Question: Is the military privatised in the continuity of the films? Do they operate at the behest of the Company? Any official or generally accepted answer is appreciated.
Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
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Question: How closely does the movie match the comic? Was that how Doc Ock get his tentacles? Were any of the fights similar to those in the comic? Did Doc Ock have an honorable death like he did in the movie?
Answer: Comic continuity is constantly being changed particularly in different comics (Amazing Spiderman, Spectacular Spiderman and Ultimate Spiderman are 3 comics in the same universe), . For each thing that happened in a movie, you could find one way that happened the same and two that it happened differently in the comic universe. So it's really best these days to take the movie on its own.
Question: When Paul knocks on Holly's door and she isn't wearing anything, she says to him "would you turn around? Oh, never mind, it's such a silly line anyway - I'll turn around instead." What joke is she referring to?
Answer: Holly is referring to the fact that people often ask others in the room "Will you turn around?" when they are dressing or in the nude, so the person cannot see them naked. She is simply stating she thinks it is odd that the second person is always asked to turn around, when the person herself could turn around.
Question: How could Dracula's werewolf antidote work on regular werewolves? I thought it could only work the first night they became a werewolf, and it had to be before the twelfth chime of midnight? Or did I miss something?
Answer: There is a lot of confusion about Dracula's control of werewolves and the antidote. After the twelfth stroke of midnight, a werewolf is under the complete control of Dracula. This is why Velkan couldn't kill Dracula: He knew a werewolf could kill him, even tried telling this to his sister, but couldn't consciously kill Dracula. Dracula keeps the antidote as a safety measure: If any werewolf summons enough will to get out of his control, he can make them human again.
Question: When Jack is fighting on the roof of the train,he makes the quip "yeah..but I'm taller" just before the other guys head is knocked off. What does he mean by this? He was laying down at the time, height doesn't come into it.
Answer: He's taller now because he has his head while the villain does not!
Question: During the opening credits, a song by Johnny Cash is played called, 'When the Man Comes to Town', or something like that. Is it the original song (i.e. not changed at all for the purposes of the film)? Also, can anyone tell me what Bible passage is recited at the end of it? Thanks.
Question: There seems to be a major plot hole in this film. A big deal is made about dissuading Truman from leaving the town. If he was raised and educated in the studio, surely they could have simply taught him that there was nowhere to run to, that the town where he lived was all that existed. Is the answer to this ever explained in the film?
Answer: Doing this will immediately take out the realism from the show. The reason so many viewers watch Truman daily is because he is living a "normal" life in a "normal" world. Doing anything out of the ordinary will dilute this feeling of realism so they try to persuade him not to leave instead of telling him there is no where to go.
Answer: Also, Seahaven isn't very big. All those manufactured goods and foods have to come from somewhere.
Answer: Truman is a natural explorer, the only way you could convince him of this would be to say he is living on a colony on another planet, which would make for a much different show. Truman is also an explorer, so unless he believes that going out will kill him, he's not going to be dissuaded.
Answer: Even though Truman cannot leave the town because it would ruin the show, they're still trying to emulate a (somewhat idealized) average American life and community. Truman is taught the same things as everyone else in school, buys products from all over the world and presumably meets people from many different places, even though he cannot go there. Clearly, he is also well aware that the Earth is round and that Fiji is on the opposite end. It's possible that they considered coming up with a reason for why Truman physically cannot leave, but in a promotional video for the movie, it is the revealed that the show started in a single room and that the set was constructed gradually during Truman's childhood. With this in mind, it would have been difficult to retroactively explain to Truman why he cannot leave after never mentioning it during his youth.
That's the point though - why teach him the earth is round, why teach him Fiji exists? They must have realised this would be a problem, but they took no steps to compensate for it.
Because, as stated in previous answers, the entire point was to have him live in an idealized, but still real, version of the real world. If they'd created a false reality for him where things were altered (i.e. the Earth not being round, etc.) the show wouldn't be so popular. Part of the appeal of the show, as shown in the viewers' reactions) was watching to see if Truman would figure it out.
Question: Sati is the daughter of two programs..I really don't understand how two programs can mate. How's it possible?
