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: If the wormhole was sent to help the human race, why put it out by Saturn? If it was meant to encourage humanity to redevelop spaceflight, it could have done that closer to earth.

Answer: It was never explained, so any answer is speculative. However, as a plot symbolism, Wiki Fandom suggests: Saturn is the Roman god of the harvest and visually impressive; it makes sense for the wormhole to be there thematically. As possible homage, Saturn's orbit is where the Monolith was in 2001: A Space Odyssey as well (in the book only; in the movie it was Jupiter). Saturn's rings also mimic the shape of the accretion disk around Gargantua.

raywest

Question: I am not sure of the overall logic of the plot makes sense. If Musgrave's intention as a mole is to make sure the rabbit is sold to the middle eastern buyers so that there can be a pre-emptive military strike by the US, why did he interfere in the first place with the transaction by sending Ethan? He could have just let events take their course. Am I missing something?

Answer: Davian and Musgrave need Ethan to steal the Rabbit's Foot for them, which is why they get him involved and lure him to Shanghai. Once he does, they force him to confirm it's the real thing by threatening "Julia." Lastly Musgrave wants him to confirm that Lindsey thought Brassel was the mole and not him so that he can order the strike without suspicion. Musgrave doesn't send Ethan to interfere with the transaction - Ethan escapes and tracks Julia's location, which is not what Musgrave wanted or expected to happen.

Sierra1

Why would Davian need Ethan to steal when he could just sent one of his henchmen to do it?

Show generally

Question: Why does Oliver Gates come up with ridiculous reasons for the people he defends whenever they commit murder? In the episode "Hate", Sean Webster was killing Muslims and Oliver claims that his hatred was genetic but, it was found out that Sean had been raised to hate Muslims after his dad left his mom and married a muslim. In the episode "Game" a guy is murdering people the exact same way that's done in a video game when it's clear the suspect is using the video game as a scapegoat for his crimes.

Answer: His clients are guilty and won't take a plea. He's using desperate defenses in hopes of swaying a juror or two. Also makes for better television. "Temporary insanity" isn't nearly as compelling as "the video games made me do it."

Brian Katcher

Answer: They are shown descending down from a satellite. It's reasonable to say they return to space when not in use. And also they can just encase themselves in more illusions to stay hidden regardless of where they go.

Quantom X

Question: Why is Peggy Wood's face in shadows the entire time sing she is singing "Climb every mountain?" One cannot see her face at all until the very end of the song. During the other songs everyone else got a full face shot. I feel like she wasn't getting full credit.

Answer: This was probably a deliberate artistic choice. Mother Abbess (Peggy Wood) is singing the song directly to Maria, telling her to follow her dream and not remain cloistered in the convent (in the shadows like her). The strongest lighting is always on Maria's face, and she is framed in a pyramid shape of light on the wall, always keeping the audience's focus on her.

raywest

Answer: Peggy Wood could not sing the song, so they had to bring in a vocal double which meant she had to lip-sync, something she was unable to do perfectly.

Answer: The director explains this choice in his commentary on the DVD. He'd seen a stage version where the presence of the Mother Abbess was too dominant during 'Climb Every Mountain' and he wanted to make sure that didn't happen in his film. So he focused more on the setting and on Maria's face and reactions.

Answer: It was apparently embarrassing and ridiculous, enough that Natalie tried to burn it. It's funnier if you let the viewer image what it looked like.

Brian Katcher

Christopher - S4-E3

Question: How could Bobby be talking to Karen when she had just died in the car accident? he was stuck in traffic talking to her on the phone, and the traffic was caused by her accident, so she would already be dead.

Answer: Bobby Jr. was talking to his son (Bobby III) on the phone, not Karen. Karen couldn't get a hold of Bobby Jr, so she called her son and told him to give his dad a message. For whatever reason, Bobby III waited to call his dad (perhaps he couldn't get a hold of him at first as well). During this time, Karen had her accident and traffic backed up enough for Bobby Jr. to be stuck in it.

Bishop73

Thank you.

Answer: The criteria for being cursed were never accurately established in the film. All we have is the words of the specialist: "You're cursed. [...] Dia de Los Muertos is the day of giving to the dead! You stole from the dead!" This seems to imply that the act of theft must have taken place on Dia de Los Muertos and the owner of the stolen object must have been dead.

