Question: Regarding this question and answer: "In some scenes, why do the Serenity crew members speak Chinese? [One of the premises of the show is that the two major Earth societies that survived, and ultimately merged, were the Chinese and Americans. As a result the common language includes much Chinese. Clothing, signage, and building designs also have a heavy Chinese influence.] Answered by MovieGuy." Survived what?
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: After his failed deer hunting expedition, when he is going into his apartment, he is pouring a bottle of something on the staircase and sidewalk of his apartment. I want to know, what is that stuff and why is he pouring it out?
Chosen answer: When John grabs supplies from the cabinet, before he goes to rent a movie, you can see bottles of vinegar next to the ammunition. He pours that out to hide their scent.
Question: I've noticed that on the show, people use "gorram" a lot. Is that phrase used as a euphemism for "God damn"?
Chosen answer: Yes, this was done to allow them to swear without causing a problem with the censors. They also swear quite a bit in Chinese.
Question: What did the term, "tying your shoe" mean?
Chosen answer: It means you need to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Originally, terms like "tying your shoe" or "pulling your socks up" meant ducking to avoid flying bullets. In a more generic sense though, it needn't be about gun violence per se. Just that you don't want to be on the receiving end of violence meant for someone else. In the movie, this was a way of telling Edward that if he could not defuse the situation, then others would be forced to harm the professor. Here, they weren't actually going to put Edward in harm's way. But if he failed to change the professor, then violence against the professor was forthcoming.
Question: In a flashback, Darla and Drusilla imply that they engaged in a threesome together with The Immortal. Considering that Darla is Dru's grandsire (and a siring line seems to follow the line of a human family), doesn't that seem a bit incestuous?
Chosen answer: Dru is the only vamp to refer to her grandsire as grandmother. Since they were not blood relatives in life it wouldn't be considered incestuous. But if was you'd have to keep in mind that they have no souls, therefore, no conscience.
Question: When a vampire sires a human, why is necessary for the human to drink some of the vampire's blood?
Chosen answer: If all that was necessary was for a vampire to drink from a human, then every person the vampire fed from would rise as a vampire, resulting in colossal over-population. There has to be an exchange - the factors that make a vampire what they are have to pass into the newcomer - the only way to do this is through the blood.
Question: In some scenes, why do the Serenity crew members speak Chinese?
Chosen answer: One of the premises of the show is that the two major Earth societies that survived, and ultimately merged, were the Chinese and Americans. As a result the common language includes much Chinese. Clothing, signage, and building designs also have a heavy Chinese influence.
Question: This has been bugging me for a while. When Koda asks the spirits to change Kenai back into a human, they don't show up to change him until the next day. Why do they wait so long? (Other than to give Kenai time to chase after Koda and get the whole end of the movie going.)
Chosen answer: Probably for just that reason - they were waiting for the right moment to change Kenai back.
Question: Since season four ended with Cordelia in a coma, was Spike written into this season to fill the void created by her absence?
Chosen answer: In short. No. Joss Whedon had originally want to do a spin-off of Buffy starring Eliza Dushku and James Marsters. Dushku turned it down to do Tru Calling so Marsters went onto Angel.
Question: What about the morgue director? Was he in on it with Carson?
Chosen answer: At the end of the movie, the police ask Kyle to look at a photo to ID the morgue director. So he was in on it. He had to be because Gene/Carson didn't have the code to open the casket. Therefore he could not have put the explosives into the casket. Remember he needed Kyle to leave it open on the plane.
Question: What kind of accent does Daniel Day-Lewis speak with?
Chosen answer: Daniel Day-Lewis based his voice for and characterization of Daniel Plainview in part on old recordings of the director, writer, and actor John Huston. An article by Christopher Goodwin in the Sunday Times (of London) revealed Paul Thomas Anderson sent Day-Lewis documentaries about Huston while Day-Lewis was preparing to play the role.
Just watched it. Sounds exactly like Huston in Chinatown.
