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: What was the reason behind Quint blowing up the engine? Hooper told him "Don't put that much pressure on it" and he revs it up some more. The shark isn't getting any closer at slower speeds so was there really any need to try and outrun him?

Answer: Quint had become so obsessed with killing the shark that he was completely irrational. He was stubborn, combative, single-minded, and determined that no-one knew more than him about catching sharks and was not going to listen to anything that Hooper or Brody said or did, to the point of sabotaging his own boat.

raywest

Question: Why did they release the baby Rex back to the parents? Wouldn't it have made more sense to keep the baby in the trailer with them? The parents won't attack the trailer in case it hurt their kid! They had a phone inside, they could have phoned Eddie who could have come and tranquilized them, then whilst they are asleep they could have left the baby behind and hightailed it out of there.

Answer: There was no reason. It's just to serve the movie's plot. Being as T-rexes are animals, it's a stretch to assume that they would not attack the trailer because their offspring was in it. The movie took extreme liberties about the animals' intelligence and was anthropomorphic, giving them unrealistic human parental feelings and actions.

raywest

Answer: Releasing the baby is the quickest way to hopefully get the parents away. But in doing so they gave the parents no reason not to attack them.

Ssiscool

Question: Towards the end of the movie when Kyle Reese dies, what will happen to him, considering he's from the future and there is no way he could be identified?

oobs

Answer: He would likely be considered as a "John Doe," with some identifying number, then buried in a modern-day equivalent of a "Potter's Field," where unknown persons are buried. Sarah Conner could have supplied Kyle's name, though this could not be verified and he'd still be considered as an unknown.

raywest

Answer: Also, in the sequel when the T-1000 looks up John Connor's info on the police car's computer, John's father is listed as "unknown', so any info Sarah had given the police was apparently disregarded.

zendaddy621

Answer: He'd be treated like any other John Doe corpse.

Question: I read somewhere that Mike Myers and Neil Mullarkey contributed a lot of stuff to the script for this movie (which ended up in the final movie), but were denied onscreen writing credit. Why?

Answer: The Writers Guild of America (WGA) determines who is credited and how, so they would have arbitrated this. In 1992, the LA Times reported that several writers had been involved in the script including Myers and Mullarkey, but also Howard Zieff, Barbara Benedek, Sally Robinson, Conan O'Brien and Carrie Fisher. In 1993, the LA Times reported that the WGA had awarded Robbie Fox sole story and screenwriting credit on the film.

Sierra1

Marathon - S6-E10

Question: Why do Cisco and everyone else think the multiverse is destroyed? At the end of Crisis we explicitly saw a "tour" of various recreated earths, like Earth-12 with the Green Lantern Corps, Titans, Doom Patrol, Swamp thing all getting their own, Brandon Routh's Superman being back on Earth-96 in his old suit, etc. Is it just that people assume all the earths were combined because the new Earth Prime is a bit of a mish-mash?

Jon Sandys

Chosen answer: Earth Prime is a combination of Earth-1, Earth-38, and Black Lighting's Earth. However, the Earths in the new multiverse are separated by something other than vibrational frequencies, so Cisco can't vibe them, nor can they travel to other Earths as before. So the Paragons think it's still destroyed and don't know (at this point) that Queen/Spectre recreated some of the other Earth's (and new ones).

Bishop73

Answer: Exactly, the new series, Stargirl, shows a universe where the JSA existed, but to soon to tell if it's situated on Earth Prime.

Show generally

Question: How do the "door transporters" outside Starfleet work? People just seem to walk straight into them and vanish, a) faster than normal transporters, and b) without any indication they're controlling where they're going. There's no sign saying where each door connects to, are people just hoping for the best?

Jon Sandys

Chosen answer: My guess is that they go to 1 place and they can't chose where to go. Like a highway without exits, you just end up where the highway stops.

lionhead

Answer: I assume they get sent directly from those 'Doors' to a Central Transporter hub, from there they can request to be beamed to their desired destination.

