FILM 1902: SKYSCRAPER

FILM 1902: SKYSCRAPER

TRIVIA: When Will Sawyer and Zhao first meet, Sawyer greets him with some Mandarin, and Zhao replies in the same language but there are no subtitles on the screen. He is asking in jest, "Your Mandarin is quite good; how is your English?".

During development, architect Adrian Smith was brought in to consult during the writing process. Smith led the work of Dubai's Burj Khalifa, which at the time of this movie's release is the tallest building in the world, and Saudi Arabia's Jeddah Tower, the building proposed to surpass the record held by the former.

FILM 1886: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT

FILM 1886: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT 

TRIVIA: Tom Cruise trained for an entire year to perform the HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) stunt in this film.

The H.A.L.O skydiving sequence (distance of 7 km / 25000 feet, traveling speed of 265 - 320 km/h) was the last sequence filmed during production, but it was the first stunt designed and required a full year of planning out. The crew had only a limited time window of three minutes a day during sunset to film a jump. Because of strict air aviation regulations in France, it could only be shot in the Emirates. It took Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, the skydiving camera operator Craig O'Brien (who was instructed to keep a distance of three feet from Cruise while filming) and others involved a total of 106 jumps to get three possible takes. However, to rehearse the sequence, the crew built a custom oxygen helmet with RAF assistance that can be lit up to see a face, and then also built one of the world's largest wind tunnels for practice. The practice doesn't end there - Cruise and the other persons involved did five skydives a day with one in the morning, three in the afternoon, and one at dusk. Some of the other cast members turned up to visit, with Simon Pegg saying that he and his co-stars thought multiple times that Cruise was seriously about to die: "It is a daily stress going to work with him, because you don't know if you are going to see him tomorrow." 

White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) is introduced as she delivers a tribute speech to her late mother, is referred to only as "Max." and as a lover of paradoxes. While never clarified onscreen, this is likely reference to the first film in the series, which features a female British arms dealer also known only as Max (Vanessa Redgrave).

In August 2017, Tom Cruise suffered an injury while filming a stunt jumping from one building to another. He was able to grab onto the other building thanks to a harness strapped onto him and his history of performing his own stunts for action films, but his ankle fractured upon the impact of the jump. Cruise then got up and attempted to run it off, which was what the scene called for, before he and the crew decided to stop filming. Shooting was delayed for eight weeks following the injury, but the footage of the stunt used in the film and its trailers just so happened to be the actual injury.

Solomon Lane is the first villain in the franchise to appear in two films.

Simon Pegg got in such good shape while training in the gym for his action scenes that he got eight-pack abs for the first time in 25 years even though it wasn't required for his role at all. The actor is not an action star or known for his body and was teased on set by co-stars Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill, who actually are action stars and regularly show their eight-pack abs in films. They nick-named Pegg 'Eight-Pack Peggles' due to his new found abs. Cruise said, "Six-Pack Peggles I call him! He had an amazing eight-pack going on. He's almost like Eight-Pack Peggles." Pegg responded to the good-natured teasing saying, "To be fair it was a six-pack, it wasn't quite an eight-pack. I think one morning, after training, my abs made an appearance for the first time since I was 23. You have to be in shape to do these movies and I put my mind to it. It's nice to know that I can still show out if I need to. My wife appreciates it!"

A clause stipulated in Henry Cavill's contract forbade him from shaving his beard required for the role. During production, the producers received a phone call from Justice League producer Charles Roven requesting Cavill back for some reshoots for his role as Superman. Co-producer Jake Myers suggested letting Cavill shave his beard, shutting down production while he does his reshoots and then getting Warner Bros to pay $3 million for additional visual effects (digital moustache) on shots of Cavill after completing his Superman reshoots. Paramount got wind of the idea and shot it down immediately through the clause.

During the Empire Podcast, director Christopher McQuarrie revealed that he provides the authoritative voice in the initial mission briefing.

Rescuing another person in free fall while sky diving is very difficult. Hewitt says that "it takes Accelerated Free Fall instructors over 1,000 jumps to get it right and something like 70% of the people who try to qualify at the instructor level fail. Tom had just 100 jumps to perfect this."

The Paris chase scenes involved stuntmen in 70 cars driving to avoid Cruise who was riding his motorcycle against traffic without a helmet at extremely high speeds.

The musical composer on "Fallout" is Lorne Balfe, but the iconic "Mission: Impossible" theme was written by Lalo Schifrin. He wrote it in just 3 minutes. When asked why he wrote it in the unusual time signature of 5/4, he joked at a press conference in Vienna, "Everybody knows that there have been beams from outer space coming because of interplanetary flights. The people in outer space have five legs and couldn't dance to our music, so I wrote this for them."

