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 Eddie find out about Peter and Mary Jane's relationship? He never saw them together and, when he kidnapped her, she and Peter were somewhat estranged.

Answer: The symbiote, traditionally, knows all of Peter's secrets including his identity. This is how Eddie knows who he is, as well as his relationship with Mary Jane.

Rob245

Question: How did Kirill know Bourne was in India?

Answer: In the script, Kirill shows a photo of Marie when he poses as her brother and says there has been a death in the family. He does this at a specific telegraph office, and says that they know Marie called from there. Kirill was a Russian FSB agent, so presumably he used that agency's resources to tap the phone of Marie's brother and traced her call to the telegraph office in Goa. This is not clear in the actual film, where Kirill shows a photo of Bourne and says he is a friend.

Sierra1

Answer: Was this bought on by her husband dying or something she always had?

Answer: Her mental disorder is never identified. She exhibits extreme emotions, impulsiveness, promiscuity, difficulty with relationships, among other symptoms, which can indicate a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

raywest

Question: Why is Ben wearing a wedding ring?

Show generally

Question: I recently watched the series for the first time on Hulu. (I'm located in the US if that makes any difference.) And I'm confused about something: the first three seasons are in 4:3 full-frame, before switching to 16:9 widescreen for the final four seasons. I know there is an infamous "HD remaster" that botched the series with bad cropped widescreen and poor color-correction work. But I've also heard the series was shown in widescreen in the UK for seasons 4-7. Is the version of seasons 4-7 on Hulu the HD remaster or the UK version?

TedStixon

Question: What happened to Lydia's biological mother? Was this mentioned in a deleted scene? I once watched the movie with someone who said that Delia actually is the biological mother, but Lydia feels so disconnected and misunderstood, she pretends that Delia is her stepmother. (When I was a kid myself, I actually met a couple of kids who pretended that parents were adoptive or someone was a step-parent).

Answer: Her mother died and Delia is indeed her stepmother. We are not told in the film how her mother died. In the musical we're told Emily Deetz is her biological mother.

Bishop73

Question: How are Thanos and the Black Order able to track the infinity stone throughout the galaxy?

Answer: We aren't given a specific answer, but as Thanos himself tells Tony Stark, "You're not the only one cursed with knowledge." Thanos has probably studied the Infinity Stones for most of his life, and with the exception of the Soul Stone, every Stone presumably gives off some kind of energy signature that can be tracked.

Phaneron

Answer: He probably has spies everywhere and he can probably gain their location through interrogating his victims.

lionhead

Question: Is there any reason why this is the only film in the American "Ring" series to not have an R1/A Blu-Ray release? It seems so weird that the first and third films are available in HD, while this one isn't. Is it like a studio issue or something?

TedStixon

Answer: Whelp, just to update my own question, the movie is finally getting a Blu-Ray (and 4K) release in October through boutique company Shout Factory. Presumably, it just wasn't seen as a necessity until more recently, with boutique physical media labels becoming more and more prevalent and being successful in the collector's market.

TedStixon

Answer: More and more studios are not releasing films on Blu-Ray because of the higher risk on the return of their money. It's more expensive and home media sales continue to decline, especially with streaming services available. DreamWorks Pictures was the distribution company for the first two films while Paramount Pictures was the distribution company for the third film. I don't know specifically why DreamWorks opted out of the third film, but it seems they didn't think the third film would be worth it financially and probably has similar thoughts about the 2nd film's home release. There's much more to it, including parent companies involved and whom they contract out for disc distribution, that I don't have answers to about why DreamWorks hadn't released "The Ring Two" on Blu-Ray.

Bishop73

Question: Two questions involving the whole flossing thing earlier in the movie; One, why was Vivian trying to keep it a secret and felt so embarrassed about it? And two, why was Edward so surprised by it?

Answer: She was embarrassed to be doing something so mundane and non-sexy when her job is to seduce him. He was surprised because he assumed that since she was a prostitute she was a drug user. He didn't expect a prostitute to pay attention to personal hygiene while on the job.

Question: Why was Vivian wearing a wig at the beginning of the movie? Was it just part of her job/hooker persona or something?

