Question: Why is it said that Imhotep and his priests were mummified alive? Mummification occurs when someone dies and has most of the organs removed. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that he was buried alive?
lionhead
1st Jan 2023
The Mummy (1999)
2nd Jun 2022
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Plot hole: Any strike on a military facility by incoming aircraft would first take out the SAM sites with missiles to clear the way for said aircraft to operate freely. After all, the Tomahawks fly right past the attacking planes and take out the runway with no issues at all - no reason they couldn't hit the high and exposed SAMs.
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Suggested correction: The idea was to use the tomahawks to take out the airfield and prevent enemy planes from taking off. The SAMs could be evaded by flying through the canyon so the airfield was considered a higher priority target.
While that may be so, those planes exit would have a difficult time out running and avoiding that many SAMs. It's not like the ship wouldn't have enough tomahawks to take out the SAMs as well.
Taking out the airfield was deemed necessary to complete the mission, taking out SAMs beyond the canyon was not. The original plan didn't take into account the pilots surviving the mission in the first place, so the Navy didn't bother with extra strikes on SAM sites. Maverick had to struggle to get them to approve this plan in the first place too, so he wouldn't be able to convince them to put even more effort into it.
They still have to avoid the SAMs on the way out, no canyon to protect them then.
12th Dec 2014
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Corrected entry: For an alleged spectator sport, the Triwizard Tournament is remarkably unfriendly to spectators, with the First Task the only one of the three in which they are able to witness the action going on (since the second task takes place at the bottom of the school lake and the third in an overgrown maze of hedges). Watching the three tasks is presumably the whole point of the tournament, and the justification for cancelling an entire year of Quidditch, a much more spectator-friendly game.
Correction: For one thing, at no point is it ever stated to any degree that the Triwizard Tournament is a spectator sport. Quidditch is cancelled so the champions can focus on the tournament instead of the Quidditch season, and so the maze can be grown on the pitch. For another, the audience for the third task is sitting in bleachers a hundred feet up; they can see everything just fine.
If they could see everything in the maze, Moody would have been caught helping, Krum would have been arrested for using unforgivable curses and everybody would have freaked when Harry and Cedric disappeared for a few hours.
This is quite a good plot hole IMHO. They ship several years' worth of students from two schools to Hogwarts for the Tournament and cancel Quiddich etc. for everyone, for the purposes of the tournament. It's not like they share classes or anything - the Ball and that's about it. If not a spectator sport - and what sport isn't? - why not just send the champions off by themselves and not disrupt anyone else. And why have the crowds at the lake, staring at the surface of the lake for hour?
It's not a sport. It's a brutal competition between the 3 best students of 3 schools. All year around the students of 1 year of the other 2 schools are at Hogwarts and the tournament is going on. There are still classes, since only 3 students are supposed to participate anyway but if they don't allow students to go watch the 3 tasks when they happen they'd probably refuse to follow classes and riot. So they let them watch, even though they can't see anything of it.
3rd Jun 2016
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Question: Benedict sent the SWAT team down to the vault while the "thieves" were still there in order to gain control over his vault etc. Obviously the SWAT team kind of managed to do that, except that the "thieves" blew up the vault with the money. But then when Benedict came down to the vault personally, why he didn't ask about the thieves or want to speak to them, or wonder where their bodies were? Because when the SWAT team left it was only him in the vault.
Answer: Simple, he didn't suspect the SWAT team to know anything more than he did. All he knows is that the SWAT team arrived in an empty vault, just like he did. No thieves, no money. He is a control freak anyway and wanted to nail the scumbags himself, it was his vault.
I thought about this... but how are they going to justify the standoff and gunfight if they say the vault is empty.
He talks to the SWAT team shortly after the lights are turned back on. They say the bomb was detonated, and they were looking for survivors. He then rushes to the vault and doesn't contact them again, assuming he would meet them at the vault but the SWAT team was already gone before he got there. I suspect Benedict would have run up to vault to find nobody there, no guards, SWAT, or thieves. That's when he starts working things out. Remember the money was supposed to be in the van at the airport.
2nd Dec 2009
The Dark Knight (2008)
Trivia: This is the first Batman film in which Bruce Wayne does not appear in a tuxedo.
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Suggested correction: He does; he is wearing one during the restaurant scene.
No, he's wearing a regular suit in the restaurant scene, if you're talking about the one where he and his ballerina date sit down with Harvey and Rachel.
I don't know what you think the definition of a tuxedo is, but it's equivalent to a dress suit or dinner suit (or even black tie). So basically, dress shirt, dress shoes, trousers and a jacket.
