Question: The Phantom refers to himself as Christine's "angel of music" in the song called "The Mirror". How did he know that Christine thought her father would send her an angel? Did he know her father?
Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
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Question: When Irina speaks to the Russians, is she really speaking in Russian? And could anybody translate anything for me, like in the warehouse scene?
Chosen answer: Ok i found out thread on the indy forum with the translations: http://raven.theraider.net/showthread.php?t=15558&highlight=russian+translation.
Question: Why was only one Agent sent after all the Smiths when the woman saw them all in the burly brawl? Couldn't the Matrix itself have turned as many humans as it needed into Agents and outnumbered the rogue Smiths? Or did they interpret one Agent being beaten by a Smith as meaning they would never win against him?
Chosen answer: The Matrix only became aware of Smith after the one woman saw the fight, the woman was converted into an Agent and Smith then infected them. Other people nearby would also have been converted into Agents, but this occurred off-camera, as did Smith then infecting these people, the large influx of Smiths that occurs towards the end of the fight are the people who turn into Agents who then get infected by Smith.
Question: Is there a reason why Halsey wasn't given any lines in the movie?
Chosen answer: Because there was no real need for him to talk.
Question: Wouldn't Aladdin have one more wish, since technically he didn't wish for Genie to save him from the water?
Answer: Technically, yes. He would still have one wish left. After being knocked out, Genie asks Aladdin if he wishes for his life to be saved. After grabbing Aladdin, his head drops down, which Genie takes as a yes, However, since Aladdin was unconscious the whole time, he never actually confirmed the wish. Genie only assumed he did. Also, since Aladdin was out cold, he could once again make a case that he never wished for his life to be saved since he wasn't awake to make it.
Chosen answer: Under the rules that the genie lives by, he can only use his abilities to grant three wishes per person. He's already technically broken those rules once, when he helped Aladdin escape from the cave, despite Aladdin not actually wishing for it, but that wasn't an intentional violation; it can be considered a mistake on the genie's part, a misunderstanding of what Aladdin actually said. As he said after that incident, he can't give Aladdin any more freebies; while he can stretch the rules a bit, he can't consciously break them again by using his power on another non-wish, even to save a life. The genie's taking Aladdin's unconscious "nod" as affirmation that he agrees to use his second wish to be rescued from drowning. By the rules that govern the genie's existence, even though Aladdin didn't actually say it, it has to count as one of his wishes.
Question: Why did the author of the book, that this movie is based on, hate this movie version so much?
Chosen answer: He felt that it took too many liberties with the story. In the original agreement, Dahl himself was to write the screenplay (he was, by that point, a not-unsuccessful screenwriter), only to find that his version of the script was subsequently heavily re-written, including what Dahl felt were a number of unnecessary gimmicks, such as Wonka's penchant for literary quotations. Even the title of the film was changed from the original "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", in order to tie into the launch of the "Wonka Bar", a new candy bar made by the Quaker Oats company, who co-financed the film. Annoyed at all the changes, he ultimately disowned the film and refused to sell the cinematic rights to the sequel, "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator".
Question: Since Marty's actions led to him not existing, shouldn't no Marty mean that there would have been no Marty to get hit by the car in the first place, meaning that Marty would have just reappeared when he ceased to exist?
Answer: The simple answer is NO. According to the time travel rules established in the films, alternate realities are created when changes are made to the past. Marty continues to exist as long as there's the possibility that he exists in 1985. Small changes don't affect him. Marty only begins to disappear after the past has been altered so significantly that he would *never* exist in the present. But at the time he gets hit by the car, Marty hadn't impacted the timeline enough to assure his non-existence.
Question: I know that this is such a small detail, but it's been bugging me for a while and google has been no help. In the original series, the command uniforms were gold and security was red, but in Next Gen and everything thereafter, it has been reversed to command being red and security being gold. Anyone know why the change was made? I'm looking for a real world explanation, not a continuity one as I already found one of those. Thanks.
Answer: When ST:TNG went into production, television had changed drastically from the time the original series aired in the 1960s. Not only were special effects far more advanced, but editing, camera angles, set design, lighting, color schemes, types of film used, and so on, were all very different. It was likely a decision of what looked best from an artistic-design point-of-view to give the series a fresh, updated look as well as to reflect how much Star Fleet had changed since Captain James T. Kirk's time. Red is also a very prominent color, and it draws the viewer's eye to it, and to the character wearing it. Therefore, that became the command color. Also of note is that the "old" uniforms, as of the Star Trek original series movies, had more or less universally switched to red uniforms with smaller department insignia. Thus, chronologically they removed colour coding in favour of pure red for everyone, and then decided to bring back colour coding - but retained the red for command instead of switching back to the old way.
Question: What exactly do the machines do on a day-to-day basis? What's their reason for existing? Is it solely to maintain and perfect the Matrix, develop more efficient programmes and hunt down the remaining humans? Are they planning universal domination? Or just designing more cute inquisitive little metal spiders with which to fill their cities?
Chosen answer: The machines tried to peacefully found their own nation before the war that sent the last of the human race underground. So their society would not be entirely unlike our own. They perform tasks similar to a society based on agriculture would. They are not planning any sort of domination. They just wanted to be free and respected as mankind's equals. Humanity wouldn't have it, so they did what they had to do to survive.
Question: It wasn't addressed in the movie, but did NASA intend for Lev Andropov to go on the mission, assuming the RSS didn't blow up? It seems odd that later on, he has his own pressure suit and spacesuit without any explanation.
