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: Why does Thomas Reynolds want the telecommunications security and privacy act to be passed into law so bad that he has a congressman killed? To advance his career?

Answer: Yes, and to increase the importance of his agency.

David Mercier

Question: In the scene when Joel is a child with the red cape, he smashes something in a red wagon with a hammer. What was it that he smashed?

T Poston

Chosen answer: A dead bird.

Nick N.

Question: Yoda always makes a huge deal about Anakin's age in Episode 2, being too old to start training as a Jedi. Yet in Episode 5, he barely hesitates before training Luke, a full grown man. We are made to think that even a young boy is a lost cause, so wouldn't a man be impossible to train? Unlike Anakin, Luke had never displayed any Force characteristics (except for piloting in the Battle of Yavin).

Answer: In Episode 1, he's clearly reluctant to train Anakin at all, obviously sensing something that troubles him. The age issue may have been something of a smokescreen, but it is clear that Jedi training starts at a very early age - Anakin is well past that age already. With training Luke in Episode 5, what other choice does Yoda have? If the Emperor and Vader are to be brought down, it's pretty much Luke, Leia (who obviously has the same age issues) or nobody.

Tailkinker

Question: Why is it that we never see the Blair Witch? Also the cover is very convincing that this is a true story. Is it?

Answer: The Blair Witch does not exist. The reason you didn't see is it is an abstract concept. What you can't see is scarier because you make her up in your own mind. It is a complete hoax of a story. The three actors have been doing many other acting jobs since, especially Heather and Josh.

William Bergquist

Question: When Reese hot wires the car what's the name of the song that starts playing?

Answer: When they are in the car park? If that's the case, it's just called Tunnel Chase - written specifically for the film. It is located on the official soundtrack.

Sam Johnson

Question: Why does Obi-Wan freely admit he is a Jedi, when he is supposedly in hiding from Vader? He sure made no secret of his last name.

Answer: It's a very large galaxy - Vader's hardly going to track down some old hermit living out in the middle of nowhere on a backwards planet based purely on a surname that, for all we know, might be quite a common one, and remember that nobody knows him as 'Obi-wan', only as Ben. The only person that he admits to being a Jedi to is Luke, who's not going to go running to the Empire to turn in a man who was a friend of his fathers. Everyone else seems to regard him as a crazy old hermit, not a Jedi Knight or anything like that. Okay, he cuts loose with his sabre in the Mos Eisley cantina, but (a) he's about to leave the planet anyway and (b) it's not as if he had a lot of choice. By the time that Vader might hear about it, he'll be long gone.

Tailkinker

Question: What is the music in the trailer for the film called?

Answer: It was taken from various sources, most notably the films Backdraft and Drop Zone (music by Hans Zimmer) and Danny Elfman's score for Planet of the Apes. There's also a piece of music used called "Voices of War" by X-Ray Dog.

Tailkinker

Good Times With Weapons - S8-E1

Question: In the middle there's a rather humorous song in what's supposed to sound like Japanese. Does it have a literal translation? I know that Trey Parker went to the University of Colorado with a double major in Music and Japanese, so it wouldn't surprise me if the entire song was just a long, dirty, sentence since he was perfectly capable of doing it. Anyone know?

Answer: According to tvtome.com the translation is: You have an awesome penis, I see the hair on your balls, Sounds like a baby monkey, No, no it's ninjas, "hey Hey Let's Go!" we fight, It's really important to "protect my balls", It's my bad "so let's fighting", Let's fighting Love... This song is dumb, it makes no sense, The English is bad, but it's ok, we do it all the time, "hey Hey Let's Go!" we fight.

Myridon

Question: In the Ultimate Edition DVD, after the T-1000 has 'regrouped' after the liquid nitrogen death, his hands and feet take on the pattern of whatever he touches, for example to yellow and black stripes on the rail or the floor pattern. Why does happen and why was it left out of the movie? It's actually the reason John recognises the fake Sarah as an illusion.

Answer: It's one of several things that were cut from the original theatrical release for time reasons; James Cameron likes longer movies than studios like to release. The constant morphing indicates that whatever computer mechanism controls the T-1000 has been damaged: it is no longer able to choose what it copies but copies everything it samples to some extent. From a critic's point of view, this isn't necessary for John to recognize his mother because it's more interesting and intuitive if he "just knows".

Phoenix

Solitudes - S1-E18

Question: Since the DHD on the Antarctica gate would still have to have the symbol for Earth as the point of origin, why couldn't they just take that DHD and attach it to the gate in SGC it would make dialing out faster and they could beat a Goa'uld attack by dialing out faster than the Goa'uld could dial in.

