Question: I remember Cobb saying that he spent time in Limbo for about fifty years. Was he referring to the time that he spent with Mal, or something else that we weren't shown?
Tailkinker
8th Sep 2010
Inception (2010)
4th Sep 2010
Aliens (1986)
Question: How did the first facehugger get through Kane's helmet? In 'Alien' the people searching the alien craft wore helmets, in 'Aliens', Newt's parents didn't wear helmets. Can anyone explain the discrepancy?
Chosen answer: It burned its way through Kane's faceplate by excreting some acidic substance - that's why it appears melted. As for the helmets discrepancy between the two films, when the Nostromo landed on LV-426, the planet's atmosphere wasn't capable of supporting human life, forcing Dallas, Kane and Lambert to wear full suits. By the time Newt's family locate the derelict ship, fifty-seven years later, the human terraforming process has been running for twenty years, altering the atmosphere enough to make it breathable.
27th Aug 2010
Inception (2010)
Question: How come Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) didn't recognize Saito (Ken Watanabe) on the plane, especially if the two are supposed to be bitter business rivals?
Answer: Saito's rivalry is with Fischer's father, not with Fischer himself. With Fischer and his father not being on particularly good terms, it's hardly unreasonable that Fischer might be unfamiliar with his father's competitors. Equally, it's not particularly clear that Saito and Fischer Snr are necessarily bitter rivals - the whole reason for the inception is that Fischer's company is so much more powerful that Saito's that Saito needs Fischer to break up his father's corporate empire so that he isn't pushed out of the market. Saito may have a bee in his bonnet about Fischer Snr, as you'd expect from a smaller competitor looking at a more powerful opponent, but it's quite likely that Fischer Snr gave little thought to Saito, dismissing him as being little threat to his empire. In which case, there'd be even less reason for Fischer to recognise him on the plane.
3rd Sep 2010
The Fugitive (1993)
Question: Towards the end, before the confrontation with Kimble and Nicholls, the guy who was tracing Kimble's phone records tells the Marshalls that Kimble telephoned Sykes on the night of his wife's murder. But obviously it wasn't Kimble calling Sykes, it was Sykes using Kimble's phone. But why would Sykes be calling himself?
Chosen answer: He didn't. A key plot point is that Nichols borrowed Kimble's car on the night of the murder. The call to Sykes, which is expressly stated by the marshals as being on Kimble's car phone, was from Nichols, presumably arranging to meet so that he could give Sykes Kimble's keys to get into his house to lie in wait for him.
Thank you for explaining it. I've seen it several times and never realised how it went down.
And Tommy Lee Jones tells Kimble that they knew Nichols called Skyes from his car, but how? Wouldn't the more logical answer have been that the US Marshals thought that Kimble called Sykes from his car to tell the killer his wife was home alone? There is no way the US Marshalls would have known that the Kimble let Nichols borrow his call - that's the mistake in the movie! It actually should have made the Marshalls suspicious of Kimble, not exonerate him.
The Marshals know Kimble let Nichols borrow his car because Kimble told the police when he was initially interviewed following the murder. He gave a detailed account of his actions and whereabouts that night and mentioned that Nichols had borrowed his car. It didn't seem suspicious to the police at the time because Richard claimed he fought with a one armed man he didn't recognize; a story the police did not believe because there was no evidence of this and Kimble's wife "identified" her attacker as Richard. Gerard puts everything together when he realises that Nichols lied about knowing Lentz.
How did Sam figure out that Nichols borrowed the vehicle and made the call to Sykes and gave him keys, etc? I know in the laundry he reveals that he knew this but when/how did he figure it out?
Answer: This is more of a question really. What kind of defense attorney did this high dollar, Dr. Kimble hire who do not show their defendant pictures of the one-armed men the police question? How do his attorneys not ask him "OK, which of these one-armed men did you fight with in your house?"
The prosecution is not required to inform the defense of every person the police interview or question. They are only required to give the defense whatever evidence they have against the accused. Simply questioning someone in a perceived dead only counts as evidence against the accused if the prosecutor mentions it in court. If the prosecutor were to say "We interviewed a one-armed man named Sykes and he says he doesn't know you", then Kimble's defense would be required to be given access to Sykes. We can assume this never happened.
The Chicago police DID question Sykes after the Kimble murder. Review the scene where Sykes returns to his apartment after Kimble has been there. Girard starts asking Sykes questions, at first Sykes says he doesn't know anything about Kimble but then "remembers" that he had been interviewed by the police right after the Kimble murder. However, Sykes says that he gave the police an alibi, with 15 people supposedly confirming that Sykes was on a business trip and not in Chicago. The movie then implies that Sykes had been a Chicago cop and lost his arm "in the line of duty." Remember that the Chicago police focused on Kimble pretty quickly. Their investigators may have interviewed Sykes, but they likely didn't even come close to considering him as a potential murderer. Even with Sykes likely matching Kimble's description of the one-armed man, the police likely saw Sykes as a former cop... A former cop who had an alibi confirmed by 15 people. As I understand it, prosecutors don't have to tell defense attorneys about everyone that the cops question. They only have to tell the defense about potential witnesses that might be called in connection to the criminal trial. In this scenario, Sykes wouldn't have been part of the criminal trial (Again, supposedly on a business trip confirmed by 15 people on the night of the murder) and thus Kimble and his lawyers would never have known about his existence.
