Tailkinker

19th Jan 2014

Oblivion (2013)

Question: Since Jack/Victoria are clones, what is the purpose of using 'Sally'? And if Jack is having flashbacks/memories of his wife, wouldn't he have flashbacks of Sally as part of mission control?

Answer: Jack and Victoria believe that they are there on behalf of the human race, so it makes sense for them to have a human face to interact with. Sally is a logical candidate - the Tet would presumably have intercepted her transmissions to the Odyssey and would therefore have plenty to work with in constructing their fake Sally as an interface with their clone workers. It's not made clear in the movie how the original Jack's memories of Julia survived to resurface in his clones, but it seems reasonable that it might be related to the powerful emotions that are associated with those memories, in this case his love for his wife. Sally and Victoria would also feature significantly in the original Jack's memories, but without the same emotional investment, those memories failed to make the transfer into his clones.

Tailkinker

Question: So Batman rides the Bat-cycle into the alley in order to get to the Bat and fly away from the cops when he returns from exile. What happens then to the Bat-cycle? It doesn't seem like the Bat-pod has room to carry it and there's nowhere in the alley to hide it. Batman also doesn't set it to self-destroy (assuming that's an option as with the Bat-pod) so does he just leave it there?

zexthatico

Chosen answer: He hides it away, presumably in the modified shipping container that we see him retrieve it from later on, once he returns to the city from captivity. Having left the Bat there so that he can use it if necessary, it would make sense that he'd also prepare somewhere to hide the Bat-pod when he changed vehicles to avoid having to leave it for the police.

Tailkinker

Question: I'm partly deaf, so I am dependent upon reading closed captioning on TV or movies. My wife and I rented a DVD of this movie. I saw on this DVD where Benedict Cumberbatch was said to be the Necromancer; my wife claims not to have heard the name "Necromancer" said out loud. This was when the Necromancer made a very brief appearance. Was this a mistake in captioning?

Answer: The name Necromancer is said specifically at that point in the movie, by Radagast as he narrates what happened to Gandalf. Your information is correct in that the character is indeed being played by Benedict Cumberbatch, in addition to his role as Smaug.

Tailkinker

Question: When Marty and Doc arrive in the bad 1985, they learn that 1985 has changed and are told that alternate versions of themselves exist. Alternate Doc has been committed and alternate Marty is at a boarding school in Switzerland. Nice movie trick to keep them from running into their alternate selves. Question though, isn't the 1985 at the start of this movie also an alternate 1985? This too has been altered from the original 1985 as seen at the beginning of the first movie. So, where are the alternate Marty and Doc in the timeline when Marty's family is actually upper middle class? Since this is an alternate 1985 as well, where is "rich" Marty? Why didn't he bump into his other self, the Marty that owns the black pickup truck?

Carl Missouri

Chosen answer: We see the alternate Marty depart for the past at the end of the the first movie. As for Doc, as he's simply lived through the thirty years from when the timeline was changed, rather than jumping through time to get there, he actually is the alternate Doc.

Tailkinker

Question: This has always bothered me, Isn't it very convenient that all the cops go down to the sewers and get trapped on the exact same day that Bane takes over Gotham? How could Bane know that was the day the cops were going to try and capture him in the sewers? I admit I may have missed something.

envisaged0ne

Chosen answer: No handy coincidence involved, it's all part of the plan. Bane's intentionally luring the police down into the sewers. He's made himself a major threat with his attack on the stock exchange, so he knows that it's only a matter of time before the police launch a major search of the tunnels under Gotham to try to find him. As soon as it becomes obvious that the time has come, and a mobilisation of that size would be impossible to pull off with any stealth (we see the mayor having to fend off questions from the press), Bane puts the rest of the plan into action so that he can be ready to launch his takeover once the police have walked into the trap he set for them.

Tailkinker

15th Sep 2013

Blade Runner (1982)

Question: When Roy confronts Tyrell, he says something that I'm having difficulty figuring out. The captions read that he is saying "I want more life... father!" But to me, and I've listened to that part over and over trying to figure it out, it sounds like he is saying "I want more life... fucker!" So is he saying Father, or Fucker?

Quantom X

Chosen answer: It's a more complicated question than you might think. Two versions of the scene were filmed, the main one, where Roy says "fucker" and an alternate, originally intended for use on television, where he says "father." Different versions of the movie use different takes. Of the three best known variants, the original theatrical release and the inaccurately-named Director's Cut both use the "fucker" line, whereas the Final Cut, the only one that Ridley Scott had full control over, uses the "father" line. What he's saying will depend on which version of the movie you were watching. Only you can answer that one.

Tailkinker

Question: Why does Khan have to be alive for McCoy to use his blood to save Kirk? The blood will be removed from its supply anyway when drawn.

