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: Does Hanzo have the katana with him from the beginning? My brother thinks he picked it up in Nolan's hideout, but I'm pretty sure a Yakuza would know how to conceal a katana, and in any case, it just makes more sense that way. Which of us is right?

Answer: Your brother is correct, he picked it up at Noland's hideout.

GalahadFairlight

Answer: When he found it in Nolen's hideout, he noticed how old the sword was and therefore made the comment about the Predators doing this for a very long time.

lartaker1975

Question: What was the eventual fate of the Earth President? His 'A113' message ends with him muttering about "getting the hell out of here" which would suggest he went on the space liners with the other humans but no further mention is ever made of him.

Answer: He almost certainly boarded the Axiom, and lived out the remainder of his days in luxury.

Phixius

Actually, I think he stayed on earth. In the message, he says Earth is beyond saving, and that everyone should remain in space and not return to earth. He then puts on a gas mask, accepting that Earth is a lost cause. There'd be no need for a gas mask if he was aboard the Axiom. Also, we see the message was sent to the Axiom in 2110. If you look at the date of the 1st captain, it is 2105. So, he stayed on earth to clean up the planet, and after 5 years they deemed it a lost cause and sent that message.

jshy7979

Question: I am confused about a scene near the beginning of the film, when all the SPECTRE agents, among them Largo (Adolfo Celi), are in a secret room being quizzed by the unseen Blofeld (number 1). At one point, an agent named Number 11 is talking about money he and Number 9 (seated to his left) collected. Blofeld says "One of you is guilty of embezzlement." Number 11 has a guilty look on his face, and Number 9 gives him a smug look. It's as if Number 11 is about to be "punished" and he expects it, but suddenly, Number 9 is electrocuted in his chair and dumped beneath the floor. Afterwards, Number 11 is seen wiping his sweaty face. What exactly happened? Were Numbers 11 and 9 in cahoots and Number 9 was the only one that was caught? Did Number 9 set up Number 11 to look guilty and was found out by SPECTRE and punished accordingly? Or did SPECTRE simply make a mistake and kill the wrong guy?

Answer: They're both embezzling. Number 11 expects that he's about to be caught and Number 9 might have tried to pin his own embezzlement on 11, but Number 1 saw through it.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: Why does Doc suddenly change his ideas (about time travel and not learning too much of your own future) in Part 2? In Part 1, he was determined not to learn too much about his own future, despite Marty trying to warn him that his life depended on it. But in Part 2, suddenly it's okay to bring Marty to the future and give him enough information to try to change the course of destiny for his son. Also, wouldn't it have just been easier to warn Marty about the accident he was going to have that caused his life to go so wrong to begin with? One would have to think that if Marty becomes successful and lives out an entirely different life, then maybe his son doesn't turn into such a wimp.

unicorngoddess

Chosen answer: Marty's saving his life with the note made him realize that some events are worth tampering with. He wasn't aware that Marty's entire life had taken a wrong turn, he'd just read that his son goes to prison after the robbery and takes action on that one thing.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: When Captain Marshfield goes to arrest Captain Cummins, he says, "You gave intel to a foreign government" (or something like that). What is Marshfield referring to?

Answer: He gave the Russians EDI's energy signature so they could shoot him down, which is pretty classified information.

Brad

Question: The trivia for this movie says that a cameo of a toy from Toy Story 2 appears during the credits. I did not notice this cameo. What toy was it, and what happens in the scene?

Answer: I believe it is the cameo of Emperor Zurg, who was last seen playing catch with his "son". This is the only character of significance that I noticed in the credits, though knowing Pixar there may well be more.

Craig Thompson

Question: Can someone please tell me why Stark brought strawberries when he visits Pepper in her office? He knows that she is allergic to them and we know that he likes/loves her, but it was a spiteful and mean thing to do. Not to mention insensitive. If he did that just to get the model, couldn't he had done it differently? The whole idea just doesn't make sense to me.

