Question: Does the art museum catch fire from the lava even though they tried to stop it by putting a bus against it?
Question: Much ado is made near the start of the film about the kidnappers sending Elise's finger back to her family as a threat, but we learn later that she was never harmed. Did the film ever explain where the finger actually came from, or if it was even sent at all?
Answer: The finger is never shown, only mentioned. Since Elise looked to have all her fingers one must assume it was made up as part of the scheme to fool everyone.
Question: If you read the book version of Contact you know that the stuff about transcendental numbers and the Artist's Signature was left out of the movie. This makes no sense to me, since it's not only the real ending, it's the whole POINT of the story. Without this information, the story's fundamental question (does God exist?) is not answered in the movie. Does anyone know why this was left out?
Answer: If anything, I think the film's producers deliberately left godly topics unaddressed (and questions dangling, unanswered) because they didn't want to alienate any particular audience. However, we know the producers of "Contact" certainly did vilify religion through the sinister scenes with Joseph, the evangelical extremist. At the same time, the film created empathy for the president's glib theological adviser, Palmer Joss. So, I don't think the film was shying away from religious topics, and I think it was pretty fair to the religious viewpoint, for the most part. But this movie wasn't about religion; it was about a primitive, materialistic, self-centered and aggressive species (humanity) reluctantly acknowledging the existence of vastly more intelligent and even godlike entities throughout the cosmos. Even the first-contact entities, advanced as they are, acknowledge other entities much more ancient and much more advanced (the virtual architects of the space/time conduit). The implication was that we live in a universe that may be populated with many intelligent entities that answer every human criteria of godhood. Ellie's narrow-minded atheism was surely shaken to its foundation by her experience; and, while she didn't "convert" to archaic earthly religions, she was spiritually a different person upon her return. The film, however, is open-ended and fence-straddling and doesn't presume to definitively answer the question of the existence of god, leaving it up to the audience to decide.
Answer: The film chooses to focus on Ellie's personal journey and how she deals with and comes to terms with what happens - it doesn't really involve God at all, other than the inclusion of Palmer Joss as a religious advocate, choosing to restrict itself to the much less theologically controversial theme of a straight first contact scenario, without the religious overtones. Given the depth of feeling on religious matters in the US, it's hardly surprising that the filmmakers preferred to leave this particular hot topic out. While Carl Sagan died during production of the film, he both co-produced and was involved in the story process, so he was clearly not concerned about this change.
Question: Why is Danny Glover as judge Tyrone Kipler not credited?
Answer: I don't know how prevalent this is (or how it actually works), but one possibility would be that he was under contract with a particular agency (or company/ business) and could only receive credit for work performed under this contract and/or no other agency could benefit from using him. His name cannot show up in something he did outside of that contract.
Chosen answer: I don't know why, but he asked not to be in the credits.
Question: Why did the Event Horizon choose to come back after seven years? In fact, why come back at all?
Chosen answer: The movie never explicitly says; but science is as yet unsure what happens to a given piece of matter once it crosses a black hole's event horizon, so who knows? The ship could have been thrown seven years forward in time, or far enough away that it took seven years for it to drift close to Neptune. Pick any explanation you like.
Question: What's going on with Rico and Carl in the card guessing scene? I originally thought Rico was trying to guess the value of the unturned card was but then he says it's the ace of spades and it turns out to be exactly that yet he still gets it wrong. Could someone please explain what's happening there?
Answer: The card face up is the one he's trying to guess. The card that flips over is his guess (you can see him hit a pad when he says "ace of spades".) So he is trying to use mental powers to guess the card that is face up (which he can't see as he has his back to it), and (presumably so the computer can track his results better) he makes his choice on a keypad, which then turns over the card on the screen (which is why the card is what he said, yet still wrong).
Question: What happened to the terrorist Harrison Ford apprehended? Did he parachute with everyone else?
Chosen answer: He fell out the back without a parachute when the door blew open. We see him both tumble off the ramp, and another shot of him falling from below.
Question: Who is the man in the picture in the office of the hospital? Is it supposed to be Nick Nolte when he was young, working as the night watchman?
Chosen answer: It is intended as a nod to the original 1994 version of the film, which supposedly featured the same picture in the watchman's booth.
Question: Does anyone know what kind of pistols Martin Blank uses in this film? Also, is the gunfire sound they make accurate? It's very distinctive.
Chosen answer: His pistols are 9mm Glock 17's (http://www.glock.com/g17.jpg). No movie firearm shot is authentic as it would sound very flat and unexciting because the blank rounds used are very quiet (not much louder than clapping your hands actually). The shot sounds are added in post production.
Question: I'm posting this as a question since I'm not sure, but everything I know about Ermac is that he is multiple people in one body, so he refers to himself as "we". In the movie right after Shao Kahn kills Rain, he refers to himself as "I". Is there a reason for this, or is this a mistake?
Answer: This could have been a mistake but then again it could have been one of the people inside of him just stepping up and saying it to keep Shao Khan from throwing them over with Rain.
Question: Shouldn't Dr Jonas and his men have been arrested for what they did? And shouldn't the guys who employed have been arrested too?
Question: How exactly did they make John Leguizamo look so short? Was he just sitting on some seat concealed inside the fat suit?
Chosen answer: He is squatting the entire time in every scene. The suit probably helped in ways to balance himself whilst squatting, so he could hold on much longer than normally.
Question: At the end of the movie, George Clooney and Nicole Kidman are trying to remove one of the small explosive plates that surround the plutonium sphere in a nuclear weapon. Couldn't they have just disconnected the wire connected to the explosive plate to prevent that trigger charge detonating properly? Or would it have detonated because it was touching the other plates?
Answer: Presumably they couldn't take the risk that removing the wire would stop that plate detonating, and/or were worried that there might be a failsafe to detect a wire being cut. Physically removing the charge seemed like the safer bet.
Question: What song is playing when the killer is putting on make-up and dancing around in his silk robe?
Answer: I think you're talking about 'Silence of the Lambs,' not Kiss the Girls. The song is 'Goodbye Horses' by Psyche.
Question: The Secret Service Agents rush up the mansion stairs to the bedroom grabbing the stair banister multiple times without gloves. Why didn't the police pick up their fingerprints? And where did they get the crowbar? Is that standard issue for agents?
Answer: The female detective states the carpet is spotlessly clean, indicating they had performed an intense cleanup not shown on camera so they would no doubt cover the staircase as well and wipe it clean of prints. As for the crowbar, it is more than likely part of a "kit" in the boot (trunk) of secret service vehicles.
Question: From the way it is portrayed in the movie, it looks like Bond & Wai Lin just head straight for the stealth boat once they spot it. They come at it from the front. I don't see why they would do that. Even if the surveillance guy wasn't paying attention (there's no way Bond could've known that), shouldn't someone on the bridge be able to see the dingy approaching straight at it? It would've made more sense to me if Bond waited for the ship to pass and then come from behind or the sides.
Answer: It's getting dark by this point - Bond and Wai Lin are dressed in black in a dark coloured boat. Anyone looking out of the window would be looking down towards them - they wouldn't be able to pick them out against the sea.
Answer: Lava is extremely hot. It heats the air above and around it to such a degree that it can reach the flash point of various items.
Greg Dwyer