the pictures are from different years or editions?
Answer: The artwork is always altering to some extent, generally based on the artist who's doing the drawing. Peter makes his own costumes, so it's not out of the question that he might make alterations from time to time, which can provide a 'story' reason, but the real answer is just that each artist will have his own interpretation of the character.
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Answer: Because they were the only ones with horses. Foot soldiers running across the field would be easily picked off, but charging horses are more difficult.
David Mercier