10 Behind the Scenes Facts about Time Travel Movies

Making time travel a reality continues to evade scientists, but the concept still thrives in the movies. Some time travel movies have characters willingly traverse the ages through the use of an upgraded DeLorean or a futuristic phone booth. Others force their characters to unknowingly stumble into the past via hot tubs or time loops. Although real time travel is sadly not a part of the making of these movies, there are still plenty of interesting behind-the-scenes stories to dive into.

Related: Top 10 Blockbuster Movie Scenes Reviewed By Real Life Spies

10 Hot Tub Time Machine started with the title

Movies usually start out as an idea or a story, but in the case of Time machine in a jacuzzi (2010), the title came first. In an article for Hollywood.com, writer Josh Heald explained that the seed was planted when he was discussing ’80s sitcoms with producer Matt Moore, who suggested someone remake the ski comedy. Hot dog… The movie (1983). Heald thought he had said “Hot Tub”, but brushed aside the confusion and began work on a new ski comedy.

Heald knew that an ’80s setting would “end up going down a shitty road,” but a current setting wouldn’t give the right comedic feel. “If only there was a way to set it both times,” he writes. A kind of time machine. A time machine in a jacuzzi”. Heald spent the next several months writing a story to fit the title. The key, according to him, was to “allow the Jacuzzi time machine to be ridiculous.”^[1]

9 Happy Death Day’s Babyface Mask Could Have Been A Pig Mask

The creepy baby-faced mask worn by the mugger who repeatedly kills Tree (Jessica Rothe) in happy death day (2017) was designed by Tony Gardner, who also created the iconic Ghostface mask for Shout (nineteen ninety six). However, it was director Christopher Landon who had the initial idea for the mask.

“I was expecting my first child,” Landon explains. “I don’t know if I just had babies in my brain or if I was subconsciously afraid of becoming a father, but that baby image floated in my head. Tony also made us a pig mask, but when I wore the baby mask to the office, it scared a coworker and we were like… yeah, this is it. This is the one.”

However, Jonathan Bertuccelli is suing Universal and Blumhouse over the mask, claiming it copied his design for the New Orleans Pelicans basketball team’s mascot, known as King Cake Baby.^[2]

8 Interrogation room in 12 Monkeys made filmmakers sue

12 monkeys (1995) sees Bruce Willis’ James Cole tied to a seat anchored to the middle of a wall and interrogated by a spherical robot. The film’s visual style was heavily inspired by the photography of Josef Sudek and the experimental architecture of Lebbeus Woods. Production designer Jeffrey Beecroft explains that no one had built anything that Woods had designed “because it doesn’t hold up. So I built it! And it doesn’t make sense, but it works.”

The interrogation room is essentially a re-creation of Woods’ drawing titled “Neomechanical Tower (Upper) Chamber”. When Woods discovered that his art had been used without permission, he sued Universal, along with Beecroft and director Terry Gilliam.

The judge ruled in favor of Woods, requiring Universal to withdraw all copies of 12 monkeys and take out the scenes, barely a month after its premiere. However, Woods allowed Universal to continue distributing the film in exchange for a six-figure cash settlement (exact amount unknown).^[3]

7 Time travel in Avengers: Endgame written to solve a problem

Avengers: infinity war (2018) left writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely in a tight spot. Spoiler warning: having half the population ripped out of existence at the end of the movie was a dramatic move, but they needed to figure out how to make the heroes win. Avengers Endgame (2019). Markus recalls that they were “sitting in a room trying to figure out how the hell to get out of the corner where we wrote to each other.”[to].”

Eventually, they ended up turning to time travel. While they thought “it’s the stupidest idea you could have,” they later realized “that the Ant-Man franchise, which we hadn’t even addressed yet, legitimately had, if you believe the science, the seeds of a space machine.” time”. ”

The explanation that Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) gives for time travel in the film is, according to Markus, “essentially what we were told by the genuine quantum physicists brought into the writers room to explain time travel to us.”^[4]

6 Edge of Tomorrow’s exosuits led actors to hang themselves from chains

The time loop movie The Age of Tomorrow (2014) sees the use of armored exoskeletons, called ExoSuits, to fight an alien invasion. Director Doug Liman tasked prop designer Pierre Bohanna, production designer Oliver Scholl, and costume designer Kate Hawley to make the exosuits look as lifelike as possible, which also meant they were heavy.

