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: Did the Warden know about the "Randall Stevens" character? At first it would seem that he didn't, since Andy used the identity to clean out the bank accounts and escape to Mexico. On the other hand, how could the Warden make deposits and withdrawals (before Andy's escape) from his bank accounts without noticing?

Matty Blast

Chosen answer: He probably only knows the name. He doesn't want to know anymore, so he can pin the blame on Andy should anything go wrong. He no doubt hasn't even considered that Andy might have ID so he can access the accounts after his escape.

Grumpy Scot

Also, Andy indicated that the deposits were night deposits, which were in envelopes. So, the warden may not have known the "Randall Stevens" name.

Question: When Max approaches the house for his second date with Lucy, being a vampire he asks Michael to invite him in so people in the house would be, in his words, "rendered powerless." As a result, Sam and the Frog brothers can't prove he is a vampire. But how did Max know that his vampirism would be tested in the first place?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: A vampire probably wouldn't survive for very long without playing it safe - he's probably in the habit of insisting on being invited in (if possible) whereever he goes, just in case.

Tailkinker

Answer: He didn't, any vampire cannot enter a home unless they're invited.

Question: What are the themes of the film and the novel it was based on?

Onesimos

Chosen answer: Mainly the book is about the war against an alien enemy in a facist society. It goes into considerable detail about the facist society being fully functional, unlike those in the past.

Grumpy Scot

Question: What is the alternate ending and start to this film as shown on the DVD version?

omegaman3000

Chosen answer: In the alternate beginning, Richard is sitting in front of the large Buddha statue when a taxi driver stops and prompts him to take a ride with him. He explains that they celebrate New Year's by spraying each other with water guns, and gives one to Richard. While riding in the taxi, Richard sprays others and gets sprayed, having a lot of fun. It ends when Richard enters the "mall" where he will eventually meet the guy who offers him to drink the snake blood in the regular movie beginning. In the alternate ending, Sal turns the gun on herself and commits suicide. It ends by having a large ship rescue all of them when they're stranded at sea, banned from the island. The final words by Richard are something to the effect of "I have a lot of scars," which from what I recall is the actual ending of the novel by Alex Garland.

Question: At the end of the film just before Tom hanks dies, he lowers his oxygen mask and says to partner Banderas "I'm ready". Ready for what exactly? Ready to die? Ready for a bit of final smooching? Or ready (and this is just my assumption) for Banderas to pull the plug?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: Ready to die.

Question: Was the doctor (the owner of the sailboat in the beginning) in on Laura's planned disappearance? Or was the bad weather just a coincidence and gave her the chance to escape? Just though it was weird because her husband commented that she only gets on a boat like once a year, so I don't know how she could have planned her escape so perfectly.

weetie21

Chosen answer: No, the doctor was not in on her plan. She had her escape planned for a long time, but was waiting for the right time. The stormy weather on the boat provided the "perfect" time for her to put her plan into action.

Ral0618

Question: When Charlie goes into the candy shop and gets a Scrumdiddlyumptious bar, he gobbles it down and the man warns him he'll get a stomach ache. The fifth golden ticket had been found (or so Charlie thinks at this point), so he can't be digging for it. I've never understood: what was the point in eating it so fast?

Macalou

Chosen answer: In the original book, Charlie has an obsession with chocolate that he only satiates once a year on his birthday. Also, at this point in the book, the Bucket family is going through an extremely hard time and Charlie has had less food than he usually would have, so he is EXTREMELY hungry.

Question: Mel Gibson spends 50 years frozen inside a machine that his friend Harry built. After Mel awakes, he is still the same age, but he slowly starts to age back into what he would been at the time that he awoke. Later on He discovers that Harry knew this would happen. If Harry knew, why did he build the machine in the first place?. It seems to serve no purpose other than to waste years of someone's life.

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: Harry Findlay only discovered the ageing would irreversible after Daniel had been frozen; don't forget this was the first time he'd tried it on a human. Plus he only ever intended to freeze Daniel for a year, so this may not have been the main focus of the experiment anyway.

Answer: He only wanted to be frozen because his girlfriend was in a coma. Harry said, he only tried it on animals and wasn't to keen on the idea. Mel said to wake him when his girlfriend woke up. He figured it would only be for a few weeks or months. Joe Morton, the scientist, read a file on the experiment, stating that Harry died when a fire broke out in the lab and ran in to save him.

Show generally

Question: I remember watching two particular episodes when younger, and are curious to know what the titles of the episodes were called. One was about a doll that came alive and the other about the trees coming alive, and the tree roots etc. killing people. What are the episode titles of those two?

