Best action movie questions of all time

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Hancock picture

Question: I'm not sure if I was seeing things but during the fight between Hancock and Mary, when it goes all windy and stormy, at one point it cuts to some people who are screaming and running away. I thought I saw a figure that appears to be made out of rocks or similar material and about 10 foot tall, it wasn't our hero or heroine as they were not in that scene so what on earth was it?

Answer: I saw it, too, and wondered. He's a street performer in L.A. that just happened to be around during filming. See: http://io9.com/5023487/hancock-giant-robot-mystery-++-solved.

johnrosa

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest picture

Question: When Jack asks for Tia Dalma's help, she asks him what he brought for her. Jack then lifts the cage containing the monkey and shoots it. Jack then says, "An undead monkey". How is it possible for the monkey to be undead, wasn't the curse on the Black Pearl lifted?

Answer: There is a scene after the credits of "The Curse of the Black Pearl": the monkey got back to the cave and took a coin. That way he turned undead again.

Bjoern_Buller

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Red Planet picture

Question: The ship is hit by a solar flare. But in that case shouldn't Earth advise them about the solar flare incoming? It is supposed that the Sun is constantly watched for solar flares, in case a human mission is en route. Shouldn't mission control on Earth be watching for any unusual solar activity to advise the crew? And they could warn them with time because radio waves go faster than solar flares.

Answer: The ship is not hit by a solar flare, it is hit by a gamma ray burst. It is a completely different, much more violent phenomena.

BaconIsMyBFF

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Resident Evil: Retribution picture

Question: How can they use the elevator to get to the surface if the Red Queen shut the power down?

Answer: She must have had trouble in keeping control of the elevator's power as the impact of the explosion blew out some of the windows and the sea came rushing in.

Bunch Son

Answer: The force of the water moved the elevator up the shaft, hence why it did not go all the way up.

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Speed picture

Question: When they notice there's a gap in the freeway they keep to that route. However, there were other routes available. Why not take them?

Answer: If they had, there might have been the possibility that to get to these routes they would have to go down a different road and depending on which route they take they might have to slow down to make the turn which would likely cause the bus to drop below 50 mph. Better to just keep going straight and keep the bus going. There's also the possibility that had they taken a different route, they would have to deal with a lot of traffic especially if there was traffic stopped at a red light. By using the highway, there'd be no traffic lights and less traffic to deal with.

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Thor picture

Question: Since Loki is the son of Laufey the Frost Giant, why doesn't he look like one?

Answer: When initially found by Odin, he does. Something then acts on him that causes him to mimic Odin's more human appearance, which he then keeps until his exposure to the frost giants during the events of the film, which tips him off to his true nature. Whether this was caused by some magic inherent in Loki even as a baby or whether Odin did something to disguise the child's true origin is unrevealed.

Tailkinker

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Superman II picture

Question: How does Superman know who Zod is when he is in the bar with Lois and the President makes the emergency broadcast?

Answer: Superman was well educated regarding his home planet's history. All this information was left for him by his parents at the secret installation at the North Pole.

raywest

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North by Northwest picture

Question: Several times in the movie one character is able to ascertain in which hotel room another character is staying simply by asking the front desk for the room number. Was this realistic at the time the movie was made? Today, a hotel would never divulge a guest's room number to a stranger, since such information could potentially be used by burglars and/or predators to gain access to hotel rooms. Was security really that lax in the 1950s?

Answer: Not really. You could (and at some hotels are still able to) keep your room number private or you could not - i.e. you could ask the hotel staff to keep your number secret from strangers, or you could ask them to tell anyone who might ask. Not having seen this movie, I don't know how likely it would be in the situations you speak of that the hotel guest would choose the latter option- it might be a mistake.

Blibbetyblip

Answer: Yes, security was that lax in the 1950s and beyond. People could acquire all kinds of information about individuals from various types of businesses. Not all were so careless, but many were or they naively didn't see a concern. In the late 1980s, I was a student at a university where a non-university person obtained his ex-girlfriend's class schedule simply by requesting it in-person from the registrar's office. Using that information, he was able to locate and fatally shoot her on campus.

raywest

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The Time Machine picture

Question: What did VOX mean when he said that to find the Morlocks' lair, that Alexander would have to follow the breathing?

Answer: He's referring to the sound that the Morlocks' machinery makes from underground.

raywest

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Iron Man picture

Question: What music is being played in the end credits?

Answer: Iron Man by Black Sabbath (minus the lyrics).

Rydersriot87

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Around the World in 80 Days picture

Question: How is it possible for everybody from other countries to know about the wager that Phileas made when the only ones who knew about were the members of the Academy of Science?

Answer: In order to stop Fogg from completing the journey, his rivals at the Academy wired (telegraphed) details to confederates in the countries he visited with instructions to waylay him.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales picture

Question: At the very beginning of the film, young Henry boards the Flying Dutchman to speak to Will. When Will looks behind him, he sees the shadows of several crew member starting to make their way towards him and he suddenly gets frightened that the crew will see Henry. Why would he react this way? Since he's captain of the Flying Dutchman, if his men saw Henry, Will could order them to leave Henry alone.

Answer: He's probably worried that either the crew will attack or at very least frighten Henry. Or he just doesn't want Henry to see how horribly the curse can affect people.

