Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.

Question: If the police were so sure Jamal cheated, why are they so desperate to find out how?

MikeH

Chosen answer: It's not enough to be sure about a crime or other wrongdoing. It has to be proven with facts. They want to show how he did it.

raywest

Answer: Optimus Prime has swords with him and he also has retractable ones that come out from where his hands are.

Answer: Seeing as this move takes place a few years later it is safe to assume that Optimus Prime either had swords built into him or he just has backup swords.

Question: What does Flynn think will happen if he lets Rapunzel heal him? Why couldn't he wait till after he has healed to cut her hair?

Bob Smith

Chosen answer: Rapunzel had already promised Mother Gothel that she would stay in the tower with her if she let Rapunzel heal Flynn. Rapunzel also said earlier in the film that "When I promise something, I never, ever break that promise. EV-er!" So, since she already made a sacrificial and conditional promise to Gothel, she would not have broken it, so Flynn had to disable Rapunzel from healing him before she was stuck with Gothel for eternity.

She still would have disappeared if he cut Rapunzel's hair after.

If Gothel did not allow the hair to be cut after the healing, it would have been a dead end for Rapunzel. Eugene used the first chance he got.

Flynn didn't want Rapunzel to heal him because he knew that it would kill her. Earlier on she healed his hand with her hair, and he knew that this used some of her life. Furthermore, within this scene Flynn says that she will die if she heals him (obvious hint).

Healing does not use up parts of her life. When she heals Eugene's hand it does not appear as though she is getting hurt. Eugene refers to her being locked in the tower by Gothel as her death.

Question: Why was Oz considered a con man? He was simply doing magic tricks, which everyone should know aren't real.

MikeH

Chosen answer: I believe you are taking a very modern day perspective. In our era of technology, scientific advancement, and general skepticism about everything, we are pretty jaded and cynical about things like magic and paranormal phenomena. At that time and place, audiences were far more willing to accept the possibility of true magic and sorcery, and weren't as prone to disbelieving what their eyes tell them. A "con" (short for "confidence") man is one who attempts to gain the trust of another, subsequently using deception, fraud and/or trickery for their own personal gain. I don't think it's unfair to label Oz this way, particularly at the beginning of the film.

Michael Albert

Question: Isn't Judas' reference to Muhammad an historical inaccuracy? Muhammad lived from 570 AD to 632 AD.

Answer: In the song "Jesus Christ, Superstar, " Judas highlights several anachronisms. He makes comparison to Buddha, about whom he likely would have known little to nothing. He references Muhammad, not yet born. He even brings up the concept of mass communication, also unheard of in the ancient world. However, this number is meant to take place in a spiritual realm, out of place and time, where past and present have no actual meaning. Judas is shown to be eternally struggling with Jesus, his message, his methods, and whether or not he is truly divine. But also, let's face it...like its contemporary, "Godspell, " the entire film is pretty much an anachronism. For starters, it's a rock operetta which puts just about everything in modern terms in its language ("what's the buzz") and its cinematography (Judas being chased down by tanks, for example). If you are looking for temporal realism, there are many options for that. This film is far more allegorical than it is historical.

Michael Albert

The ghost of Judas is speaking from a modern perspective. Consider the lyric "If you'd have come today you would have reached a whole nation, Israel in 4BC had no mass communication." He is in the here and now, not in the times Jesus was alive.

Question: Unless it was stated in the movie, why was there a beacon or signal from the Empire State Building? And how did the surviving humans know how to create a signal to bring the spaceship back to earth?

Answer: There are already, in real life, a large amount of communication dishes on top of the ESB. It would be easier to modify that existing setup rather than building a new array from scratch. In the movie it says that the survivors opted for a longer term plan and hint that they had the know-how for a while but were waiting for a "Jack with a soul" to action it. As for the specifics of the signal, real life recovery beacons used in maritime and airplane landing approach can basically remote control a ship or plane. If someone knew the specific system used by the shuttle (and only a few exist in real life, making that a lot simpler that one might think), it would not be a hard thing to set up. It is not unbelievable that one or more of the survivors would have that knowledge.

Question: When Will Smith is going to the bathroom and says "Jasmine, I think the neighbors are leaving" the vehicle I believe has Wyoming plates on it. Am I correct?

Lucy Shupe

Chosen answer: I believe you are correct. It is a hard to make out, because it goes by so quickly. But it does look like a Wyoming plate. We see a dark design mass in the area where the letters and numbers also appear that looks the cowboy/bucking bronco which distinguishes the Wyoming plate from those of other states.

Michael Albert

Answer: Catch-as-catch-can is a style of wrestling in which the wrestlers are allowed to use methods which are illegal in most traditional wrestling matches. These include tackling, tripping, and holds below the waist. The humor lies in how the character of Mr. Humphries references it in his line: "I was known as Hugger Humphries. They had to pull me off people. I was the 'catch as catch can' champion of the Barley Road Mixed Infants."

Michael Albert

Question: If Jonathan thought Sara was with another man, why did he call off the wedding with Halley?

Answer: He didn't want to marry Halley anyway.

