Best sci-fi movie questions of 2013

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Iron Man 3 picture

Question: Who is the vendor or manufacturer of that pull-up bar stand that Tony Stark is using near the beginning of the movie? And where could I get one?

Answer: An independent guy from the UK called Ian. He's made over 3000 of his product and creation "hot gym".

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World War Z picture

Question: On the plane, as Gerry is wrapping her stump and right after he admits he hadn't known cutting her hand off would work, Segen says something quietly, then adds "Now I'm just a liability." What does she say right before "Now I'm just a liability"? I can't hear what she says (it might not be English) and it's not in the closed captioning or in any transcript I've been able to find online.

Aerinah

Answer: Segen says in Hebrew, "עכשיו אני סתם עול" (phonetically pronounced, "achshav ani stam ohl"), which means "Now I'm just a burden." Then Segen says in English, "Now I'm just a liability."

Super Grover

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Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox picture

Question: In the altered timeline, Flash initially could not travel through time because there was another speedster. How was he able to travel through time in the original timeline, when Zoom was alive there as well?

Answer: Flash couldn't travel through time later in the movie not because Zoom was alive but because Zoom was also tapping into the Speed Force, preventing Flash from gathering enough of the Speed Force to break the Time Barrier. When Flash originally went back in time it's likely because Zoom was in custody, therefore not tapping into the Speed Force at that time.

Answer: Batman kills Zoom so the Flash could use the speed force.

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About Time picture

Question: Whenever Tim goes back in time, his clothes change to whatever he was wearing at the time, but he always appears in the same spot that he left from. Both times he goes back to the NYE party he appears in the upstairs wardrobe. So what happened to the version of him that was already walking around at the party? Did that version of him just vanish?

Answer: This is one of the (many) time travel plot holes in the film, and unfortunately your question doesn't really have a definitive, or satisfying, answer. Richard Curtis has said he was less concerned with making an airtight time travel film than with the human story at its core, so he let things like this slide without explanation. However, since we don't see any "second" Tims around when he goes back in time, and no-one else seems to think of him as an "extra" Tim, we can safely assume that, yes, he replaces himself in the timeline when he travels back. (Of course, this doesn't explain what happens when he then returns FROM the past).

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G.I. Joe: Retaliation picture

Question: General Joe says he wants some of his own men in the mission. You see them when they are making the plan and the are other old men. They don't really do much if anything during the actual battle. Who are they?

Quantom X

Chosen answer: They are probably other retired Joes.

lionhead

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Man of Steel picture

Question: How could Superman kill Zod by breaking his neck? He's from Krypton like Superman so he should also be invulnerable.

Answer: Kryptonians aren't invulnerable. It just takes a lot to hurt one after he has been charged by our yellow sun. There are several beings who are strong enough to break a Kryptonian's bones. Doomsday, Darkseid, etc. Since both are roughly equal in strength on Earth, its no different than one human breaking another's neck.

Grumpy Scot

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Oblivion picture

Question: Maybe this was explained in the film and I missed it, but it has been bugging me for a while. What happened to all the rest of the clones of Jack and Victoria after the Tet was destroyed? Presumably their daily instructions in the form of Sally would cease. Wouldn't they get suspicious? Some reasonable explanation would be nice.

Answer: They would obviously notice that the Tet was gone and would no doubt have questions, but, without outside intervention, would be unlikely to be able to do anything about it, as they would have no reason not to believe that the "radiation zones" confining them to their particular area weren't real. Some would likely die fighting Scavenger groups in their areas (without the drones, they'd be increasingly vulnerable), others might be successfully contacted by those groups and thus could join with them, some may have ultimately starved without resupply from the Tet. The film only covers what happens to Jacks 49 and 52; the others likely met with a variety of different fates.

Tailkinker

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The Purge picture

Question: Who exactly are "the new founding fathers"? It never actually says. I read an internet post that said they were not singular people, but a collection of multi-national companies that took over the government after a near nation wide collapse of the US.

Answer: The only information the original script offers is the company that took over the government, their name is "Arcon". Other than that, there is no other specific name nor is there an answer to what kind of company Arcon really is.