But because Will is ferrying souls to the after life, like Davy Jones should have done for the full time, he was captain of the Dutchman. There is no curse that would make the men look like sea monsters. They only started to look like that because Jones denied his duties after 10 years of service, when Calipso didn't show up. So the crew would look like normal men, so Will being worried that Henry will be frightened by them, can't be the reason he started to panic.

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Inglourious Basterds picture

Question: Why does Hugo Stiglitz kill the German officers in the first place? The film mentions his enlistment, but how is this related to his killings?

Answer: Based on his willingness to join the Basterds, we can assume he killed them because he didn't believe in what the Nazis were doing.

There is a cut of him being whipped during the bar scene. I think he was taking revenge for harsh and perhaps undeserved punishment.

No, the whipping is how it feels in his mind sitting next to that SS officer and having to pretend to like him and be a Nazi. He's ready to snap.

lionhead

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Answer: Spoiler alert: this gives some important plot twists away. Sometimes a bit of unresolved mystery improves a story, and I think this is the case here. But the book partly answers your questions. At the end of the last chapter it is shown that Mrs MacReady thinks the wardrobe is just a piece of furniture. She knows nothing about Narnia. But Professor Kirke amazes Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy by expressing familiarity with Narnia and explaining that a wardrobe might well be a portal into Narnia. If C S Lewis had not written any more books after completing "The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe" Professor Kirke's knowledge of Narnia would probably have been an unresolved mystery. But C S Lewis later wrote "The Magician's Nephew" which tells how Professor Kirke visited Narnia as a boy. The final chapter of this book says he took an apple back with him, which he planted in his garden. It grew into a tree, was cut down and made into the wardrobe. So Professor Kirke was not consciously aware of what the wardrobe could do, but with hindsight, he realised that he had set up a chain of events that caused the children to discover Narnia.

Answer: While Professor Kirke is aware of the existence of Narnia, as he was there when it was created, he doesn't appear to be aware that the wardrobe can act as a portal (although he may suspect that it has unusual properties, as the tree from which the wood came to create it grew from a Narnian apple). Mrs MacReady doesn't know.

Tailkinker

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Con Air picture

Question: What is the actual likelihood that a decorated serviceman, with no prior criminal record (we know this because if Poe had any priors he wouldn't have been in the Army) would actually get prison time for killing two men who attacked himself and his girlfriend? Seeing as there were witnesses (said girlfriend and bartender) I find it hard to believe he would have gotten more than an extended period of probation. A prison term, even a year or two, seems severely harsh considering the circumstances.

dablues7

Chosen answer: Zero. As you said, he was attacked and there are witnesses that he tried to avoid the fight and the killings were in self-defense. It is an extremely weak plot hammer to get Poe onto a plane full of criminals. It's foolish as well. The writers could have had Poe framed for a crime then exonerated and put in the same situation much more believably.

Grumpy Scot

It's in Alabama. People are put in prison here for much less.

First, Poe is a federal prisoner, not subject to State laws or legal procedures. Secondly, he is not in Alabama. During a conversation with Billy Bedlam we hear that he is incarcerated in the "Q" - prison slang for San Quentin in California. It makes you wonder why a Federal prisoner is in a State prison, but that's another type of mistake.

He was incarcerated in San Quentin, but the incident in which he was arrested happened in Alabama.

jshy7979

Would it really be considered self-defense, though? After he beat the guys to the ground he could have just stopped and walked away, but he didn't. He kept beating them until they died.

He is defending his wife against two armed assailants, and use of lethal force is allowable. No DA in the United States would even think about pressing charges, knowing full well a grand jury would throw them out in a second.

This is not at all how it happened. Two of the assailants survived; we see them get up and run away. Cameron killed only one person, unintentionally, accidentally killing him with a lethal blow under the chin.

jshy7979

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Answer: Lacy had gotten tired of her dad's newspaper, big-city life and decided to move to Smallville because she wanted to experience life at a much slower pace and even decided to live on a farm.

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Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace picture

Question: I'm confused. Palpatine wanted to use Queen Amidala to get himself voted as chancellor so he could have control over the republic. Why did he send Darth Maul after the Queen's ship when it escaped if he needed the Queen alive?

Answer: The entire time Palpatine is bitching to Viceroy Gunray that he needs the Queen to sign the treaty to make the blockade and invasion legal. He didn't send Darth Maul to kill Amidala, he sent him to capture her and to deal with her Jedi escort.

Quantom X

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X-Men 2 picture

Question: Is there a reason for Storm creating a storm when the X-Men talk to the president or is it just to make the scene more "spooky"?

Answer: The president is delivering a live address on television. The storm would make an excuse for the break in the signal.

Nick N.

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Willow picture

Question: Why did Queen Bavmorda need a ritual to get rid of the child? Why didn't she simply kill the baby on the spot?

Answer: Bavmorda's ritual was the Ritual of Obliteration - a spell that is used to destroy a living spirit's essence or soul. Presuambly if she'd just killed Elora, the soul would have been later reborn into another baby.

Sierra1

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Dunkirk picture

Question: Why did the spitfire pilot land on the beach at the end of the movie facing certain internment when he could have ditched and be taken back to Blighty?

Answer: After running out of fuel, he kept his craft aloft as long as he could so he could shoot down the enemy plane. He then landed when and where he safely could, which was on the beach but in enemy territory. Ditching a plane in water is dangerous and would have meant far less chance of survival.

raywest

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