Answer: It is my opinion that you should absolutely watch Breaking Bad first. If you did not know, Better Call Saul takes place before the events of Breaking Bad. At the time I am posting this, BCS is mid-way through season 5, with season 6 on the way perhaps in a year. So if you binge Better Call Saul now, you would not be able to "flow" right into Breaking Bad. To me, it's better to watch in the order that they came out. Breaking Bad was a phenomenal show, and now watching Better Call Saul, it is fun to watch the events unfold and start to lead up to what we saw in BB. Enjoy.

jshy7979

Answer: Now that it's ended, this question can be fully answered. Better Call Saul includes events after the conclusion of Breaking Bad, as well as references to and descriptions of major events from the latter. Not only would Breaking Bad be spoiled for you by watching Better Call Saul first, but there's a lot that wouldn't be understood.

Chosen answer: So far the show has been about Saul's struggles as a lawyer long before the Breaking Bad timeline (Spoiler Alert: It starts out for the most part at a time when he didn't even go by the name Saul).

Bishop73

Question: If no one on PK's planet communicated using voices, then why did he have vocal cords in the first place?

Yashbhatt

Chosen answer: This would be a complex speculation question. But first off, it's not the vocal chords that allow humans to speak as we do, other animals have vocal chords, yet can't speak. It's about our mouths and muscle structure that allows us to "shape" sounds into words. Given the humanoid figure of PK (i.e. small, non protruding mouth and neck length), we can assume PK's species developed the ability to speak and then evolved past that, but maintained the needed structure for speaking for whatever reason, such as eating.

Bishop73

Question: How does Hermione know so much about magic and the wizard world already, more than Harry, if she and Harry were both raised by Muggle families?

Answer: After learning she was a witch and purchasing all her school textbooks, she learned them all by heart. She also read as much as she could about the magical world, presumably in order to help her ease the transition into her new surroundings.

Cubs Fan

Question: When Cage enters the dam building something past the plant moves. What is it? Looks like a mop head.

Answer: It must be either a piece of equipment that someone noticed was in the shot, and tried to move out of the way in time. Or some sort of reference marker for Tom Cruise to take a cue from and point his gun at.

Scott Benham

I've Got You Under My Skin - S1-E2

Question: What is the song that plays immediately after the opening credits/theme, over the shots of San Fransisco? [At least in the version on Netflix in the UK - other versions seem to have "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia]. The lyrics go something like this: "We hope and we pray for a break, that the weather around us might change, that hope just fell asleep in the hole where burdens keep pulling and pressing the weight of the problems in life that we face, but faith's so incomplete."

Answer: I get the impression that it is a studio band doing a "sound-alike" piece of music that may not have ever been released but was done just for the show. I'm not sure it has a title or can be found anywhere outside of the episode.

Question: Tolkien has made it clear in his letters that sailing to the Undying Lands does not make a mortal immortal. But this is what I'm curious about: is it possible to give up immortality in the Undying Lands? For instance, if Arwen had remained immortal and sailed there, would she still be able to choose a mortal life? (Not that she would do that, I'm just using her as an example).

Answer: Arwen could have, yes, but only because she specifically has the race of Men in her ancestral lineage.

Phixius

Question: How is Hugo Stiglitz not recognised in the coffee scene? Earlier in the movie, a soldier tells Aldo Raine that "everybody in the German Army knows Hugo Stiglitz." So how come the SS officer or even the other German soldiers do not recognise him?

touliou

Chosen answer: Everyone in the German army knows who Stiglitz is, that doesn't mean they all know what he looks like and can identify him on sight.

Question: When Frog and The Bandit have stopped and are walking through the woods, you can see something that is wrapped around Burt Reynolds gut under his shirt. Does anyone know what that was?

wolfman

Chosen answer: That's a 'kidney belt'. It's used for two reasons: 1) in long distance driving, it keeps your kidney's from bouncing around from all that high-speed stunt driving and 2) it holds in your gut for filming purposes to make you look good on film.

CCARNI

Question: What song is Barbara singing in the nightclub?

Question: Why does Sanchez leave Felix back at his house? I get that he might have thought Felix was dead, but why bring him back to his house? Why not cremate him or something? Hell, why not leave him in the shark tank to drown or get eaten some more?

Answer: That message wasn't for Bond. It was for everyone in law enforcement, to show what happens when you tangle with him. No one is safe from his wrath.

Answer: He apparently wanted to "stage the scene" in order to send a message, particularly to Bond. It's doubtful he expected Felix to still be alive.

raywest

That doesn't make any sense - Sanchez didn't even know who Bond was at that point. Even if he did and Killifer had tipped him off why did Sanchez not recognise Bond when Bond turns up at his casino?

Question: If Callaghan knew that his daughter was dead because of project silent sparrow, how did he attended the SFIT students showcase happily? And after the fire at SFIT, everyone presumed that Callaghan was dead. So when did Callaghan visit the project silent sparrow to know that his daughter was dead, before or after the fire?

PRiYaM

Chosen answer: The Silent Sparrow incident took place long before the events of the film. He had been plotting his revenge for some time, part of which was using the fire to steal the microbots.

Answer: I think the fire was his original revenge plot but the microbots provided a chance for an even more satisfying end to Krei. Likely Abigail disappeared a year or two before (judging by how the men hardly aged) and Krei had to rebuild his company's image therefore creating the event. The comeback would have been hard on Callaghan and may have caused him to plan the fire and his death in the explosion assuming KreiTech couldn't recover from both, perhaps even would have taken Krei with him. But then he the microbots changed everything.

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