Question: Why wouldn't Charles' brother be his best man? Or is that not traditional in England the way it is in America? It's not mandatory but is certainly expected, unless the brothers are not close (which Charles and his brother are) or the groom's father serves as best man.
Question: After Wade seemingly kills Tom, Terry scolds him, saying he had said at the start of the robbery that no-one would get hurt, but now three people (a guard, Frank and "Tom") are dead. Why does Terry wait until the "third" death to have it out with Wade?
Question: Is removing hands, feet and teeth really sufficient to prevent the corpses being identified? What about DNA?
Answer: Even with head, hands and feet removed, a lot about a person's identity can be determined from body scars, tattoos, body tissue and blood samples, etc. Sex, age, height, weight, body-fat content, race, hair color, and pre-death physical health can all be determined rather easily through traditional means, even given only a torso for examination. Once investigators have a general idea of identity, they can compare their findings to a missing persons database and narrow it down further to likely matches. Then they can request DNA samples from the families of likely missing persons and compare it to the DNA of the corpse. Of course, if the corpse was never reported as missing, that would bring the investigation to a dead-end.
Answer: Identifying a body (or anyone for that matter) through DNA would only work if that person's DNA is already on file and you had something to compare it to (and getting a DNA match is an extensive process that doesn't happen over night despite what some TV shows suggest). I don't know about the UK, but in the US, federal DNA databases didn't really start until 1994. And only a few states started a felon DNA database in the 90's, so it's unlikely Hugo's DNA was on file. It's much more likely that a person's fingerprints or dental records were on file since they were much more common and not exclusive to felons. Again though, those records would have to be on file in order to compare to a body. I don't know if the feet removal was more for the dark comedy aspect or if they thought his feet print were on file and would be viable (i.e. prints taken when he was born in the hospital).
Question: Does anyone know why this is the only Tim Burton film for which Danny Elfman hasn't written the score? All I can think is that time-wise it might have clashed with Black Beauty, but I'd like to know a definite reason.
Chosen answer: According to Tim Burton in an interview at the time, they were "taking a little vacation from each other", - he also said that he was not sure what the situation between them was, which certainly implied a falling out. Danny Elfman is a bit more open, describing what happened as "a family feud" - he says that after working on six films together in ten years, they had a bit of a creative fallout, which led to Howard Shore doing the music for Ed Wood. Afterwards, according to Elfman, they realised that they missed working together and went back to collaborating happily.
Question: Is there any reason that for the re-make it was changed from Santa speaking to a little girl in Dutch to him speaking to a girl in sign language? It seemed like it would be less convincing this way, since it would not be uncommon for any department store Santa to know sign language.
Answer: The original Dutch girl was a World War II orphan. That wouldn't make sense in the newer remake. And why wouldn't a Santa know sign language? It would seem more common than Dutch.
Question: So who turned out to be A. Friend? I just got lost on that issue. (04:53:00)
Answer: It's a little confusing. Stephanie Kaplan, who was promoted to replace Meredith at the end of the film, had a son named Spencer. Spencer worked as a research assistant to a Professor Arthur Friend (A. Friend) at the University of Washington. Stephanie was feeding clues to Tom via her son, who had access to Prof. Friend's computer and email account. Prof. Friend was supposedly on a leave of absence and unaware his email was being used.
Answer: A groom can choose whoever he wants as best man. As you say yourself, it's by no means mandatory for it to be the groom's brother, even if they are close. In this particular case, it's possible that David felt that he ought not to be the best man, due to the difficulty that he'd have in making a speech, but, really, Charles was under no obligation to choose him.
Tailkinker ★