Question: I just wondered if anyone knows how much of the historical content of Gladiator is accurate, e.g. are the characters based on people who actually lived?
Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
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Question: At the end of the movie, when they find out when Marek died, why does Kate say "...or 1971"?
Answer: Kate is actually saying, "Born 1971."
Question: In the scene where Johnny and Ponyboy are talking in the lot, Ponyboy goes over to sort out the fire. The camera zooms up on Johnny and you can hear voices echoing. Does anyone know what they're saying? I can't make them out.
Answer: Johnny is recalling the argument he heard his parents having; the voices were meant to sound angry but not to be understood. Its to help us understand his horrid home life.
Question: What did the movie say about Gary Bertier at the end when they scroll what happened to the characters? It looked like it said he died in a car crash, but in the movie he only got paralyzed.
Answer: The real Gerry Bertier participated in the final game and was paralyzed in a car accident after it. He died in a car crash in 1981.
Question: Turkish is always going on about ''Ze German's''. Is he referring to the War?
Answer: Basically, yes. He says it once when he discovers Tommy is carrying a handgun, which are not at all common in England, where they are outlawed. More the kind of thing a Brit would expect from a war-hungry Nazi. Later on he refers to it again just to mess with Tommy.
Question: The part in the movie where Marcus is getting out of the pool, he asks his son to get his bolts and a screwdriver.... Why would you ask for bolts and a screwdriver?
Question: OK, let's see: Lamar Burgess set Anderton up; he Hired Leo Crow and sent him to be killed in a hotel. But How did exactly Burgess plan the meeting of Anderton with Crow? Anderton arrived at the crime scene by a chain of events that began with the pre-vision of his destiny. It was clear that Lamar did not fake the pre-vision, because this became true just like it was predicted; besides, when Anderton was being chased, he arrived to crime scene by a coincidence; so what did Burguess have to do to make sure the existence of the pre-vision and this possible future? I don't see a simple solution.
Answer: Well, there isn't really a simple solution, but here goes. For a pre-vision to form, there have be two things present within the range of the precog ability (which appears to be limited to the Washington area - regardless of the stated plan to take the programme countrywide, there's never any indication that the precogs can sense beyond that range). Firstly, someone with the intent to kill. Secondly, there has to be a target for that intent within the range of the precogs. Anderton is present, and has the intent within him to kill the man who took his son, but has no target - the real kidnapper is presumably either dead or beyond the precog ability. Burgess, by bribing Crow to pretend to be that man, has provided a viable target for Anderton's intent within the range of the precog ability, thus triggering the prevision, and beginning the chain of events.
The above answers the question, but there do appear to be some time travel issues with this plot point in the movie. Burgess set things up for Crow to fake being the kidnapper and thus triggering Jon's desire to kill that person, everything starts by the pre-cogs seeing the future. If the pre-cogs did not exist or did not have the vision, Jon would have never known that Leo Crow existed and would have continued on without having killed anyone. This is unique within the movie, as the other murders would have been commited regardless of whether or not the pre-cogs saw it. In this case, the ONLY reason this murder occurred is because the pre-cogs saw it.
Thinking about this a little more, it could be conceivable that Burgess had planned a different option for Jon finding Crow. We just never saw that on screen, because the precogs changed everything to an alternative future timeline once they saw the original murder. Originally, Jon could have been triggered by Burgess himself, stating that they got a lead on his son's murder and pointing him to Crow.
No I think Burgess set it up so that Anderton would find Crow because of the precogs, not have a different plan set up before or else it could be possible Burgess himself would be visible in the prevision. He manipulated the system perfectly, he has done it before after all. He knows exactly how the precogs work so he is able to set it up so that it's untraceable. Except, except for the fact there is always a choice. Only then did it go wrong for him. This proves both true for Anderton and Burgess in the end.
Question: What I don't understand about this movie is, how did Dr. Satan get in this family's basement and are we supposed to believe that he did his brain surgery on the whole family which is why they are all so insane?
