Question: Why don't the machines use geothermal energy? What do the humans in the real use to make their clothes? Where do the humans in the real get their food from? Why don't the machines just kill humans when they are unplugged instead of letting them become soldiers for Zion? Why don't the machines just attach a gadget to a hover craft, that when it returns to Zion will either blow up or spread a virus (al la 2nd renaissance part 2)? Why don't the humans in the real plug into the matrix and just carpet bomb the entire planet thereby destroying the machines energy source and they can just repopulate the earth naturally? How come Neo has superpowers in the real world? Without sunlight where do humans in the real get vitamin D?
Captain Defenestrator
14th Aug 2010
The Matrix (1999)
24th Jul 2010
Thunderball (1965)
Question: I am confused about a scene near the beginning of the film, when all the SPECTRE agents, among them Largo (Adolfo Celi), are in a secret room being quizzed by the unseen Blofeld (number 1). At one point, an agent named Number 11 is talking about money he and Number 9 (seated to his left) collected. Blofeld says "One of you is guilty of embezzlement." Number 11 has a guilty look on his face, and Number 9 gives him a smug look. It's as if Number 11 is about to be "punished" and he expects it, but suddenly, Number 9 is electrocuted in his chair and dumped beneath the floor. Afterwards, Number 11 is seen wiping his sweaty face. What exactly happened? Were Numbers 11 and 9 in cahoots and Number 9 was the only one that was caught? Did Number 9 set up Number 11 to look guilty and was found out by SPECTRE and punished accordingly? Or did SPECTRE simply make a mistake and kill the wrong guy?
Answer: They're both embezzling. Number 11 expects that he's about to be caught and Number 9 might have tried to pin his own embezzlement on 11, but Number 1 saw through it.
24th Jul 2010
General questions
I remember seeing a movie on TV once. It involved these hijackers who hijacked a plane (no 9/11 movies). This guy on the plane, when threatened with a gun by the hijackers tells them he has a family but they kill him anyway. After that, all I remember is a part where the hijackers are at a fair, looking for someone. Something about a ferris wheel. If anyone could help me, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Chosen answer: Passenger 57, starring Wesley Snipes and Bruce Payne. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105104/)
24th Jul 2010
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Question: Why does Doc suddenly change his ideas (about time travel and not learning too much of your own future) in Part 2? In Part 1, he was determined not to learn too much about his own future, despite Marty trying to warn him that his life depended on it. But in Part 2, suddenly it's okay to bring Marty to the future and give him enough information to try to change the course of destiny for his son. Also, wouldn't it have just been easier to warn Marty about the accident he was going to have that caused his life to go so wrong to begin with? One would have to think that if Marty becomes successful and lives out an entirely different life, then maybe his son doesn't turn into such a wimp.
Chosen answer: Marty's saving his life with the note made him realize that some events are worth tampering with. He wasn't aware that Marty's entire life had taken a wrong turn, he'd just read that his son goes to prison after the robbery and takes action on that one thing.
10th Jul 2010
General questions
For any scene that involves someone either standing in front of or walking casually away from a massive explosion, what's usually done to ensure the actor isn't burned from the heat or deafened by the noise?
Answer: Either via a greenscreen or by filming from a forced perspective so that it seems that the actor is closer to the explosion than they really are.
16th Jun 2010
Edge of Darkness (2010)
Question: How and when did Thomas Craven get poisoned? He was already sick before he got tasered, kidnapped and taken to the Northmoor facility.
Chosen answer: Possibly from getting his daughter's blood on him, when he accepted a drink from the Northmoor executive, or from handling his daughter's radioactive belongings. Given the depth of the coverup, they may have even anticipated that she'd come to him and broken into his house and poisoned him before the story even began.
28th Jun 2009
Doctor Who (1963)
Question: During The Five Doctors, why did Borusa give The Doctor enemies to fight? Wouldn't he want The Doctor's journey to the Dark Tower to go as smoothly as possible without the threat of death and interference?
Chosen answer: They were a diversion to keep The Doctors focused on escape rather than thinking about who had collected them from time and why.
