Hotly Debated Questions From Movies And TV Shows That Have Answers

Arguing about fictional franchises is a great way to jaw about the media we love and prove we know the franchise inside and out, but an arguer should always do their homework first so they don't lose face in front of their fellow fans.

Because imagine how embarassed you'd be if you claimed Groundhog Day was purposely written without an explanation of how Phil got stuck in the time loop, only to find out about the second draft of the script.

The second draft spells out that Phil's ex girlfriend Stephanie Decastro put a curse on the poor guy and that Phil is actually supposed to be stuck in the time loop for 10,000 years. 

And speaking of things that are spelled out in the script but never made it onto the screen- the contents of the mysterious FedEx box in Cast Away was originally supposed to be revealed to be this:

(Image Link)

In the third draft of the script Chuck decided to open the box after he'd been on the island for 1,000 days, and inside he discovered two bottles of homemade salsa verde and a note from a woman begging her husband to come back. 

Read 7 Hotly Debated Movie Questions That Totally Have Answers here (NSFW language)


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What the monoliths are and do in 2001 is pretty self-explanatory from the first scene, not a question or mystery at all. Beating people over the head with further explanation would be boring and make the monoliths less mysterious and impressive, because you've defined strict constraints on their behavior and intent, rather than leaving those as open questions, where we don't know if maybe they'll become malicious later.

The sequel, 2010, made a similar but much larger mistake. (spoiler) It explained away HAL's murder spree as just a programming mistake, when it made more sense that approaching the giant monolith was making him self-aware, like the apes in the opening. If HAL's behavior wasn't affected by it, then it's a side-plot that didn't get properly set-up, and isn't really relevant to the story, oddly enough. I actually like 2010, as an independent movie, more action, adventure, and less mystery. But as a sequel, it really takes the air out of one of the greatest movies of all time, robbing it of the existential philosophical questions of what it means to be alive, conscious, intelligent, etc., and how we differ from the animals, and the advanced machines we've created to assist us. I don't believe it was coincidence that we start with apes killing to survive, then the rest of the film is HAL killing humans, then humans killing HAL to survive. Perhaps Artur C Clarke didn't intend it, but surely Kubrick did. It's far from the first movie that improved upon and eclipsed the source material, taking it in another direction. Though, obviously the reverse is vastly more common.
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I'm not sure if you read the article I linked to Tiago but the point was that most of the scripts featured were the scripts used to shoot the film, only the filmmakers decided to drop that one crucial bit of information right before filming so audiences would debate these scenes. For instance, the Groundhog Day script is pretty much the same as the one used to shoot only the entire magic curse scene was omitted on purpose to create a question for debate. Danny Rubin (writer of the film) didn't want to show the curse scene and originally wanted the movie to start in the middle of the loop, but Harold Ramis (director of film) insisted the scene be included in the script and the movie start before the time loop. So while it's true that early scripts generally don't count the scripts referred to in the article are very close to, if not the same as, the script used in shooting.
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I have to strongly disagree with this article. Early drafts do not count...
In an early draft Luke Skywalker was going to be Lucia Skywalker, so, what I'm saying is things change (and quite a lot) between drafts.
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