Answer: He wanted to do something nice for her, but since he is a pretty self-absorbed, shallow multi-billionaire, he forgot about her allergy. He remembered that there was SOMETHING about her and strawberries, but misremembered and thought it meant she really liked them. He makes a simple human mistake, not out of meanness or spite, but because he honestly does not remember.

Twotall

Answer: I've only watched this movie once but I think he got the strawberries from the man on the side of the road, and he just didn't want them. The man did just place them on the seat of Tony's car.

He stopped on the side of the road to get the strawberries. The man didn't throw them into his car as he drove by.

lionhead

Question: Right after the Jamaicans kill Ramon Vega and the predator slaughters all of them, Jerry Lambert says, "she (Ramon's girlfriend) never made it". What could she have died of? She was seen walking with Leona Cantrell and didn't seem wounded, and the predator would not have hurt her because she was unarmed. If she were wounded, she would have been checked out by paramedics right away. (00:31:20)

Chosen answer: Jerry means she never made it to the hospital. Keyes' goon squad intercepted the ambulance and snatched her to interrogate her about the Predator.

Grumpy Scot

Question: Is the scene where Will smith recites all the movie dialogue while it is playing in the original Richard Matheson novel, or was it just a homage to The Omega man (where Charlton Heston does something similar)?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: It's an homage to the Omega Man.

Grumpy Scot

Question: According to the president's addresses EVE was part of the Axiom's crew since it first left Earth, meaning that she and WALL-E would have been manufactured around the same time since he was intended to start cleaning the planet up right after humanity evacuated. Why then do the two have such a major difference in their looks and technological standards if they were both intended for roughly the same behind the scenes purpose (at least in terms of wandering around wastelands and looking through trash)?

Answer: A few reasons, I guess. The Wall-E units were designed for constant, robust use (picking up and compacting garbage, then moving the garbage around), so they're going to be bulkier and have no bells and whistles. The EVE units are designed for relatively little usage (they check out a planet every now and then, and there are multiple units so each one isn't likely to get much use), so they can afford to be more techy. The Wall-E units were designed to work in a huge army to clean up earth, so they needed to be low cost (which often coincides with lower-tech), whereas the Eve units were relatively few, but important, so more money could be spent on each unit. Also the Eve units would be on the ships where the humans are, and likely to be seen by many people, so they had to look nice for them. The Wall-E units would be working unseen, so they can look ugly. It's basically the same reason why a harbour tug and a speedboat are so different in terms of aesthetics and technology, even though they're both made for powering through water.

Gary O'Reilly

Question: Okay, so help me out here. When someone still plugged into the Matrix dies from say, cancer or is hit by a car, does that mean the real world counterpart of that person has been completely drained of energy by the machines? When a human has served its purpose to the machines, do they alter the Matrix to make that person die? I'm very curious to know how how death works in the Matrix.

Brad

Chosen answer: Insofar as can be told from what little we know, the human body will continue to produce energy indefinitely, at least until it dies of old age or from some other cause - there appears to be no precedent for an individual to be fully drained by the machines. If an individual dies in some abnormal manner within the Matrix, such as a car crash, their body will die on the outside and will have to be disposed of. Otherwise, their body will presumably age normally until they expire of natural causes. As for how cancer might operate, we have no information. To theorise, as the digital body represents the actual body with reasonable accuracy, should an individual plugged into the Matrix develop cancer in their real body, then it's a plausible hypothesis that their digital self will demonstrate the same symptoms - the real and virtual afflictions will proceed at the same rate and the digital self will expire when the real body passes away.

Tailkinker

Question: How come Tony doesn't die when Pepper hits the button that blows up the roof? He never cleared the roof as intended and it must have been really powerful if it killed Obediah. Tony's chest piece flickers on and off and then the scene fades. They never give an explanation for this.