Quantom X

Chosen answer: McCoy has no real idea how much blood he's going to need to bring Kirk back - given the catastrophic radiation damage to his body, there's every possibility that he might need multiple transfusions over a period of time, which would be much easier if Khan was still alive. Plus there's also the issue that killing Khan could well involve spilling some of the blood that McCoy so desperately needs. Bringing Khan in alive is the best way to maximise their chances.

Tailkinker

Question: Maybe I didn't pay attention when I last saw this film, but when the IMF traitor reveals to Ethan that the Julia in front of him is Davian's translator disguised as her, he says that she (the translator) failed Davian at the Vatican. How exactly did she fail him? Did I miss something?

Heather Benton

Chosen answer: It's stated that she's not just a translator, she's actually Davian's head of security. Given that he was snatched by Ethan's team on her watch, the depth of her failure is quite clear.

Tailkinker

2nd Sep 2013

Kick-Ass (2010)

Chosen answer: Completely, yes, although Cage neglected to inform anybody that he was planning to do it until they started shooting, so he got some very odd looks at first until they figured out what he was up to.

Tailkinker

Question: Why would Rex, a US soldier who fought to protect his country, turn traitor and decide to become a man who wanted world domination?

Answer: He was left for dead by his own comrades, badly injured by an airstrike that they called down on his location. He would likely say that his country turned against him, not that he turned on them.

Tailkinker

28th Aug 2013

Iron Man (2008)

Question: The guy who put the magnet in Tony's chest in the cave, who was he and why was he being held captive by the soldiers?

dan coakley..

Chosen answer: His name is Ho Yinsen and he's a skilled engineer and medic. The details behind his capture are never revealed, but most likely he was kidnapped so that the terrorist group could utilise his skills, coercing him into helping by threatening to destroy his home village, exactly as we see then doing later in the movie after Stark's escape and Yinsen's death.

Tailkinker

22nd Aug 2013

The Truman Show (1998)

Question: Is it ever revealed what happened to Truman's real mother and father? Once he left the show, would it have been possible for him to have been able to find them?

Heather Benton

Chosen answer: No, we don't get any information about them in the movie. It's stated that Truman was legally adopted by the corporation that runs the show; that being the case, Truman would probably be able to learn his true mother's identity from the adoption papers and, with any luck, track her down. Truman was an unwanted pregnancy, hence being given up for adoption, which raises the possibility that his biological father may be unknown, or at least no longer in touch with his mother, but depending on the situation, locating his father cannot be ruled out as a possibility. Given Truman's enormous fame, it's quite probable that a number of people may well appear claiming to be his parents after his escape; DNA matches would allow them to weed out the liars, so it's not implausible that one of both of his biological parents might find him, rather than him finding them.

Tailkinker

Answer: During the interview as they were showing the babies, it was stated that they were "unwanted babies" which means their parents didn't want them. This includes Truman.

lartaker1975

21st Aug 2013

The Game (1997)

Question: Why did Nicholas react very rudely when his assistant wished him a happy birthday?

dan coakley..

Chosen answer: Nicholas' father committed suicide on his 48th birthday, something that has haunted Nicholas ever since. Nicholas himself has now reached the same birthday, putting him in a very sour mood and in no place to receive birthday wishes cordially.

Tailkinker

Answer: No, he admits to his ex-wife after 11:40pm that day that he didn't even realise he was the same age as when his father committed suicide until she just brought it up. I'm guessing he was annoyed because he was just a grumpy man and was resentful of celebrating his birthday due to the painful memories associated with his father.

I always thought he was lying or being sarcastic when he said that.

Answer: The story parallels "A Christmas Carol" with Nicholas being a modern day mirror to Ebenezer Scrooge. When wished "Merry Christmas" Ebenezer famously would say "Humbug." When wished "Happy Birthday", Nicholas is equally as unhappy with the sentiment "I don't like her" he says to his assistant.

19th Aug 2013

General questions

In movies where a giant being is attacking smaller beings, why is it that the giants always seem to be moving so slowly? Happens in video games often as well.

Quantom X

Chosen answer: Firstly, giants are heavy, really heavy. If you double the height of an individual, simple maths indicates that their volume, and thus their mass, multiplies by a factor of eight. So anything huge is going to have a hell of a lot of mass to move around. Secondly, in order for a giant to appear to move at what we would consider normal human speeds, they would actually have to move their body at a much higher velocity than normal. Say, for example, that a human, walking fast, takes two paces every second. A giant ten times the size, in order to appear to be moving at human-normal speeds, would also have to be taking the same two paces per second. Given the ten-times-longer stride length, this would translate to the giant's limbs moving at ten times the velocity of the humans, with a correspondingly much higher acceleration and deceleration. Given the increase in mass (a giant ten times the height of a human would possess a thousand times the mass) and the need for much higher acceleration, basic physics (Force = Mass x Acceleration) dictates that the amount of force required to move at what would appear to be a normal speed is staggeringly higher than that required for a normal-sized human; ten times the acceleration and a thousand times the mass requires ten thousand times the force. While our theoretical ten-times-larger giant would have a thousand times the muscle volume, in order to apply the necessary force, those muscles would still have to operate at ten times the capacity of normal muscles to give the appearance of normal movement. Obviously in the case of fictional giants, that sort of muscular efficiency isn't out of the question (they are fictional, after all), but most creators recognise on some level that there's a certain implausibility there, and thus the image of the slow-moving giant has become an indication of something really big. And while their movements may appear slow, their increased size means that their actual movement speed is still likely to be considerably higher than human norms, so the slowness is somewhat misleading anyway.