Most of the suits weighed around 85 pounds (38.5 kg), but additional equipment could increase that number up to 176 pounds (79.8 kg). They were so heavy that, during breaks in filming, chain platforms (which, according to Emily Blunt, looked like “a kid’s swings”) were used to hang the actors off their weight.^[5]

5 The special effects of Terminator 2 cost more than twice the total budget of the first film.

the terminator (1984) cost $6.4 million to make, and to terminator 2 (1991) the special effects budget alone cost more than double, reaching around $15-$17 million. The entire film cost between $94 and $102 million, making it the most expensive film ever made at the time. Much of the effects budget went into the liquid metal CGI form of the T-1000 (Robert Patrick).

Writer-director James Cameron wanted to include the T-1000 in the original film, but the technology wasn’t up to the task (or the budget). But he knew it was possible after working with ILM for the aquatic alien in the abyss (1989).

Cameron told ILM that he wanted to do something similar but that it would be “metallic, so you don’t have translucency issues.” Although he admitted that there would be “surface reflectivity problems”. The Abyss had not worked out as desired, and Tom Sherak, who was in charge of distribution for Fox, complained, “Who would have known that we made a $60 million movie that was just a test for terminator 2?”

Forty-two CGI shots were created for T2, but while he is known for these innovative effects, much more practical effects were actually used. For example, the frozen T-1000 shot at and smashed by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 was a model created by Stan Winston.^[6]

4 Sean Connery wasn’t supposed to be in Time Bandits

When Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin, members of Monty Python, were writing time bandits (1981), they wanted Agamemnon to be played by a famous actor as a surprise. They knew Sean Connery would be perfect, but they thought they would never cast him in his little movie. So in the script, they jokingly wrote, “He reveals himself to be none other than Sean Connery or an actor of equal or lesser stature.” But it turned out that Connery was a fan of Python and accepted the role.

Connery proved to be a great help in making the film. Gilliam hadn’t shot a movie in several years and was reeling on the first day when Connery stepped in and told him what takes to do. “He literally saved my butt,” recalls Gilliam.

Connery also made the ending of the movie extra special. He wanted to play the firefighter in the end and spent a day in England to meet his accountant. “I managed to get him to come out of nowhere and put on a fire helmet, wink, get in the truck and drive off,” says Gilliam. “And it ended with this brilliant ending that wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for Sean and his tax problems.”^[7]

3 Replacing Crispin Glover in Back to the Future II Led to a Lawsuit

Crispin Glover refused to reprise his role as George McFly in Back to the Future Part II (1989) for two reasons. One problem was that Glover was offered less than half what Lea Thompson and Tom Wilson were being paid, who had similarly sized roles. Then there was the fact that he didn’t like the first movie that ends with the McFlys getting rich because, in his words, “basically, the moral of the movie is that money equals happiness.”

Director Robert Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale came up with an ingenious way to replace Glover. They took casts of his face that were created for the old-age makeup from the first film and made prosthetics to attach replacement actor Jeffrey Weissman. They also used camera angles to hide his face. However, according to Thompson, George hanging upside down from a futuristic contraption was intended to punish Glover “because they were so mad at him for missing the mark” in the first film.

Glover filed a lawsuit against Universal for using his image without permission. Universal decided to settle (reportedly for $760,000) and the case helped lead to stricter regulations to prevent filmmakers from impersonating actors.^[8]

2 Groundhog Day originally featured an unexpected ending.

In screenwriter Danny Rubin’s first draft of groundhog day (1993), the story was to start in the middle and end with an unexpected twist. The audience would see Phil (Bill Murray) go through the day knowing everything that was going to happen, and then a voiceover from Phil would reveal that he is stuck in a time loop. But when director Harold Ramis was rewriting, development executive Whitney White noted that “most audiences will feel cheated if they don’t see his reaction to the start of the time warp.”

The filmed ending has Phil wake up next to Rita (Andie MacDowell) to show that his time loop is broken. Rubin explains that in his original script, “A second later, Rita walks out of there. She can’t wait to go. And it turns out that she has been reliving February 3 over and over again. This would be combined with “a voiceover from Rita. So the movie actually shifts the point of view from her voiceover to hers.”^[9]

1 Actors believed a character change in the excellent adventure of Bill and Ted

It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esquire, and Keanu Reeves as “Ted” Theodore Logan. However, the actors initially thought they were playing opposite roles in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989). In 2013, an interviewer mistakenly thought that Reeves played Bill. After hilariously responding, “You just lost all your credibility, dude,” the actor revealed that he once thought he was playing Bill. “Alex and I, once we found out we got the parts, we thought we were playing the other guy,” he said. They only found out about the mix-up once they showed up at the wardrobe fittings.

It’s understandable that Winter and Reeves were confused about which characters they were playing, given the fact that their waiting room chemistry led them to pair up and then audition together to read for both roles.^[10]