Question: Why don't the machines use geothermal energy? What do the humans in the real use to make their clothes? Where do the humans in the real get their food from? Why don't the machines just kill humans when they are unplugged instead of letting them become soldiers for Zion? Why don't the machines just attach a gadget to a hover craft, that when it returns to Zion will either blow up or spread a virus (al la 2nd renaissance part 2)? Why don't the humans in the real plug into the matrix and just carpet bomb the entire planet thereby destroying the machines energy source and they can just repopulate the earth naturally? How come Neo has superpowers in the real world? Without sunlight where do humans in the real get vitamin D?
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: During the run of the series, the Brady's had a housekeeper, Alice. When they were giving Alice a few days off they even hired a temp to keep things straight while she was away - even though Carol had no career and all six kids did chores. So now that the kids are gone and they both (Mike and Carol) have careers, can they live without a housekeeper?
Chosen answer: I'm sure they could, but as long as she's there, now a part of the family, and they can afford her, why fire her? Plus, with six kids help is welcome, with a career and no kids, help is welcome, and everything in between.
Answer: Technically, they DO live now without a housekeeper. Alice is simply their guest in this film, because she dropped by after her husband left her and Mike and Carol took her in. She was helping out while there since the whole family was visiting.
Question: Béatrice is speaking a peculiar French accent (copied also with another actor on Les Visiteurs II). It sounds like extreme version of Canadian or Swiss Geneva region French. Which accent is this and why was it so important to carry on tio the sequel?
Chosen answer: Valérie Lemercier's accent sounds nothing like Canadian French. It is a posh bourgeoisie accent such as would be heard in towns like Neuilly.
Question: Can someone tell me what Nicolas Cage says at the bowling alley, when he says Mindy will get two knives? It's something like "You know what? You're gonna get two-two? One? Two? That's what you get", and the word seems something like "ballsome". Thanks for the help.
Question: When the Fellowship are on the side of the mountain and arguing about which direction to take, Gandalf says "Let the ring bearer choose". Why does Gandalf say that? He knows that Frodo has enough on his plate, what with taking the ring all the way to Mordor, so why add to his problems by making Frodo decide the way to go?
Answer: Because, like it or not, he's the leader of this quest. Gandalf is only a guide; Aragorn, Boromir, Legolas, and Gimli are Frodo's guardians, while the other three Hobbits are simply companions. Besides, Frodo's the one carrying the increasingly burdensome ring. If he thinks one path easier than another then that's his call.
Question: When Bill and the Bride are outside by a campfire, Bill begins to tell her a story about Pai Mei that started in the year "One double ought three" (1003). Does the Chinese calendar differ from our Western one? If so, how? Or is Pai Mei over one thousand years old? (which I doubt, but you never know).
Question: This isn't really about this movie, but I could have sworn there was a third Stuart Little movie that was all CG. Does this actually exist or am I making things up?
Answer: Nope, you're not making it up. There is indeed a third movie in the series, called Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild, which is, unlike its predecessors, completely computer animated.
Question: When Bruce speeds through the light in the Lamborghini to intercept the intentional crash into Reese's car, Reese got out of the car and glanced at Bruce for a few seconds. Does Reese really know that Bruce is Batman? Because there is almost a look of uncertainty or a lack of recognition on Reese's face when he looks at Bruce.
Chosen answer: It certainly seems that Reese is pretty confident about Bruce being Batman. I always interpreted the look of uncertainty that Reese gives him as being more a degree of shock and shame that, even though he tried to blackmail him and then went to the TV station to reveal Bruce's big secret to the whole world, Bruce would still put his life on the line to save him.
Question: The movie seems to suggest that Link has an ulterior motive for being on the Nebuchadnezzar. Early in the movie, Morpheus says "Given your situation, I can't say I fully understand your reasons for being here", and later Link tells Zee that he made a promise. Is he talking about Tank? What is going on here?