Hamster

Chosen answer: The tree root episode is season five, episode nine and is called Schizogeny. And the doll one sounds like it could be the very next episode (season five, episode 10) called Chinga.

wolfchild

Question: When the fat lady painting lets Harry and the others in after "breaking" the glass, she says something quite quietly to herself, possibly foregin. I can't make it out - does anyone know what she says? The subtitles don't say...

Hamster

Chosen answer: She calls them plebs - dates back to Roman times, relating to common people.

Super Grover

Show generally

Question: In the movie it's well established that symbols are different from one gate to another. How, then, do the SG teams know the code to Earth from any gate in the network?

Answer: The Gate addresses are made up of the constellations in the night sky above the planet the person is trying to Gate to with the exception of the first & last. The first is the planet of origin (eg. Earth - a pyramid with one moon above it) & the last is the planet you are trying to Gate to (eg. Abydos - a pyramid with three moons above it). As long as you remember the constellations & know the two planet symbols you should be able to Gate home again.

Answer: This is one of the differences from the movie to the series. In the movie, each gate had completely different sets of symbols corresponding to the constellations in that gate's planets sky. In the series, the gates were more standardized, with the same constellation symbols regardless of where the gate way in the galaxy. The only difference between gates being their own unique point of origin symbol. Therefore, whenever anyone dials Earth from any other planet, they would enter the exact same sequence of six symbols on the DHD followed by that gates unique origin symbol. The point of origin on any given gate/DHD would therefore be the one symbol the dialling person had never seen elsewhere and would be the only symbol they would consciously have to think about and find before dialling.

Question: Why was Greg surprised by the fact that Kevin and Bob went to lacrosse camp?

Answer: Greg was probably surprised at just how "richy" they really are. Because lacrosse camp seems like a really rich, preppy thing to do. But mainly, I think he was suprised because he did not know that his girlfriend's ex and his girlfriend's sister's fiance knew each other. He didn't realize how connected they all were.

Answer: It is an instrumental version of "Funkytown", by Lipps Inc.

Shay

Question: After the D-day battle and Capt. Miller is informing the Colonel about the types of mines, what was the purpose of Capt. Miller taking such a long pause during his discussion?

Answer: Their discussion was talking about a mission they recently completed and that it claimed a lot of troops lives. Throughout the film every death seems to affect Miller and was probably reflecting on the tragic situation.

Lummie

Question: In the UK there was a children's programme called 'SMTV Live', on this programme they had a competition where the winner could have a small part in Shrek 2. Does anyone know who won and what part they play?

Answer: A young girl named Victoria Glover won the part. She doesn't have a credit on IMDB but all I know is the line she recorded for the film was "Star maps, get your star maps".

Lummie

Question: What is that song by 311 called? I cant find the soundtrack anywhere. And I know it's only on the soundtrack so it's not on any of their CD's.

Answer: According to imdb.com the song is 'Anytime'.

Question: Why aren't Arwen's brothers - Elladan and Elrohir - ever mentioned? They were, at least, talked about in the LotR books.

Answer: They're very minor characters in the books - there'd be little point in having them in the film unless there was a good reason. The filmmakers have made something of an effort to remove minor characters - the decision to use Arwen to rescue Frodo after Weathertop, rather than Glorfindel from the books, would be an example of this. In storytelling terms, Elladan and Elrohir serve no purpose, hence their non-appearance.

Tailkinker

Question: How accurate is this film to portraying what actually happened? Such as the three sprinters tripping, Dorice tracking down an ex-bobsled cheat and then entering the Olympics with three months practice time, them chasing the sled on their first push start, them beating the Swiss's start time, etc.

Answer: Only part of this is accurate. The sprinters did in fact trip and almost fall in the Olympics. There was one member of the team who did join just a few months ahead of the games but not a former cheater. The basic idea of the bobsled is to get off a huge start, then get in smoothly. The only person who needs a tonne of experience is the driver or else the sled can flip over on the track, which incidentally it did both in the film and at the Olympics. Also, they did lose the sled on startup once and almost did several other times too. Finally they did beat the Swiss start time, however, Jamaicans tend to be strong sprinters, which is just one element of the race.

Question: When the teacher is pouring her Vodka, she freaks out all of a sudden when she looks inside her cup. Why does she do this?

Answer: The cup has the high school's crest on the side of it - she is freaked out because, as she explains in the previous scene, everything is reminding her of the school and thus of the crash in which she should have died.

Shay

Answer: The psychiatrist is scared of him and afraid that if the chair isn't secure, that Kryten will pick it up and beat him with it.

Captain Defenestrator

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.