1 Toy Story 4
In Toy Story 4 instead of creating all of the individual cobwebs by hand, Pixer created AI spiders that were programmed to spin the webs wherever the cobwebs needed to be.
2. While filming Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the live rabbit they used for the “monster” scenes was covered in what they assumed was washable red dye. But when they had trouble cleaning it off, they had to stop filming to desperately clean the rabbit before its owner arrived.
3. All the roles in ‘Alien’ were written as unisex, able to be portrayed as male or female. Ripley only became a woman when Weaver was cast.
4. The briefcase in Pulp Fiction originally contained diamonds but that was deemed too predictable so it was decided that the contents were never to be seen. This way each audience member would fill in the blank with their own imagination.
5. When it was released in France in 2007, Ratatouille was not only praised for its technical accuracy and attention to culinary detail, it also drew the 4th highest opening-day attendance in French movie history.
6 The Princess Bride
In the movie The Princess Bride, when Count Rugen knocks Westly played by Cary Elwes on the head the tap came a little too hard and Elwes was knocked legitimately unconscious. He later woke up in the hospital. The take which was used in the movie was the one where Elwes actually passed out.
7. When “Battlefield Earth” won the Razzie Award for Worst Movie of the Decade, screenwriter J.D. Shapiro accepted in person saying: “No one sets out to make a train wreck. Actually, comparing it to a train wreck isn’t really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.”
8. In the film Osmosis Jones, Bill Murray’s character mentions a “National Chicken Wing Festival” in Buffalo, New York. While the festival did not exist during the filming of the movie, this mention caused organizers to create an annual festival in Buffalo which has been active now since 2003, except 2020 when it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
9. Shrek was originally given a thick Canadian accent by actor Mike Meyers. However, after the animation had begun and the dialogue almost finished, Meyers decided the character would be better portrayed with a Scottish accent. The film had to be re-animated and this little change cost over $4 million.
10. The R-rated film Planes, Trains and Automobiles would have been rated PG if not for the scene where Steve Martin says “fu*king” 18 times in one minute. Despite the rating, it is the only time in the movie where the word is used.
11 The Big Lebowski
The Big Lebowski secured rights for the song Dead Flowers (closing credits) when rights owner and Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein, who was asking $150,000 heard the line “I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man!” Klein stood up and said, ‘That’s it, you can have the song!’
12. In Jurassic Park (1993), the insect trapped in amber and which made the cloning of dinosaur possible was actually an elephant mosquito. Technically, it’s the only mosquito that doesn’t suck blood, so in theory, cloning dinosaurs with its help shouldn’t have been possible.
13. Mad Max: Fury Road had filming moved from the Broken Hill region of NSW to Namibia after unusual rainfall caused the desert landscape to bloom with wildflowers.
14. The head-in-the-box ending of “Se7en” was originally rejected by the studio, but David Fincher was accidentally sent the original screenplay with that ending, convincing him to make the movie. The producer still objected to it, but Brad Pitt refused to act in the film unless the scene was kept.
15. During the filming of The Wolf of Wall Street, Jonah Hill took revenge on Leonardo DiCaprio by giving him food poisoning. By improvising a line, Hill made DiCaprio eat the last piece of raw yellowtail sushi. DiCaprio had to repeat this 70 times. Only Hill and Martin Scorsese found it funny.
16 The Patriot
The infamous scene, in Mel Gibson’s film “The Patriot” depicting the herding noncombatant men, women and children into a church, and setting it on fire is based on the SS massacre of French villagers in Oradour-Sur-Glane in 1944. Nothing like this ever happened in the American Revolution.
17. The dust storm that sets off the events in the film “The Martian” isn’t plausible because the atmosphere on Mars is about 1% as dense as Earth’s and the winds in the strongest Martian storms top out at about 60 miles per hour, unlikely to tip or rip apart major mechanical equipment.
18. “Airplane” was judged “culturally, historically, or aesthetically” significant and added to the National Film Registry in 2010
19. The Prawns in the movie District 9 are not called that because they looked like shrimps, but the name is in reference to the Parktown prawn which is a cricket native to South Africa.
20. The boots worn by the actors portraying American soldiers in Saving Private Ryan were made by the same company that supplied boots for American soldiers during the Second World War.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Finding Nemo
“Finding Nemo” is the second film to be dubbed in Navajo, following the success of Navajo “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope”. It was a joint effort between the Navajo Nation Museum and The Walt Disney Studios for more than a year
22. The “Funny how? Like a clown?” scene in Goodfellas is based on an actual encounter Joe Pesci had with a mobster while working in a restaurant as a young man.
23. The 1959 film “The Tingler” was about a parasite that causes tingling sensations in victims. The film’s producers rigged surplus WWII aircraft motors to random theater seats, so viewers would “feel the tingler” when it attacked. Some viewers were also paid to pretend to scream and faint.
24. The entire movie of “Chinatown” is portrayed subjectively through the eyes of the main character, Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), who appears in every scene. In fact, in the one scene when Gittes is knocked unconscious, the film fades to black and fades back in only when he awakens.
25. Mouse’s shotguns in The Matrix were working models that fired 900 rounds per minute. It used a unique cam-driven design invented by movies armorer, John Bowring.