Answer: As the other answer indicated, it was part of her cheap hooker persona, but it also makes a greater impact on the audience when they see Vivian undergo her "transformation" with the classy designer clothes, toned-down make-up, and her own nicely-styled hair.

raywest

Answer: Yes.

Question: Why exactly did Edward need a date so badly for the week? He made a big deal about it to his ex-girlfriend earlier in the movie about her going with him to something. Did he just not want to go alone or was there something that I missed?

Answer: Edward always needed to project a certain image of success, including having a beautiful woman by his side. His previous girlfriend dumped him because she was fed up with him treating her as nothing more than someone to cater to his needs and to be a prop to aid his business deals. He hires Vivian for the same reason and to charm the men he wants to conduct business with. Presumably, he would find a new girlfriend later on, but needed someone in the immediate interim to fill that role.

raywest

Question: Did the 'Ahab' feature AI? If not, it would have been very ridiculous if it hit something on the water they couldn't possibly have accounted for.

Answer: It was very likely programmed to be able to detect and avoid obstacles in its path.

TedStixon

Question: Couldn't Cage just have triggered the avalanche from the airplane instead of risking his own life doing it the way he did?

Answer: Two reasons. One, for the adrenaline, it's who he is. Second, once the avalanche hit, he couldn't be sure what would survive and what will be destroyed. If he could get into Anarchy 99 and rescue Yelena.

Question: During the song "Some Things Never Change", Elsa was making things with her magic for the kids. A boy was given an ice bear doll and the next little girl whispered to Elsa who made some kind of tool made of ice for her. What was that?

Bunch Son

Chosen answer: It's called a "sextant." It's a celestial navigation tool used by sailors.

Bishop73

Question: Does the word 'Ahab' mean anything?

Answer: Captain Ahab is the main character in the book "Moby Dick" where he's obsessed at finding the white whale that bit his leg off.

Bishop73

So are there any similarities between the 'Ahab' rocket's mission and the Moby Dick Ahab character other than the shared name?

It doesn't seem so, but often times "Ahab" is used to describe someone vigilantly set about completing a task, or in this case an object (although it's usually said without regards to how everything ended for Ahab).

Bishop73

Answer: In Hebrew, "Ahab" means "uncle" or "my father's brother." In the bible, Ahab was an idol-worshiping ruler in the "Book of Kings." In literature, Ahab was the revenge-obsessed captain in Moby Dick whose sole purpose was to kill the white whale. The Ahab drone had a singular target like Captain Ahab, so that might be the inspiration for it being called that.

raywest

Show generally

Question: How can they fit inside those balls and why do they fight each other? Why listen to those who captured them? Why doesn't Pikachu ever evolve?

Rob245

Answer: To answer the first question, the ball is actually a gateway. They are not exactly inside the ball, but more like it opens up a sort of pocket dimension and kinda stores the creatures as data. In some cases, the balls even teleport the pokemon to the professor. For the second question, it's unclear exactly but there is a lot of "training" that goes into it. And I can't exactly answer the last question other than to say Pikachu doesn't want to. Several times in the series Ash even tries to get him to evolve, but Pikachu refuses. Resulting in over time he's actually a very above average power Pikachu.

Quantom X

It's not any kind of gateway or pocket dimension. When captured by a Pokeball, Pokemon are converted into a form of energy for storage and transfer.

LorgSkyegon

Must be getting my animes mixed up then, lol.

Quantom X

Question: In the first half of the movie, the problem that needs to be solved is where the known route starts. Indy finds out when he finds the second, complete shield in Venice and deciphers it later. When exactly do the Nazis find out? He has told Marcus Brody, but not Elsa, because he does not fully trust her. The Nazis find the diary, but not the rubbing. They don't "extract" the information from the Joneses when they are captured in Austria, at which time Indy confidently states that Marcus has a two day head start (unless the Nazis know something that Indy doesn't). But they are already waiting for him in Iskenderun when he arrives. (No indication is ever given that Marcus is being followed in Venice; at any rate, no-one pays much attention to him, because all eyes are on Indy.) When and how do the Nazis discover where to go?

Spiny Norman

Answer: They don't know Alexandretta is the city when they set out to capture Brody; he travels to Iskenderun (modern Alexandretta) himself, and the Nazis capture him there. They probably sent his description, and orders to capture him, to all their agents in Hatay (whose leader is sympathetic); as we see, Brody is very easy to spot, and naïve enough to be captured with relative ease (he also contacts Sallah in advance of going there, leaving a further trail). At that point, it's not difficult for them to deduce that the starting point on the map is the city that Brody has traveled to.