There's a distinction between a tuxedo and a suit, and what Bruce is wearing isn't a tuxedo. There's also a difference between a dress suit and a dinner suit, also known as a black tie, so dress suits and dinner suits are not equivalent. What British refer to as a dinner suit is what Americans refer to as a tuxedo. Wearing a suit at dinner or a black tie doesn't make it a tuxedo.
So what makes a tuxedo?
The type of jacket and pants (or trousers), and often the shirt, shoes and accessories. Satin on the jacket lapel and side of the pants and pants without belt loops. Usually a tux comes with a pleated shirt with studs instead of buttons. Often you wear a bow tie and cummerbund, but it's not necessary. A casual or dress suit is made out of all the same material with acrylic and uncovered buttons.
6th Jan 2005
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Question: Has anyone an idea about what kind of car is this one which almost hits Marty McFly Jr. as he runs out from Cafe 80's? For me it looks like Renault or Mazda, but I'm not sure, though I I can swear it must be some future descendant of the really existing nowadays car. Does anyone recognize any other familiar car in future vehicles? :).
7th Sep 2017
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Question: Did Darth Tyranus know that Sidious was going to betray him?
Chosen answer: Nope, you can see the surprise on his face when Palpatine orders Anakin to kill him. He then realises Anakin is Sidious' new apprentice. He fully expected to defeat Anakin.
I read that Palpatine/Sidious had given Dooku/Tyrannus a fake plan: Tyrannus thought they would kill Obi-wan, then convince Anakin to join the two of them.
I think that is partially right. Though I would sooner think the plan was to incapacitate Obi-Wan, which Dooku did and then focus on Anakin to get him to the dark side. Dooku had a chance to kill Obi-Wan but didn't. Besides, if Dooku did kill Obi-Wan it is almost sure Anakin will kill Dooku for it.
If I remember correctly, at the moment, the plan was described in the book "Labyrinth of Evil" by James Luceno. Although, I don't know how many books are canon now.
Question: Why did the design of the coin change throughout the movie? In the beginning, when Elizabeth holds up the coin, there is a different design on the back than when Barbossa drops it into the chest with her blood, at the end. Please explain?
Answer: The most likely answer is, it is because the coins are movie props that probably had slight variations in the designs. There may have been multiple prop makers producing the coins for the movie, resulting in a different-looking product. It would be unrealistic that the same exact coin would always be used as the one belonging to Will Turner. This should be submitted as a movie inconsistency.
Actually that would just be a continuity.
24th Sep 2022
Blade: Trinity (2004)
Other mistake: In the opening fight, right before the title card, Blade fights five vampires. He kicks one, who falls onto the ground and starts to crawl away. He then kills the other four vampires with his weapon (sort-of a blade that's on a line he can whip around). After those four vampires "dust," you see the fifth vampire (the one Blade had kicked earlier) on the ground... and he spontaneously "dusts" for no reason whatsoever. Blade did nothing to him... he just dies for no reason.
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Suggested correction: He gets hit by the silver knife on a string (whatever it is called) like the others in 1 swing (there are 5 in total BTW). A small touch seems to be enough to dust them.
You are correct there are five (typo), but the last vampire does not get hit by the knife in any way that I can see. Watch this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LkxaihdyRE Blade swings the knife-line above his head (you can see the line in the entire shot), and there's never any point that I can identify where it hits the vampire on the ground. Blade swings it in an upward motion, and you can see the line goes slack after it hits the last vampire on the left side of screen, implying that it stopped and fell to the ground in that direction.
The blade goes around his head at least twice before it hits the last 2 vampires. I admit that it's unlikely but you can't really see where the blade goes unless you go into slowmotion (if that even shows anything as it's all CGI). It could have hit him at any point.
It does go around his head twice and is quite fast, but it is definitely visible throughout the shot (slow mo is not required), and at no point does it go low enough to hit the vampire on the ground. It would need to completely defy all laws of physics to do that.
27th Aug 2001
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Corrected entry: At the end of BTTF, Doc, Marty and Jennifer take off for the future. In BTTF2, they arrive 30 years later and see themselves. Impossible! They would have been inside the time machine (as far as those left behind are concerned) for 30 years. Marty and Jennifer were gone from 1985 to 2015 as far as he and everyone else knows. I can prove this by using the first movie. When Einstein goes into the future one minute, he was gone for a minute as far as Doc and Marty were concerned, even though the trip was instantaneous to Einstein.
Correction: Wrong - the reason Einstein is completely gone for that minute is because he never goes back to the time he left. While Marty, etc. go 30 years into the future, they will eventually go back to 1985 and live the rest of their lives, therefore he can exist in the future.
