5 Weirdo Movie Questions, Answered

There are some movie-related questions that will forever go unanswered. Were the seven dwarfs planning to use all those diamonds they mined to construct deadly super lasers? How did Chewbacca poop without ruining his fur? But not every conundrum cooked up by couch-bound cannabis connoisseurs lacks an official explanation. For instance ...

5 What Did John Wick Do After Retiring From Assassinating?

The impression we get from the first John Wick movie is that after he retired from assassin work, he did little else but honeymoon with his wife and then mope around the house in his underwear after she died. But there was a five-year span between his departure from the professional murder game and his quest to brutally liquidate Theon Greyjoy. He had to be doing something, right?

The original script addressed Mr. Wick's lack of a vocation, spun the wheel of hipster professions, and landed on "bookbinder," barely missing "craft beer critic" in the process. And if you weren't already swooning at Keanu Reeves' scruffy wonderfulness, know that he made an effort to learn the trade.

According to Reeves, they did film scenes of Wick restoring old leather-bound books -- Victorian children's books being the character's particular passion -- but those scenes were cut in accordance with the classic action filmmaking rule "Less character development, more gun karate." Maybe they can be restored in a pretentious director's cut, or be made the basis of a rom-com wherein he falls in love with a sassy Kindle enthusiast (while also killing 500 men).

4 How Does Superman Shave?

Superman can fly, shoot lasers from his eyes, bend steel, see through almost anything, reverse time, and keep getting movies despite most of them being terrible. But can he shave?

If that sounds like a silly question, well, it is. But remember that bullets bounce off this man's eyeballs. Is his hair somehow weaker than that? Does he need a kryptonite razor? We're not trying to get too into the biology of Kryptonians, because that's what our fanfiction.net account is for, but we know he has testosterone. He can have a kid, and he gets superboners (see: fanfiction). But Superman never seems to have facial hair. The few times we do see a bearded Superman, like in Man Of Steel, he's clean-shaven 15 seconds later. But how? And no, Gillette's " Soft enough for a woman of Kleenex, strong enough for a Man of Steel" ads aren't canon.

Before you learn the answer, please try to imagine all of the ways Superman could shave. Is one of his superpowers hair follicle control? Does he just rip his hair out while screaming in agony every morning? Is Batman involved somehow?

Does he casually endanger the lives of his next-door neighbors if his bathroom mirror ever develops a dull spot?

Nope! When Superman needs that clean smooth feeling, he simply shoots his own face with lasers via a mirror, because the only thing strong enough to shave a Superman is a Superman. So while he may be a golden god, his bathroom always smells like burnt hair.

3 How Did Monsters Inc.'s Monster Society Start?

The whole plot of Pixar's Monsters movies is that the monsters live in secret other world, yet know a lot about human life and use human emotions to power their cities. This raises a lot of questions. How did the monsters learn about humans? Why do the monsters behave so much like humans that their cities and homes are similar to ours? Do they have a pact with the immortal Toy People?

Well, a DVD bonus feature for Monsters Inc. reveals that the monsters are basically Neanderthals gone weird. A long time ago, there were two groups of humanoids. "The Mans" were judgmental and just all-around mean. That was us! Then there were "the Mons," a kind, caring group that largely resembled the Mans, but happened to smell like a stack of diapers baking in the hot sun. The Mans attacked the Mons, who fled across the ocean to a mystical island. There the Mons discovered fruit that made them bigger and uglier in different ways, because this is still a children's movie.

So that's why all the monsters look completely different from each other, yet are treated as one species. They're the descendants of Mons who ate magic fruit on a secret island after being driven from their home by our ancestors. You all thought that Monsters Inc. didn't have the dark undercurrent of some other Pixar films, but it actually began with an attempted genocide, followed by body horror.

2 Why Are Twilight's Werewolf Boys All Shirtless?

Back when the internet spent most of its time screaming about Twilight instead of screaming about politics, everyone loved to rip on the movies for their overabundance of half-naked teenage werewolves. And to be fair, the movies give no clear explanation for why the woods of Washington State glisten with the smooth, hairless chests of the Quileute tribe.

Now, obviously the true motivation for including copious shirtless men who spend most of their waking hours at the gym was lady-boners, but there is an in-universe justification for it as well. It's because they're poor, you insensitive monster.

When werewolves are teenagers, they're way worse at controlling their transformations, because their condition is a thinly disguised erection metaphor. So every time a werewolf looks at a sexy dog and unexpectedly pops a were-boner, whatever clothes they're wearing get shredded in the transformation. And like grandma always said while uncomfortably winking at grandpa, "You can't rip what you don't wear."

According to the filmmakers, the Quileute don't make a lot of money, and they can't afford to go to Walmart five times a day to replace their constantly bursting shirts. So werewolves aren't just sexy; they're economical. We're also told that they have a higher average body temperature than normal humans (108.9 degrees), which explains how they can handle the Pacific Northwest cold without a thick coat of hair. Again, this is all really an excuse to show off rippling muscles, but countering criticisms of gratuitous nudity with "They can't afford shirts, you classist jerks" is fairly clever for the Twilight franchise. Not a clever enough explanation to also cover the jorts, but it's a sliding scale.

1 How Did The Lion King's Scar Get His Scar?

The Lion King never explains the origin of Scar's nickname, preferring only to use it as a hint for the slower kids in the audience. But what if, like us, you've spent the past 25 years wildly overthinking a children's movie? How did Scar get the name that screams "Hello, I am an evildoer"?

There is an answer, and it can be found in A Tale Of Two Brothers, the first of six official short stories released after the movie to give us the Lion King lore that fans didn't know they wanted, and probably still don't. It takes us back to the childhoods of Mufasa and Scar, who was born as Taka.

Taka is overflowing with jealousy of his golden boy brother, so he provokes a herd of buffalo into attacking Mufasa in order to embarrass him and teach their father a lesson. But while Mufasa manages to escape the stampede, Taka is too busy laughing maniacally at his perceived victory to notice that they're also coming after him. He ends up taking a horn to the face, leaving him with a scar and a cool nickname. The rest is very profitable history.

E. Reid Ross has a book called BIZARRE WORLD that's on store shelves as we speak. Or you could just order it now fromAmazonorBarnes & Nobleand leave a scathing/glowing review. Jordan Breeding also writes for awhole mess of other sites, theTwitter, and a weird amount of gas station bathrooms. Plenty more interesting factoids from Markos can be found at the FactBuffet.

For more, check out 4 Plot Holes You Didn't Notice In Your Favorite Movies - The Spit Take:

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