FILM 1675: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES

TRVIA: During the filming process, Lily James stated that she had a scene where she had to walk through an area with zombie heads all around. Of course, most of them were fake props and she was directed to stomp on one. They would have supposedly gotten squished, however she stomped and realized everyone behind cameras were all staring at her in shock. She looked down and realized she stepped on one of the few extras' head.

All the actresses playing the Bennet sisters did their own stunts for the film.

Natalie Portman was originally cast as Elizabeth Bennet but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, Emma Stone, Mia Wasikowska, Rooney Mara, Mila Kunis and Blake Lively were considered to replace her before Lily James was finally cast. Portman remains on board as a producer.

Matt Smith dated co-star Lily James during the film's production.

FILM 1594: GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS

TRIVIA: Nicolas Cage did most of his own stunt driving for the film. He attended the Bondurant Driving School in Phoenix, Arizona, Willow Springs (another car driving school), and the Bobby Ore Stunt Driving School in preparation for the film. He liked the race car driving school so much that he continued to pursue it as a hobby after shooting was completed.

When Mirror Man is talking to the clerk at the police impound yard, a sign can be seen in the background that reads "If you leave your car unlocked it will be Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)". This same sign was used in the original 1974 version of the movie.

Christopher Eccleston did not actually have his drivers license during the shoot. He did not choose to take the drivers test until several years after the film was released.

Christopher Eccleston described this as a "terrible film in which I give a terrible performance", adding that, before Doctor Who (2005), people who recognised him mostly shouted "'You were in Gone in 60 Seconds, mate! You were shit!' And I have to laugh at that, because I was!""

When Memphis first talks to Otto in his shop, there is a decal on the window of a woodpecker. It is the same woodpecker that Nicolas Cage's has as a tattoo in Raising Arizona (1987).

FILM 1480: THE GENERAL

TRIVIA: In the train crash a dummy was used as the engineer. It looked so realistic that the townspeople who had come to watch screamed in horror.

The first try at getting the cannonball to shoot out of the cannon into the cab caused the ball to shoot with too much force. To cause it to shoot into the cab of the engine correctly, Buster Keaton had to count out the grains of gunpowder with tweezers.

Based on a true incident during the Civil War. In April 1862 Union agent James J. Andrews led a squad of 21 soldiers on a daring secret raid. Dressed in civilian clothes, Andrews and his men traveled by rail into the Southern states. Their mission was to sabotage rail lines and disrupt the Confederate army's supply chain. At the town of Big Shanty, GA, (now known as Kennesaw, Georgia) the raiders stole a locomotive known as "The General." They headed north, tearing up track, burning covered bridges and cutting telegraph lines along the way. William Fuller and Jeff Cain, the conductor and engineer of "The General," pursued the stolen train by rail and foot. They first used a hand-cart (as Buster Keaton does in the film), then a small work locomotive called "The Yonah," which they borrowed from a railroad work crew, and finally a full-sized Confederate army locomotive called "The Texas," which pursued "The General" for 51 miles--in reverse. During the chase Confederate soldiers were able to repair the sabotaged telegraph wires and send messages ahead of the raiders. Andrews and his men were intercepted and captured near Chattanooga, TN, by a squad of Confederate troops led by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest (who, after the war, was one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan). Tried as spies, Andrews and seven of his raiders were hanged (a special gallows was built to hold all eight men). The rest of the raiders were traded in a prisoner exchange. In 1863 the survivors of the mission were awarded the first Medals of Honor (Andrews and the raiders who had been hanged later received the medal posthumously). Although this film is a comedy, the incident was later filmed by Walt Disney as a drama, The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), with Fess Parker--a Southerner, born in Texas--as Andrews.

Buster Keaton always said that this was his favorite movie.

Buster Keaton wanted to use the real locomotive "The General", which was at the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St Louis Union Depot in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The railroad initially permitted him to do so, even providing him with a branch line to film on. However, when it became known that the film was to be a comedy, the railroad withdrew permission and Keaton had to look elsewhere.

The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.

For the scenes with the opposing armies marching, Buster Keaton had the extras (which included Oregon National Guard troops) wear the gray uniforms of the Confederacy and march in one direction past the camera, then he had them change uniforms to the Union blues and had them march past the camera in the other direction.

The film's hard-edged look was inspired by the battlefield photographs of Matthew Brady, which captured the carnage of the Civil War in shocking detail.