The whole point and premise of BTTF is that Time is very surely linear, such that altering the past changes the future in such a way that time travellers can even erase themselves from existence. The BTTF story is not about alternate timelines, it's about the pitfalls of travelling in linear Time.
The way time travel works in the BTTF trilogy is that time jumps don't happen until we actually see them happen. Marty and Jennifer have not yet returned to 1985, so they obviously could not yet have lived out their lives to 2015. Also, the Marty we see in 2015 had his accident with the Rolls Royce, and when Marty finally does return to 1985 he avoids that accident, meaning that the Marty we see in 2015 can't possibly be from the timeline where Marty returned to 1985.
The original correction is correct. Everything happens simultaneously, for the time machine time doesn't matter whether it's the past of future. So the fact that Marty and Jen go back is important. Because going back makes it likes the travel to the future never happened. Because, and I want to make this absolutely clear, them returning means they travelled back in time again and that has more impact than only going to the future (which is what we are all doing all the time).
8th Apr 2020
Titanic (1997)
Question: Would everyone have been saved if the lifeboats had been filled to capacity properly? Mr Andrews yells at one of the officers about the boats not being full and how they were tested with the weight of 70 men, so won't buckle under the weight of only 15 or 20 people. So since women and children don't weigh as much as men would, if they had filled the boats properly, would everyone have been saved in the actual tragedy?
Answer: Not everyone, no. Even with all the boats at full capacity they still couldn't hold all of them. It had 20 lifeboats in total that could carry a maximum of 1178 people, at full capacity. The ship was carrying 2208 people (passengers and crew). Even if you would cram as much people in them, you still couldn't fit them all in and there will be risk of sinking. The 2 major problems were that they measured lifeboat capacity in cubic meters rather than number of people, if the ship was in full lifeboat capacity (64 instead of only 20) it could take everybody twice over. Secondly it wasn't considered necessary according to the safety regulations to have more lifeboats because of the tonnage of the ship, regulations that maxed ships at 10,000 tons (whilst the Titanic was over 46,000 tons). Eventually only 710 people were saved, because of incompetent evacuation procedures and panic. Almost all first and second class women and children were saved, third class and crew were not so lucky.
Answer: In a word, no. More lives would have been saved, but as an earlier scene points out (and accurately reflects what happened in real life), there was only enough lifeboat capacity for roughly half the people onboard, even if they were filled to capacity.
Answer: There were not enough life boats for all passengers, and it was because it was never believed everyone needed to be in them at once during an emergency. While it's true that cruise lines didn't want too many boats blocking passengers' view, their intended use was to ferry passengers in turn from a stricken vessel to a rescue ship. After the disaster, new maritime regulations were enacted, including enough lifeboats for all passengers.
Answer: Also, even if there were enough boats, there was not enough time to get all the boats filled and lowered.
Yes there was. It took over 2 hours for Titanic to sink. Plenty of time to get everyone on the lifeboats, if they had known the urgency.
In one of James Cameron's documentaries that he did after making the movie, they timed him lowering a lifeboat, and it took him twenty minutes to get it swung out and lowered while it was empty. Add additional time to actually fill them would bring launching one to at least 30 minutes. So no, even if they had enough lifeboats, there wouldn't have been time to launch them all. They didn't even launch all the ones that they did have.
They weren't launched one by one, you know.
14th Sep 2017
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
Question: Whenever the gang always have dinner together why is it always in Leonard and Sheldon's apartment?
Chosen answer: Out of everyone's apartments, the gang likely eats and hangs out at Leonard and Sheldon's apartment because it has the largest living room space and they would be given the most amount of room to interact in. Raj's apartment and Penny's apartment do not appear to have as much living room space as Leonard and Sheldon's apartment, so they may not want to hang out there, nor would they want to hang out at Howard's place since his mother would be there.
In addition to this, I'm sure that Sheldon has some sort of rule that if they aren't eating at a restaurant, they eat at Sheldon and Leonard's place because it's where Sheldon is most comfortable.
In addition, I think a big part of the reason would be that 3 of the 5 (at first) friends lived in the same building so eating there meant fewer people had to travel. Plus, it was very quickly traditional for Penny to come over to Leonard and Sheldon's apartment to eat so it was natural it stayed that way. And lastly, it's not at Penny's apartment since Penny usually doesn't have money to pay for the food so since Leonard usually brings the food, it's logical everyone goes to his apartment.
This isn't true. In one episode, I can't remember which, the group eats at Raj's place with Priya. Sheldon expresses his displeasure to Amy who explains that Leonard is the nucleus and that where Leonard goes, everyone goes. Sheldon has no such rule about eating there.
