Question: I'm not sure if this is an actual mistake or a question: when Andy is escaping, we see him climb down something before he leaves the prison, (scaffolding, I think) and he is wearing boots or shoes of some kind. How could he do that since he left his shoes in the shoebox for the warden to find? The warden's shoes were safely tucked away in the plastic bag Andy had attached to his foot by the rope. It wasn't like he could carry a spare pair when he went to the warden's office to close up for the night.
Grumpy Scot
11th Dec 2009
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
9th Nov 2009
Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Question: When they settle on New Caprica, is (roughly) 49,000 people sufficiently genetically diverse enough to ensure survival or would the colony start to run into trouble after a few generations?
Chosen answer: 100 breeding couples would be plenty with genetic screening, which Colonial tech seems easily capable of. 50,000 would be more than sufficient even with old-fashioned random pairings.
15th Oct 2009
General questions
I don't remember much about this movie, but in one scene there is a group of about four people who enter a building and talk to some guy, who then opens a trapdoor under them. The people fall onto some roller coaster, which dumps them onto a conveyor belt, that feeds them into a machine that grinds them up and spits out their bones. I think the protagonist may later enter the machine himself and somehow escape it. There also may be a scene later in the movie with a lot of fire, but I don't know for sure. Can anyone help me with the title of this movie?
Chosen answer: Nothing But Trouble. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102558/.
27th Sep 2009
Smallville (2001)
Question: This is sort of a question for the Superman fan-verse, but I thought I'd ask it here. Is there an antidote for the effects of kyrptonite?
Chosen answer: No. Kryptonite as a plot device has changed from "every yahoo can get a chunk at the corner store" to an extremely rare element. It hardly ever shows up anymore. Also it really doesn't need an antidote. So long as it's removed from Superman's vicinity before he dies, he'll recover. Its effects don't linger like radioactive materials do for humans.
Answer: In Smallville, blue kryptonite does makes Kryptonians immune to the effects of green kryptonite. Although it does remove their super power abilities (by making them unable to process the power of the yellow sun). In some versions of the comics, blue kryptonite was the antidote for red kryptonite. In the comics, Supergirl tried to create an antidote to kryptonite which resulted in X-kryptonite.
18th Sep 2009
Waterworld (1995)
Question: Obviously the film is fictitious but surely the melting of the ice caps would not start the evolution of sea monsters, would it? Also, most smaller species would die off so there would be no food for the monsters to survive.
Answer: Judging from the missile sub with empty missile silos we see underwater, WWIII seems to have caused the rising water. I guess the idea is that radiation has mutated sharks and other animals (including the Mariner).
12th Sep 2009
Back to the Future (1985)
Question: In the bar scene, after Marty asks for a Pepsi Free, the barman tells him that "You want a Pepsi, pal, you're going to pay for it". I know there is a reason for it, but isn't it obvious that if Marty wants a Pepsi he must pay for it?
Chosen answer: The counterman had never heard of Pepsi Free as it didn't exist yet. He therefore assumed that Marty was asking for a Pepsi Cola free of charge. Also, Biff and his cronies frequent this bar. The counterman might have assumed that Marty was some snot nosed punk that thought he could bluff his way into free drinks.
13th Aug 2009
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Question: In a few scenes in the film, the characters mention how people of the 20th century still use money. Key word: still. How is the process of currency different in the 23rd century compared to the present?
Answer: The United Federation of Planets uses the credit. Its a purely electronic form of money. Necessities and luxuries both are simple and cheap to produce with the Federation's advanced technology, and humanity has matured to the point that accumulating wealth is considered vulgar. Furthering the common good or the advancement of humanity is the real status symbol in the 23rd and 24th century. These conditions result in a society with very little need for money. Citizens are paid, but since the technology built into a place of business (or starship) or home supplies all basic needs for free, most people spend money only on exotic products that aren't commonly manufactured, like art or handmade foods.
25th Jul 2009
The Thing (1982)
Question: Someone proposes an initial blood serum test (before Macready's heat sensitivity test), but the crew find the blood sabotaged before they can get to it. How could "The Thing" have gotten to the blood so fast, and more importantly, Garry and the Doc are the only ones said to have access to the blood. BOTH are proved by the Mac's test to be "Thing-free" - the Doc's blood is tested even though he is dead; Garry is the last man tested. How can this be?
Answer: Keys were dropped by Windows during Benning's transformation. You hear them drop to the floor. They could have been retrieved by anyone.
Chosen answer: The Thing is a shape shifter. It doesn't just take the form of what it assimilates, it can change its shape (eg. dog and head spider). It could easily form a thin tentacle to open a door from the inside. It's also shown to have the sheer strength to bust out.
Answer: Gary and the Doc may have been overconfident in their being able to keep the key safe; someone or something may have taken it, done the deed while everyone was distracted, and placed it back with none being the wiser.
28th Jun 2009
War of the Worlds (2005)
Question: How did Robbie survive?
Answer: Robbie said that he only wanted to watch it happen, and not interact. He most likely ran off somehow and hid from the aliens before you saw the burning Humvee indicating the death of the military squadrons flying/driving in.
Chosen answer: Dumb luck? A soldier chased him off from the fighting? Who knows?
Robbie's survival is a movie all on its own.
28th Jun 2009
War of the Worlds (2005)
Question: How come Boston was relatively intact with no signs of destruction?
