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 is The Hoggett's granddaughter a spoiled brat and grandson very quiet?

Answer: Personality traits of brothers and sisters are not necessarily the same, even if the parents provide a stable environment for their children to grow up. The grandson could just easily been the spoiled brat of the family. In the context of the movie, one of the grandkids had to be the spoiled brat to carry the story along and show the love of the grand parents for them, even if one of them did not appreciate the hand made doll house he built for her.

Scott215

Answer: Being that close to active lava mean his clothes would easily catch on fire. Both Anakin and Obi-Wan were likely using the force in some way to shield themselves from the heat. Once Anakin was injured, he became vulnerable, and lying on the ground made that worse.

To be honest I think there was a spec of lava that caught him.

Answer: Teal'c had heard promises of freeing his people before. O'Neil struck him as the kind of man who was serious and could pull it off, so he decided to trust him and was proven right.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: After Wayne represents the Chiefs at their trial, his last words to them were in their language, and they responded in kind. What was said in their language, and the translation?

Answer: A ha alonney cha means live in harmony with the sun.

Question: Since David told McKittrick that he thought he was only playing a game and at the time didn't know that he hacked into WOPR, McKittrick tells him that they're still on Defcon 4. Why would it still be on Defcon 4 instead of it going back to Defcon 5 after David confessed everything?

Answer: The assistant to McKitrict explains that US is waiting to go back on DEFCON once the Russians do so.

Answer: McKittrick doesn't believe David. He thinks he's covering for accomplices...most likely Russian spies.

Question: When you look at Abuelita's ofrenda, the bottom row has more pictures of family members. Where were they during Día de Los Muertos? They couldn't have gone to the true afterlife since they were on the ofrenda right?

Answer: I believe they are in-laws. Hector said when trying to cross the petal bridge when impersonating Frida that he was probably on lots of ofrendas. So they could be visiting other family ofrendas. Also we saw that the riveira family didn't cross the bridge all at once as the twins came later so they possibly crossed over before the Miguel situation happened. Also when they went back to see Mama Imelda, they went back to an office where a lot of people were being held up like it was customs. So they also possibly could have affairs to sort out before being able to cross. But as the Riveira family made no attempt to contact them when looking for Miguel as they needed a family's blessing I would stick to the assumption that they are in-laws.

Answer: They simply didn't appear on the screen, and the film wasn't about them. That's all. By the way: "Abuelita" means "grandmother" in Spanish. The character's first name was Elena. (You probably know her last name was Rivera).

FleetCommand

Answer: These other ancestors may only be faces on the family's altar. Their photographs may still be put up, but if there are no anecdotes to remember them by, their names and faces may not be strong enough to count as being remembered.

Question: If Barbossa claimed he left Carina at an orphanage for her to have a better life, why would he let her be arrested and sent to death for alleged witchcraft?

Answer: After he left Carina at the orphanage, anything that happened to her as she got older, he wasn't made aware of. So he had no knowledge of her being arrested and sentenced to death for witchcraft. If he had, he probably would have gone to rescue Carina.

Question: Why does Sal take the dirty car out of the city parking lot and park it by the docks? If that's the drug car why would the French let him do that?

Answer: The parking laws in the 1970's were not as strict as they are today, leaving a car on the street is no different from parking on the curb in a suburban area. The car was supposed to be picked up by the mob.

Question: Wasn't the crew of the Black Pearl trapped in the bottle? I'm just wondering how Marty got out or why he made no appearance in "On Stranger Tides"?

Answer: There's no definitive answer to this because it was not explained what had happened to the rest of the crew or whether or not they were aboard the Black Pearl when it was shrunk. Only the monkey was shown to be on it.

raywest

Question: In the movie Detroit all the police cars had blue lights. Wasn't 1967 a bit early for blue lights? I'm thinking seventies.

Answer: Color photos from the incident as well as car restorer enthusiasts have shown that they already had blue lights. The Michigan State Police however used red lights.

Question: Why would Henry become a sailor in the British Royal Navy knowing he would be abused and mistreated by the Navy?

Answer: It was a common occupation for many men, who knew it was a hard life. Sailors were generally treated fairly and were well fed and housed as long they obeyed orders and followed the rules. Punishments for any wrong-doing could be moderate to severe depending on the circumstances. Henry knew this when he enlisted. He was not being abused. He was punished for having done something wrong.

raywest

Question: I know Voldemort has lost all faith in Lucius, but why break his wand when he is needing a wand to kill Harry?

THE GAMER NEXT DOOR

Answer: He didn't break it. Lucius' wand had some kind of custom-made handle which Voldemort snapped off when he confiscated it.

Brian Katcher

Answer: Lucius' wand was part of his walking stick. The wand, that was attached to an ornate silver handle, fit into the cane's shaft and was removable. Lucius can be seen removing the wand from the cane at the end of Chamber of Secrets when he was about to curse Harry. When Lucius hands the wand to Voldemort, the Dark Lord detaches the silver handle from it. The "snapping" that was heard was an added sound effect that was a bit overdone.

raywest

Answer: He's angry because one of his men was using one of their alien weapons out in the open.

Answer: He's been stealing advanced technology and money unimpeded for several years, but now Spider-Man has interfered in two of his heists. He's frustrated and concerned about what will happen if the Avengers catch onto him.

Phaneron

Question: Why did God choose Jerry to spread his word around to other people?