Chosen answer: Dr. Satan wasn't in their basement. As you watch the movie, they walked quite a ways to this well structure where they put two of the captives in this box and lowered them down. It was quite a way from their house. When the girl comes up from the dirt, there house is nowhere in sight.
Question: When Zorg is on the phone with "Mr. Shadow", he gets very nervous and starts sweating. Then a black, gooey substance starts running down that nose...what is that?
Answer: The substance is actually blood - in extreme cases some people have been known to secrete blood from their pores. I believe it is a Biblical reference even when encountering extreme anguish or in this case the ultimate Evil it is simply More Than The Human Condition can bear and causes any human that interacts with it to break down on a physical level therefore leaking life out of their body uncontrollably.
Answer: It's supposed to be concentrated evil.
So, Hershey's chocolate syrup.
Chosen answer: It happens to everybody who speaks with Mr. Shadow, but it's never really explained what it is. I think it's only written something like "a brown substance" in the scenario.
Question: What is the name of the song that plays at the end of the movie just before it goes to credits?
Chosen answer: 'If You Could Read My Mind' by Gordon Lightfoot.
Question: I'm no expert on figure skating, so could someone explain why Kate couldn't just become a single skater when she had trouble finding a partner to work with? (Her father says that they should have made her a single skater). To the untrained eye, the fundamentals of single and pair skating seem the same.
Chosen answer: One reason is that singles skating focuses on jumps. Pair skaters usually do side-by-side jumps like double axles and the easier triple jumps. Single skaters now do up to three triple jumps in a row - a skill that pair skaters do not work so hard to master and may set her back in competitions.
Question: How come Will doesn't know his father was a pirate? And who was his mother?
Answer: Will grew up believing that his father was a merchant sailor. Since that meant that William Turner would spend a good deal of his time away from home, it was easy for his father to keep the secret from Will and perhaps even the mother, that he was in reality a pirate. We don't know specifically who Will's mother was, only that she raised him in England until she died.
Question: What is Goose's surname, and where is it mentioned?
Answer: According to the credits, his surname is McKenzie.
Question: Do light sabers have a shadow?
Chosen answer: The hilt does, the blade doesn't - such is the case with all forms of light.
Question: What is the song playing at the end as Matt cries alone in his room and Nanette shoots herself?
Chosen answer: "So Damn Beautiful" by Polaroid.
Question: We know that Saruman and his tower remain standing, despite the flood... so how did the Palantir end up in the water? Did Saruman throw it out of the tower?
Chosen answer: Saruman did throw the palantiri. It's a missing scene that will, hopefully, be edited back in for the Extended Edition.
Question: Can anyone explain Lucian's arm blade? It seems totally out of character for him, and every time he changed to wolf form he'd have to track it down and reattach it. Moreover, since these vampires don't have any weakness to metal, there's no special advantage in using a metal blade instead of his wolf claws. So what's the point?
Chosen answer: In most of the shots, Lucien takes his coat off when he changes to wolf form, and the blade would be attatched to a mechanism in him coat. Also, the film gives us an example of the blade hurting a vampire: bloodloss. And that kind of weapon could do some serious damage, and as it probably wouldn't kill the vampires, it would almost definitely slow them down.
Answer: Removal of the head kills everything. Immortal or not. At least that's what I saw.
Question: Does anyone experienced in Scuba Diving think Lara's dive profile to the temple is feasible on air without some form of decompression? What would be the atmospheric pressure in the temple?
Answer: The pressure in the temple would be the same as that of the water just before Lara entered the temple. So no she would not need to decompress before entering at the temple as it was open to the sea, but she would have surely suffered the bends on the rapid accent to the surface.
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Answer: Some of the characters are real - Marcus Aurelius and Commodus are both real emperors and were indeed father and son, but both are used in fictional ways. Marcus Aurelius did spend a lot of his reign fighting the Germans, but he died of the plague in Vindobona (now Vienna) rather than being murdered. Commodus did, in fact, fight in the arenas, but he did not meet his end there - in reality he was strangled in his bath by an athlete called Narcissus.
Tailkinker ★