Answered 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: I've always found it odd that although Wallyworld is closed, the car park is still open and accessible. Is this normal for closed US parks, or could it be considered a goof?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: The parking lot is huge. There's really not any way to close the lot itself, but even if there were gates, Clark would probably have been oblivious to them by then.

Question: What exactly was Dennis Nedry's plan overall? The shutting down of the command building's doors makes sense but shutting down all the park fences always struck me as a really pointless risk, especially considering he then proceeds to drive through the very areas he just disabled. Was he trying to create a distraction to cover his abrupt departure (in which case are we to infer he was actually willing to leave his boss, his colleagues and several visitors stranded with the dinosaurs?) or did he simply not have a safer means of smuggling the embryos off the island?

Answer: Twofold. He had to shut down the fences because they contained the exit gates so he could leave to get to the docks, presumably because he didn't have the time to override the individual doors as he happened upon them. Secondly, it also serves as a massive distraction so that he's highly unlikely to be chased by anyone from the park (Dinosaurs not withstanding!). He had to shut down security features on the island to access the embryos, to navigate through the park, and cause a distraction. All security ran on the same power. He was meant to only be gone for 5 minutes. That was what he had planned.

GalahadFairlight

I agree with the above explanation. Also, Nedry needed the power off so as to not be seen on surveillance cameras.

Question: Help me out if I'm wildly off: The Ugandan gangster attacks LeChiffre in his hotel, who Bond later kills. LeChiffre then continues with the game and panics when Mr. White demands the money. I was under the assumption that LeChiffre only owed money to the gangster and therefore needed to win the game to pay him back. Why does he continue with the game after the gangster is killed?

Brad

Chosen answer: Le Chiffre operates as the banker for Mr White's entire organisation. The Ugandan is only one of many individuals and groups for whom Le Chiffre provides financial services; killing him does little to solve the problem of the missing money. Plus there's the question of trust - if Le Chiffre can't keep the money safe, then Mr White's organisation have no use for him and, as we see in the movie, will readily eliminate him. Le Chiffre's desperate to recover the money to prove his trustworthiness and save his own life.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: Rafiki is a bit of a msytic or a shaman; a quasi-magical character. He was able to smell Simba on the wind that we followed from one to the other.

Phixius

Answer: Rafiki just knows because he's wise.

Question: Why did the Jackal pick up Douglas at the gay bar? How did that fit into his plan?

Chosen answer: A couple of reasons. Douglas was a presidential aide, and could be giving Jackal information about the president and family's movements, even without meaning to. Secondly, he needed to be near DC to carry out the assassination attempt, and since the FBI et al were looking for him since they knew he had entered the States, having a place to live without having to go to a hotel where it is likely the staff would have been notified to be on the lookout for him gave him some anonymity.

Question: Cobb tells Ariadne that his wife buried something deep inside her and never let it out. What was he referring to?

Answer: She buried the truth that she was living in a dream. She'd chosen to make the dream life her real life. She did it by hiding the totem (which is what they use to distinguish reality from dream) in a safe box.

Garlonuss

Question: Why does the train where the action takes place have the locomotive as the last car? When two trains pass each other at one moment, the others locomotive is at the beginning.

Billcow

Chosen answer: Trains that shuttle back and forth on shorter stretches don't usually turn around at the terminus. They simply go "backwards". So, in one direction the loco is in the front, on the way back it's at the end of the train.

Ioreth

Question: After touring the cinema, why does Goebbels become so angry when someone mentions Lillian Harvey. Who is she?

Answer: Lilian Harvey was a British-born actress who made her career in Germany. While under Nazi scrutiny for having too many friends in the Jewish community, she'd helped a Jewish friend escape the country before escaping herself and performing for Allied troops. So yeah, Goebbels hated her. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilian_Harvey)

Captain Defenestrator

Question: What happened to Special Agent Starling and why isn't she in Red Dragon? And how come the new agent didn't know who Hannibal Lecter is (recognition), when nearly the whole of America (let alone the FBI) had heard/seen at least a picture of him?

Answer: Red Dragon is a prequel to Silence of the Lambs. The events took place while Clarice Starling was still at the FBI academy. At the very end of the film, Chilton tells Lecter that a woman (Starling) from the FBI wants to meet with him. Also, when Special Agent Will Graham first met Dr. Hanibal Lecter while investigating another case, Lecter had not yet been convicted of any crime. Therefore, no one knew him to be anything other than a noted psychiatrist.

raywest

Question: Does Emmanuelle Mimieux know of the Bastard's plan to blow up the cinema and do the Bastards know that Emmanuelle Mimieux is going to burn it down, or are the plans not connected at all?

Answer: They're unconnected. As happens often in Tarantino's films, their storylines are completely separate until they intersect at that point.

Captain Defenestrator

Show generally

Question: This is actually for Doctor 1 but I couldn't find it anywhere. I heard it somewhere that they were going to do only 10 series, but when Doctor 1 fell ill they put in the idea he can regenerate. Is this true? Also is this why a lot of the later episodes were destroyed?

