The Stupid Questions About Movies Thread

[LolaBaby]

Please forgive me in advance for being an uncultured swine, but I had a few questions about movies that I'd like answered, if anyone here would care to help.

Then, I figured there must be other Dopers who have questions about parts of movies they did not understand (c'mon, help me out here...). Post your questions too, and maybe you will finally be able to sleep at night.

*Possible Spoilers*
Please name the movie before the question, so anyone who hasn't seen the movie, and is planning to, won't read it.

A Beautiful Mind

1. In the movie A Beautiful Mind, in the scene where Nash is told he is being considered for the Nobel Prize, they go to the cafeteria for tea. At the end of the scene, various colleagues begin walking up and placing their pens on the table in front of him. What is the significance of that?

Planet Of The Apes (2001)

2. The ending...I was totally clueless. Wasn't he in the future? Then he crashed back in the past? If so, how could have General Thade been a leader? Conversely, if he was in the past, and crashed back into the future (again) wasn't Thade defeated?

[dantheman]

Originally posted by LolaBaby

A Beautiful Mind

1. In the movie A Beautiful Mind, in the scene where Nash is told he is being considered for the Nobel Prize, they go to the cafeteria for tea. At the end of the scene, various colleagues begin walking up and placing their pens on the table in front of him. What is the significance of that?

This was something that was manufactured just for the movie. The idea was that it was the greatest show of honor among colleagues, a sort of "welcome to the club" gesture, nothing more.

[Ethilrist]

In V, why did the Visitors come all the way to Earth to take the liquid water, which was all sloshy and hard to transport, when they could have just taken all the water they needed from the (icy) rings of Jupiter and there wouldn't have been a darn thing we could have done about it?

[Ethilrist]

Okay, a little more seriously now: In Blade Runner, six replicants revolted--three men, three women. One got fried by an electric fence. The ones we saw on screen were Batty, Leon, Zhora and Pris. What happened to the sixth replicant?

[Cervaise]

Regarding your second question, you can find a long previous discussion here. In that thread, I provide a cite from a studio authority that the ending wasn't actually supposed to make any logical sense, but that doesn't stop people from making up all sorts of explanations anyway.

[Cervaise]

Woops, I was responding to the OP about the Planet of the Apes question. Ethilrist snuck in there.

The sixth replicant is a subject of much speculation, but the truth is pretty pedestrian. Do a Google search for "sixth replicant." (And wouldn't The Sixth Replicant make a cool username?)

[Meatros]

Ethilrist-(regarding V) They also secretly wanted our mice.

[Kat]

More than just the mice. They needed food in general and, while you saw them snacking down on mice and birds, it was humans that you saw being processed to be transported as frozen food.

[Darwin's Finch]

2001: A Space Odyssey

OK...so what is the deal with the ending? Pretend I haven't read the book. Which I haven't.

[Skeezix]

Kubrick dropped acid, and jammed the camera in his ear?

[Genseric]

Re: 2001

The important question about 2001 is not what it meant, but what it meant to you.

A quote from Arthur C. Clarke

If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered.

[msmith537]

Originally posted by LolaBaby
Planet Of The Apes (2001)

2. The ending...I was totally clueless. Wasn't he in the future? Then he crashed back in the past? If so, how could have General Thade been a leader? Conversely, if he was in the past, and crashed back into the future (again) wasn't Thade defeated?
[/b]

Spoilers.



The entire movie did not make sense. I think he went further into the past than the monkey pilot but not as far as his mother ship. The mother ship crashes. Apes kill the humans. Marky Mark crashes. Then the monkey pilot shows up. Apes and humans are friends (horay!!). Marky Mark goes forward in time (but not as far as his original starting point. Crashes in a Washington DC where Thade somehow escaped the ship and became Abe Lincoln of the monkeys.

A better question would be:
-If the apes killed all the humans from the ship, who populated the planet?
-Why could a freakin monkey land those ships but Marky Mark crashes 2x?
-Why would an ape civilization evolve EXACTLY like ours, right down to the national monuments, police cars, and surplus Starship Trooper helmets the DC ape-cops were wearing?
-Was the planet supposed to be Earth? Because how could it be Earth if Marky Marks ship was from Earth and this planet was not where the ship was from?

[Zebra]

2001


Dave flys 'into' the Big Black Rectangle.

After zooming across the universe (very simular to Contact) He ends up in a apartment that has been arranged for him by the makers of the BBR.

Dave is wandering around the apartment.

He ages.

He 'dies'.

Or he sort of evolves up a step or two so he becomes some sort of link (missing link? remember the apesmen?) between the humans and the Makers of the BBR.

You did get that the Makers of the BBR helped out the prehumans evolution? Right? The one on the moon and the one at Saturn/Jupiter were a trail for us to follow when we were ready.