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: How did Lauren know what hotel Pacino was in? Pacino never told her or her mom where he was going, as far as I remember.

Answer: When Pacino is comforting his wife at the hospital, she says "She chose you. She picked your place." Guess the implication is he had been staying there for a long time and both Justine and Lauren knew where that was. Best explanation I have been able to find.

Question: Does anyone understand the looks on Michael's face at the beginning after his father unmasks him, he looks shocked, later on, after Laurie unmasks him he stares at her with a mix of shock and anger. Does anyone understand what these looks mean?

Rob245

Answer: When we see him unmasked as a child, he looks sort of shocked but also vacant - he's staring off into nothingness... this was the moment when he lost his mind and became evil. I think the look on his face was meant to convey that he had simply snapped and was no longer "there." When he's unmasked as an adult, he didn't really look angry to me... he simply looked empty and expressionless. I think it's meant to show that he's no longer really a person... he's totally gone. There's nothing left but almost instinctive evil.

TedStixon

Answer: Yes, he is on the verge of tears. His voice cracks as well. This is a joke, telling a boy they play like a girl is insulting and the film exaggerates this for a good laugh.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: After Sidney and billy have sex, and she asks him who did he call, he asks "what do I have to do to prove to you that I am not a killer?" She looks at him strangely as if she figured something out, and then she sees ghost face and he stabs Billy. What is that look about?

Answer: You answered your own question, she was becoming suspicious about him, when he was supposedly stabbed, it all went away. That's why it was done, to divert.

Answer: She's not satisfied with his answer/demeanour, and further suspects that he might be the killer, only to quickly have this thought subverted as Ghostface enters the room and apparently kills him.

Question: Was there ever anything wrong with Colin? He seems to be in bed all the time and doesn't really do anything. Was he disabled or just kept in bed all the time for no reason?

Answer: Mary is told by Dickon that Colin was born early, and Martha even says that he was born very small and weak and no-one thought that he would survive. I think his premature birth made them believe that he was going to be a sickly child.

Answer: In the book, Colin suffered from an unidentified spinal condition that prevented him from walking. The 1993 film seems to imply there was nothing physically wrong, it being a psychosomatic condition nurtured by others and which he was able to overcome.

raywest

Question: After informing Egon of the incident with Oscar in the stroller, why did Dana ask him not to tell Peter about it?

Answer: Because she knew Peter would want to get involved. They didn't part on good terms and she hadn't spoken to him since her marriage. She just thought it would be awkward to see him again.

Bishop73

Show generally

Question: Is it true that this show was originally supposed to have only two seasons but its popularity was so big that they created a third season?

Answer: That is true.

raywest

Question: How come the end credits don't mention Robert Zemeckis as the director?

Answer: They do. I just loaded the movie up on HBO Max, and it's literally the first credit to pop up in the end credits.

TedStixon

Question: How did the sword get in the stone in the first place?

Answer: It's never revealed, it just appeared after the death of King Uther and forgotten about. In some stories it's suggested that Merlin placed it there to help convince people of Arthur being the rightful heir to the kingdom as he has knowledge of Arthur's destiny.

Bishop73

Answer: While not explicitly stated, the film's prologue implies that the sword appears via divine intervention. The opening song mentions that only a miracle could save war-torn England and then "that miracle appeared in London Town; the sword in the stone."

Answer: Disney pursued the image of a finely-finished longsword imbedded point-first into a boulder, which would be an impossible scenario outside of magical or divine intervention. However, there may be a grain of truth to the original Arthurian legend. Most ancient swords were not crafted by master swordsmiths, and military swords were quickly mass-produced in ancient times. The mass-produced swords were not conscientiously hammered and folded and shaped and tempered by a smith, but were simply smelted metal poured into open-faced molds. The metal casts were then extracted and finished with grinding and abrasives. Sometimes such a fast-food blade hardened and became stuck in the mold (in which case, in a primitive mass-production setting, they discarded the mold along with the sword, as they couldn't extract it without breaking the mold and/or the brittle sword. Both the sword and the mold were equally useless). Those discarded molds with blades locked in situ, recovered long decades or even centuries afterward, are likely the origin of Sword in the Stone legend.

Charles Austin Miller

Answer: This particular depiction of the Arthurian legend doesn't address it. Other tellings have various theories such as Merlin placing it there intentionally, Uther driving it into the stone as he was dying, or it simply appearing magically. As this is a children's movie, it isn't considered important to the plot.

Question: Did the children originally sing "So Long Farewell" sitting on the steps in the original rather than standing in front of everyone?

Answer: If by "the original" you mean the 1959 stage musical upon which the film is based, then, no. The stage directions read, "The children line up near the stairs."

Question: In the scene near the end, fighting in the super structure, Picard doesn't seem to have a com device (no jacket). How would that work when Riker contacted him?

Answer: The station itself has a communication system. The Enterprise can use that to communicate with Picard.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: When things are normal again how do they cover up Principal Drake's death? And when we see Zeke at football practice, Ms Burke's watching him and smiling. So is she interested in him for real or what?

Rob245

Answer: They don't need to cover up Principal Drake's death, the local paper reveals that the alien invasion is known to the public. Drake was infected so Zeke shooting her didn't even kill her. It wasn't until Marybeth threw the drugs in her face that Drake died. Since Marybeth is actually the alien queen in disguise, the murder is her fault. Ms. Burke is definitely interested in Zeke. She flirts with him earlier in the film. Since Zeke is repeating his senior year, he is at least 18 years old. Though she would still lose her job for dating him, it isn't illegal if he is an adult.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: Why would the brides lay out in the open when they slept? After 400 years wouldn't they know better? Also, Are they falling in love with Harker?

