Congo/Headscratchers

• So, they trained a gorilla to use sign language and built a machine to convert that to English. Fair enough. But then that sign language can be used to talk to wild gorillas? And it is the taught language because it simultaneously converts to English. So either the sign language was identical to natural gorilla communication, or someone taught those evil wild gorillas the sign language.
  • "SIT!" You get a bunch of creatures, breed them for (among other things) following human instructions, and they get understandably confused when something like them, or rather something like a generally nonconfrontational version of themselves, starts yelling at them in Squishy Pink Boss-man Language. It shows earlier that trying to get the gorillas to communicate with Amy without her teaching them first through gorillaspeak is ridiculous, when the regular gorillas are simply weirded out by Amy waving her hands and emitting odd noises. That doesn't explain why they still had the training ingrained into them so long after "Teachers" had all been killed.
    • They may have been using it among themselves to establish their dominance hierarchy and communicate. Same as how pet parrots turned loose are capable of teaching their offspring at least a handful of the human words they know.
• Why was the temple falling apart all of a sudden when the explorers arrived? I could get the lava flow later on, if the Super-Diamond refracto-powered laser had chopped up the ground, but I hadn't seen them do anything more than walk around early on, and the crumbling had started before they fired a single shot. For that matter, saying that the gorillas know what to do. If there hadn't been a flow like that since the temple was built, they wouldn;t know what to do. And that Just Bugs Me.
  • This is one of those little plot holes that appear when you change the original source material. In the novel, the eruption was triggered when Karen dynamitated a large area where she was expecting to find diamonds - she was the Corrupt Corporate Executive in the original story and a very unlikable character. They changed completely Karen's personality for the movie adaptation and as a result this incident had to be dropped because it did no longer make sense. Instead, they added an early line by Travis where he says that they've been monitoring the zone via satellite and that the hole area is about to blow up so they must act fast. Presumably, as per the movie verse, there have been quite a few earthquakes and eruptions around Zinj in recent times and the fact this one is so timely and so destructive is meant to be a pure coincidence. The characters might have considered the situation to not be as bad at first, hence their opinion that the gorillas might know what to do since they have survived all those previous quakes and eruptions.
  • Because it's a fiction story that's meant to be entertaining. "Hey, in Volcano, how come we just happen to be watching LA on the day that a volcanic eruption happens there?" Because it's the plot of the movie.
• How many expendable black assistants did they HAVE?
  • In Africa, it's pretty trivial to hire entire companies of men and firepower, especially with the resources an American multimillion dollar communications company can bring to bear.
• How the hell did Richard die? It's too dark to get a good look at his wounds, and it just looks like he had a freak-out that somehow resulted in him being covered in blood.
  • There's some indication that he's got a load of internal injuries and he's just barely hanging on as it is. Then he sees Amy, freaks the hell out, and between the thrashing and the screaming he finishes tearing up his insides.