Answered 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: At the end when Thorin is fighting the Orc, he is knocked down and drops his sword. Bilbo and the others come to his aid. They are then rescued by the eagles. We never see him pick up his sword, but when he's thanking Bilbo he has it. How did this happen?

James L. Goodwin

Chosen answer: It's a mistake. While Thorin does have the sword (Orcrist) throughout the flight, during the initial shot when the eagle is picking him, Orcrist is nowhere on Thorin's body. Both of the eagle's talons are in view as they roll Thorin toward the camera, and his entire body can be seen down to his boots. Orcrist is not on him.

Guy

Answer: She was referring to his habit of excessively passing gas (farting) He can be heard doing this early in the film, even though he is a ghost.

raywest

Question: How can a woman with such a serious heart condition have such toned arms? Muscles like Emily's requires some serious weight lifting which I doubt a serious ill woman like Emily could do.

Answer: In real life she probably would not have this type of physique or be able to maintain it. While some actors change their looks to reflect a character, it is typical for others to look unlike everyday people, such as being ultra-thin and having excessively toned muscles.

raywest

Question: How did Kate Hudson pay the cab fare after she left Mathew McConaughey's apartment, after she left her pocketbook in the apartment?

Answer: She could have been carrying money and/or a credit card in a pocket of her clothing.

raywest

Question: Lord Blackwood dies through a set of circumstances that cause him to be hanged via chain. My question is this - was it merely coincidence that he ended up in the wrong place and the wrong time for the chain of events to kill him? Or did Holmes know it was going to happen that way it did? It seems a little too convenient to me, so I can't help but wonder if Holmes knew the crane would collapse as it did, setting off the chain of events. (Whether or not he knew if would kill Blackwood).

Answer: It was a coincidence.

MasterOfAll

Question: In the film credits for American Hustle, I have rewound it several times and cannot find Robert De Niro listed, or the character that he plays, Mr. Tellegio. Is there a reason for this?

Answer: It was a cameo role, and most times those are non-credited. Often it is for contractual reasons and whether or not a known actor has to be paid a fee. De Niro appeared as a favor to the director.

raywest

Question: Was Doctor Zaius really aware of what happened to the human race? Many times during the film, he does things that indicate such a possibility, like crushing the paper airplane.

Answer: Yes, he knows what happened and does whatever he can to suppress knowledge about it. He does not want his kind to know that humans were once far superior, which he believes led to their destruction.

raywest

Question: In a post-credit scene, it shows Sinestro taking off his green ring and replacing it with a yellow one. What was the reason for it?

Answer: In the comics Sinestro founded and led the Sinestro Corps, a group similar to the Green Lanterns, but they use the yellow part of the emotional spectrum: fear, rather the the green energy of willpower.

Question: What was Tony's reason that he was afraid of Apollo fighting Rocky again?

Answer: With all the damage Apollo did to Rocky, Rocky still wasn't knocked out. In the film series, Rocky is depicted as having an almost superhuman ability to absorb punches. Rocky also caused internal bleeding in Apollo. Tony knew that Rocky was far more dangerous than anyone realized.

Greg Dwyer

Question: Why is it that the students at Hogwarts are only wearing wizarding hats in the first movie?

Answer: It is typical in a movie series for changes to be made from film-to-film, particularly concerning things like costumes, make-up, set designs, etc. It's a matter of trying something and later deciding it is not really working well. It may have been that the hats were just too cumbersome, were constantly falling off, and were affecting the actors' performances. Also, in the Harry Potter series, there were a number of different directors and each has their own artistic vision and often make subtle changes.

raywest

Question: What did Jack mean when he said "You wouldn't have jumped" after he told Rose that he could see her?

Answer: He means that she never intended to actually jump off from the balcony. He knew she was just acting in a desperate manner because she was so unhappy, but that she did not actually want to kill herself.

raywest

Question: King Kandy, actually being Turbo, is not native to Sugar Rush. But instead of dying when eaten by a cy-bug, he merges into that cy-bug and becomes it. How is it possible that King Kandy is not killed when eaten by a cy-bug? Would have happened to Ralph or anyone else if they got eaten by a cy-bug?

