Stardust (film)/Headscratchers

• How was the witch able to make a voodoo doll of Septimus? She didn't have any pieces of his hair or skin or anything--just a random doll made of clay. It wasn't linked to Septimus in any particular way, so it shouldn't have worked! It might be internally consistent, but that still raises the question of why she didn't bust it out before her sister got gutted.
  • Perhaps she didn't think she needed to until he actually killed one of them.
  • Or maybe she wanted at least one of her sisters dead. Two way split is better than three.
  • On watching the movie again, her expression shifts when her sister dies - it does not look like a happy face. Most likely, they were trying to conserve what little of their age they had left, and Septimus' competence spurred her to kick it up a notch.
  • As for the doll itself, I figured that Lamia is just that good- after all, she and her sisters are the three most powerful witches in the world, and she generally comes off as the most formidable of the three. A rough likeness and line-of-sight was probably all she needed.
• Why didn't the witch just kill both of them when she had the chance? She deliberately missed Tristan, let both of them get far away from her, then suddenly started trying to kill them again when they both had the advantage over her and she got her butt whipped. I loved the movie, but that scene almost killed it for me for being apparently pointless.
  • Possibly she needed a breather.
  • "What use is a heart when it's broken?"
    • Indeed, she needed the star to be at least moderately happy. Also, she might not have have known that Yvaine could glow and annihilate her.
    • It did seem to catch her by surprise. Plus, Tristan (rather dumbly) left his sword up there with her, so he didn't even have anything to defend himself with.
  • Her sisters who she lived with for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years just died. Even if she didn't particularly love them, it's expected she would be a little crazy after everything that's happened.
  • This Troper agrees with the above statement; she was clearly just trying to prompt a little more happiness out of Yvaine, and clearly cared very little for her sisters. What does a moment's psyche-out hurt her?
    • The thing is, it's timed atrociously. She has them in her power, she lets them go, they become happy, then she spends power to freak them out and stop being happy again. Immediately after she lets them go, when they're still in arms reach and happy about the change was the time to stab them. As it is, she freaks them out, makes them happy and freaks them out again but a little further away and less in her power
• In The Movie, were the animals the witches used for divination that were let loose at the end transformed humans, or was it left to the viewer's interpretation?
  • They were animals. There's absolutely nothing in the movie that implies that they were transformed humans.
  • Though that would've made one witch's Karmic Death by wolves more awesome.
    • The animals acted a lot more intelligently and less like animals though. They attacked the person further away from them who'd caused them suffering and then left peacefully and orderly without attacking any of the other humans
  • Another interpretation: The wall is a magical place. Animals born in them could be quite intelligent (like how a star could be people in the wall and rocks and metal outside).
• At the end of The Movie, isn't it a bit of an unhappy ending that Tristran and Yvain end up hundreds, or thousands of light-years apart, or at least with other stars between them?
  • The movie seemed to give the implication that stars were still together and capable of communicating. Besides, since they lit the same Babylon candle, they would have gone to the heavens together. Since this movie is pure fantasy, actual distance of heavenly bodies isn't an issue in this universe.
  • Even with that in mind, that part always bugged me too. Why couldn't they have just made it one star?
  • Because they're two different people.
  • If real life must intrude on this romantic celestial metaphor, just consider them to be binary stars that are close enough to "Earth" that they look close together.
    • That's doesn't work. To be close enough to earth to look like two separate stars as far apart as shown in the movie, both stars would have to be within the solar system, at a distance measured not in LYs but in AUs (otherwise the binary pair will still look like one star from earth, or at best, just barely resolvable by the naked eye as two stars VERY close together in the sky). At such distances, the two stars would not look like stars in the sky, but like SUNS. Perhaps dimmer than the actual sun, depending on precisely how far away and what intrinsic brightness they were (but also possibly BRIGHTER than the sun), but each at least several times brighter than the full moon, and both visible as discs, not points of light.
  • I figure, stars are lightyears away from each other in the 'real' world, but Tristran and Yvain were on the 'fantasy' side of the wall. It's like how stars aren't sentient humanoids with magic powers on both sides of the wall.