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Star Trek Into Darkness picture

Question: Spock stops a volcano from erupting by detonating a cold fusion device that causes ice to form over the volcano. I have problem with that because where would all the pressure inside the volcano go? All that pressure would have gone somewhere.

Answer: Unless the cold fusion went directly into the volcano, all the way to the source of the pressure.

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After Earth picture

Question: The alien predators are blind and hunt by pheromones. Why don't humans just wear hermetically sealed suits to block the pheromones, or use false pheromones as decoys?

Answer: Probably because it wouldn't work. On "Mythbusters," Adam and Jamie tested whether a tracking dog could still trace a human clad in a hermetically-sealed suit to contain the scent. The dog easily tracked Jamie.

raywest

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire picture

Question: When Katniss asks Johanna about Annie why does Johanna kind of stutter when answering?

Answer: Joanna hesitates a bit when she's recalling how many years ago it was when Annie was in the games - she tells Katniss it was "four" then corrects herself and says "five." She then seems a bit somber when Katniss indicates that Annie had some kind of mental breakdown, implying that Annie is Joanna's friend. Joanna is being shown as having a softer side than the harder image she tries to project.

raywest

Answer: Joanna won her games the year after Annie. It's possible she stuttered and corrected herself when recalling how many years ago Annie won was because she was shocked by how long ago it seems her own games were.

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Ender's Game picture

Question: If Ender would destroy the planet in the simulation, why wouldn't he do it for real? The simulations are supposed to be practice.

MikeH

Answer: For the same reason when you are playing a video game you will run people over, or shoot them without figuring out who they are. He thought it was the equivalent of a video game, i.e. not real, so he would potentially do things he wouldn't do if he thought it was real. This is the very reason the power structure put them into a real operation while leading them to think it was a simulation, so they would be likely to act when faced with a moral dilemma.

jimba

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The Wolverine picture

Question: Approximately what year is the film set? The adamantium would place it after the Origins film (which I believe to be set circa 1979) in which he loses most if not all of his memories. This begs the question, how is it that he remembers WWII and the atomic bomb?

Answer: The chronology of the X-Men film series is, to put it mildly, somewhat screwed up. The first movie was released in 2000 and is described in an on-screen caption as being set in "The not too distant future", which isn't the most helpful statement, could be two years, could be ten years, who knows. The Wolverine is set about two years after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, which is in turn about a year after the events of the first movie, so think about "the not too distant future", whatever that means, and add about three years onto that. This does mean that, yes, it is indeed set some decades after the events of the Origins movie, during which he lost his memories. It is, however, also set after a period during which he worked with Professor Xavier to regain some of his memories. It could therefore be suggested that Logan remembering his experience at Nagasaki represents that they had at least a partial success in recovering some of his memories.

Tailkinker

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Pacific Rim picture

Question: Why are the people so proud of having built Jaegers with obviously obsolete technology?

Answer: Simple: because in a mere 14 months (as was said by Pentecost) they managed to build an effective weapon against the Kaiju.

Friso94

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Elysium picture

Question: The method of identifying citizens by a "tattoo" burned into their arm seems awfully prehistoric for such an advanced environment. The government would "know" the number of legit citizens and would know that the black market citizens were fake, right?

applejackson

Chosen answer: There is virtually no system in the world that is completely foolproof when it comes to regulating a large scale system related to identification. We only know the tattoo are for certain services. There might be more high tech security features for more restricted areas. As for whether they have an accurate count of all their citizens, they might, but again, how you go about regulating these systems is generally the tougher part. At the end of the day people required special transports to even reach Elysium, so it might have not been as big a concern.

Lummie

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Riddick picture

Question: As the rain comes and the creatures come out and start to damage the station and kill people, why did the entire crew not seek refuge in their ships? Obviously, if the ships were meant for the harshness of space travel and some offensive/defensive capabilities, wouldn't they most likely have provided enough protection from the organic weapons of the creatures? It would make the plot not work but maybe should have been eliminated as a possibility.

Answer: The walls of the settlement are likely to be just as strong as the hulls of the spacecraft. It's likely they are even stronger because the settlement doesn't have to worry about weight limits. Remember also that they had to worry about Riddick hiding and getting the units back.

Greg Dwyer

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Chosen answer: No, they are not related. His father used to work with Agent Carter but that is as close as it gets.

Casual Person

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