Since he states his displeasure it proves he is more comfortable eating at home. He even doesn't like eating at a dinner table in his own apartment, let alone somewhere else entirely. He only compromises if he has no choice.
18th May 2022
Doctor Strange (2016)
Question: When Strange is surgically removing the bullet from the patient's brain, why did he ask the one doctor to cover his wristwatch?
Answer: I took it to mean Dr. Strange could hear the watch ticking, and he wanted complete silence.
27th Aug 2001
Armageddon (1998)
Corrected entry: In the movie they show people around the world praying. They show a shot of Taj Mahal in India and hundreds sitting around praying. Oops, Taj Mahal is not a place of worship, it's a tomb.
Correction: It is a tomb; it is also a place of worship. Mosques and tombs often go together - much like churches and graveyards I assume.
Er, not in India. There is no religious significance to the Taj Mahal.
There is a mosque (and jawab) attached to the tomb, so they are probably praying to the mosque but there being so many they are praying outside in the courtyard. They pray to the east so towards the Taj Mahal, so it looks like they are praying to the tomb, but they are not.
25th Nov 2003
Independence Day (1996)
Corrected entry: How come the aliens keep attacking major cities on July 3rd? After the first attacks people flee the major cities and surely the aliens must have realised that reaction would come. So why blow up abandoned cities?
Correction: They want to destroy the infrastructure, thus making the cities impossible to live in. This action will eventually kill a lot of people (lack of water and food, spreading of diseases breakdown of healthcare and law enforcement etc).
Correction: Abandoned cities were being blown up because every major city contains what we call natural resources. Our gas, our oil, our source of power. When Whitmore saw their plan in his head he discovered that "after they've consumed every natural resource they move on" the aliens will not leave any city in the world untouched until they have taken everything from us.
Firstly our resources are not in our cities, especially not the center. Oil and Gas are produced and stored outside the cities, for obvious safety reasons. Secondly if they want our natural resources, they wouldn't be blowing them up. Thirdly, I doubt they are after our oil, considering what technology they use, I'm pretty sure they were after the water and oxygen for their spacefaring civilization.
Correction: The aliens don't know if the cities are abandoned or not. They just know that most people live in cities.
23rd Sep 2018
The Green Mile (1999)
Question: What was with the scene where John picks up and smells the grass after he's snuck out to help Melinda? And what did John mean when he said 'no matter how it happened, Del was the lucky one.' Did John somehow take all that pain so Del wouldn't? I never really got it.
Answer: He smelled the grass because he had missed it being locked up. As for the other thing, John was tired, he constantly felt the pain of others around him, he wanted it to stop. Del died, to John that's the way out, to get rid of the pain. Even though Del felt a lot of pain, for John it doesn't matter, as long as he gets out, so the pain stops. He didn't take Del's pain.
Watch John closely during Del's execution. His body reacts the same as Del's throughout. He said Del's the lucky one because he wouldn't know earthly pain any longer, something that John is longing for by the time of his own execution.
He didn't take his pain.
I believe that John himself had lived a long time because of his powers, maybe he couldn't die from old age, but could be killed like other people, he was tired of being alive, so the execution was his way out.
Answer: He smells the grass, because it's pure.
7th Apr 2013
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
The Monster Isolation - S6-E17
Corrected entry: When Leonard tells Sheldon to hand over his Nintendo DS, Sheldon gives him a shiny aqua console. The Nintendo DS has never been produced in that color: the console is actually a 3DS, not a DS.
Correction: Semantics. To most people, "DS" is sufficient enough to specify all of the Nintendo DS consoles. The same way that "Xbox" is sufficient enough to specify the Xbox 360.
2nd Jun 2022
Highlander (1986)
Question: In the director's cut (which seems to be the most widely available version these days), what's the deal with all the backflips in the opening fight? The editing is very awkward. Fasil goes from running, to doing backflips, then back to running, then back to doing backflips several times, seemingly between shots, during a short section of the fight. Is it just bad editing? Or is the movie trying to suggest that it's a different person doing the flips? Or... what? It's so confusingly edited.
Answer: The Director, Russell Mulcahy, started his career making music videos. He was known for using fast cuts and tracking shots.
Answer: I always felt the idea was given he was trying to move very rapidly whilst also being silent. In a garage with those shoes on your footsteps are very loud. Perhaps he was trying to confuse MacLeod as to where he was.
I'm not asking why he's doing backflips. I'm asking why the editing is so confusing, since he goes from doing backflips, to running somewhere completely else, then back to backflips at the first location between edits. (Look up the clip "The Highlander (1986) 1080p : Underground parking Fight Scene. Epic!" on YouTube and pay attention around 4:20.) He also loses his sword whenever we see him doing backflips, even though he's carrying it when he's running. The editing makes absolutely no sense.