    • And perhaps stars have a different view of distance and than humans? For entities that can live for billions of years, light years, decades and centuries won't necessarily feel the same as to short-lived humans. And besides, this is fantasy.
  • Technically, wasn't Yvaine a meteorite, or would be if she crossed the wall?
    • Yep. A Fallen Star.
    • Look at it this way: it's still far, far happier then the ending of the book, where Tristran just dies as all mortals do and Yvain stays in the castle to mourn him for all eternity...
• Did anyone else find it kind of anticlimactic how the second witch died? They're apparently the three best witches and all we see her do is... getting killed by rodents.
  • Hey, it worked on Dr. Doom :P.
  • The ferrets (not rodents) didn't kill her. They distracted her. The wolves Tristan set free right after killed her.
    • Still, an uber powerful witch got killed by a bunch of mindless animals.
  • Even Ditchwater Sal put up a better fight and managed to pull one over on two main characters. Plus, her black magic smoke was way cooler than Pfeiffer's green magic smoke.
    • Hey, you ever try casting spells when you've got a couple dozen pissed off ferrets running up your dress? Ferrets are fast. Add in the hungry, pissed off wolves, and it's going to be just a wee bit difficult concentrating on magic.
  • To say nothing of the fact that wolves are highly dangerous predators, especially when there's a lot of them and especially when they're single-mindedly engraged at you.
• The part I don't understand is why the necklace knocked Yvain out of the sky. I mean, I know the necklace had to travel a good distance for the sons to go look for it, but why would it bring down a star?
  • In the comic book it's implied the necklace literally knocked her out of the sky. Maybe it hit her in the head or feet, tripping her? I mean, what's the magical physics like for living stars... Wait, I can't believe we're discussing the implausibility of a magical pendant being thrown out of orbit by a dying king, managing to hit an orbiting immortal glowing woman out of all that emptiness of space, knocking her out of orbit and crashing her into Earth without having the fall the kill her, and the implausible part is that it made her trip??? Sorry, sorry, Bellisario's Maxim and such.
    • That's what I mean, why did the necklace go into space at all? It's not as though the sons could look for it up there.
    • He didn't mean for it to stay up there. He was just tossing it in the air to make it difficult for him. When you play fetch with the dog, you throw the stick up in the air. Same thing here.
• So when the witch was exploding the mirrors, why did they keep moving back in front of the unexploded mirrors instead of heading for the door where the already exploded mirrors could not explode on them?
  • Because shards where still flying throw the air and there was no time to wait for them to fall onto the ground before the next mirror exploded.
  • And because it looks a lot cooler to have the hero and heroine running along a corridor of exploding glass...
• So, is The Wall a portal between worlds, or is the magic land that one area? I mean, in the magic world, is supposed to be a whole other Earth, or do they just have a couple hundred square miles?
  • If I remember the book correctly, the Wall only has that universe merging effect during the other Wall's big carnival-like affair...
  • It's on all the time in the graphic novel, it's just more widely used during market meets. Anyhoo, think of the Wall this way: If you jump over it, you're still in England, but if you walk through the gap, you're crossing into another world entirely.
    • Ah, okay. I was wondering why those strapping men never tried to just jump over the five foot wall further down away from the guard.
    • So, how does a scene in the movie where the star managed to walk right up to the wall and even had been stopped by the old man gaurding the wall?
  • To be more clear, it's a portal and the world on the other side is as big as Earth, if not bigger - countries removed from the map by cartographers move over there.
• Why does only Septimus go to Hell? His is the only spirit that turns red and zips downward. I'm not arguing that he didn't deserve it (though he does seem to have been pushed to it by the way his father raised him), but it sounds like some of his other brothers were equally as ruthless and murderous... they just weren't as good at it as he was. Seems like at least one or two of them should have rated damnation.
  • We don't see the brother's behavior except to each other. Perhaps the rest where quite noble to ordinary people.And they may have only killed each other because daddy gave them no choice. Sept may have been the only one who was evil generally and who relished killing his brothers.
