Question: In the first chapter, Voldemort wouldn't let Peter find another wizard for the ritual because he didn't trust Peter to not run away. But why not send Barty Crouch Junior, whom he does trust, to find someone? Then he could have been revived sooner, as Peter said.
Greg Dwyer
23rd Jul 2014
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Answer: Barty Crouch Jr was already looking for Harry and trying to get to Hogwarts.
18th Jul 2014
The Simpsons Movie (2007)
18th Jul 2014
The Simpsons Movie (2007)
Question: Is there any reason why the EPA couldn't just put the dome over the lake instead of the whole town? I mean, the only thing that actually is causing any pollution is from the lake.
Chosen answer: It's less about containing the pollution itself and more about destroying the kind of people who let it get that bad.
18th Jul 2014
Saw II (2005)
Question: Why couldn't the victims just gotten a few antidotes, or maybe even the one in the safe, and shared it to possibly last the full 3 hours until the doors opened before the gas killed them?
Answer: They had no idea how long they would last. They had to rely on Jigsaw's reputation and Amanda's directions as the only one to survive him.
1st Jul 2014
Wild Things (1998)
Question: Did Kelly Van Ryan really love Sam Lombardo or was she trying to use him to get her mom's money? Or both?
Answer: Yes, Kelly WAS in love with Sam. And the money was just a bonus.
Answer: Kelly loved Sam and hated her mom. She wanted the money that was left to her by her grandfather and this was the only way to get it without her mom dying.
26th Jun 2014
The Truman Show (1998)
Question: When Christof and his employees examine the basement where Truman is supposedly asleep (just before Marlon is sent there), Christof discovers something under the chair that obviously reveals to them that Truman is gone. What is it that they discover?
Answer: Christof sees Truman's hand as he is sneaking away. This means that he can't be under the blanket.
24th Jun 2014
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
Question: My understanding is Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, Howard, and even Amy and Kripke work for a university; but none of them seem to be teachers. And if they are, they never have office hours, or are seen grading homework, and Sheldon seems inept at teaching. Do universities really hire that many people who simply do research with no actual work requirements? Or what's going on? (I understand not filming boring office hours or grading, etc. But they never even allude to it, their work never interferes with random daily events, and I imagine college teachers/professors would stay extremely more busy.
Chosen answer: The boys work for Caltech, a research university mainly dedicated to science and technology. It's never been stated where Amy works, except that she has her own lab. But remember, her lab is fully funded by the Saudi prince that she is pseudo-engaged to. Any business or university would hire her for that reason.
Answer: In season 7 though Amy came to work at the university til the end.
3rd Jun 2014
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
29th May 2014
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
Question: Why is it that Arthur Weasley doesn't die when Nagini bites him, but Severus Snape later dies after being bitten by her?
Answer: Arthur was quickly brought to the hospital after the attack, and it seems like it may have been cut short by Voldemort realizing Harry could sense Nagini and the intervention of the Order. Snape was bitten several times in the face and neck and left to die with no help around. Not only that, but Voldemort magically slits Snape's throat before setting Nagini onto him, which would have sped up his death considerably.
5th May 2014
The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Question: At the fort they cover their cannons with sheepskin. Why?
Answer: During inclement weather, dry sheepskins were used to keep rain from entering the barrel. During battle, wet sheepskins were used to cool down the barrel to decrease the likelihood of the powder exploding prematurely.
21st Apr 2014
Jawbreaker (1999)
Question: The girls try to persuade the police that Liz had sex with a strange man who then killed her. Why then didn't the police do a DNA test and forensics, which would prove that there was no semen in Liz's body, and so show the girls were lying?
Chosen answer: I believe the idea was to take the DNA from Marilyn Manson out of Courtney and put it into Liz's corpse.
17th Apr 2014
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Question: Tom Cruise is a Manhattan doctor living on Central Park West. We can see in the movie it's a large, beautiful apartment. To buy a Central Park West apartment of this type is in the range of 5 to 12 million dollars. Being a doctor he's highly educated. Why don't the rich people in the naked group want him as a member? He the perfect recruit.
Answer: Perhaps the group is full or bans certain groups of people. It is also possible that they excluded him because in New York, physicians are mandatory reporters and they were afraid of being found out.
17th Apr 2014
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990)
Question: In an episode with all Vivian's sisters around she says "the Smith sisters are together again" or something like that. Later in Fresh Prince we meet Will's father, who we hear has the surname "Smith" as well, does this mean Will's dad and Vi shared a surname?