Chosen answer: The Martians hadn't gotten that far yet.
28th Jun 2009
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Question: What makes Taylor think they're on a planet in the constellation of Orion some 320 light years from Earth? How did he come to this conclusion?
Chosen answer: Because that's where the ship was originally headed. Some sort of malfunction made it turn around and return to Earth.
28th Jun 2009
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Question: What caused the original nuclear devastation depicted in the movie?
Answer: I think that this is meant to be a mystery. Taylor/Charlton Heston, an astronaut, leaves a world set somewhat in the future after 1968 (when the movie was made) but still recognisable to cinema-goers at the time, to travel through a "time vortex" to arrive in a world in a distant future, which has changed beyond recognition. Taylor meets the orangutan Zaius/Maurice Evans, and Zaius hints that he has some idea of what had happened, but Zaius' knowledge is either limited, or else Zaius is not going to tell Taylor (or his fellow apes) the full story. At the end of the movie Taylor discovers that, at some point between his leaving his own time and arriving in the "Planet Of The Apes", the world had been devastated by a nuclear war, but I think that the exact time, causes of, and course of this nuclear war are deliberately left as a mystery. Sometimes I think a bit of unresolved mystery actually improves a story, and I think this is the case here.
Chosen answer: World War III.
28th Jun 2009
Independence Day (1996)
Question: After the B-2 bomber launches the nuclear missile towards the city destroyer, the B-2 is shown to be retreating, yet the nuclear missile is in fact travelling even faster than the B-2. My question is, was the B-2 destroyed when the nuclear missile struck the ship? Did it get out of there in time?
Chosen answer: Cruise missiles fired from a B-2 have a 100 mile range, so it would have escaped.
28th Jun 2009
Battlefield Earth (2000)
Question: Is Jonnie correct in his assumption that there are other Psychlo colonies out there?
Chosen answer: Between the book and the hideous box office take, no he is not correct. In the book, Psychlo got turned into a sun and all the other colonies tried to teleport their ore shipments home and were wiped out by the resulting explosion.
Answer: If there were other colonies out there, they wouldn't love as much as their home planet just like earth. Besides even if there was, they've been mostly defenseless without their fleet on the homeworld and will already be on the verge of extinction.
23rd Jun 2009
Stargate SG-1 (1997)
Children of the Gods (1) - S1-E1
Question: At the beginning of the episode, Apophis and his serpent guards invade the SGC. My question is: How could they dial out when there wasn't a DHD?
Chosen answer: Apparently a ribbon device can activate the gate to the address it was dialed from. Like a sort of "*69" on the phone.
14th Jun 2009
Clerks 2 (2006)
29th May 2009
General questions
I am looking for a movie about a teen that finds this government weapon (like a blow torch zap gun) and he uses it on his dad after he kills his golden retriever named Axel. The government is chasing him and in the end he is killed. Anyone know the name of this movie? I have been searching for years. Late eighties or early nineties.
Chosen answer: Sounds like it might be Deadly Weapon (1989) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097171/.
29th May 2009
Back to the Future (1985)
Question: Doesn't anybody think that when the Star Wars movies were released, that the name of the enemy, Darth Vader, would get George McFly a little suspicious? After all, he had to have remembered the name of the spirit that "came down to him from planet Vulcan" since it is on the cover of his book at the end.
Answer: Suspicious of what? He never finds out Doc Brown has a time machine or that Marty affected his past. It might make him believe in some sort of "The truth is hiding in plain sight" conspiracy theory. Oh and BTW, he'd see Star Trek in 1966 (with the Vulcan reference) before he sees Star Wars.
Marty says that he is "Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan", and unless George doesn't remember "meeting him", he might think back to it and be like "wait a minute..." Regardless of when Star Trek and Star Wars would come out, a nerd like him would be able to put two-and-two together and see that they don't add up, unless he thinks that it's just a coincidence.
Answer: I think it was mostly as a shock to him waking up like that with loud noises right in his ear. Disoriented and confused and already being kind of a jittery and craven person he just did what he was told. Doesn't matter at that point how unalien the encounter actually was. I mean the music was guitars, Vulcan is a common word, the "alien" spoke plain english and i'll bet people from the 50's have seen an environmental suit before (basically a diving suit with a gasmask).
Answer: In a special "front page wrap" of USA Today for October 22, 2015, written by Michael Klastorin. The name of the alien is "Garth D'Vade." Obviously done as a joke, it does show that George may have not remembered the name and didn't associate it with Darth Vader, so there's nothing for him to be suspicious about. It's also possible he believes Darth Vader to be real and thinks Vader must have visited George Lucas.
Answer: Vulcan had long been used as the name of fictitious planets (when 19th century astronomers thought they'd discovered a planet closer to the sun than Mercury, they were going to name it 'Vulcan'). As for Vader, George wouldn't have heard the name again until more than 20 years after his 'dream, ' and either chalked it up to coincidence or misremembering what he heard.
25th Apr 2009
Battlefield Earth (2000)
Question: Who's that weird little holographic alien Jonnie sees next to the learning machine?
Chosen answer: It's a Chinko. A subject race of the Psychlos. They were scholars and historians until the Psychlos got tired of them and wiped them out.
18th Apr 2009
X-Men (2000)
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Answer: Either prisoners are given more than one pair or Andy obtained another. He does have a lot of pull at the prison. Getting another pair of shoes would be trivial for him.
Grumpy Scot