Shadow5

Chosen answer: The show was intended to be ongoing, with no particular plan as to how many series might be involved. But you are indeed correct that William Hartnell's failing health was the principal factor that led to the concept of the regeneration being introduced, with Hartnell himself suggesting Patrick Troughton as his successor, a suggestion that was taken up. This is not, however, why many episodes from that era are missing. At the time, it simply wasn't standard policy to keep episodes indefinitely after transmission, due to the limitations in storage space, and thus many early episodes were simply wiped.

Tailkinker

Question: Why would Andy get Hadley arrested? He saved him from the sisters. And what happened to Hadley after he got arrested? Was he put in Shawshank?

jawsant

Chosen answer: Hadley was a cruel, brutal man who repeatedly beat inmates, in some cases so badly that they died. He was directly responsible for, or an accomplice to, multiple crimes up to and including premeditated murder. By any standards, the guy deserves arrest, conviction and punishment. He may have saved Andy from the Sisters, but that was purely because Andy was useful to both him and the warden with his financial acumen. Hadley stepping in was purely down to self-interest, not any interest in inmate welfare. After all, the Sisters have clearly targetted other prisoners prior to Andy, without any apparent reaction from the prison staff. As for Hadley's eventual fate, it's not revealed.

Tailkinker

Answer: Andy could have also at least have strongly suspected that Hadley shot Tommy.

Actually, when he visits him in "the hole" Norton told Andy that Hadley is the one who shot Tommy.

Question: Were the CGI artists running out of time at the end of the movie? I ask because towards the end there is an increase in reusing footage, and masking the Transformers off with dust, explosions, sheets of fabric, pillars and some more uninteresting stuff. What's the reason behind this? This only starts after the forest battle, before that, everything looks just fine.

Friso94

Chosen answer: It was probably as much to do with cost as it was with time. Although, there's no real way to know which scenes the CGI was actually made for, and which scenes it was borrowed for since they could very likely have animated a sequence for the climax then use elements of it for much earlier scenes. No reason to assume they'd work on the effects in the order we see them in the movie.

Phixius

Question: During the lunch scene, Ismay says that Titanic was the largest moving object made by man. Was that true? At least, at the time?

Answer: Yes, it was. At the time, the big cruise lines were all trying to outdo each other with the largest and most opulent cruise ships. The Olympic class ships were the White Star Line's entry in the size race, with Olympic, the first built, taking the title in 1911, before losing it to her sister ship, the Titanic, the following year.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: No they most certainly did not. That wouldn't remotely be considered a particularly respectful homage! They picked Alzheimers because it's specifically a brain condition, which can then be explored in the movie as a plausible way of explaining the intelligence raising properties of the drug used.

GalahadFairlight

Question: How is it possible that Peter Petigrew was in Gryffindor? The main Gryffindor attribute is bravery, and we can see that Petigrew is a total coward.

Feather

Chosen answer: The sorting hat takes into consideration your choices. Black, Lupin, & Potter befriended Pettigrew on the Hogwarts express. So when Black and Lupin, preceeding Pettigrew alphabetically, were sorted into Gryffindor, Pettigrew chose to join his new friends thinking to have them as protectors from school bullies.

Phixius

Question: I'm just curious, but at Helm's Deep, when Legolas says to Gimli "Shall I get you a box to stand on?" or words to that effect, was that line improvised by Orlando Bloom or was it in the script?

Answer: There's nothing to indicate that it wasn't in the script. It seems in line with much of the humour displayed throughout the trilogy, so was likely there from the start.

Tailkinker

Justice - S4-E3

Question: In various episodes in the first series it is mentioned several times that the crew numbered 169 crewmembers aboard the ship. However, when the mindprobe convicts Rimmer of second degree murder it states that he is guilty of 1,167 counts. Where did the other 1,000 casualties come from?

Skarma

Chosen answer: This is an example of the rather lax attitude to continuity that Red Dwarf subscribed to. Early on, the crew was stated as numbering 169; in later series of the show, this was deemed to be more than a little low, given the huge size of the ship, and the count was upped to 1169. Various arguments have been put forward to try to explain this, most commonly that the ship had 169 registered crew, but families, passengers and so forth boosted the actual number of people on board to the higher level, but, in The End, it's simply an intentional change in continuity by the show's writers.

Tailkinker

Question: Shouldn't Anakin be angry when, after he finally converts to the Dark Side and kills Mace, Palpatine/Sidious reveals that he really doesn't know how to save someone from death, but if they work really really really hard, maybe they can figure it out? Shouldn't Anakin fly into a rage at this? He has no reaction, just kneels and says he will pledge himself to the Emperor's teaching.

cks72

Chosen answer: He probably is, but he's out of options at that point. Having acted directly against the Jedi by participating in Windu's death, he can no longer turn to them for help. If he wants to save Padme, he has no choice but to sign up with Sidious and hope that they can figure it out, no matter what his feelings on the matter might be.

Tailkinker

Question: When the boat first starts sinking, some nameless crew members are shown trying to sort things out. But I don't remember them appearing again, even when the DJs were being rescued. Did they drown?

Josman

Chosen answer: They can be seen in a couple of long shots of the ship's prow as the DJs shelter there. It's reasonable to assume, given that they were present when the rescue flotilla arrived, that they were picked up as well, just off-screen while the film focused on the main characters.

Tailkinker

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