Answer: In "48 Hours", it was revealed that the Antarctic gate stopped working shortly after it was discovered. As one of the oldest DHDs in the galaxy, it simply ran out of power. Also note that the Antarctic gate and the Giza gate have different symbols for their points of origin, so their DHDs might not have been interchangable, anyway.

Question: It's obviously simple to build a robot that can understand and speak English. Even droids working as short order cooks can speak English, as far back as Episode 2. So why can't R2 talk? He's a friggin' mechanic, he needs to be able to speak with the humans he works for. I know his primary function isn't communication but if 90% of the droids in Star Wars have a speech function surely R2 could have one.

Answer: R2's job is astromech droid and in-flight mechanic, which means that he's supposed to be locked into a fighter most of the time. When that is the case, he can communicate with the pilot through the computer (as seen in Empire Strikes Back, I believe). Since the builders didn't anticipate how much wandering around he would be doing, they didn't see a need to build in a speech function and instead spent that space on extra tools and repair programming. How many astromechs do you see wandering around the Star Wars universe and interacting with people?

Phoenix

Question: What is Gollum? I thought he was supposed to have once been a hobbit but what happened to him?

Answer: He was indeed a hobbit, probably of the Stoor sub-race. After the finding of the Ring, he fell under its influence and he took it. The Ring kept him alive, prolonging his life far beyond the norm (he's around 500 years old at the time of the films). His physical change is related to the Ring - the precise mechanism is unclear, but it's most likely due to repeated exposure to the wraithworld that parallels our own; wearers of the Ring are transported at least partially into that world, rendering them invisible in ours. The same process happened with the kings who became the Nazgul.

Tailkinker

Question: Why was the choice made to create an original story rather than base the movie directly on the game? While there are game references and little details, much of the story was original material. Almost everyone I know is very angry that the games were disregarded so much.

Answer: It was original for two reasons. 1) there are so many games - RE, RE2, RE: Nemesis, RE 0, RE Code Veronica - that it would be impossible to pick one game to base the movie on that all the players of the series would approve of. Theoretically, making it original prevented gamers from complaining that they picked a bad storyline. The constant references to the different games were supposed to placate your friends. 2) the director naturally wants to add some of his own style to the movie, not just copy what was already done in a game.

Phoenix

Show generally

Question: Can someone please tell me which season and the name of the episode is the one where Frank buys the two sets of pearl necklaces, (one to give to Margaret and one to give to his wife)?

Answer: Season 3, "Payday" is the episode.

Myridon

Question: I need this answered. My wife and I saw The Forgotten movie tonight, and we noticed MAJOR MISTAKES. We literally saw microphones hanging over their head dozens of times. Let me repeat that...DOZENS OF TIMES. I have to know if this was on purpose, because on the net some say they saw the same thing and others said they never noticed it... It happened so often it was distracting... DOZENS OF TIMES.

Answer: When movies are made the actual picture captured onto the film is larger than what is intended to be shown in the theater. The projector in the theater is supposed to be adjusted to not show this portion of the film, however occasionally the projector gets out of whack and you get to see all the trash at the top or the bottom that wasn't supposed to be there. Sometimes when a movie is "panned and scanned" to fit TV screens some of this trash also accidentally sneaks in. It's the cinema's fault, not the movie.

Myridon

Question: I can understand how zombie saliva can spread the disease, but how can scratches spread the disease?

Answer: If the scratch itself draws blood and the zombie which inflicted it had his own (or another's infected) blood or saliva, the victim then becomes infected too.

Question: Why does Nicholas Cage keep doing things 3 times? He opens the door, unlocks it, and a few other things three times.

Answer: His character has obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The primary trait of OCD is that you do things over and over, often for a set amount of times.

Xofer

Question: I have looked all over the web for the wav of the sound Goofy makes whenever he is falling, which he does at least once in every cartoon he is in. It sounds like 'yah-ha-ha-hooey.' I have never found it, so can someone point me to where I might be able to download it?

Answer: Took about 1 minute to Google this: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/7451/sounds.html.

Myridon

Question: There is something I have always wondered about spoofs: Do they actually get permission from the makers of the films they spoof?

Answer: Nope. Parodies aren't usually covered by copyright laws as they are generally considered to be as example of fair usage, provided that it can be demonstrated that the copyrighted material was used in a manner that is considered to be a commentary, ridicule or criticism of that material.

Tailkinker

Question: Towards the beginning, after the guard captain beats up the fat guy, the says "call the trustees and have them take him to the infirmary." What are the "trustees"?

rstill

Chosen answer: As referenced in this movie, trustees are prisoners that have earned the right to work in parts of the prison - in this case, the hospital wing. The name implies that they can be trusted to do the required work with minimal supervision.

BGraz

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.