Answer: Tony, even wearing the Iron Man armour, is light enough that the shockwave of the blast throws him out of the way, so he escapes the majority of the explosion's effects. Stane, in his much heavier suit, isn't so lucky and so gets the full impact, which kills him. The flickering of the chest piece is merely a device to show that Tony is still in one piece, even if injured.

Tailkinker

Show generally

Question: My understanding of The Daleks is that they draw their power from their vertical shoulder slats. The new paradigm Daleks have no shoulder slats, so where are they drawing their power from?

Josman

Chosen answer: Don't know where you got that information from, but there doesn't seem to be much around to support it. Models of Dalek shown in very early episodes of the original series got their power from external sources, but since then they have operated entirely on unspecified internal power sources concealed within their armour. No reason to think that the new Daleks are any different.

Tailkinker

Question: I would like to know from a real Navy pilot if the scene is correct where Maverick's F-14 is right on Iceman's tail and he tells him to fly hard right to get out of his way. This leaves jet wash in his flight path and the jet goes down. Wouldn't a real pilot be trained to avoid this kind of danger from happening with the jet wash?

jcmann01

Answer: The original F-14A used the TF30 engine which was prone to compressor stall. This problem was fixed in later aircraft. https://theaviationist.com/2014/12/12/f-14b-engine-goose/.

Chosen answer: Probably not a lot of Navy fighter jocks on this site. Of course he'd be trained to avoid it, but Maverick is hyper-aggressive and is following Iceman way too closely. Had he been farther back he'd have avoided it.

Grumpy Scot

Question: I actually have two questions about this film. Firstly, does Rambo actually kill anyone in this film? Dennehy doesn't die and he didn't kill Galt so was there anyone else? And secondly when Rambo arrives at the cliff face, why didn't he simply run to his right or left? The police were only coming at him from behind (and even if one of them came from the side, Rambo could have used his skills to get past him). So why did he feel that going down the cliff was his only option?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: No he doesn't kill anyone. He didn't know if he was surrounded or not and if he did encounter one from the side they might have shot him.

Grumpy Scot

Question: When Chick's pit crew insults Guido, he yells back something in Italian. Can someone translate to English?

Answer: Guido says something like "Who do you think you're talking to? Who are you talking to?"

Question: Did anyone know that Gordon didn't actually die? Or were Batman or Dent in on the plan?

Answer: Given Dent's reaction after Gordon saves him it seems he had no idea. It seems by Batman's reaction in the armored car chase that he knew Gordon was the driver but it's not totally clear. Batman going to Gordon's house after his apparent death gives viewers the idea he also thought Gordon was dead. This may have just been Batman "playing to appearances" so to say. The way the chase ended seems to lead you to think Batman and Gordon had planned the whole thing together.

dablues7

Question: When Helen and Madelin are fighting with the shovels, Helen whacks off the end of Madelin's shovel, and then Madelin throws the stick through Helen. How did they achieve this effect?

curiouskid

Chosen answer: CGI, just like any other difficult effect.

Grumpy Scot

Question: If the ship's artillery is only equipped with 5-inch starburst rounds (as stated more than once), how do they use the much larger guns to sink the submarine?

Answer: The smaller guns were only equipped with the Starburst rounds. The 16 Inch Cannons were still supplied with live ammo. None of the characters left to fight had experience with the 16 inch guns except for the Gunner's Mate, therefore none of them thought to use one of the 16 inch guns.

dablues7

Question: When Slugworth is trying to bribe Charlie into bringing him the Everlasting Gobstopper, he says that his reward will be "10,000 of these" as he shows Charlie a bunch of money. Does anyone know what "those" were and how much "they" were worth? They look too big to be American dollars.

Paul Pepiton

Chosen answer: The story itself is purposely set in a fictional European country (accordingly to the DVD's audio commentary), so no real town or city can be identified (keeping the cities anonymity). Coupled with the fact that Willy Wonka IS a fantasy, the money offered to Charlie by Slugworth is of a non-descript denominational currency used in that country. It can be safely assumed that it was a very large sum of money.

CCARNI

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