Chosen answer: Yes, though remember that Smith is the most common surname in the United States.
20th Mar 2014
Rocky II (1979)
Question: What was Tony's reason that he was afraid of Apollo fighting Rocky again?
Answer: With all the damage Apollo did to Rocky, Rocky still wasn't knocked out. In the film series, Rocky is depicted as having an almost superhuman ability to absorb punches. Rocky also caused internal bleeding in Apollo. Tony knew that Rocky was far more dangerous than anyone realized.
18th Mar 2014
I, Robot (2004)
Question: Why did Lanning build a robot that functioned independently of the USR mainframe, had alloys strong enough to endure vast drops and steal nanites, had a pre-programmed knowledge of Spooner... And then tell it to kill him? Furthermore, it is Sonny's own suggestion to kill Viki with nanites, so why didn't Lanning just get him to jump out the lab and do that, or at least convey a less cryptic message about what was going on?
Answer: People would not likely listen to just the robot. By killing himself he ensured that Spooner would take him seriously. This would also keep VIKI from finding out and planning around it.
But why couldn't Lanning just kill VIKI in the first place?
Because VIKI basically had complete control over him. She could lock him in the lab, stop his access to information, stop him from communicating with others, etc... Developing Sonny allowed him to deceive VIKI and still kill her in the end.
Answer: VIKI was too powerful to fight on his own. VIKI could control the robots.
18th Mar 2014
Gattaca (1997)
Question: When 'Jerome' has his blood tested with the syringe, and jumps up pretending to be in pain, he puts his own test tube down on the trolley, but the sample from his arm was in the syringe; why does the doctor not realise that it's not his? Is he in on it, or is the syringe suppose to be filling from the test tube, like the finger print capsules?
Chosen answer: Jerome does a little sleight of hand, switching the vials.
18th Mar 2014
A Few Good Men (1992)
Question: I guess I fell asleep, but what is significant about the unrecorded flight that left 7 hours earlier?
Answer: It means Colonel Jessup was lying about the 6am flight being the first flight off the base. He says a few times, and Kaffe confirms it several other times, that after they made the decision to transfer him (which was itself a lie), the next possible flight was 6am the following day. That was incorrect; there was one that left at 11pm that same day. The missing flight proves that Jessup altered the Gitmo log books to remove the 11pm flight, but the Andrews log books will show that same flight landing, thus demonstrating both the lie and the cover-up.
Answer: It would show that the colonel was lying about getting Santiago out of there as soon as possible.
4th Feb 2014
General questions
I'm searching for a movie that I can't remember the title of. I'd say it was released late 90s, early 2000s. I can't remember much about it but I remember a boy befriending another boy who was bigger, may have had something wrong with him. I remember the bigger boy giving the smaller one a ride on his shoulders and the small boy gets hurt. The small boy's mother is a Darryl Hall-type character. I also remember the bigger boy gets upset and he hurts his friend, even though it was an accident.
Answer: That would be "The Mighty", starring Elden Henson and Kieran Culkin.
12th Jan 2014
Die Hard (1988)
Question: Why didn't Hans Gruber simply place 5 hostages in a room and threaten to blow their brains out if John McClane doesn't hand himself in? John McClane is the good guy with a conscience and Hans Gruber is the ruthless killer that kills 2 people in a heartbeat, John would have been forced to hand himself in or be responsible for their deaths. Even if Hans didn't want to kill anyone, he could have pretended to shoot people one by one. John wouldn't know any better.
Answer: We don't know what John would have done in that circumstance. Obviously Hans was planning to kill everyone with the explosives anyway at the end. Perhaps John would have suspected that. Also, doing that would invite more police incursions.
Hans thought Ellis was a good friend of John's and John still didn't give up when he was going to shoot him. If John wouldn't save his friend, why would he care about others. Plus Hans told Karl earlier he could stall the police but not if they heard gun shots. The police would have absolutely stormed the building if he started killing the hostages.
The fact that we don't know how John McClane would have acted doesn't remove the fact that it would most likely have been a good way to coax him out. Also, depending on when Hans Gruber would have decided do implement this strategy, John probably wouldn't have known about the explosives on the roof as he only finds out about them at the 3rd act break. As for the "more police incursions" part, I couldn't disagree more; Hans already killed two hostages - one on speaker with the police -, all the cops in LA seem to be there already, and don't forget that the involvement of the FBI is part of their plan anyway. This is definitely the one major plot hole of this otherwise perfect film.
