Movie's little mysteries... - Page 2

After I brought that up (and I'm far from the first, apparently), I went looking. Someone said that the island they were on couldn't have been too far from the mainland, and that the flash-bang the Ark gave off probably attracted some notice.

 

I just like how Spielberg shrugs past it. "They got home. Do you really want me to take five minutes of anticlimactic screen time to show you exactly how?"

 

It's sketchy screenwriting — a screenwriting professor would ream you for that. But it's Spielberg, and we don't care. Well, except when we (meaning me) bring it up in an amused fashion.

 

It seems like that's the sort of thing you wouldn't see today. A movie would feel the need to explain it.

 

One thing I was never clear on in Raiders: when Toht shows up with his scarred hand, are we to assume that that's the missing side of the headpiece? Because if so, it doesn't seem to affect their search; they're still digging in the wrong place, and the only reason the Nazis figure out where the Ark's located is that Belloq happens to see Indy and the diggers at dawn. Where they've apparently been digging all night and nobody saw them until then. But again. It's Spielberg at the top of his game, we don't care.

 

William Goldman pointed out that the only reason we don't throw tomatoes at the screen at the extreme coincidence of Indy picking the one tent out of dozens that Marion happens to be in, is that Indy then decides not to act on it for now. What registers is that Indy now knows Marion is alive, Marion knows Indy is around (and the Ark is here), and it's not a major plot point in terms of plot mechanics — it's a people moment. If he'd taken her out of the tent, not only would it have been a stupid move (as he says), we wouldn't have bought it. We only just buy it anyway.

The Birds, why do they start attacking people.

 

In the movie there is no reason, just all of a sudden birds are starting to go nuts.

 

To be honest though, I don't really want this one explained, maybe if Hitchcock was still alive, but I don't need some sort of "the birds are tired of the way the humans are treating the enviorment" or whatever crap a director would think up today.

 

I think that's the pleasure of these kinds of mysteries: they tantalize us, terrify us, take away our sense of certainties. I like that we don't know why the birds attack, just like I like the apparent, yet totally unsatisfactory explanation of the Zombie attack in the original Night of the Living Dead. It makes the characters in the films speculate what the hell is going on, why is this happening, how can this be happening.

 

I love how in Stephen King's books his characters will comment on the absurdity of their situations. In The Mist (Novella) after a Giant Land Based Squid attacks the Grocery Store, one of the characters who has just helped fight it off says "you know this is impossible, right? If you stole a Giant fucking Squid from the Zoo, trucked to the back of this Supermarket, and dumped it there, it wouldn't attack us, it'd just fucking die!". Sadly that type of dialogue never gets into the film versions of King's work.

 

Though: FYI an article came out recently that stated that the real life Bird attack incident in Santa Cruz, which inspired the short story and movie of The Birds, was caused by said Birds ingesting pesticides that made them go crazy.

Edited by Cylon Baby - 1/24/12 at 7:00pm

To chime in on a few of these:

 

1. Stallone actually gave an answer to the three sea shells a while back. I don't remember what it was, but it's kinda gross and anti-climactic.

 

2. There is no mystery in Reservoir Dogs about who shot Nice Guy Eddie. Mr. White shot him. If you slow it down it's clear as day he gets two shots off. How that became a long-standing debate boggles my mind.

 

3.As for Pulp Fiction, the band-aid on the back of Marellus's neck has nothing to do with anything. That was a band-aid that Ving Rhames actually had to where for some reason. As to theories, my personal favorite has always been that the briefcase contains Lucifer's Halo, although doesn't actually make sense, for the same reason it doesn't make sense for it to be a soul: if it were some kind of proof of divinity, then there is no reason that John Travolta would be so adamantly against the concept of divine intervention, considering he lays eyes on what's in the briefcase only moments before the shooting starts.

 

Of course, it's not actually anything other than a Macguffin. Are there any examples people can think of where the mystery is explained, but hidden?

 

Toht has the front side of the headpiece scarred on his hand, which says 'go to the map room, find this hole, at this time of day stick a staff of the following length in hole: <length of staff>.' The back side of the headpiece, which the Nazis don't have, says 'also, subtract this length from the staff because of Jews.' That's why the Nazis are digging in the wrong place.

 

 

I know this one; she whispers 'You should have a cloak lined with ermine'.

 

Which brings up what could be a continuity error.  The translation of the front says, "six kaddam high," which Sallah says is about 72 inches, or six feet.  So it makes sense that a kaddam is about one foot; anything much less, and six of them wouldn't come close to 72 inches.  But the back says take one kaddam back.  Which would make the staff around five feet tall.  Which would make Indy about four feet tall, going by how much taller the staff is than he is.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA:

 

An opium-induced fantasy?

DARK CITY

when the aliens tune the city every night, they demonstrate that they have absolute control over the entire environments...buildings change, tables stretch, doors appear and disappear. Why do they then need to manually place objects/artifacts in the test locations?

The X MEN films

Magneto is places into a plastic prison. That's fine in concept, but it should have been irrelevant. His magnetic powers have been shown to really have zero range limits, so he should have been able to affect metal objects far outside of the confines of his plastic cell. Surely there's a car in the parking lot to the facility that holds him that he could draw to him, smashing through the plastic walls and so forth. So why does the prison hold him?

How have his powers been shown to have no range limits?

I haven't watched the three original films in a while so I'm going off of memory, but I believe in LAST STAND it's shown that he has great range in the Golden Gate bridge sequence. He's manipulating metal that's both at hand and far away. In FIRST CLASS, he moves the satellite dish which appears to be at least a mile away.

All of those involved line of sight though.

And also later films in the franchise, which makes it a little wonkier.

If line of sight is all that matters, then why the big expansive prison? All that you would need would be a regular cell lined with opaque plastic. His oversized cell suspended in space implies that his powers have a range.

Well, if they made a prison like that it'll be very boring. The one in the film looks cool. That's why we got it.

Also, this is not a mystery so much as an incongruity.

Yeah, I agree. Sorry for the derail.

I caught the end of The Usual Suspects the other day, and that reminded me of a good one: how much of what "Kayser" tells the detective is true? Again, I understand that the ambiguity is the point, and unlike some, I don't think the twist negates what's come before, but there's a point that is worth looking at:

 

Is Kayser a completely made up persona, or is there some truth to the origin that "Verbal" gives? After all, he does need to get on that boat in order to kill the witness who is being sold to Turks. Whatever the real origin of the character, it does seem to have some connection with international criminal clans.