Chosen answer: He has no ulterior motive, he's simply taken over as the ship's "operator" because of a promise that he made to his brother-in-law Dozer before his death in the first film. Given he's married, that his wife has already lost two brothers under Morpheus' command and that, at the beginning at least, he's clearly sceptical about Morpheus' beliefs, it's not unreasonable that his commander would question his presence. Link, however, takes the attitude that a promise is a promise; if others don't entirely understand that, that's their problem.
Question: In this episode, an autistic child is trying to communicate to House what he ate that might have made him sick. The entire episode he is drawing mysterious squiggle lines on a chalk-board that nobody could decipher what he meant. The entire episode, one of those "perpetual motion" rectangular, water novelties is swaying back and forth near the child. You'd think that the child is drawing squiggles to imply he drank some of the chemical from the novelty toy, but at the very last second BAM! Turns out he ate sand from the sandbox. End of episode. Did the writers do this intentionally? Why was the kid drawing squiggles the whole time? Why was the perpetual motion toy next to the child the whole time? Why didn't he draw a box to imply "sandbox" or dots to imply "sand". Was the squiggles to throw the viewer off, or was there some sort of symbolic correlation between the squiggles the child drew, the wave toy, or both?
Chosen answer: He's communicating what is wrong with his eyesight. He sees these lines and it makes his vision blurry.
Question: When Marty and Doc are on the train at the end, and Clara shows up, Doc says that Clara will have to go with them to 1985. Why does Doc say that? Someone submitted a correction saying that Clara is better off in 1885 because she was supposed to die so staying in her own period is better than going to the future, so why would Doc suggest such a thing?
Answer: Simply because, believe it or not, it's hard for Doc to kill someone through inaction. He saved her life when she was supposed to die. But that doesn't mean it'd be easy for him to do nothing now and just let her die when he knows he can do something to save her. And by taking her to the future, he is likely thinking he can avoid any other complications that may arise from the fact that she is still alive when she's already supposed to have died.
Answer: They literally had no choice but to take her with them! They had gone past the windmill so they didn't have enough track left to stop the train before it went over the ravine so that's not an option. Doc and Marty are not murderers, they are not just gonna leave her on the train so that she dies! Plus, let's say they didn't care what happens to Clara, you've still got a problem... Clara is in the cab, she has the controls! How long before she just starts pulling random levers, turning random valves etc whilst trying to work out how to stop the train? If the train slows down at all, they will not have enough time to get it back up to speed... Them, the train and the DeLorean would be at the bottom of the ravine.
Question: In the scene where the Cullens are filling Jacob and his friends in about the newborn vampire army, this is all taking place during Bella's graduation party. Why would they discuss it there where other people could hear them or notice them? In the book they discussed it later that night after the party.
Question: In the vault scene, isn't forger Eames impersonating the Elder Fischer on his deathbed in the vault? If so, then how can he also be across the room at the door?
Answer: No, he isn't. Everything in that room is out of Fischer's subconscious - as the film explains, the team design the dreams to include a secure area, a vault, safe, whatever, which the target will then fill. In the higher levels of the dream, the team have been surreptitiously guiding Fischer towards the idea of splitting the company up; this is the level where it pays off, where Fischer's own subconscious fills the vault with the things he needs to see or hear to make the idea real, to complete the inception.
Question: During the attack on Klendathu when the fleet is bombarded by the plasma bugs, you can see a plasma burst impact the bridge of the Roger Young and kill everyone in it, Carmen included. But later the fleet regroups to repair and the ship arrives with everyone safe and alive. What's with that?
Chosen answer: It doesn't kill everyone on the bridge, it just destroys a lot of it, and presumably the ship has the ability to seal hull breaches so everyone doesn't get sucked out.
Question: If the real Henry Hill wrote a book and co-wrote the screenplay (with Martin Scorsese), how is it that the Mob never found him? Or did they, and we (the viewers/general public) were never told about that?
