Question: Why did everyone at the baseball game decide to leave upon seeing the meteor descend from the sky?
Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
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Question: Why did Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon dislike each other when working on this movie?
Answer: Paul Verhoeven subtly encouraged a rivalry between the two actresses in order to make the characters' dislike appear more real on screen.
Question: How did the kids in the flashback know it was Lonnie who stole their brother's candy?
Answer: The way that I look at it is: they didn't know. Not for certain anyway. They just guessed and as it turns out, they were right. Also, they were bullies. And there were three of them and one of Lonnie.
Question: What is the device that Ray uses to scan Vigo's painting?
Answer: In the context of the movie, it's simply a piece of Ghostbusting tech that's nature is never really revealed. In real life, it's a modified version of a camera called a "Globuscope." It was invented in the early 1980s and was used to take panoramic-style photographs. So far as I can tell, only a handful were ever produced, and somehow one of them ended up in the movie.
Question: Were all-male jury panels the norm in the 1950s?
Answer: Depends where, and the type of case. At the time the film was made, women were still barred from juries in three states (South Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama); it wasn't until 1994 that the Supreme Court ruled that lawyers could not strike women from juries solely on the basis of gender. SCOTUS had ruled in 1942 that all-male juries were constitutionally acceptable. New York State (where the story is set) had granted women the right to serve on juries in 1927, so an all-male jury may not have been the norm across the board, but the nature of the crime (murder) would have, at the time, allowed lawyers to exclude women at the jury selection stage by citing the unsavoury aspects of the crime and arguing that the details of the case were not "suitable" for women to hear (being such delicate creatures, you understand /s).
Question: What did Mr. B leave Manly?
Answer: He left him the mansion and everything in it.
Question: When John Doe is at the shelter and is dreaming about walking up stairs, how is he able to walk on air in the real world? At this point in time, John isn't even in Springwood anymore so the whole altering-reality-through-dreams thing shouldn't work here. Also, how did John get from being in the air to being back on the ground when the security guard catches up to him? And why didn't the guard see John in the air?
Question: Why not take over this planet's cloning process instead of shutting it down and recruiting others to be Stormtroopers, when the clones were 100% obedient and loyal to the Emperor?
Answer: I think recruiting people is one of the sneaky ways of controlling the galaxy. Many Stormtroopers might have spouses and children back home. They could be receiving a tiny salary. Maybe some younger adults are eager to get away from their home planets, as Luke and Anakin both were. Still, others could be criminals who agreed to serve as Stormtroopers instead of another sentence (in "Game of Thrones", some convicted criminals can choose to join the Night's Watch order). These would all be ways to convince more citizens to support the Empire, instead of just training clones.
I'd like to add besides these points that it's possible the cloning process is just too slow and cumbersome for the Emperor. They were useful as shock troops, to fight droid armies. But their numbers were not great enough to cover the entire galaxy as a security force. This especially once the Rebel Alliance shows up. I'd say recruiting people gives him a much-needed manpower boost in a shorter time.
Answer: There would be serious moral and ethical issues about cloning sentient beings just to become mindless, obedient servants/slaves/killers to achieve your cause, regardless of its good intent.
But the Empire clearly doesn't really have moral/ethical issues about most stuff, so that's not really an argument.
Ray West mentions "mindless, obedient" servants, which is a good point. I think an army of "mindless" clones would actually be less effective. Instead, the Emperor claims that the Jedi wanted to overthrow the Senate. If he can persuade a decent number of people to support him, and spread his way of thinking, he can slowly gain more influence around the galaxy.
Question: Why did the Emperor wait 20 years or so to dissolve the Senate?
Answer: Likely because it takes time. Fascist/autocratic takeovers usually happen with supporters gradually and strategically being inserted into key government roles at all levels. They then systematically begin dismantling democratic norms, enact new laws and regulations, eventually weakening the entire system for a complete takeover.
Question: If the aliens were there to attack and kill people and spent some time getting ready, how did they not know about how to set a fire or smoke out families that barricaded themselves?
Question: If Beetlejuice is "killed" by a sandworm, shouldn't he have gone to the Lost Souls Room? The room is supposedly "death for the dead."
Answer: The janitor tells Adam and Barbara that the Lost Souls room is for ghosts that have been exorcised. Beetlejuice wasn't exorcized, he was simply devoured.
Question: Whenever Beetlejuice is shown in the model cemetery that Adam made, does it mean that a "real" Beetlejuice is the real cemetery in the town?
Answer: No. It's not meant to be an exact replica of the town cemetery. Beetlejuice just inserted himself into it.
Question: I hope this question is not too speculative, but why would it be bad for living people to learn about the afterlife? Juno tells Adam and Barbara that they can't let people find out.
Answer: Probably because people would go to extreme lengths to try and contact the dead. There would be a media frenzy. It would create a massive opportunity for shyster mediums to victimize living people who want to communicate with lost loved ones. Science would be turned upside down investigating it. There would be all kinds of religious issues and conflicts. People would want to commit suicide to leave unhappy lives. The dead would be hounded relentlessly and never able to "rest in peace" again.
Question: What would have realistically happened to Mike at the very end, when his jacket got caught in the airplane door?
Answer: Chris Farley weighed over 300 pounds. His jacket would have torn long before the plane took off.
Question: Is it true that Peter Serafinowicz, who voiced Darth Maul, is furious with George Lucas?
Answer: Serafinowicz apparently hated working on "Phantom Menace" because it paid poorly, he was given limited direction, and he felt Jar Jar Binks was a racist caricature upon watching the film on release.
Also, Serafinowicz was annoyed that he wasn't invited to the film's premiere and had to pay for his own tickets and travel expenses.
Question: Why did Jack Albertson hate working with Shelley Winters when making this movie?
Answer: There's nothing specific reported about them, but other actors have also expressed disliking working with Shelley Winters. Stella Stevens, who was also in Poseidon, mentioned not getting along with Winters on another movie they made together because she was drinking at the time. Winters had a rather ditzy and brash personality that annoyed some people, which is probably what Albertson was referring to.
Moreover, Albertson once said, "The happiest moment making the movie for me was when she died."
Question: Why did Billy Green Bush quit acting after starring in this movie?
Answer: It's not uncommon for a lot of actors to want to retire after being in movies and TV shows for so many years.
Question: Did Lynda Carter wear a wig as Wonder Woman?
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Answer: It didn't look or act like a normal meteor streaking through the sky and burning up in the atmosphere. It was large, the fiery mass seemed suspended in air, and it was close enough to the ground that spectators, erring on the side of caution, sought shelter.
raywest ★
What does a "normal" flaming meteor look like? How many meteors do you think the people of a small town in upstate NY have seen? Don't know what you mean by "seemed suspended in air." It was passing over and would land miles away, posing zero threat to the people of the town.
Jizzmopper
1. Smaller and less fiery. 2. Probably lots on TV. 3. Means it was moving slower than a meteor would be expected to move. 4. They had no way of assessing the potential threat. As it turned out, it posed a very real threat to them.