Tailkinker

Question: When the Hydra men are using their weapons, the sound of them charging is the same sound effect used in the Iron Man movies where he his charging his arch reactor pulses. Is there any relation between these technologies?

Quantom X

Chosen answer: While not explicitly spelled out in the films to date, it's implied that Howard Stark developed the arc reactor technology after extensive study of the Tesseract that he retrieved from the ocean floor at the end of the movie. As such, Hydra's Tesseract-powered weaponry and the arc reactor-powered systems in the Iron Man suits share something of a common origin, hence the similar sound.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: A couple of techniques were used. In most cases, Evans would film the scene normally, then the effects team would digitally shrink his character down to the smaller size. This would generally require some on-set adjustment to allow for eyelines - in some cases Evans would be physically lower than other actors, in others, they would look at his upper chest while he looked over their heads. In a few cases, actor Leander Deeny, who possessed the necessary scrawny physique, would film the scene, collaborating closely with Evans to ensure that the character's mannerisms remained the same. Deeny's features would then be digitally replaced with those of Chris Evans. Deeny appears briefly in the movie as the bartender in the pub Rogers visits to recruit his team.

Tailkinker

Question: Is it known if there is still an ongoing feud between Peter Jackson and Christopher Lee? I ask because they had a well documented falling-out after the original LOTR trilogy, stemming from Jackson cutting Lee's character Saruman from the theatrical release of ROTK. In this movie, there's an odd part where Galadriel and Gandalf have a telepathic communication, basically ignoring Lee as he is delivering his lines. This happens more than once and I found it to be unintentionally comical.

Answer: While Lee was unhappy about being cut from the theatrical cut, the character's restoration in full to the Extended Edition, generally deemed to be the definitive version of the movie, went some distance towards settling the issue; most allegations of an actual feud between them are considerably exaggerated, mostly by irate Lee fans. While Lee did ask Jackson for assurances that he wouldn't be cut out this time, assurances that Jackson was more than happy to give, given the key nature of his scenes in The Hobbit, any feud between them is long gone. After all, Lee could easily have just refused to appear if there was a real issue there. He didn't.

Tailkinker

Question: What is the meaning behind both Snape and Lily having a doe as a Patronus? Why does Dumbledore *not* find it "curious" (during the scene after Harry's "death")?

Answer: Snape loved Lily all his life, despite her choosing another; his Patronus being the same as hers is a mark of how his heart always belonged to her. Dumbledore was well aware of Snape's feelings for Lily, so their shared Patronus comes as no surprise to him at all.

Tailkinker

Answer: As mentioned, Snape's patronus took the same form as Lily's because he was in love with her. Dumbledore always knew what Snape's patronus was. He was just surprised by the continued depth of Snape's feelings for Lily, so many years after her death. Dumbledore asked Snape if he was starting to care for Harry after Snape expressed disdain over Dumbledore's always having known that Harry was destined to die. He cast his patronus to show Dumbledore that he is only motivated by his love for Lily, not Harry.

6th Aug 2013

Blade Runner (1982)

Chosen answer: It's simply a term used for the police detectives who specialise in tracking down and "retiring" replicants. The origin of the phrase is not given in the movie. In reality, Hampton Fancher, who wrote the first draft of the script, encountered the term as the title of a movie that was never made, that centred around a supplier of illegal medical equipment. He and Ridley Scott liked the phrase so much that they acquired the rights to use it for their movie.

Tailkinker

Question: Forgive me, I haven't read the books yet. Do they explain how new Hogwarts students are able stop going to regular school in the Muggle "world"? It seems unlikely that several children, year after year, could suddenly miss school at age eleven (when they start going to Hogwarts) without the Muggles noticing.

Answer: In the UK, the age of eleven marks the point where children leave primary school and move on to secondary school. They do not all go together; children from a single primary school will end up separating and going to several different secondary schools located in their general area or even further afield in some cases. As such, the age of eleven is a very good point for children to surreptitiously drop out of their local system to attend Hogwarts, which could be explained to Muggle relatives and friends as a boarding school or other special educational facility without touching on its true nature. Hogwarts draws its pupils from all over the country, with only a hundred or so per school year. Given that a large proportion of these will be the children of wizarding families, who are generally home-schooled, then we're likely only talking about at most one or two children from any given area, which would be highly unlikely to be noticed. In the event that somebody does somehow pick up on it, it would be a relatively simple matter for the Ministry of Magic to make them forget all about it.

Tailkinker

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