28th Feb 2010
Ratatouille (2007)
Question: Something I have always wondered. At the end of the movie, Remy has hundreds of rats cooking the food with him. However, Remy is the rat in the whole flock with a real ability to know how to cook. How did all of the rats cook the food with great ability if they have no cooking experience at all? Remy couldn't have taught them all how to cook or what to do for the recipes.
Answer: He doesn't need to teach them every recipe, just give each one specific tasks to do, like assembly-line workers.
3rd Feb 2010
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Question: Brad Pitt's character, Aldo Raine, has a scar on his neck, which is very visible in the first scene where he's talking to the Basterds. He says later in the movie that he was a bootlegger in his home state of Tennessee. Is the scar from a failed attempt to execute him by hanging?
Answer: According to the IMDb trivia on the film, yes.
1st Feb 2010
Forrest Gump (1994)
Question: Does young Forrest start school a couple of years later than the other children shown on the bus? He appears to be older than five or six, the age when most kids go to kindergarten and first grade.
Answer: He starts some time later than the other children, since the principal won't let him in school until he sleeps with his mother. We're not told how much time passes before this happens, so it could be a year or more. Kindergarten is optional in the US. A school in the Deep South in the 1950s may not have even offered a Kindergarten, so Forrest would be going into 1st Grade, probably a bit older than the other kids.
13th Jan 2010
Rambo: First Blood (1982)
Question: I was wondering, at the beginning when the cop is about to shave him, why does he freak out about the knife but can kill people with his own knife?
Chosen answer: Because it's a knife that someone else is holding and can use against him. It's common for people in dangerous professions to regard their weapons as tools. For example, police officers who commit suicide by handgun rarely use their service weapon, but rather a personal firearm.
Additionally, I believe it is made clear during that scene that Rambo had previously been tortured at some point, and one of the tools used was a knife. So the combination of being restrained and having someone approach with a knife caused him to basically have extreme PTSD and so he attempts to escape.
13th Jan 2010
Star Wars (1977)
Question: Two questions: In the bar, Obi Wan's lightsaber is purple, not blue. Is there any particular reason for this? Also, the trivia section for this movie mentions a scene with Han Solo and Jabba the Hut that I have never seen before in the movie. Can somebody explain where the scene is and what happens in it?
Answer: The different color is likely due to the lighting of the cantina. The scene with Jabba is in the remastered version of the film and takes place as Han and Chewie are preparing the Falcon for takeoff. Han tells Jabba that he'll have the money to repay him as soon as he gets back from the job of taking Luke and Obi-Wan to Alderaan and Jabba tells him that if he doesn't, he's going to have to send Boba Fett after him.
Lucas filmed the scene during the production of Star Wars but dropped it because he didn't have the technology at the time to replace the stand-in with Jabba the way he wanted. Later during the remaster, now equipped with the right technology, they added Jabba and included the scene in the film.
10th Jan 2010
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Question: When Eddie is fighting Doom at the end he spots a box with a singing sword in it. He whips it out and sure enough, the sword starts singing. My question is, why would there even be a singing sword? Is this a reference to something else?
Answer: Valiant also shares his name with Arthurian comic strip hero Prince Valiant, who wields a singing sword, Flamberge.
Chosen answer: One of the legends of Excalibur says that the sword sang when Arthur pulled it from the stone. Bugs Bunny went on a quest for the singing sword in a cartoon once, so there's historical AND cartoon precedence for singing swords.
Answer: It's likely just meant to be a nonsensical gag. Notice how Eddie and Doom both give the sword a questionable look, like they're also confused as to why such a thing even exists.
Answer: This is also a gag factory where such things like that would be made for cartoons.
9th Jan 2010
Doctor Who (2005)
Question: Exactly what part did The Doctor play in the great fire of Rome?
Chosen answer: He burned Nero's original plans for his New Rome, inspiring Nero to burn down Rome to rebuild.
20th Nov 2009
Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Question: Why can only Samuel Anders, Dreilide Thrace and Hera Agathon hear 'the music'? also, what does the 'music' signify?
Chosen answer: (Extreme spoilers here.) They hear it because they're either Cylons or their destiny has been influenced by the Cylons. The notes are the coordinates to Earth.