Question: When the gang explore the ruins of the city, you can hear a low pitch humming noise. What was making that noise?

Answer: It's just an added sound effect that foreshadows an ominous event (the giant reptile) that is about to happen. It's not meant to be anything naturally occurring.

raywest

Question: When Tuck is inside Jack he can't go through the heart - is this because Jack would have a heart attack or because Tuck would die?

Answer: Probably, but most likely it's because Jack's pod is fragile and wouldn't survive the shock wave heartbeats. The pod is experimental and built for scientific observation, not battle.

Answer: I would say both probably.

Question: Why is there a pink dress on the chair in the hotel scene when Ana comes out of the bathroom?

Answer: It's not a dress. It's either a throw blanket or a robe. As this is a higher-end hotel, it's typical for robes, slippers, etc. to be provided for guests to use.

raywest

Question: When Amy goes back in time to live with H.G. Wells, why did she choose to change her name to Susan B. Anthony?

Answer: She was joking, but it seems to imply that she intends to influence his political views regarding socialism, global war, women's rights, etc. which the real H.G. Wells wrote about.

raywest

Also, H.G. Wells' second wife was named Amy Robbins, the same name as the Amy in the film, which would further indicate she did not change her name to Susan B. Anthony.

raywest

Question: When they enter Midnight's bar, the bouncer shows them a card. What is that about? What is the objective there?

Answer: They only allow people in the club that have psychic abilities. The entrant has to correctly identify the character on the card to be allowed in.

Phaneron

Question: Wouldn't Watson have noticed that Blackthorn's neck wasn't broken after he was 'hanged'?

Brian Katcher

Answer: There are two types of hanging - the long drop which is intended to break the neck causing a quick death, and a short drop which doesn't break the neck and causes slower death by asphyxiation. There is no reason to check for a broken neck, just whether the person is dead.

Answer: He didn't check the neck, he only checked the pulse.

lionhead

Answer: I believe Rockne Tarkington (from season 7) was the only black person with a speaking line in the entire show, which is what I'd say qualifies someone to be an actor in the show. That being said, there were at least a handful of black and white episodes (season 1-5) where black extras were used and seen on screen. For example, "Barney Gets His Man" (season 1) and "Opie and the Carnival" (season 5). But none of them had any lines and weren't credited for their appearance.

Bishop73

Question: How did Carmen know that their dad put a tracking device in their mouths?

Answer: She probably heard her parents talking about it.

Question: Is it really possible to turn on dirt simply by turning right to go left?

Answer: The idea of drifting is that you are swinging the back end around and losing traction on the rear wheels while counter-steering with the front wheels to maintain control. Once you enter into the left drift, you turn your wheels right to point them forward.

LorgSkyegon

I know what the idea of drifting is. What I'm asking is whether or not it's possible to drift on dirt.

Yes, you can drift on dirt. The less friction a surface has, the easier it is to start to drift because you have less traction.

Bishop73

I imagine it would take practice to drift on dirt.

It takes practice to drift on any surface.

Bishop73

Answer: It's a rally move know as the "Scandanavian Flick" where you throw the car back end first into the corner and then counter the slide with opposite lock and flick the car around. I'm advanced driving instructor and it's one of the thing we teach pretty much straight away on a skidpan.

stiiggy

Answer: Shanks had creative differences with the show's producers and felt his character was underused. He also didn't like the general direction the show had taken.

raywest

Question: What was the factory supervisor screaming at his employee?

Answer: According to IMDb, the supervisor is basically chewing him out for being lazy and sleeping on the job, and then fires him.

TedStixon

Question: What character is MJ wearing on her shirt at the very end of the film, visible just before she and Spidey swing away from 41st Street and Grand Central Station in NYC?

Erik M.

Thank you so much for that prompt and great response - it's appreciated!

Erik M.