No, I'm sorry, but that second reply makes very little sense. Sure we can speculate that his phone call to Sallah was tapped. But speculation is not good enough. And there's no indication at all that Brody was being followed. In fact he's all but ignored. The idea that at every train station there would be nazi agents waiting is a bit impractical. Hatay is perhaps small enough to do that, but then we're just renaming the problem: how did the nazis know to go there, and not Syria, or Palestine, or Istanbul, or any other place once visited by crusaders? They can't watch out for every scholarly type in every train station in the entire Middle East.

Spiny Norman

Answer: There is one theory to answer my own question. It could be that the room where Jones Sr. Is kept is "wired" (seen and mentioned), and Indy is saying out loud that the mystery city is in fact Alexandretta. Only, he KNOWS that it's wired. So that would be spectacularly stupid after all the safety precautions he took.

Spiny Norman

Answer: There are several possibilities. Indy started trusting Elsa after their escape in Venice when he revealed the grail diary to her. He sent Marcus off to Iskenderun after, while he and Elsa rescued his father in the castle. It's possible Elsa asked him before they left Venice or on the way to the castle where Marcus was going and Indy revealed it. She could have slipped away when they stopped somewhere and called her superiors. The other possibility is Indy or Marcus called Donovan and let him know about their progress. Marcus could have told Donovan where he was headed.

Most of that is conjecture or speculation, though. I simply mean that we don't see or hear that happening. I've thought over my original question, and the only provable point is some extreme stupidity on the part of Indiana Jones himself. If he hadn't mentioned the town while he was in his dad's room (that he KNEW was 'bugged'), they wouldn't have known.

Spiny Norman

Answer: They capture Max Brody with the map shortly after they capture the Jones'. They learned through him.

lionhead

And WHERE do they capture him...? Right. So that's not it.

Spiny Norman

When wandering around Egypt alone with the map, Brody meets up with Sallah who tries to prevent him from being captured. He fails by accidentally leading him into a nazi controlled truck that takes him away and into the hands of Donovan. They have the map then.

lionhead

Brody is not "wondering around Egypt." We explicitly hear Indy instruct Salah and him to meet in Iskenderun before he left for Austria and that is where Brody descends from the train station. Or am I to believe, again, that the nazis have camouflaged truck traps in every town in the entire Middle East, just in case? No, they intercept Brody because they know where he's going to be. (Iskenderun, by the way, is nowhere near Egypt, it's not even on the same continent. I suggest you re-watch the relevant bit of the movie first).

Spiny Norman

Answer: There's no explanation. He may not have completely adjusted to living there or gotten around to getting new clothing. He was also still a member of Star Fleet and would wear his uniform until he formally resigned. TV shows back then were cheaply made and rather lax about details like that. They may simply have deemed it unnecessary to change McCoy's costume. It could also be interpreted as foreshadowing that he would return to Star Fleet. Also, in all the Star Trek series, miscellaneous characters would often wear only one outfit, even though the story may take place over many days. In the early days of TNG, Counselor Troi wore the same outfit in nearly every episode until she started wearing a uniform later in the series. The practical logistical reason for a character wearing one costume is that it maintains continuity for the post-production editing process.

raywest

Question: Why does Brenda bother with all the other characters? They had nothing to do with David's death, only Natalie and Michelle did.

Rob245

Answer: Simply killing Natalie did not satisfy her quest for revenge. She also wanted to torment her by killing all of her friends before finally going for Natalie. Also, Brenda was unhinged/insane and like many other serial killers, got a thrill out of killing.

Answer: Another part of why the change was that it's cold in Canada in the winter and the old costume didn't protect her from it, whereas the new one is nice and warm.

Answer: I can't say for certain, so I'm surmising that the change was to "catch up" with the other Arrowverse shows, particularly Arrow and The Flash, whose lead characters have undergone various upgrades and redesigns of their superhero suits over the years; after four seasons, Kara's probably just felt a little stale. And I believe the change in hairstyle was Melissa Benoist's personal decision and had nothing to do with the character.

Cubs Fan

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