FleetCommand

Answer: In my opinion, I would say it may have been specified in Hector's will that his guitar would go to Ernesto in the event of early death.

Answer: I think it has to do with blood relations.

Quantom X

Ernesto and Hector aren't related.

Answer: According to IMDB, he was Charles.

Question: Why does Mola Ram only use the kids and not the adults from the Village for slave labor? Wouldn't using the adults benefit them much more? Does he just think that children make better workers than adults twice their size and strength?

Answer: Adults are much stronger and smarter, making them a liability to enslave and could more easily revolt or escape. Children are far easier to intimidate and control.

lionhead

Question: Is it actually possible to break apart solid metals such as the trailer hook as was done in the movie?

Answer: Yes. Freezing it with liquid nitrogen made it brittle. When hit with the hammer it smashed.

Ssiscool

Question: After the scene where Jack convinces Kenny to give up his "woobie" for a couple days, he's in the kitchen and throws some noodle like things into a boiling pan. They immediately boil up and start to go in every direction soon looking like a mop head. What was it he threw in that pan and why did it react that way?

Quantom X

Answer: Deep-fried rice noodles. I believe they're known as cellophane noodles. That's actually how they react. You heat oil in a pan and when the noodles hit the oil they "explode" like what you see in the film.

Question: After an examination, Patrick, Anne and Dennis are told that as part of the quarantine, they can't have sex for ten days. Why? Excluding the fact that Patrick and Anne had been infected, what would happen to all three if they had sex before the quarantine was up?

Answer: Nothing would happen to them. The restriction on sexual activity was to keep them from spreading any potential contaminants through bodily fluids. It's nonsense because there are plenty of ways to spread bodily fluids that don't involve sexual contact and 10 days seems arbitrary, but it fits with the overall erotic themes of the film series to have the quarantine specify no sexual intercourse.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: Here are a couple of questions: 1) Let's say Anakin let Mace Windu slay Chancellor Palpatine / Darth Sidious. If that happened, would Anakin have been kicked off the Jedi Council because Windu told Anakin to wait at the Jedi Temple and not interfere? 2) Would Anakin have been promoted to Jedi Master if he stayed behind and let Windu kill Palpatine? You would think that because prior to that Windu tells Anakin, "you will have gained my trust."

Answer: 1) It is unlikely given the situation that had Windu killed Palpatine, Anakin would be punished at all for defying Windu. It would only have helped Windu's case that he wasn't assassinating Palpatine because Anakin was now a witness. 2) Likely he would have been promoted, the darkness that surrounded Anakin and his unusual relationship with Palpatine is all that kept him from achieving the rank.

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: Why didn't Beth or Josh report Jacob to the faculty for everything he was doing in terms of bothering Beth? Jacob tells Josh to back off because Beth is "spoken for", he tries to win Beth at EL's party, but gets ignored by EL after Josh can't outbid him anymore, so Josh ends up winning, and he even tries to get Josh expelled from Ithaca University by pretending to be his Ancient Philosophy teacher and telling him that he can take his exam at a later date when Josh phones him from a payphone whilst on the road trip to Austin.

Answer: It's funnier if Jacob constantly bothers the characters and gets away with it, and receives his comeuppance in the end in an over the top manner (he forms a suicide cult but is the only member that actually kills himself).

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: Two questions are puzzling me. 1. Considering the tactics that Ray used to take control of McDonald's from the brothers, couldn't it be said that he cheated and conned the brothers out of their restaurant? 2. When Ray visits Mac in the hospital, he offers him a blank check to which the brothers agree. Why would they agree to such a thing instead of fighting to get their restaurant back?

Answer: 1. Yes, he pretty much cheated them out of their restaurant, royalties, intellectual property, etc. 2. Ray elaborates on this towards the end of the film when is on the phone with them. He's generated so much revenue from his real estate venture that he can afford to tie them up in court for years and drown them in legal fees if they decided to sue him for breach of contract. This is why they decide to surrender the company and everything that came with it in exchange for $1 million each and 1% perpetuity, the latter of which they never received.

Phaneron

Mistaken Identity - S1-E6

Question: Why does Carlton believe that his driving too slow was the reason he got pulled over? Will even stated that the real reason they were pulled over is because two black people driving an expensive car in a lower-middle income neighborhood looked suspicious. It was a case of racial profiling but, at the end of the episode, Carlton still believed it was because he drove too slowly.

