Fewer than 21 Important Answers to Questions Movies Forgot to… uh… Answer

Today Cracked.com put up this list of 21 Important Questions Movies Forgot to Answer. One of my favorite pastimes as an insufferable internet dork is to point out the obvious answers to pop culture questions people come up with to make themselves look smarter than film writers but actually only make themselves look like morons who don’t like to think about things for more than two seconds. (My other favorite pastime is constructing unwieldy run-on sentences.)

There were 21 questions in the Cracked article, but I haven’t seen all the movies referenced, so unfortunately I can’t answer all 21 of them. Feel free to fill in the gaps in the comments!

Q. Did [Detective Kujan] forget that Kint admitted to shooting Saul Berg, murdering him in cold blood? The Usual Suspects
A. Kujan was single-minded, and interrogating Kint for just one specific thing. He didn’t care who Kint may or may not have killed, didn’t have any evidence to prove it anyway, and was probably aware the confession would not hold up in court given the nature of the interrogation.

Q. What the hell happened to these four basterds? Inglorious Basterds
A. They died during World War 2, a military conflict which claimed the lives of thousands and thousands of American soldiers.

Q. Tony, why? Why didn’t you make [Black Widow, Captain America and Hawkeye] Iron Man suits? The Avengers
A. Those characters have super powers that do not lend themselves well to being locked in a bulky nuclear battle suit. (This does not necessarily mean those super powers are more useful than “nuclear battle suit”, mind you. But there’s something to be said for maintaining one’s individuality.)

Q. So how did [Lando Calrissian] get a job working security for Jabba? Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
A. I haven’t seen this movie in over a decade, so this is just a blind guess: Lando infiltrated Jabba’s organization in order to rescue Han Solo, and Jabba (who is a hedonistic crime lord and not a super-intelligent criminal mastermind) did not know who he was.

Q. Come to think of it, what happened to [Lando’s] cyborg? Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
A. It got lost or destroyed, and nobody cared, because sentient mechanical beings are not considered to be people or even “life forms” in the Star Wars universe.

Q. How did Forrest Gump … obtain a license to operate a commercial shrimp boat? Forrest Gump
A. It was established very early in the movie that, as far as the state of Alabama is concerned, Forrest is of “average intelligence”. The Department of Shrimpin’ Boat Licenses (or whatever) probably was not in the habit of denying licenses to people who talk funny.

Q. What holiday is this parade celebrating? Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
A. A traditional event of local significance of the sort commonly commemorated by parades or festivals. (Admittedly these were probably more common in the ’80s.)

Q. Where did Edward Scissorhands get all that ice? Edward Scissorhands
A. By freezing water, which is one of the most abundant resources on the planet.

Q. Woohoo! … Wait, now what? Finding Nemo
A. The fish will starve to death. Alternately: that’s the joke.

Q. How the [expletive deleted] were humpback whales communicating with an alien intelligence? Star Trek
A. ESP. This is not a flippant answer. ESP really exists in the Star Trek universe, and there’s no reason to believe a species that went extinct before ESP was studied wasn’t capable of it.

Q. Sure Elsa, you got your own ice palace, but what the hell are you going to eat? Frozen
A. Food brought to her ice palace by one of her giant, sentient snow monsters.

Q. Wait, so how old was the Prince when he answered the door? Eleven? Beauty and the Beast
A. Yes.

Q. If the yellow brick road goes to the Emerald City and the Wizard, where does the red brick road go? The Wizard of Oz
A. Nowhere. It ends. Alternately: it doesn’t matter, because Dorothy isn’t going that way.

Q. When did Andy learn that he was in possession of valuable, vintage toys? Toy Story 3
A. Sometime during the ten years between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, where he was growing up into a thoughtful young man who takes good care of his toys, and also had internet access.

Q. So why did this machine combine only Brundle’s and the fly’s DNA? The Fly
A. The collective DNA of single-celled organisms didn’t provide enough material for the machine to work with. They were either destroyed, or they were absorbed but had an only negligible effect on the completed mutant. (This is a junk science answer, but it was a junk science movie, so I’m okay with that.)

Q. Revenge for WHAT? Star Wars: The Phantom Mence
A. For whatever it was the Jedi did to them that drove them underground, defeating them and forcing them to operate in the shadows rather than openly. Also, be careful what you ask about; leaning too hard on this question might result in more prequels!

Q. OK, so when can you start feeding [mogwai]? 1am? 2am? Noon? Gremlins
A. Presumably after sunrise, given that “after midnight” colloquially means “very late at night”, and the man who gave the instructions was an ancient Asian mystic rather than an internet smartass.

This has been your daily dose of Me Being a Smart Ass. Thanks for reading!

3 comments to Fewer than 21 Important Answers to Questions Movies Forgot to… uh… Answer

  • Badranch

    The question about feeding the Mogwai has been driving me nuts for years! Thanks, Brick!

  • witchfynder

    Brickroad, please post this as a comment on that article so Cracked knows they’re shoveling out shit content.

    • Brickroad

      I don’t begrudge them the shit content. The shit content pulls in viewers, which pays their bills, which enables them to pay their columnists to write surprisingly educational pro-science articles.

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