Question: Olaf fades away once Elsa dies because he can't live without her magic. He is only revived by Elsa after she revives. The post-credit scene shows Olaf in Elsa's ice palace telling a story to Marshmallow, the giant snowman and the tiny snowmen. How is it possible that Marshmallow and the tiny snowmen are still alive after Elsa froze to death? Did Elsa guess they have faded away too and managed to revive them? Did she even have to rebuild her ice palace?

Johman

Answer: Since the answer is not given in the movie, I think you have found a plot hole and a possible solution for it.

Question: If the clones believe Dooku is their leader, why are they against the droids, who are his allies?

Answer: The pilots didn't refuse to shoot down Dooku - they explain they have run out of rockets and they can't. The clone troopers have no idea that Dooku originally ordered for them to be made, only the Jedi council at that time know, which is explained earlier in the film.

Answer: The clones do not believe Dooku to be their leader. Dooku is the leader of the Separatists.

BaconIsMyBFF

But they believe he was one of the people who was helping with ordering them (which he was) and refused to shoot him down when Anakin asked.

No, they believe Sifo Dyas was the Jedi who ordered their creation. They do not refuse to shoot down Dooku, they tried and failed.

BaconIsMyBFF

They believe it was both. They used "we're out of rockets" as an excuse to not kill him as they knew he was one of their leaders. Some of the corrections even state it, and one of the answers does as well.

The Jedi and the Chancellor are their leaders, not Dooku. Dooku is the enemy. Dooku's plan was to gather the largest droid army in the galaxy to counter the republic so that the clone army would be deployed. For Palpatine the seperatists were only a distraction for the Jedi and an excuse to deploy the clones. The clones obeyed the Jedi and Republic until order 66. Dooku was led to believe he would become one of the leaders eventually, if he knew about order 66, but Palpatine had other plans.

lionhead

So are you saying the people who were saying that in the corrections and questions are wrong?

There's one correction I saw that says that, and yes, I believe that correction to be incorrect. There is nothing in the film to suggest that the clones were aware (either consciously or otherwise) that Dooku played any part in their creation and chose not to kill him. If that was the case and George Lucas wanted the audience to be aware, it would have been less subtle and more obvious. It's not even supposed to be obvious that Dooku and Darth Tyranus are the same person until the end of the movie but that reveal was ruined by pre-release marketing and merchandise.

BaconIsMyBFF

But you can see the rockets in the gunship when the clone pilot refuses to fire them at Dooku.

Plus, they could've also used lasers or etc. instead.

Plus, why wouldn't Dooku and Sidious have had this feature installed anyway if they knew they would've been against him otherwise?

Sidious already was the leader of the clone troops, as Chancellor of the republic. All he had to do was wait for the war to spread the Jedi out over the galaxy so they will be more vulnerable and then execute order 66 to take them out. Dooku or Grievous were never a part of that plan. This is proven by Sidious ordering Vader to go to the Mustafar system and kill the rest of the separatist leaders. If Grievous was still alive he would have been eliminated too. Sidious' new apprentice Vader had already killed Dooku by then anyway.

lionhead

That's not exactly the point though.

The point the clones did not refuse to fire on Dooku. Dooku is not protected against them. Not by Palpatine, not by himself as Tyrannus.

lionhead

The programming of the clone troopers has been explored extensively in additional canon materials outside of the films. There has never been any mention of specific programming put in place to keep the clones from killing Dooku and Sidious. The ship still having rockets after the clone says they are out is more likely to be a simple continuity error rather than a subtle hint (and if this theory is to be believed, the ONLY hint at all in any Star Wars media) that the clones were programmed to not kill Dooku.

BaconIsMyBFF

There's also the hint that he finished up the job with ordering them.

We can go on and on for pages but the fact of the matter is the clones were not what you expected them to be. Dooku never had any idea he would be in danger of being captured or killed by the clones as he was supposed to be coordinating the war on the background like Sidious.

lionhead

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