Headscratchers / Zathura

• When Danny and Walter are talking about astronaut dude, and Walter complains that he's eating all the food, Danny replies, "So? Lupe just went shopping." ... Who the heck is Lupe?!
  • I thought it was a nickname for Lisa that the filmmakers neglected to have Danny keep using.
  • I just figured they had a maid. Lupe's the name of more than one fictional maid.
  • Or she's their dad's new girlfriend. He's divorced, after all.
  • Probably a housekeeper. Lisa is still in school and probably not always able to watch her younger brothers when their father is at work, and the house is a bit large for one man to tend by himself. So, he probably has some hired help.
• Shouldn't Walter wishing that Danny had never been born changed it so he never played the game? Danny was the one who wanted to play, wasn't he? And it's specifically stated he wished he'd never been born, not that he just didn't exist anymore, so there should probably be more consequences than him just disappearing.
  • Maybe it's like Jumanji. The game doesn't stop until you finish it. If a player dies/is erased, you're screwed.
    • I get the impression that the game is intended to be sentient, and that it has the goal of teaching its players a lesson and making them go on a heroic journey. So the reason its rules are inconsistent is that it has no rules. It does whatever it needs to to advance its agenda.
• If meeting the astronaut/ his future self was what eventually convinced Walter to stop fighting with his brother and not wish him out of existence, then what did the astronaut card do for Walter in the original game?
  • It is plausible that Walter never got the astronaut card in the original game, although if this is the case, what he would have got at that moment instead of the astronaut card is anyone's guess.
  • Or maybe they got a different astronaut. If that astronaut didn't survive the Zorgon attack, because they hadn't lived through it already, it would also explain the below question of where Future Walter got his gear from.
  • I assumed that in the astronaut's timeline, Danny ended up sending him back as soon as he'd outstayed his welcome like Walter wanted him to, and so he wasn't around to help them learn to get along.
• Where did the astronaut get his equipment, anyway? Especially considering his identity?
  • It's possible that he scraped them from the Zorgon's junk pile. Of how he got the suit his size though is a mystery. Guess it's One Size Fits All?
  • Maybe that's the answer to the above question—he got a card that sent him an astronaut suit.
• Does the astronaut know that Lisa is really his older sister? If so, why doesn't he try to turn her off in some way once it becomes clear that she's interested in him? Does he want to give his younger self an opportunity to tease her about it later?
  • Well, he's an adult, not... you know, a kid scared of cooties. He probably was just quietly smiling and ignoring it, thinking "This'll be hilarious if we survive this."
  • He did look distinctly uncomfortable a few times when she was 'flirting'. Maybe it just wasn't important enough to mention at the time or he thought it would throw everyone off too much for them to be useful in the situation they were in.
  • Maybe there's some "rule" in Zathura stating that he can't reveal who he is, since he never even hints that he's an aged Walter until after Walter wishes the astronaut would get his brother back. Revealing to Lisa who he is might be in violation of that "rule".
  • The astronaut spent his adolescence and entire adulthood drifting around in space. He's probably got no clue she is flirting with him, because he became a lone castaway at too young an age to have ever seen what flirting is.
• Since Zathura is a black hole, that means its forces can be harnessed to cause time travel... right? But Old Walter and Kid Walter come from different timelines, therefore, Old Walter got sucked into the hole, and into this timeline, but getting sucked in takes you back to Earth... help plz?
  • We don't know if the Temporal Sphincter old!Walter got sucked into was Zathura. If so, presumably the game registered it as reaching the end illegally and sent him to the movie timeline so that he could complete the game fairly. If not, then who knows what kinds of space adventures might have ultimately lead him to a wormhole?
• If the astronaut was adult Walter, how did he not recognize Danny as soon as he saw him?
  • What are the chances that after all those years lost in space he had forgotten what Danny looked like?
  • The astronaut immediately recognizes that the boys are brothers, knows what kind of furnace the house has in its basement without looking, and nearly always anticipates what each of the boys is likely to be thinking. He definitely knows the house and who the boys are.
• Where did the Zathura game even come from? Did Danny and Walter’s family own it? Was it something from whoever owned the house before them? Did it just spawn itself into existence?
• Why was Lisa the one who got cryogenically frozen? The whole point of freezing someone for a set amount of turns in a game is to hinder their progress. But Lisa wasn't a player. Her being frozen has no impact on the game.
  • She would still be in the room helping them and thus impacting the real world (which impacts the game).