Chosen answer: No, he was not meant to join the team. The pressure suit and space suit he uses are spares brought along in case one of the others had a malfunction.
Question: If the machines have managed to locate Zion, wouldn't it have been easier for them to try and find the main door through which all the hovercrafts fly and blast their way through that, as opposed to digging through a HELL of a lot of pure rock to get into the city?
Chosen answer: To do so, they'd have to search a vast labyrinth of tunnels under the earth, contending with human ships, booby traps, dead ends and so forth, plus they can guarantee that they'll be facing a defensive bottleneck of apocalyptic proportions. Once they establish the location, much easier to just take the direct route and drill straight down to it, rather than waste time and resources attempting to locate the entrance used by the human ships. Plus the drilling method has the added advantage of bypassing most of the Zion defence grid and putting their forces directly into the dock, rather than having to battle their way there.
Question: During Neo's final fight with Smith it looks as if Smith has turned every living person (including other "human" programmes) in The Matrix into versions of himself - have The Merovingian and Persephone also been captured and morphed? It's an odd thought that these two seemingly powerful figures would have given up without a fight, although The Oracle was turned too so it might not be implausible. Any mention of them again in any other media?
Chosen answer: ##The Oracle deliberately choose to be assimilated so she could help Neo in the final fight. The Merovingian (and Persephone) had access to the Trainman and so, most likely, would have either hid in the machine world or in the Trainman's half-way Mobile Station. The both played a large role in the (now defunct) Matrix Online Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game.
Question: Why is it when Bella sees Waylon's body does she have a flashback to Edward? What is the relationship here?
Chosen answer: When Bella sees Waylon's dead, pale white foot sticking out from under the sheet, she has a flashback to Edward's cold, pale white hand touching her in the car. Seeing the skin color of a dead body automatically made her think of Edward's skin, and how cold it was. She finally realises then that Edward is not a 'living being'.
Question: How long had it been since the time Kate stabbed Simon in the eye and the time he captured Sasha? You can tell by his appearance that it's been a nice length of time, but it's never specified. I don't know much about survival, but it's evident that he had been cannibalizing even before that point, so he had probably been eating people in that whole time so it could have been a very long time. I'm inclined to believe that it's been at least a month, given the dramatic change in his appearance. Can anybody give a clearer response? As mine is just a blind guess. (01:19:00 - 01:19:40)
Chosen answer: I'm inclined to think it was longer than a month because of the lack of proper needed care for such an injury would prolong the healing process. But he only had a handful of souvenirs on him, which means he probably stopped collecting after a while. I concur with your cannibalism theory, there's no other way he would have survived. However that doesn't explain what he could have done for water. This theory of Simon spending possibly months in the cube also brings up the question: If the cube breaks down at 6:06:59, then how is it possible to live in there for months? Well, as we saw, certain rooms have slower and faster rates of time. So, he could have spent all that time in a room with a slow time rate waiting for people to wander into it and feed off of them.
Question: This is sort of a question for the Superman fan-verse, but I thought I'd ask it here. Is there an antidote for the effects of kyrptonite?
Chosen answer: No. Kryptonite as a plot device has changed from "every yahoo can get a chunk at the corner store" to an extremely rare element. It hardly ever shows up anymore. Also it really doesn't need an antidote. So long as it's removed from Superman's vicinity before he dies, he'll recover. Its effects don't linger like radioactive materials do for humans.
Answer: In Smallville, blue kryptonite does makes Kryptonians immune to the effects of green kryptonite. Although it does remove their super power abilities (by making them unable to process the power of the yellow sun). In some versions of the comics, blue kryptonite was the antidote for red kryptonite. In the comics, Supergirl tried to create an antidote to kryptonite which resulted in X-kryptonite.
Question: Is Brad Pitt's character Jewish, like the rest of the Basterds?
Answer: Though not explicitly stated in the movie, it is strongly implied in the film that he is not. He mentions that he is part Apache and that he was born and raised in Maynardville, Tennessee. He tells his troops that he was a direct descendant of Jim Bridger the mountain man, suggesting he is the hillbilly type (there were not many Jewish hillbillies). He was in charge of leading the actual Jewish-American soldiers (with the exception of Hugo Stiglitz, who was not Jewish) into enemy territory. In all likelihood, Raine received/asked for command of the Basterds purely so he could have a crack at the Nazis.
Question: I'm looking for an audio version of the Buying a Bed sketch - where they have to get in a fish tank and sing Jerusalem. Does anyone know which album/CD it appears on? Thanks.
Answer: The sketch appears on their first album "Monty Python's Flying Circus" from 1970. BBC retained the rights to this album and it has not been re-released on CD as the other albums whose rights belong to the Pythons so you will probably only find it on (very used) vinyl.
Question: At the end of the movie, why does Ethan appear so shocked when the flight attendant asks if he wants to watch a movie? I understand that this is probably another mission, but why does he react the way he does?
Answer: In addendum, only the leader of the group receives communication in this method. He's baffled because he's never been approached in this fashion, hence his utter confusion. Naturally, he catches on quickly.
Answer: Because he's resigned from the IMF. As such, he's more than a little surprised to be approached with another mission.
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Answer: As shown in the movie, Christine has spent time praying in the chapel as a child. It would not be unexpected for a child of such a young age to literally speak to her dead father in such situations, mentioning his promise in the process, thus allowing the Phantom to hear about it. In the book, though, it is understood that Mr. Daaé and the Phantom knew each other. By sending his daughter to the Opéra populaire after his death, he might have wanted the Phantom to look over her.
Sereenie