Question: How come there were suddenly dead Greeks lying on the beach, apparently killed by plague? Was there really a plague or what happened?
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: In the scene where Ripley is describing the new Alien, she says it 'moves different to the other ones'. I could never get a good enough look at the alien to understand what she meant. What did she mean and why does it move differently?
Answer: She means that the alien it moves on 4 legs, whereas the other aliens moved primarily on two legs. This alien came out of a dog in the theatrical version and from an ox in the Assembly cut version, which can only move on 4 legs. This hints to the fact that the alien inherits the characteristics of its host.
Question: I don't get the Michael Jackson scene where he goes out the window, and Charlie Sheen finds his body (which doesn't look real) and then something is running in the bushes. Does anyone know just what exactly is going on there?
Answer: It was an alien in a Michael Jackson skin. He shed it and ran off into the bushes.
Question: Does anyone know if they are really going to make a sequel (Kung Pow: Tongue of Fury)? Or was this just a simple joke at the end to get one last laugh?
Answer: If they do, it will come out in 2006, as it says on IMBD.
Question: When Aladdin is thrown into the water by the guards and the Genie turns into a sub to save him, the sub-Genie speaks something in what sounds like German. What does he say?
Answer: Nothing. He was babbling it. Even the closed captions say " (babbling the German language)," which means he wasn't saying anything real in German; he was just mimicking it and speaking gibberish.
Question: Maybe this is just an assumption of mine, but since Malcolm is dead why can't he see the other dead people, ie the three hanging in the school?
Answer: Cole explains this. During the hospital scene when he tells his secret, he describes the dead people he sees as "Walking around like regular people. The don't see each other. They only see what they wanna see. They don't know they're dead". This explains many things in the movie, including why Malcolm can't see the ghosts, why he can't see his blood-stained shirt (till the very end), why he doesn't see the table blocking the basement door, etc. I believe that Cole sees him just how he looked when he died - blue work shirt with the massive blood stain at the back, while we see Malcolm throughout the movie as he perceives himself - no blood, overcoat when he's outside, etc.
Answer: When Bob Morton is told by a tech that one of Murphy's arm was saved, Bob stated that he wants total body prosthesis. Meaning Robocop's entire body was synthetic. None of his actual body was used. The only thing that was used was Murphy's actual face.
Also, his human brain, and possibly his spine, where OCP could wire him into the suit.
Answer: Most of his head and brain, about 40% of his upper torso, none of his pelvic area or limbs.
Question: What is this reference to "Fried Gold" mean? I'm sorta late on UK slang.
Answer: I took it to mean "Better than good" because say you have a candy bar, how do you make it better? Deep fry. So Gold is something precious and amazing. The only possible way to make it better would be to fry it.
Answer: According to IMDB : The phrase "fried gold" originated behind the scenes of Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson and Edgar Wright's sitcom "Spaced" (1999) and was mentioned several times on the DVD commentaries for that series. It makes several fan-pleasing appearances in the film.
Question: In the final battle scene, the samurai army is shown as having several dozen footmen who were not casualties. Additionally, the archers did not appear to have taken more than light casualties. Yet the final charge was made by by a small group (30-50) samurai. Why would Watanabe have used only a small portion of his army with so many support troops left?
Answer: Because they were the only ones with horses. Foot soldiers running across the field would be easily picked off, but charging horses are more difficult.
Question: I was told that all songs in the Monty Python series/movies were written and composed by either Eric Idle or Neil MacInnes. Is this true? If not, who else wrote or co-wrote songs?
Answer: "The Lumberjack Song" and "Spam" were written by Terry Jones and Michael Palin. "If I Were Not in the C.I.D." was written primarily by John Cleese. Other than those, and "Jerusalem," all songs for visual media were written by Eric Idle and Neil Innes (not MacInnes). Mind you, they all wrote more songs that appear on the albums.
Question: Why would the impostor queen still be pretending while everyone was on the royal ship? Who is the queen hiding from when the only people around are her security force and two Jedi? What is gained by keeping the Jedi in the dark?
Answer: Nothing. But nothing was lost, either. Captain Panaka was probably in charge of the deception, and he makes it clear that he is not the most trusting of people, even of Jedi. They probably just thought, if no one knew, then no one could accidentally tell anyone else (it's harder to act that you don't know something than it is to actually not know something).
Question: I know that Monty Python usually played female roles themselves, but they had actors such as Carol Cleveland to fill roles when necessary. My question is, aside from Ms. Cleveland, who else, if anyone, played a recurring role as "extra"? I hope that makes sense.
Answer: Ian Davidson, Connie Booth and Lyn "Mrs. Idle" Ashley appeared quite often, as did the Fred Tomlinson Singers (whenever a male chorus was required).
Question: At Darrin's home from prison party, he tells one of his friends, "I can read, I ain't no criminal." How are the two related?
Answer: The majority of people who commit small crimes, or even some major ones, are people that drop out of schools, and are mostly or completely illiterate. This is especially true in larger cities and people from a poor neighborhood.
Answer: Prisons are built on third grade reading scores. They feel if you can't read by the time you reach the third grade you will commit crimes and go to jail. Most prisoners are illiterate.
Chosen answer: It only took me a couple of seconds to find a fan site with a credible answer. Apparently, in an early draft, Marty mentions in passing that Doc hired him to clean out his garage for fifty bucks and total access to his record collection. This scene was presumably never shot, thus the backstory was lost to time. See www.kristensheley.com/bttf/bttfuniverse.html for more extensive info.
Question: In the next few months, the Extended Edition version will be released. Why did Peter Jackson remove about fifty minutes of footage (which will appear in the Extended Edition) for the theatrical release?
Chosen answer: The movie was already 3 hours long and he removed footage not strictly necessary to make it that length. Movies are shown to test audiences for things like length, proper ending etc. His said that while good, it was just too long.
Question: When Brad Pitt and the Prince fight outside Troy and Pitt is the victor, is there any reason why they began with spears and then when they went, they used their swords? How come they didn't just use their swords to begin with as you see in many movies of the same genre?
Chosen answer: Homer describes the fight as having taken place in The Iliad using spears, not swords - they threw spears at each other in turn, and with Athena's help Achilles (Pitt) struck Hector (Bana), killing him. The movie uses swords to make the fight visually more exciting, but features spears as a nod to the original.
Also in those days the spear was the primary weapon that was used to fight with. The sword was always a secondary or back up weapon. This is often misrepresented in movies.
Question: What's the significance, if any, of Miranda Frost being stabbed through "The Art Of War"?
Chosen answer: Frost is proud of her martial skills and Sun Tzu's Art of War is considered to be one of the classic texts on warfare, but that's about as far as it goes.
Question: Were any of O.J. Simpson's scenes cut due to his then-impending murder trial?
Answer: According to the IMDB, the only scene cut out was an extended version of Norberg and Ed's visiting Dreben near the beginning of the film. So you can assume the rest of Simpson's scenes were left in.
Answer: O.J. Simpson's murder trial wasn't then pending. This movie came out on March 18, 1994. Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered on June 12, 1994. In fact, O.J., Nicole and their kids attended the premiere of Naked Gun 33 1/3 together.
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Answer: In The Iliad, there was a plague sent by Apollo about 9 years into the war in revenge for Agamemnon keeping Chryses as a slave - her father was a priest and prayed to Apollo for vengeance. There's no real explanation given in the movie (since they've essentially written the gods out of it). They could well have faked up some bodies to look like that as an explanation for their sudden departure to the Trojans.
Shay