Answer: It's unlikely they were falling in love with Harker: they are sadistic, baby-eating monsters who regarded Harker as food and a temporary plaything. As for them sleeping in the open, the local populace dreads and avoids Dracula's castle, so there's hardly any fear of intruders. Van Helsing did enter and kill them, but they reckoned, mistakenly, that he too would be too afraid to do so, especially after their horse-mauling escapades the previous night.

Jukka Nurmi

Answer: They are lesser vampires whose power is tied to Dracula, who in turn is entirely preoccupied with Mina. And as Van Helsing noted, vampires are weak at daytime, further reducing their ability to sense unwanted visitors. And a decapitated vampire, in this universe and most others, is dead and cannot be resurrected, ever.

Jukka Nurmi

Question: When the girls are drinking together in a bedroom, one of them comments about her mother saying that she was "born with a silver spoon" in her mouth. She jokes that the spoon is actually in her nose. What does she mean?

Answer: That she uses cocaine.

Brian Katcher

Question: The Alien brings Brett and Dallas back to its nest alive in order to create more Aliens. It seems that Brett had died in the process but Dallas is still alive. How then would the alien impregnate them without facehuggers complete with an egg?

Answer: It's possible that Brett was the only one being turned into an egg and that Dallas was merely stuck to the wall to be the eventual facehugger host.

TonyPH

Dallas is more than just merely stuck to the wall. He is in physical agony, his eyes appear to no longer work properly, and he has barely enough strength to muster more than a couple words. And the words he can get out are him pleading with Ripley to end his suffering.

BaconIsMyBFF

Rather than burning Dallas to death it would have been more humane to let him blow up with the ship.

Perhaps so, but Dallas was pleading for his suffering to end right then and there. It appeared that the burning was no more agonizing than what he was going through, which means he must have been in immense pain already.

BaconIsMyBFF

Answer: Actually the alien was using Brett and Dallas to make new facehugger eggs. The scene, only shown in the Director's Cut, shows Brett partway through being turned into an egg and Dallas in what appears to be the very beginning of this process. This scene was cut from the theatrical release and as such, James Cameron did not include this feature of the alien lifecycle in the sequel. Cameron showed the eggs are laid by a queen and the franchise has continued with this approach since Aliens and has never revisited the idea that alien eggs are created from the bodies of humans. Since this scene only appears in the Director's Cut, its status as canon remains in question. However, some fans reconcile this by theorizing that in the absence of a queen a single alien can use human bodies to create more facehuggers.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: Why would Michael Myers recognise the mask from the opening scene in the reboot of the original? When he was a child he was wearing a clown mask. The mask that is shown in the opening scene he started wearing when he first escaped from the mental institution in the first movie as an adult, it doesn't make sense.

Answer: This movie has been deemed as the true sequel to the first Halloween movie in 1978 as it ignores Halloween 2 which was released in 1981 and all other Halloween movies after. Although Michael did wear the clown mask when he was a child, when he escaped from Smith's Grove Sanitarium as an adult, he walked into a convenience store and stole the iconic mask that he wore while killing people. Remember, this is happened in the 1978 film and all other Halloween movies up until this point were ignored so after Aaron shows Michael the mask that he used in the killing 40 years ago, Michael realises that mask was his and killed Aaron and Dana both to get it back.

Answer: You may wanna rephrase this question, because the wording doesn't really make sense as-is, and it's unclear about which movie you're even referring to. You seem to be asking a question relating to the reboot, but it's classified under the questions for the 2018 sequel to the original, so it's hard to tell which of the two movies you're talking about. If you're referring to the 2007 reboot and how Michael recognizes the mask he digs up when he escapes the sanitarium, it's because his sister's boyfriend wore the mask, and he also stole and wore it for a few minutes during the murders. If you're referring to the 2018 film and how Michael recognizes the mask Aaron holds up, it's because it's the same mask he wore 40 years earlier in the original film.

TedStixon

Spousal Privilege - S16-E8

Question: Why was A.J. only charged with reckless endangerment? The video showed him punching Paula in the back when she's climbing the stairwell, getting punched in the face by A.J. and then being dragged away unconscious. Shouldn't he have been charged with either aggravated assault or assault and battery instead considering how violent he was?

Answer: I didn't see the show so I don't know the details. A general answer would be because a reckless endangerment charge is easier to prove "beyond a Reasonable Doubt" in court and get a conviction. This charge would not require the prosecutor to prove intent, which would be required for proving aggravated or simple assault. Also, if there were no visible injuries, it is difficult to show bodily injury. Just because the reckless endangerment charge was specifically mentioned, it does not necessarily mean there were not other charges filed. Police often make multiple charges, like lesser-included offenses, so that the defendant's act will fall under one of them if the legal requirements are not met for the others, if they are not sure of the best charge to make (the district attorney knows and can decide), or to have something to plea bargain with.

KeyZOid

Question: Near the end of the movie Optimus wants Sam to put the cube in his chest before Sam instead puts the cube in Megatron's chest. Why did Optimus want that?

Answer: Putting the Allspark into Optimus' chest would have killed him and destroyed the Allspark (though apparently not completely considering the direct sequel). Optimus would not have fought Sam and would willingly have sacrificed himself to achieve this goal. Without the Allspark, Megatron cannot create more Decepticons (again, this idea is ruined by the sequels which show this not to be the case). Trying to kill Megatron with the Allspark was a huge risk, if Megatron had seen the attack coming he would have easily killed Sam and taken the Allspark since Optimus was momentarily incapacitated.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: Is Jack Handle actually a person in Step Brothers? Cause if so, we only hear his name when Robert announces that's who he will be moving in with.

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