It would have been, but plenty of movie plots don't pan out the "perfect" way without it being a plot hole. Killing Ellis is a reasonable first step, it doesn't work, and then the events of the plot pick up pace - Gruber goes to check the detonators, as that's a priority. He's hoping/assuming they can get through the rest of their plan by isolating McClane, or at least prevent him causing more chaos. They want the power shut off - they don't want to cause such massive carnage that the building is stormed before then. They need to get helicopters, blow the roof, and escape as planned. Hans doesn't want to derail things any more than they already have been.
Seems to me like they have all their bases covered; the police isn't even able to get in with a tank as he blows them up so I don't think the police "storming the building" is even a possibility in the reality of the film. Also, after blowing up that tank, that's two hostages and a bunch of cops dead so I would say the situation is pretty derailed. Everything is going as planned for Hans and his team, except for McClane, so he should be in damage control mode and this is an obvious solution. He doesn't even have to change his plans, just tell McClane he's gonna kill one hostage every 10 minutes until he shows up unarmed and tell one of his henchmen guarding the hostages to do it while they go along with the plan and maybe even try to find McClane at the same time. I think this is something Hans should have at least considered, but the screenwriters just didn't think about it/didn't want to address because they couldn't think of a good reason for him not to do it.
There are no cops dead, Hans says "Just wound them" and despite the awesome explosion, the APC isn't actually penetrated or destroyed. But Hans needed this to turn into a standoff, a show of force would prevent a SWAT raid from expediting the deadline, he needed to get all of the hostages up on the roof to make his getaway downstairs, and executing a bunch of them would bring suspicion onto how cooperative he is (His plan to blow up the roof relies heavily on the police sending in choppers) they cooperate with him, which they won't do if they think Hans is a crazed lunatic who's only interested in more and more carnage, if he wounds the cops and only shows he can defend himself, and that he was being reasonable. The cops would play ball, and they would believe he's willing to spare the hostages lives, plus he always planned on taking one hostage as a contingency, if they thought they were gonna be killed they'd become a liability. Patton Oswalt talks of a real plothole though lol.
John McClane would know they'd kill him as soon as he shows up, as soon as he heard "We'll have to tell Karl that his brother is dead" he knew that all bets were off, he lost his chance to end it civil, if they had no personal connection to the first terrorist John kills then maybe putting 5 people into a room and doing an Air Force One on them would work, but not when John knows he'll be body number 6. Al says it best "If he gave himself up they'd both be dead" with Ellis execution, John watched them take control of the hostages, watched them execute the Takagi, and when the first Terrorist thinks he's found John he shoots first after saying "I promise I won't hurt you" and then taking his bag and realizing how well financed and equipped, these guys weren't domestic terrorists, they used serious money, serious contacts, and serious planning to get themselves into this building on this night. He knew the only way to play ball with them was fists and elbows.
Just because a character doesn't do a thing I doesn't make it a plot hole. The plot was that he didn't do it. You may consider a different approach "better" but that's irrelevant. You may as well try to argue that any character choice that doesn't fit with a perceived meta is a plot hole. It isn't, it's just the plot.
Answer: Hans Gruber needed the last vault lock to open by cutting off the electricity; he didn't want to escalate it further so that the FBI would start getting more aggressive. He needed them to play ball so he could make it seem like he's just a terrorist who martyrs himself and the hostages, and by the time they figured out he and his men aren't among the remains, they'll already have left in the basement with the ambulance. Shooting 5 people would have escalated it to the point that the FBI wouldn't play ball with him.
6th Jan 2014
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
Question: Why does the show go out of the way never to show the names of sodas? IE, 'Cola' instead of 'Coke', 'Lime' instead of 'Sprite,' 'Zip' instead of '7up.' They don't seem to have a problem with showing names of other products, such as the snacks in the vending machine.
Chosen answer: Certain items are part of paid product placement. Those would be obviously named, as would things that can't go unnamed for simplicity reasons. Other things might be unnamed because of opposite product placement, i.e. Coke pays for it so they don't name Pepsi products.
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Answer: Because Crouch was a notorious dark wizard who was supposed to be locked up in Azkaban. Crouch had to be free to take over the life of Professor Moody. Even if they could find another person, Voldemort still wanted Harry for the ritual.
Greg Dwyer