Answer: He went into the witness protection programme along with his family under assumed names, however was expelled from that programme after being arrested for drugs offences in Seattle in the late 1980s. Since then he apparently lived quite openly, including a number of media appearances, although he continued to have problems with the law, mostly due to a long battle with alcoholism. He lived in Malibu up until his death in 2012. As to why the Mob appeared to be disinterested in pursuing him, you'd have to ask them.
By his own loud admission on Howard Stern, he had no idea why he was able to live such an incredibly long time for his circumstances.
Also, Henry Hill, in the last years of his life wasn't so worried anymore about getting whacked. All the people that were a threat to him were either in prison or dead by that time.
Question: I have three questions. First, on one of the holo-screens in the beginning, (the one saying: "Too much garbage in your space? There's plenty of space out in space"), there are two Axiom cruisers leaving. I thought it was just one. Question number two: What's the purpose of that robot that is clicking on a keyboard? (The one that lets GO-4, Wall-E and Eve pass to the bridge.) Last question: In the Axiom garbage disposal thing area, there are two gigantic Wall-A's. What does the A stand for?
Answer: (1) If you continue to listen to the announcement that you quote, the next line is "BnL Starliners leaving each day". Clearly there's a sizeable fleet of ships, as you'd expect, given the necessity to completely evacuate Earth's population, with the Axiom, described as "the jewel in the BnL fleet", presumably being the flagship. Whether any of the other ships were also still functioning remains unrevealed. (2) It's presumably some sort of administration robot, with specific duties regarding access to the captain's office. (3) It stands for "Axiom".
Question: When Cobb finally gets home to see his children at the end why don't they look any different from his memories? The story implies that he's been gone for a long time yet they don't appear to have aged.
Answer: The answer above is solid and I agree, but there's another plausible way of looking at it. It is implied at the end that Cobb could still be dreaming (we never see if the top stops spinning). If that's the case, then he would likely dream his children to be exactly how he remembers them.
Answer: The story really doesn't imply too heavily exactly how long Cobb has been on the run. Very few clues are given, so it could quite plausibly be less than a year since his wife's death, in which case their children would not have aged dramatically. Their voices on the phone seem compatible with children of the ages shown at the end of the film and Cobb shows no concern when reunited with them that they should be older than they are. Two sets of children are listed in the credits, of different ages.
Question: I'm not sure if it was just one song or not, but what was the song played that cued the "kick"?
Chosen answer: Édith Piaf's "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien".
Question: What happened to the original timeline to cause such a dramatic change in Marty's mom? In the original timeline, Marty's mom was 'born a nun' as Marty described her to Jennifer. But when Marty goes back to 1955, Lorraine is a drinking, smoking, parking with boys kind of girl. In the original timeline, what would have made it to where Lorraine thinks it's inappropriate for a girl to make advances on a boy? She seems to already be a boy chaser before Marty even gets there.
Chosen answer: Actually, nothing happened to the original timeline to change Marty's mom. It's Marty, like many children, who had a rather unrealistic view about what Lorraine was actually like when she was a teenager. He always believed (and was deliberately given the impression) that she was extremely shy and proper, when in fact, she was a boy-crazy flirt, though she apparently changed after falling in love with George. Parents are often evasive regarding their own youthful behavior.
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Answer: 1: The machines have found an acceptable fuel source with the Matrix and haven't bothered to pursue geothermal energy (Converting to geothermal may be one of the "levels of survival we are willing to accept."). 2: Their clothing seems to be mainly natural fibers, so it could be that they have cotton, flax, or hemp crops under grow lights underground. 3: They eat either from the aforementioned crops or the synthetic protein that the ship crews eat. 4: The machines have accepted that some people will always reject the Matrix and have orchestrated the creation of Zion as a sort of Trash Folder to deposit and occasionally purge their rejects. 5: See 4. 6: Since Zion is set up by the machines each time, we can safely assume that they're not going to give the humans of Zion the technological means to destroy them. By the time they might develop such means on their own, the purge happens. 7: Neo is The Chosen One, sometimes miracles happen for people like that. 8: See 2 and 3.
Captain Defenestrator