Question: At the end of the film, when Jack dies, one of Davy Jones' crewmembers says, "Not even Jack Sparrow could best the devil," and suddenly Jones becomes worried and demands to see the heart in the chest. Why did he get so worried?
Chosen answer: Jones knows that Sparrow is a cunning adversary - while he knows that the Kraken has taken Jack into the Locker, his crewmember's words have suddenly put an element of doubt in his mind. Has he really beaten Jack completely, or has Jack pulled off some last minute trick involving the heart to spite him? Hence his sudden desire to check on the heart, to make sure that it's safe.
Question: What are the infected humans doing when they are huddled up together when Will Smith first finds them in the abandoned building? Are they sleeping? But then how is the deer killed?
Answer: When Sam chased the deer into the bank, Robert was terrified. Yet his love for Sam outweighed those fears and he enters the bank anyway. As he is looking for Sam he encounters the deer lying on the ground (now dead) As he peers around the corner he sees one of the infected feasting on the entrails of the deer. He continues to look for Sam and it is then that he finds a hive of infected "sleeping" within a bank vault.
Question: If so many famous, high-ranking people were involved, and many of the records of the heist are classified, how did the complete story become known? It would seem no one should have known about the photographs and such.
Answer: The complete story isn't known. There was a bank robbery, and after a few days of press coverage there was a gag order put in place to keep the press from talking about it. No one knows for certain why other than the people who were involved. This film is speculation, a possible reason for why there was a gag order. The producers of the film claim to have been working with an inside source who knew the truth for the gag order and cover-up. Whether the producers really did have an inside source, or that the source was telling the truth, will likely never be known for certain.
Question: When Julie comes to Alex and Marissa's apartment and they argue, Marissa says that she'll just steal if she can't get a job, and says that Julie knows she is good at that. What is she referring to?
Answer: She is referring the episode entitled: The Best Chrismukkah Ever, episode 13, season 1. She goes out christmas shopping with Ryan and gets stopped by a security when she is out by Ryan's car. He asks to look inside her bag and finds a stolen watch and some other stolen things.
Question: Why were the sprites so desperate to protect the book?
Question: Was the bank employee who was taken into the back room and "beaten" one of the robbers? If not, was he actually hit or was it fake like the "shot" hostage? I couldn't tell if he was one of the ones in the car at the end.
Chosen answer: The beating was real and no he wasn't one of the robbers. The men who participated in the hold up along with Clive Owen's character were all much younger than the employee who was beaten up. The much older guy in the car was not part of the robbery.
Actually the guy that was beaten WAS part of the robbery. The four involved were the guy that was beaten, the guy that was Algerian that asked for a glass of water because his throat was "parched," the big-breasted girl that said she violated "Section 34 Double D," and Clive Owen, obviously. If you check the credits on IMDB, you will see that the guy that was beaten was Steve-O. They are all listed. The girl was Stevie and the other guy was Steve.
What about the rabbi?
I think he means Peter Hammond.
Not Algerian...Armenian. They asked if he was Albanian. He said no, Armenian...but I was born in Queens, I don't know the difference.
The bank employee who was beaten up was not one of the robbers because later in the film he attempts to pull the tray out from box 392 before Detective Frazier prevents him from doing so.
Answer: The Algerian guy was not Algerian. He was Armenian. And no, they're not the same thing.
Answer: Peter Frechette played the bank employee, Pewter Hammond. Who was beaten. Stever was played by another actor. To me, this was the weakest point in the movie. 1. It turns them all into bad guys for the beating. The move tried to make them into good guys (caring about violent games, etc) 2. The police would not have dropped it since there was a badly beaten victim. 3. He could have been another accomplice who didn't join them in the "pick-up" car a few days later. It was pretty weak.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Chosen answer: It's never made entirely clear. What we know is that at some point, the Earth became unable to sustain those who lived there, resulting in a mass exodus to a new star system. At that point in the Firefly timeline, the two existing superpowers were the Americans and the Chinese. Whether other present-day nations might still have existed is never mentioned.
Tailkinker ★