Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: I have wondered this for ages. Laurie went over to the Wallace house because she thought they were all playing a prank on her. So when she found the bodies in the bedroom, why did she never assume that this could all just be a practical joke set-up? How did she know straight away that it was the real thing?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: Because it was too graphic and elaborate for her to think it might be a prank. Not to mention that there was probably a very distinctive smell to the room.

JC Fernandez

Question: What are the military ranks of Tucker, Watts, and Halsey? It's stated that Sharpe & Davis are Colonels, and Lev is a Colonel in the Russian military. Gruber is referred to as Sergeant, but so far, the ranks of the last 3 weren't mentioned.

Darthbane2007

Chosen answer: It is not mentioned in the movie. However, we can assume that Tucker and Watts are mid-grade officers. They would be below the commanding colonels, but above ensigns because of their flight status. Likely they are lieutenants or captains.

LorgSkyegon

Answer: They're introduced as "Nasa Pilot Watts" and "Nasa Pilot Tucker", they're likely civilians. There are civilian Astronauts in the Space program. There's even wings for a civilian pilot.

Show generally

Question: I'm really confused about Jason Earles' age. IMDB and Wikipedia say he's 32, but his resume and the Houston Chronicle say he is 19. So where are people getting the information he's 32? Has Jason Earles actually stated his age somewhere? Help me out here, please.

Answer: Many actors and actresses tend to be quite secretive about their ages, probably to try to fend off being automatically dismissed for possible roles as too old or too young or even just because they consider it to be nobody's business but their own. Earles appears to be one of these; as a result, reports regarding his age tend to conflict. However, as a rule, public records can generally be accessed to give a reasonable idea of their true age. He is, for example, listed as an alumni of Rocky Mountain College, from which he graduated in 2000, unless he graduated at the age of ten, that rules out the idea that he's only nineteen, realistically putting his age at at least thirty years old. A name search engine on the internet turns up a Jason D Earles who lived in Billing, Montana, near the college in the right time period, with a listed birth date of April 1977 - an individual with the same name and birth date also has a listing for California, where the actor currently lives. Other information available online also tends to point to a likely birth year of 1977. While Earles and his agent have every right to fudge his age as it appears on his resume for professional purposes, most of the verifiable information suggests that he is indeed currently 32.

Tailkinker

Answer: It is revealed in the sequel, Love Never Dies, that when the Phantom disappears he makes his way to Coney Island with Meg and Madame Giry. However, he does stay in Paris for a short amount of time (but it isn't known where) because on the night before Christine's wedding, she finds the Phantom and they make love, but then he flees because he felt ashamed of what he did. This is explained in "Beneath a Moonless Sky."

I was trying to figure this out but how does the song 'Beneath a Moonless Sky' hint where and when the two of them met? How did Christine find him if he left through a secret exit (mirror) after Christine returns the ring?

debbi.ee

Question: This applies to both Revolutions and the first Matrix film really - why do the machines have no security around the Matrix itself? In the first film, Morpheus and co. are able to fly near enough to extract Neo once he's been de-tanked, and in Revolutions Neo and Trinity fly right by it - do the machines not think Zion might ever try and disable their main/only source of power, thus beating them once and for all?

diesel123

Chosen answer: The vast majority of the machines live in one central "Machine City" which we see in this movie and is located somewhere in the middle east (The Animatrix:The Second Renaissance), the huge towers we see Neo in when he is first freed are scattered around the earth built on the remnants of the human mega-cities (New York/London/Tokyo/etc). This means that a) they are very very big and b) they are very spread out. The tower/cities are protected by Sentinel patrols (and possibly other defences) and the amount of damage one lone Zion ship can cause is insignificant at best and it's implied that the machines have control over the creation of new humans, so any pod-people lost could quickly be "manufactured" and replaced.

Sanguis

Question: I hope I'm not missing anything, but why do the machines allow Zion to be rebuilt each time the Matrix is renewed, the code returns to the source, etc. etc. and everything basically starts over? If people can consciously free themselves from The Matrix, fair enough, but wouldn't it just be easier for the machines to detach them, de-tank them and dunk them like they did to Neo? Otherwise they are in effect, re-creating their own enemies over and over again.

diesel123

Chosen answer: The machines use the humans as power so it stands to reason that they would want to hold onto as many humans as possible (even defective/inefficient ones). The Architect, in his enormous speech in Reloaded, states that the Zion "solution" was an acceptable (from the machine point-of-view) way of dealing with people who rejected the Matrix (less than 1% of the total pod-people population). Those freed would then free others who also reject the matrix (this is desirable for the machines as the disbelief could spread and result in more rejecting the matrix resulting in "crashes"). Once the Zion population gets too big the machines eradicate it and start again. So, yes, the machines are creating their own enemies, but strictly on their terms as part of the plan to keep the matrix going.

Sanguis

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?

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

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?

msmall724

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.

msmall724

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?

diesel123

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.

Sanguis

Chosen answer: Because there was no real need for him to talk.

LorgSkyegon

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.

Tailkinker

Question: Why did the author of the book, that this movie is based on, hate this movie version so much?

Android Kaeli

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".

Tailkinker

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.

JC Fernandez

Show generally

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.

raywest

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?

diesel123

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.

Phixius

Chosen answer: Nope. Joey is the only friend who has never gotten drunk.

Brad

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.

Darthbane2007

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.

Phixius

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?

diesel123

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.

Tailkinker

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?

diesel123

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.

Sanguis

Chosen answer: When Bella sees Waylon's dead, pale foot sticking out from under the sheet, she has a flashback to Edward's cold, pale 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'.

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