Best biography movie questions of 2017

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The Greatest Showman picture

Question: Why was Zendaya considered as one of the "freaks" (like they called them), even though she looked normal?

Answer: I'm pretty sure because she was a person of colour.

Answer: Her brother said people of the time didn't want to see colored people on the stage. It's clear throughout the entire movie that she faces undue discrimination from the public just for not being white.

Answer: There were other people in the circus who were just normal but had amazing abilities.

She was half black and half white.

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Darkest Hour picture

Question: In the 'War Room' scene, there appeared to be a sheet of plastic or acetate covering the wall with the map of the enemy's movements. Was that premature for plastic to be available in that size for that time frame?

Myke

Answer: It was probably Perspex, an acrylic plastic commonly available at the time, used for, amongst other things, fighter plane cockpit canopies and windscreens.

stiiggy

Answer: It may be polyethylene, which was in wide use by the 1930s. Other plastics were also available at that time.

raywest

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Papillon picture

Question: How did Papillon, Diega and Marturette manage to sail to Colombia after their second escape attempt? Colombia is on the opposite side of South America from French Guiana/Devil's Island. It seems like they would have ended up in Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, CuraƧao or Aruba long before ending up in Colombia. I'm sure the book sheds light on this, but the movie completely glosses over it.

Phaneron

Answer: I discovered the answer to this by reading the book's plot synopsis on Wikipedia. The inmates actually sailed to Trinidad and then picked up three other inmates. They set sail again and were captured near the Colombian coastline when the wind died down. It would appear that in the interest of saving time, the movie chose to just have them appear in Colombia.

Phaneron

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Professor Marston and the Wonder Women picture

Question: Assuming people knew, how did Marston avoid trouble for living with two wives?

Rob245

Answer: Though it may be considered immoral and socially unacceptable, particularly during the film's 1940s time frame, it is not illegal to live with multiple people in a sexual relationship. It is only illegal to be married to more than one person at the same time. Marston was not a bigamist. He was legally married to his wife, Elizabeth. They engaged in a consensual polyamorous (not polygamous) relationship with Olive, who was not married to Marston.

raywest

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Answer: He was a fictional character. However, Apatow says he was playing a version of himself, though he didn't initially realise that when being cast. He claims he is not that bad in real life; his character is also an amalgam of other producers.

raywest

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I, Tonya picture

Question: Did people actually care about figure skating? I wasn't alive when this happened, but apparently it was one of the biggest sporting controversies of all time. Well I find that quite hard to believe, since before this movie came out, I'd never heard anyone talk about figure skating, I barely even knew what it was. Was figure skating ever actually a big thing, or do people just like controversy?

MikeH

Answer: It used to be a lot more popular. The Harding/Kerrigan Winter Olympic figure skating competition was the 6th highest rated program in TV history as of 1994, with 48.5 million viewers, no doubt helped by the controversy. It's slowly declined over time - from 1998 to 2018 viewing figures for the US championships declined by 1/3. Opinions about its loss of appeal range from a change in the scoring (used to be judges rating out of 6.0, now it's a more complicated points system), to a lack of "star power", with recognisable names grabbing people's attention. In the UK at least, skater team Torville and Dean were household names for a long time, but I'd imagine a lot of people would struggle to think of skaters with that level of popular recognition nowadays. That said, viewing figures for the 2018 US championships were 60% up on 2017, and membership of the US figure skating organization has risen for the last four years - these things wax and wane like any other.

Jon Sandys

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