Answer: Some Matrix programs have become so sophisticated that they are self-aware and much like humans. Keeping with that, Sati's "parents" wrote her using some of their own code, thus, she is their daughter.
Question: What happened to the deformed guy that made him the way he is?
Answer: It is mentioned by his other two brothers, he was dropped as a baby which clearly had physical and mental effects on him.
Question: When Cady gives the kalteen bars to Regina, she says that there's an ingredient that is not legal in the US yet. Right after she says that, Regina suggests some ingredients. Does anyone actually know what the ingredients are, or are they just made up?
Answer: The name Kalteen bars was made up for the film, but the ingredients Regina suggests are real: phentermine and ephedrine I think.
Question: What is the word that Drew Barrymore says to her boss, which she claims means that he'll have it "right away"?
Answer: She says "tickety-boo" - later on he asks for her article and says he wants it "tickety-now" not "tickety-boo".
Question: I still can't access the easter egg on my DVD and I would really like the chance to watch this movie from beginning to end in that order. I have the limited edition 2 disc set. It's frustrating because the directions people are giving are not specific at all. Please, please, somebody just explain it to me one step at a time, because it says to go to special features, but which picture is the special features? On the main menu are nothing but little pictures of random stuff like a book, telephone, etc. Which one is the special features and do what from there?
Question: I'm probably going to regret asking this but what is Buck supposed to have done with the tub of Vasalube to account for how it looks in the film?
Answer: It's been used by him and many a dirty perv during Buck's nasty little side business, not caring if it gets dirty or attracts stray hairs.
Question: How come there were suddenly dead Greeks lying on the beach, apparently killed by plague? Was there really a plague or what happened?
Answer: In The Iliad, there was a plague sent by Apollo about 9 years into the war in revenge for Agamemnon keeping Chryses as a slave - her father was a priest and prayed to Apollo for vengeance. There's no real explanation given in the movie (since they've essentially written the gods out of it). They could well have faked up some bodies to look like that as an explanation for their sudden departure to the Trojans.
Question: In the scene where Ripley is describing the new Alien, she says it 'moves different to the other ones'. I could never get a good enough look at the alien to understand what she meant. What did she mean and why does it move differently?
Answer: She means that the alien it moves on 4 legs, whereas the other aliens moved primarily on two legs. This alien came out of a dog in the theatrical version and from an ox in the Assembly cut version, which can only move on 4 legs. This hints to the fact that the alien inherits the characteristics of its host.
Question: I don't get the Michael Jackson scene where he goes out the window, and Charlie Sheen finds his body (which doesn't look real) and then something is running in the bushes. Does anyone know just what exactly is going on there?
Answer: It was an alien in a Michael Jackson skin. He shed it and ran off into the bushes.
Question: Does anyone know if they are really going to make a sequel (Kung Pow: Tongue of Fury)? Or was this just a simple joke at the end to get one last laugh?
Answer: If they do, it will come out in 2006, as it says on IMBD.
Question: When Aladdin is thrown into the water by the guards and the Genie turns into a sub to save him, the sub-Genie speaks something in what sounds like German. What does he say?
Answer: Nothing. He was babbling it. Even the closed captions say " (babbling the German language)," which means he wasn't saying anything real in German; he was just mimicking it and speaking gibberish.
Question: Maybe this is just an assumption of mine, but since Malcolm is dead why can't he see the other dead people, ie the three hanging in the school?
Answer: Cole explains this. During the hospital scene when he tells his secret, he describes the dead people he sees as "Walking around like regular people. The don't see each other. They only see what they wanna see. They don't know they're dead". This explains many things in the movie, including why Malcolm can't see the ghosts, why he can't see his blood-stained shirt (till the very end), why he doesn't see the table blocking the basement door, etc. I believe that Cole sees him just how he looked when he died - blue work shirt with the massive blood stain at the back, while we see Malcolm throughout the movie as he perceives himself - no blood, overcoat when he's outside, etc.
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Answer: From the books and comics, the answer seems to be that the Earth government still controls the military, but the megacorporations like Weyland-Yutani have so much influence, they can dictate pretty much what they want the govt to do with them.
Grumpy Scot