23rd Aug 2009
General questions
I'm searching for a movie I saw maybe 20 years ago about a community on Venus. Venus is covered in clouds and there is a legend/story that the clouds will part one day in however long and the sun will come out. A little girl believes in this story but everyone in her class makes fun of her. On the day it's supposed to happen, her classmates lock her in a shed or closet or something but the clouds do part. The kids run out in the sun while all the flowers bloom in the sunlight and the little girl only gets to see a streak of sunlight through a slot in the door. Finally, the clouds close up and the kids remember that they locked her in the closet. So they go and open the closet and give her all the flowers they collected in the time the sun was out.
Answer: The movie is "All Summer In A Day," based on the short story by Ray Bradbury. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195517/) As of this writing, the film is on YouTube. (https://youtu.be/iz05RhA9Cyw).
23rd Aug 2009
Back to the Future (1985)
Question: How is Marty able to play a 1980s videotape on a 1950s television set? Is this just another example of Doc's ahead-of-his-time inventiveness?
Answer: The video camera was in the DeLorean. With the right kind of adapter, which was common enough in the 80s that Doc might've had it on the camera or been able to jury-rig something in the 50s, it would have been possible to connect it into the antenna screws in the back of the TV like an old Atari and play it directly from the camera.
TVs in the 50s had a two prong antennae connection (two screws in the back that you put a prong antennae into) TVs in the mid 80s also had this. The coax connection (the one wire that screws in) was starting to become common, but, the two prong connection would have been more likely on any given TV at the time, so, whatever wire they used to preview recordings probably had that. very convenient that Marty brought those cords with him.
An old Atari 2600 RF Adapter would be how one would link a video camera to an old-fashioned television. A simple-enough part that Doc could probably make one with 1950s technology.
Answer: Video tape system back then could output an NTSC video signal, just like broadcast at the time, and up to HD in the 2000s. Usually there was a switch on the video device to change the output frequency between channels 3 or 4. Depending on what was an open channel in your area.
15th Aug 2009
General questions
I wanted to submit this to the general questions page, since it is about more than one Disney movie. Has anyone ever explained why several Disney characters have deceased mothers (Belle, Snow White, etc.)?
Answer: Partially, it may be attributed to feelings of guilt over the death of Walt and Roy Disney's mother of carbon monoxide poisoning in the house they'd just bought her a month previously (For more on that, check http://www.snopes.com/disney/waltdisn/mother.asp), however, it's also a trope of children's literature to have the protagonists be orphaned or without one or the other parent, the better to go off on adventures without anyone worrying about them.
28th Aug 2008
Highlander: Endgame (2000)
Question: If this is supposed to be the end of "the game," what happened to Methos? Is Duncan the last immortal? Did he win the prize?
Answer: It's the end of the game for Connor. The other immortals go on.
1st Aug 2009
Ghostbusters 2 (1989)
Question: It seems like the character of Winston (the fourth Ghostbuster) has very little screen time in this movie. He was in a few scenes in the beginning, then kind of disappears for a while, then shows up again after the court room incident. Was there a reason why his character wasn't in the movie more?
Chosen answer: Winston was an employee of the other Ghostbusters, not a "professional paranormal investigator" like the other three. When they're looking into Dana's problem, they're doing it not in a professional ghostbusting capacity, but as a favor to a friend. Once the judge lifted the restraining order and they were back in business, they were able to hire him back.
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Answer: 1: The machines have found an acceptable fuel source with the Matrix and haven't bothered to pursue geothermal energy (Converting to geothermal may be one of the "levels of survival we are willing to accept."). 2: Their clothing seems to be mainly natural fibers, so it could be that they have cotton, flax, or hemp crops under grow lights underground. 3: They eat either from the aforementioned crops or the synthetic protein that the ship crews eat. 4: The machines have accepted that some people will always reject the Matrix and have orchestrated the creation of Zion as a sort of Trash Folder to deposit and occasionally purge their rejects. 5: See 4. 6: Since Zion is set up by the machines each time, we can safely assume that they're not going to give the humans of Zion the technological means to destroy them. By the time they might develop such means on their own, the purge happens. 7: Neo is The Chosen One, sometimes miracles happen for people like that. 8: See 2 and 3.
Captain Defenestrator