  • Maybe because he was the only one to kill a clergyman.
• This cannot be coincidence, and I find it highly disturbing.
  • ELEPHANT!!!
• Is it addressed in any of the adaptations who wrote the question to the astronomical society, or what the question was exactly?
  • No, because that's only in the movie.
    • It was written by Tristran's father and it was asking wether or not another, magical universe could exist on the other side of the wall.
• Why did Yvaine have an English accent? Wasn't she a star? Why would a star have an English accent?
  • Do you mean "why does a fallen star speak English?" That would go under Aliens Speaking English. As for the accent: speaking English without a foreign accent fits perfectly with a film set in (a mystical part of) England.
  • By that logic, why wouldn't a star have an English accent? Maybe she likes that sort of accent best.
  • Because everyone has an accent? there is no such thing as a non-accent, y'know...
  • "Lots of planets have a north, you know."
  • What accent would she have, then? She has to have some kind of accent.
• Royals have blue blood, right? Fair enough. But Tristan himself is a royal, even though he doesn't know it. So how come he never noticed he bleeds blue?
  • He's only half royal thanks to his non-elvish, mortal, and non-royal dad. Presumably that plus not having been raised a royal in the mundane world made his blue blood turn into a normal, if perhaps dark, red.
    • One presumes things like 'actually blue blood' are magic and don't work in England.
• Was there every any sort of explanation as to why Una was kidnapped by the witch? This troper knows it's a part of the fairy tale aspects, but it seems a little odd that a princess could be imprisoned and never found by her family again.
  • I've only seen the movie, but didn't the King ask his sons where the heck was their sister, and Septimus pointed out that he wouldn't bother killing her when he still had two brothers alive? That sort of implies they don't even know she's missing, let alone bound to a witch. She probably left home a long time ago, knowing it would be unlikely that she'd ever get the throne, then got kidnapped. Everyone has just been too busy trying to do each other in to notice.
  • Kidnapped by a witch. Ditchwater Sal may have been low on the totem pole of witchcraft, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have the magic that could keep Una hidden, even from those handy Runestones her brothers used. Whatever magic she used to bind Una with that chain probably included such an effect.
• What is up with Victoria's characterization in the movie? In the book, she was cold, yes, but really a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who was willing to take responsibility for her actions. In the movie she was just a Shallow Love Interest.
  • Admittedly, it's been awhile since I read the book, but in the movie, isn't that the point of Victoria's character that she's a shallow person who really needs to grow up, and Tristan only crushes on her because she's pretty and he's got some maturing to do himself?
    • I didn't find her shallow. She clearly already had something going on with the guy she married but Tristan didn't notice. Tristan was the young idiotic one, she was interested in the older guy with a steady job who presumably spent some time with her, not 'fell in love' with her without knowing anything other than thats she's pretty.
    • Well, she's pretty clearly manipulating Tristan's attraction to her in order to get him to help her in the shop scene, and the reason she gives for why she can't say no to Humphrey is because he "went all the way to Ipswitch" to get her a ring, not that she actually loves him.
• Why didn't they just let the witch-queen give up and genuinely mourn the loss of her sisters? One of the film's themes is that eternal life is only worth living if you have someone to share it with; the only people who'd be willing to share Lamia's immortality are shish-kebabbed and mauled to death, respectively. It would have been a poignant ending that made Lamia a touch more sympathetic and given the film a lot more emotional impact. It just felt like she got hit with the Villain Ball.
  • Maybe she did. Perhaps her "change of heart" was actually genuine, but then she realized that she can't take her own life, and needed the heroes to do it for her.
  • This is where the heart of the star Tristan ending makes it genuinely clever. They sought a good thing an evil way and it was a trap that refused to let them enjoy it or even have it. They just sought it and became more twisted and aged and faded and hateful. Eternity? They never had eternity because they never had the heart of a star, they just found a way to avoid death whereas Tristan was able to find eternity. None of them would be able to mourn anymore because they gave too much of their humanity (which was physically shown everytime they used dark magic!)
  • She's evil. I really didn't need much more reason than that, personally.