50 Behind the Scene Facts about Movies – Part 2

In the original, scrapped ending fro Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, K-2SO was going to be quickly shot and killed by no other than Director Krennic outside of the Imperial satellite dish facility, but this was rewritten to give the character a more heroic demise in the film’s final cut.

2. Ben Affleck was warned by Warner Bros. about the possible negative reaction to his casting in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and was advised to stay off the internet for a few days after its announcement. Despite this, Affleck admitted to checking out an online message board, where the first comment he read was, “Affleck as Batman? NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!” After seeing that, he immediately logged offline.

3. In the original ending of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, BB-8 was supposed to join Rey and Chewbacca on their journey to find Luke Skywalker. Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson asked J.J. Abrams if R2-D2 could join them instead so BB-8 could remain with Poe Dameron, establishing where the characters would start in the film’s sequel.

4. Bruce Springsteen wrote the song “I’ll Stand By You Always,” for a Harry Potter film, but said the producers of the movie didn’t want to use it.

5. In a few scenes of The Dark Knight Rises, Bane can be seen quietly knitting in the background. This is a reference to the main antagonist of Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities, who would knit as she watched public guillotine executions. Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan said the novel had a major influence on the film.

The ivory dinner jacket and red carnation lapel pin that Indiana Jones wears in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was a direct nod to the same outfit worn by James Bond in Goldfinger, a film series adored by co-creator Steven Spielberg. 

7. To prepare for the role of Killer Croc in Suicide Squad, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje spent the long hours he endured in the makeup chair listening to tapes of the Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa speaking about his crimes and his controversial release from a mental institution.

8. The position of Kylo Ren’s scar shifted drastically on his face between receiving in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and it healing by Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The latter film’s director Rian Johnson said he specifically made the decision to change it, noting it “looked goofy running straight up the bridge of his nose.”

9. Director James Mangold explained that the reason the character Caliban is different in Logan than the version of the character that debuted in X-Men: Apocalypse is because neither film production knew the other was using the character. However, Mangold refused to change the character after X-Men: Apocalypse premiered, as he still wanted to tell his story the way he wanted instead of curtailing it to fit within the broader X-Men universe.

10. Hans Zimmer, who composed both The Dark Knight trilogy and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, claims he won’t compose another Batman film again because of the way Ben Affleck’s version of the character was written in the later film. According to Zimmer: “The Christian Bale character was always about that moment at the beginning of the first movie, where he sees his parents getting killed. It was basically arrested development. The Ben character is grumpy as hell but I didn’t feel the pain that I felt in Christian’s performance.”

The club featured at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is called “Club Obi Wan,” an explicit tribute to writer George Lucas’ other hit franchise, Star Wars.

12. On top of playing the title character in Doctor Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch also provided the voice and motion capture of the villain Dormammu, a character director Scott Derrickson revealed he would like Cumberbatch to continue playing in future Marvel films.

13. It was discovered after James Gunn wrote the script for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 that Marvel didn’t own the character of Ego, the Living Planet. Instead, the rights belonged to FOX Studios, and James Gunn did not have a backup plan. Fortunately, FOX needed the permission from Marvel Studios to change key details about the Negasonic Teenage Warhead in the Deadpool film, which Marvel happily allowed in exchange for Ego’s character rights.

14. The unstable blade of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber in Star Wars: The Force Awakens is created by a cracked Kyber Crystal. The excess power is vented out its sides, thus creating its crossguard-like design.

15. The Wachowski sisters, directors of the Matrix trilogy, wrote a script for an action comedy take on DC Comics’ Plastic Man in the 1990s, and though it has never come to fruition, the duo were reportedly interested in shooting it as recently as 2008 with Keanu Reeves rumored to play the lead role.

Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts originally pitched that Kong: Skull island would open on a bunch of soldiers discovering a large ape visually similar to the one in Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong and killing it, in hopes, it would trick the audience until the real, much larger Kong debuts. The studio absolutely refused.

17. The design of the Skull Crawlers from Kong: Skull Island were partly inspired by the Pokémon Cubone, known for wearing its dead mother’s skull on its head.

18. Gareth Edwards, director of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, revealed that the name of the planet where the film’s climactic battle takes place was inspired by an incident where a coffee shop barista misheard the filmmaker’s name and wrote “Scarif” on his order.

19. George Lucas derived the word “Sith” from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars series, in which the sith are giant, venomous, hornet-like insects that are difficult to kill.

20. Doc Brown’s dog Einstein in Back to the Future was originally written to be a chimpanzee named Shemp, but was changed after a studio executive told Bob Gale “movies with chimps never made money”.

Peter Venkman, Bill Murray’s character in 1984’s Ghostbusters, was originally written for John Belushi but had to be recast when the actor passed away.  Dan Aykroyd later stated that he always thought of Slimer as the Ghost of John Belushi.

22. Crispin Glover, who portrayed George McFly in the first Back to the Future did not return for the sequels because he reportedly asked for too much money. Instead, he was replaced by a lookalike in a latex mask, prompting Glover to sue the producers for using his likeness, for which he was awarded $1 million.

23. To promote the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Google Maps added various hidden locations from the film for users to explore, including the MACUSA Headquarters, The Blind Pig, and Tina and Queenie Goldstein’s apartment.

24. After the mediocre response to Superman Returns, Warner Bros. canceled a planned Superman vs. Batman film in order to reboot the character. The reboot, which became Man Of Steel, was developed specifically to “reintroduce Superman without regard to a Batman and Superman movie at all,” even though that’s what the film’s sequel eventually became.

25. Kate Upton was among Warner Bros. top considerations for the role of Tina Goldstein in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.