Answer: Because Carlton is naive, trusting, and optimistic. He lived a pretty sheltered life in Bel-Air and just doesn't think police officers would do anything unjust. At this point in his life, he just hasn't gone through the things Will has to make him think otherwise.

Bishop73

Question: When Val and Earl first come into Perfection the sign says population 14. If you add up all the characters in the movie excluding Rhonda, there's 14 people. The question is who is taking care of Melvin?

Answer: According to one of the writers, his parents were both immature ne'er-do-wells who would often abandon him for long stretches of time. So he's pretty much on his own. Hence, his parents are not counted on the population sign, since they're barely there for him. It's also mentioned in the original script (which can be found online) that they spend a lot of their time in Las Vegas, presumably gambling. (Val says the line "Why don't his parents ever take him to Vegas with them?" in regards to Melvin in scene 13).

TedStixon

Answer: His Uncle Nestor.

To my knowledge, nothing in the film indicates Nestor is related to Melvin.

TedStixon

When Nester dies, Melvin lets the audience know that was his dad.

Um... no. No he doesn't. All he does when Nester dies is shout "No way, man! You guys have gotta do something!" to Val and Earl. He definitely never says Nester was his dad. As I said above, the writers have specifically said his parents were immature ne'er-do-wells who just aren't around most of the time. In fact, it's even mentioned in the original script that his parents were often away in Las Vegas rather than taking care of him.

TedStixon

Question: In real life, had Tarzan been raised by apes from the time he was a baby, would he have actually been able to be educated to act and speak like an ordinary person?

Answer: I'd have to disagree with the previous answer. Being that Tarzan was raised by apes from infancy, there are many higher-level brain functions that he (in real life) would never have completely developed, such as upright walking and other motor skills, cognitive and speech abilities, social interaction, and so on. There are some vital human-brain capacities that if not learned at certain stages of early-childhood, cannot or can only partially be learned later. However, it is highly unlikely an infant could survive long in such an environment.

raywest

That is a very valid point.

Quantom X

I actually agree with this answer. Thanks.

Answer: Any answer would be speculative at this point since we don't have enough examples of feral children living in the wild until Tarzan's age. Most children that become feral either start out at an older age, 5 or 7, where they know how to speak a language, or are found before they hit puberty. This makes teaching and integration somewhat easier. There was a case of a boy living in the wild for 15+ years that still had difficulty interacting with society even in his 60's and 70's. He had the ability to speak but eventually lost it as he became more feral and he had huge difficulties understanding technology, like radio and cinemas. In all probability, Tarzan, and similar characters, would not be able to learn how to communicate, even if he could learn to speak English. He would have an even more difficult time learning how to socialize and live as "normal" adults do. And I could not see any possibility he teaches himself how to read and speak English, or any language.

Bishop73

Answer: In the books, Tarzan was self-taught after he discovered the house his father built. He learned to read English using the elementary books his parents brought with them to teach the child they were expecting, these books were in the house. While studying these books, he mimicked many of the things he saw in pictures, which could have included walking upright. He did not learn to speak English until he was a young adult after traveling to Europe. Also, after rescuing Paul D'Arnot in Africa, the French officer taught Tarzan French as the two of them left Africa for Europe.

Noman

Yes, but the question was could he "in real life" be educated and learn to speak like an ordinary person if he had been raised by apes from the time he was a baby. You are only describing how Tarzan accomplished that fictionally in the book. In real life, that could not have happened.

raywest

Just adding a little perspective, which is why I qualified it to what was in the books.

Noman

Answer: Given enough time, yes. Even though the best time to learn a second language is when a person is a kid, many adults of various ages despite speaking one language all their lives, are able to learn a different one and be fluent with it given enough time and practice.

Quantom X

Question: Why did Jason Voorhees not tell his mother he was alive? This sequel shows he's alive, and she wouldn't be murdering people if she knew he wasn't dead.

Athletic Jason

Answer: The way I understand it, they just never crossed paths again after his incident. She's not exactly been hanging out around the lake where he went under. Jason has some heavy mental issues to boot and wouldn't know how to find her till it was too late. He was a lost scared little boy.

Quantom X

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