2nd Jun 2022
War of the Worlds (2005)
Corrected entry: It becomes quite obvious as the movie progresses that the aliens want to capture and use (or digest) humans, so it defies logic that the first one to appear immediately starts vaporizing every human in sight. Since the people posed no threat, the only reason to vaporize them would be if the aliens simply wanted to be rid of them - which they obviously didn't. So this initial vaporization was simply a manufactured plot device by the movie makers.
Correction: There are plenty of humans to go around. They don't need all of them. What they first wanted to do is collapse human society. That usually works if you start killing indiscriminately.
Maybe they needed 20 billion people. So we don't know that there "are plenty to go around." And again, the people they vaporized were no threat. And they didn't need to "collapse human society" (and you have no way of knowing what they "wanted" to do); they merely needed to remove threats. So, again, it defies logic to unnecessarily vaporize what's later shown to be desirable to them, if not required by them.
You don't know what the wanted to do either. Seeing them kill so many people, logically shows that they don't need all those people.
Maybe they didn't need 20 billion people. Maybe they didn't have the "human harvesting" equipment ready. Maybe they just felt like it. Who knows. Either way, I'm not sure we can't apply our concepts of logic to an alien race.
You might try reading the original novel. While I don't disagree that it defies logic, the fact is that the only person that could address the why of this was H.G. Wells. While the filmmakers changed a number of details to base the story in the present (2005), in the U.S., from a family's point of view, the tripods being buried...the basic story itself, on the aliens illogically torching lots of humans before they began harvesting them, is pretty much the same as in the novel.
Correction: Doesn't defy logic in the slightest. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the initial "invasion" (vaporizing every human in sight and starting battles) was to disrupt and take control of the human population. Thus making it easier to harvest human blood/tissue from the remaining population. (Which, from my memory at least, were implied to basically be used to fertilize their terraforming efforts/the red weed.) If you wanna take somewhere over, you can't just wander in and say "Ok, this is MINE now!" That's not how war works. You have to show force, assert dominance and then get rid of any possible opposition.
Correction: "So this initial vaporization was simply a manufactured plot device by the movie makers." This 'manufactured plot device' was written by Herbert George Wells, 110 years before the 2005 movie. While there are differences between the original novel and the 2005 movie, there are a number of similarities. One identical plot detail being that the aliens' tripods started by incinerating countless humans before harvesting them to fertilize the red weed. I can't recall if the novel explained why.
29th Apr 2004
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Corrected entry: Doesn't it strain credulity that the Enterprise is (once again) "the only ship in the quadrant"? In Star Trek terminology (all series), a quadrant covers one fourth of the galaxy (smaller regions are "sectors" and the boundary runs just about right down the middle of the Federation, right by Earth to be exact. Are we to believe that there is no other starship in that entire half of the Federation?
Correction: Before ST:TNG, "quadrant" was a term used somewhat loosely. In the Wrath of Khan, quadrant does not refer to one quarter of the galaxy.
Look up the term "quadrant." In every single applicable variation it is some form of "one quarter of a circle."
According to memory alpha, the star trek wiki, a quadrant is a major region of space encompassing a portion of a galaxy. There are apparently major and minor quadrants. The major quadrants are the 4 quadrants dividing up the milky way. Minor quadrants of course encompass a smaller part of said major quadrants. How large is seemingly quite inconsistent though. I think it has been settled upon that a minor quadrant is a couple of sectors (4) large.
Sulu also mentions that Reliant (which is in visual range, approaching at half impulse power) is in the same quadrant, which going by the post-1987 definition would be like saying the car approaching down the street is on the same continent. It's pretty clear that when they mention a "quadrant" in this movie, they are not referring to a quarter of the entire galaxy.
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Answer: It means the process of removing their organs was performed while they were still alive. Certainly at some point they would die during the process from blood loss or having a vital organ removed. And it was just the priests that were mummified alive, Imhotep was subjected to a different punishment.
Phaneron ★
Their internal organs were not removed or they'd die instantly. In the movie you see them being bandaged up and put in the sarcophaguses whilst still moving and then sealed up so they still had their organs. It is indeed more like being buried alive but then as a mummy.
lionhead
Indeed, but you can also see the Medjai using sharp tools against some of the priests. The priest on the left side of the screen with his arm writhing has a Medjai placing a sharp object around his face, indicating he might either be cutting out his tongue or removing his brains through his nose. The Medjai in the immediate foreground is (badly) making a slashing motion with his sword towards the priest lying on the table before him.
Phaneron ★