Answer: He tells Jerry he chose him specifically because he was an average person. As he put it "better than some, not as good as others."

Question: Where did the hijackers hide Julia?

Answer: They hid her in the avionics section. Stephanie would have made sure that she "searched" that section since she is one of the hijackers.

Which part of the avionics section? The nose of the plane?

The avionics section can be much larger than the nose of the plane. On a 747 for example, it's "1.7 metres tall, and about 60cms wide, but goes the full width of the plane." A photo is here, and you could easily stash a child in it. Http://www.billzilla.org/aviationpage3.html.

Jon Sandys

Actually if you look at the shape of the interior where they hid Julia you can tell that it's the nose of the plane, and it would have been far too full with all kinds of equipment to put a child inside.

OK, well there's already a mistake mentioning that, so there's your answer. In the plot they hide her in the nose, but in the real world that's impossible.

Jon Sandys

Question: What did Houston mean by they need Omni bravo?

Answer: The Apollo spacecraft had 4 omni-directional control antennas, designated A, B, C, and D. "Omni Bravo" was the B antenna. When Mission Control in Houston said they needed Omni Bravo, it meant they wanted Apollo 13 to try to activate the B antenna.

Charles Austin Miller

What were Omni-directional control antennas?

Omni Directional Control Antennas were capable of sending and receiving signals from any direction. The Apollo 13 spacecraft had 4 redundant antennas of this type, which allowed Mission Control in Houston to remotely control certain systems when necessary.

Answer: Omni directional antennas can broadcast in any direction at once, as opposed to one that can only broadcast to a particular spot.

stiiggy

Question: In Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Luke's replacement hand looks like a normal human one (though it was mechanical). In this film he has a more obviously robotic hand. Other than to remind today's audiences that he previously lost his hand, was there any point to this change?

Gavin Jackson

Answer: The outer skin could have been destroyed when Ben attacked Luke and ransacked the temple. We see Luke's robotic hand rise out of the rubble. Perhaps it had skin before that, and Luke never fixed it as a reminder of his "failure."

Answer: At the beginning of Return of the Jedi Luke gets shot in the robotic hand and just wears a glove over it for the whole movie even though he could have had the skin fixed. Apparently in the many years between the movies he never bothered having any damage to the face flesh and skin fixed.

Answer: After thirty plus years, it could just be the natural degradation of the organic flesh covering the robotic parts.

Answer: He likely downgraded to a simpler, easier to maintain version at some point. Presumably before going off to the island.

The robotic hand Luke has in The Last Jedi has the scorch mark he got from a blaster from Return of the Jedi. It's the same hand, just without the artificial skin covering.

Bishop73

Question: Why do Snoke's guards attack Kylo Ren and Rey after Kylo kills Snoke? They no longer need to obey him, and he is past protecting.

Answer: Kylo Ren has betrayed the First Order. They were loyal to the First Order. You are assuming they only did so out of fear of Snoke rather than out of loyalty.

Answer: Kylo killing Snoke is no different than any leader being assassinated. If the U.S. President is assassinated, the Secret Service will come after the assailant (s) even though the president is past protecting.

jshy7979

Question: As Al arrives, the terrorists run to a window and talk in German, laughing at him. What are they saying?

Answer: Based on the original film, it's almost impossible to say, as the actors could not actually speak German and were faking it. A search of the Die Hard script shows no specific German words or phrases, only vague notations such as "they speak briefly in German"; so, the German dialogue scenes were improvised outside of the script. Thus, most of the terrorists' "German" dialogue is incoherent gibberish with terrible pronunciation and grammar, such that it's incomprehensible. When they released this film in Germany, they even changed the terrorists' nationality from German to "European" (rather than insult German audiences with the garbled, nonsensical dialogue). Supposedly, when the movie was first released on VHS, they went back and dubbed in real German dialogue, but I've never seen or heard that version.

Charles Austin Miller

Answer: "nür einmal" - literally "only one"

"Nür ein mann" - literally "only one man".

Answer: I wonder why they didn't take the German subbed version for it where they say "Wieviele Bullen sind es?" to which the other one replies "Nur so ein Fettsack" which translates to "how many cops are there?" "Just one fat guy" and is grammatically correct.

Answer: I always thought that they were discussing the fact that it was just the one policeman responding. Something about einman meaning one man. But that's my broken gcse German from secondary school.

Alan Keddie

Answer: "Neuer ein man..." literally means 'One new man." But he says it more Anglicised so "neuer" sounds like English "newer."

Nür ein Mann is what's said - Only one man.

I believe it was 'nur ein man' - or 'only one man'.

Question: When John is first on the construction floor, he looks across and the shot lingers on a woman in another building. There doesn't seem to be any real point to that shot - am I missing something?

Answer: When Hans and the gang enter the floor and take everyone hostage, that's when John's phone gets cut out while talking to Argyle in the garage. He then escapes up to the unfinished floors and sees the construction foreman's phone and runs over to try that phone and of course the same thing; the phone is dead. He looks out the window and sees the woman talking on her phone in the adjacent building and it confirms to John that the Nakatomi Towers phone lines have been cut since it's not affecting the building next door.

Answer: He's waiting to see if she looks in his direction, so he can try to signal her. She doesn't, so he moves on.

If you look closely, she is talking on the phone, which confirms to John that the phone lines had been cut.

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.