Answer: Calhoun mentions that the Cybugs become what they eat, hence one developing guns after eating a gun, and others developing candy features after eating the candy of sugar rush. The cybug that ate King Kandy became King Kandy, so it's easy to assume, yes, the same thing would happen to Ralph or anyone else.

MasterOfAll

Question: What was that rotting corpse lying in the bath at Buffalo Bill's basement, minutes before the light is shut down? Who did it belong to and what has happened to it?

Answer: The body in the bathtub is Mrs. Lippman, the previous owner of Jame Gumb's home. Notice the long grey hair coming from the scalp. He would have wanted someone young, large, and whole.

Question: Isn't the National Guard supposed to be in the US only? Then why did the sergeant talk about them being in Kandahar?

Answer: The President of the United States could have sent them there. Remember G.W. Bush sent some National Guard troops to Iraq and Afghanistan during the wars.

lartaker1975

Answer: Based on accounts from 5th Office Harold Lowe (played by Ioan Gruffudd), he waited approximately 20 minutes after the sinking to begin the process of freeing up a lifeboat to look for survivors. His whole operation took about 45 minutes. Jack and Rose would have been in the water for probably close to an hour.

Question: When George Clooney and Matt Damon are going to break into the vault they have two small silver round disks that they slide towards the guards. You see these disks pop open but don't see any type of gas or vapor emerge. Any idea what those things were?

Answer: According to the script, they are gas pellets. Most gases are invisible, but a lot of movies show visible vapour for theatrical effect.

Sierra1

Question: Neither Dunbar nor the non-commissioned officer he talks to just before he makes his suicide run at the beginning of the film appear to have to trouser stripe common to officers and non-commissioned officers. Shouldn't they as part of the Union uniform of the era?

Answer: There were variations of the stripes depending on which branch of the Army a soldier was in. The trousers were sky blue and NCOs had a dark blue (infantry), red (artillery) or yellow (cavalry) stripe down the leg. Junior officers which included corporals, had a French blue stripe. Senior officers wore navy blue trousers with a black or gold stripe.

raywest

Question: Why did Lanning build a robot that functioned independently of the USR mainframe, had alloys strong enough to endure vast drops and steal nanites, had a pre-programmed knowledge of Spooner... And then tell it to kill him? Furthermore, it is Sonny's own suggestion to kill Viki with nanites, so why didn't Lanning just get him to jump out the lab and do that, or at least convey a less cryptic message about what was going on?

Answer: People would not likely listen to just the robot. By killing himself he ensured that Spooner would take him seriously. This would also keep VIKI from finding out and planning around it.

Greg Dwyer

But why couldn't Lanning just kill VIKI in the first place?

Because VIKI basically had complete control over him. She could lock him in the lab, stop his access to information, stop him from communicating with others, etc... Developing Sonny allowed him to deceive VIKI and still kill her in the end.

Answer: VIKI was too powerful to fight on his own. VIKI could control the robots.

Question: When 'Jerome' has his blood tested with the syringe, and jumps up pretending to be in pain, he puts his own test tube down on the trolley, but the sample from his arm was in the syringe; why does the doctor not realise that it's not his? Is he in on it, or is the syringe suppose to be filling from the test tube, like the finger print capsules?

Bryn Charles

Chosen answer: Jerome does a little sleight of hand, switching the vials.

Greg Dwyer

Question: I guess I fell asleep, but what is significant about the unrecorded flight that left 7 hours earlier?

Answer: It means Colonel Jessup was lying about the 6am flight being the first flight off the base. He says a few times, and Kaffe confirms it several other times, that after they made the decision to transfer him (which was itself a lie), the next possible flight was 6am the following day. That was incorrect; there was one that left at 11pm that same day. The missing flight proves that Jessup altered the Gitmo log books to remove the 11pm flight, but the Andrews log books will show that same flight landing, thus demonstrating both the lie and the cover-up.

Answer: It would show that the colonel was lying about getting Santiago out of there as soon as possible.

Greg Dwyer

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