20th Aug 2010
Scream 2 (1997)
Question: When Gail and Dewy are trying to find the killer, Dewy says "white male, 3'0 clock" and Gale says "your clock or my clock?", what are they talking about?
Answer: It's a way of indicating direction. If you consider yourself to be standing in the centre of a clock face, with 12 o'clock directly in front of you, then the different times indicate different directions, so when Dewey says that the man he's spotted is at 3 o'clock, he's referring to somebody standing directly to his right. Gale asks him to clarify whether he means his 3 o'clock or her 3 o'clock because they're not facing in the same direction, and thus their 3 o'clocks are not the same.
20th Aug 2010
Titanic (1997)
20th Aug 2010
Avatar (2009)
Question: Can someone explain how the link between the human and the Avatar is actually completed? There does not seem to be a physical link. Does it have a range?
Answer: While the precise details are never spelled out, each avatar is created by combining native Pandoran DNA with the DNA of the intended user, hence the avatars resembling their human selves. This allows a neural link to be created, using unspecified technology, between the human brain and the genetically similar brain of the avatar, allowing the user complete access to the senses of and control over the avatar body. If there is a maximum range over which this can be achieved, it is not mentioned at any point in the film, although the fact that all those using the avatars are present on Pandora would seem to rule out the link functioning over interstellar distances.
10th Aug 2010
Stuart Little 2 (2002)
Question: This isn't really about this movie, but I could have sworn there was a third Stuart Little movie that was all CG. Does this actually exist or am I making things up?
Answer: Nope, you're not making it up. There is indeed a third movie in the series, called Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild, which is, unlike its predecessors, completely computer animated.
10th Aug 2010
The Dark Knight (2008)
Question: When Bruce speeds through the light in the Lamborghini to intercept the intentional crash into Reese's car, Reese got out of the car and glanced at Bruce for a few seconds. Does Reese really know that Bruce is Batman? Because there is almost a look of uncertainty or a lack of recognition on Reese's face when he looks at Bruce.
Chosen answer: It certainly seems that Reese is pretty confident about Bruce being Batman. I always interpreted the look of uncertainty that Reese gives him as being more a degree of shock and shame that, even though he tried to blackmail him and then went to the TV station to reveal Bruce's big secret to the whole world, Bruce would still put his life on the line to save him.
9th Aug 2010
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Question: The movie seems to suggest that Link has an ulterior motive for being on the Nebuchadnezzar. Early in the movie, Morpheus says "Given your situation, I can't say I fully understand your reasons for being here", and later Link tells Zee that he made a promise. Is he talking about Tank? What is going on here?
Chosen answer: He has no ulterior motive, he's simply taken over as the ship's "operator" because of a promise that he made to his brother-in-law Dozer before his death in the first film. Given he's married, that his wife has already lost two brothers under Morpheus' command and that, at the beginning at least, he's clearly sceptical about Morpheus' beliefs, it's not unreasonable that his commander would question his presence. Link, however, takes the attitude that a promise is a promise; if others don't entirely understand that, that's their problem.
2nd Aug 2010
Inception (2010)
Question: In the vault scene, isn't forger Eames impersonating the Elder Fischer on his deathbed in the vault? If so, then how can he also be across the room at the door?
Answer: No, he isn't. Everything in that room is out of Fischer's subconscious - as the film explains, the team design the dreams to include a secure area, a vault, safe, whatever, which the target will then fill. In the higher levels of the dream, the team have been surreptitiously guiding Fischer towards the idea of splitting the company up; this is the level where it pays off, where Fischer's own subconscious fills the vault with the things he needs to see or hear to make the idea real, to complete the inception.
29th Jul 2010
General questions
Does anybody know who the film composer is for Eric Rohmer's film, 'My Night With Maud'?
Answer: One of Rohmer's signature touches was that he almost invariably used diagetic music in his films, that is, music that comes from an on-screen source, such as a radio or a character playing a musical instrument as opposed to the vast majority of film scores, which use extra-diagetic music that is used in a scene but cannot be heard by the characters involved. As such, he tended not to employ a composer to create a specific score, but instead populated the film with pre-existing pieces of music from a variety of sources that he would select to be playing on whatever musical object existed with any given scene.
29th Jul 2010
Goodfellas (1990)
Question: If the real Henry Hill wrote a book and co-wrote the screenplay (with Martin Scorsese), how is it that the Mob never found him? Or did they, and we (the viewers/general public) were never told about that?
Answer: He went into the witness protection programme along with his family under assumed names, however was expelled from that programme after being arrested for drugs offences in Seattle in the late 1980s. Since then he apparently lived quite openly, including a number of media appearances, although he continued to have problems with the law, mostly due to a long battle with alcoholism. He lived in Malibu up until his death in 2012. As to why the Mob appeared to be disinterested in pursuing him, you'd have to ask them.
By his own loud admission on Howard Stern, he had no idea why he was able to live such an incredibly long time for his circumstances.
Also, Henry Hill, in the last years of his life wasn't so worried anymore about getting whacked. All the people that were a threat to him were either in prison or dead by that time.
29th Jul 2010
Wall-E (2008)
Question: I have three questions. First, on one of the holo-screens in the beginning, (the one saying: "Too much garbage in your space? There's plenty of space out in space"), there are two Axiom cruisers leaving. I thought it was just one. Question number two: What's the purpose of that robot that is clicking on a keyboard? (The one that lets GO-4, Wall-E and Eve pass to the bridge.) Last question: In the Axiom garbage disposal thing area, there are two gigantic Wall-A's. What does the A stand for?
Answer: (1) If you continue to listen to the announcement that you quote, the next line is "BnL Starliners leaving each day". Clearly there's a sizeable fleet of ships, as you'd expect, given the necessity to completely evacuate Earth's population, with the Axiom, described as "the jewel in the BnL fleet", presumably being the flagship. Whether any of the other ships were also still functioning remains unrevealed. (2) It's presumably some sort of administration robot, with specific duties regarding access to the captain's office. (3) It stands for "Axiom".
26th Jul 2010
Inception (2010)
Question: When Cobb finally gets home to see his children at the end why don't they look any different from his memories? The story implies that he's been gone for a long time yet they don't appear to have aged.
Answer: The answer above is solid and I agree, but there's another plausible way of looking at it. It is implied at the end that Cobb could still be dreaming (we never see if the top stops spinning). If that's the case, then he would likely dream his children to be exactly how he remembers them.
Answer: The story really doesn't imply too heavily exactly how long Cobb has been on the run. Very few clues are given, so it could quite plausibly be less than a year since his wife's death, in which case their children would not have aged dramatically. Their voices on the phone seem compatible with children of the ages shown at the end of the film and Cobb shows no concern when reunited with them that they should be older than they are. Two sets of children are listed in the credits, of different ages.
24th Jul 2010
Inception (2010)
Question: I'm not sure if it was just one song or not, but what was the song played that cued the "kick"?
Chosen answer: Édith Piaf's "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien".
15th Jun 2010
The Matrix (1999)
Question: Okay, so help me out here. When someone still plugged into the Matrix dies from say, cancer or is hit by a car, does that mean the real world counterpart of that person has been completely drained of energy by the machines? When a human has served its purpose to the machines, do they alter the Matrix to make that person die? I'm very curious to know how how death works in the Matrix.
Chosen answer: Insofar as can be told from what little we know, the human body will continue to produce energy indefinitely, at least until it dies of old age or from some other cause - there appears to be no precedent for an individual to be fully drained by the machines. If an individual dies in some abnormal manner within the Matrix, such as a car crash, their body will die on the outside and will have to be disposed of. Otherwise, their body will presumably age normally until they expire of natural causes. As for how cancer might operate, we have no information. To theorise, as the digital body represents the actual body with reasonable accuracy, should an individual plugged into the Matrix develop cancer in their real body, then it's a plausible hypothesis that their digital self will demonstrate the same symptoms - the real and virtual afflictions will proceed at the same rate and the digital self will expire when the real body passes away.
10th Jul 2010
Iron Man (2008)
Question: How come Tony doesn't die when Pepper hits the button that blows up the roof? He never cleared the roof as intended and it must have been really powerful if it killed Obediah. Tony's chest piece flickers on and off and then the scene fades. They never give an explanation for this.
Answer: Tony, even wearing the Iron Man armour, is light enough that the shockwave of the blast throws him out of the way, so he escapes the majority of the explosion's effects. Stane, in his much heavier suit, isn't so lucky and so gets the full impact, which kills him. The flickering of the chest piece is merely a device to show that Tony is still in one piece, even if injured.
15th Jun 2010
Doctor Who (2005)
Question: My understanding of The Daleks is that they draw their power from their vertical shoulder slats. The new paradigm Daleks have no shoulder slats, so where are they drawing their power from?
Chosen answer: Don't know where you got that information from, but there doesn't seem to be much around to support it. Models of Dalek shown in very early episodes of the original series got their power from external sources, but since then they have operated entirely on unspecified internal power sources concealed within their armour. No reason to think that the new Daleks are any different.
16th May 2010
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Question: How does Ivan Vanko know that Tony Stark will be driving at the Monaco Grand Prix, and is therefore open to attack, when Tony himself made that decision at the Grand Prix, like, 5 minutes before the race was to start?
Chosen answer: He doesn't. All he knows is that Stark will be there. His aim is not necessarily to confront Stark directly, but to humiliate him by attacking the race; showing that Stark's technology is not unique to him, to crack the world's confidence in Stark so that the government will have no choice but to step in to bring him down. Stark choosing to drive the car, thus allowing Vanko to attack him directly, to "make him bleed", as he put it, is merely a very useful bonus.
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Chosen answer: He's referring to the time spent there with Mal - remember that we see, towards the end of the film, a scene with the pair of them in their Limbo-built cityscape, both of them old-aged.
Tailkinker ★