Fantastic Four (2005) Trivia

Trivia about Fantastic Four.

Chris Columbus, Raja Gosnell and Peyton Reed were each attached as director at some point.
Steven Soderbergh and Sean Astin were both interested in directing.
Peter Segal was attached to direct the film at one point
George Clooney and Brendan Fraser were considered for the part of Reed Richards.
Paul Walker was considered for the part of Johnny Storm.
Ali Larter, Julia Stiles, Kate Bosworth, Rachel McAdams, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Banks, KaDee Strickland were considered for the role of Susan Storm/Invisible Woman. When Peyton Reed was attached as the director, Renée Zellweger was considered for the Sue Storm/Invisible Woman role.
Tim Robbins and Mel Gibson were considered for Dr. Doom.
James Gandolfini was considered for the role of Ben Grimm/The Thing. David Boreanaz turned down to play Ben Grimm/The Thing.
Hugh Jackman (Wolverine in the X-Men films) was offered the role of Reed Richards. In a deleted scene, Reed turned into Jackman as Wolverine.
Patrick Wilson auditioned for a role in this film.
Cliff Curtis read for a role in the film.
20th Century Fox hired director Tim Story after his ensemble work on Barbershop (2002) and Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004).
The film has nearly 900 special effects shots.
A replica of a part of the Brooklyn Bridge was constructed on-set in Canada.
While Sue Storm is unpacking in the Baxter Building, in the background a signed photo of the band Devo can be seen.
Jessica Alba's underwear scene was added after the actress had agreed to be in the film.
Jessica Alba dyed her hair blonde for this movie but wore a blonde wig for the second.
Many comic-book fans disliked the way Doctor Doom was portrayed. Original series author Stan Lee, who plays Willy the Postman, agreed with them.
Contains over 25 cameos from real life employees of Fox television affiliates.
To get through the long arduous make-up, Michael Chiklis spent the time in the make-up chair watching the Boston Red Sox, his favorite team, who happened to be breaking the "Curse of the Bambino" winning their first World Series since 1918.
Inspired by his role on "Nip/Tuck", it was Julian McMahon's idea to have Victor's scars sealed by surgical staples.
It was Ioan Gruffudd's idea that Reed should continually be taking notes: "On a good day, I'd be writing formulas that I remembered from my algebra class in school, and on a day when I was really concentrating on the other actor, it would just be gibberish."
To keep Michael Chiklis cool in the Thing suit, a rock was removed from his head and cold air was sprayed into the gap between the suit and the actor
As part of his costume for The Thing, Michael Chiklis wore prosthetic teeth. To prepare himself to speak with the prostheses, Chiklis wore them when reading to his children.
Michael Chiklis, The Thing, is the only of the 4 to have read the comics.
It took three hours to get Michael Chiklis into The Thing suit.
Although Stan Lee has made cameos in many Marvel movies, this is the first time he has played a character from the comics: Willy Lumpkin, the Fantastic Four's kindly old mailman.
(at around 48 mins) While being examined by Reed, Ben mentions that he used to smoke. In the comics, the Thing used to smoke cigars, up until the early '90s, when Marvel's new editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada, instituted an "anti-smoking" policy for all the company's characters, banning them from being shown smoking on-panel.
Several moments in the movie take their visual cues from Jack Kirby's work in the very first issue of Fantastic Four: The cosmic storm is depicted with the same bullet-shaped rays from the origin. Ben possesses the lumpy craggy face from his earlier appearance rather than his more familiar beetle-brow. Johnny races against a missile like he does in the opening act of the comic. Johnny's flame-form is a smoldering pillar of fire like it was in the earlier comics rather than the more familiar burning man look. Ben smashes into an oncoming truck in an angle identical to the one given in a panel where he exits a manhole directly in the path of an oncoming car.
The script was developed for over ten years. The final writer was Simon Kinberg, who worked on the movie throughout its production.
Ioan Gruffudd's efforts to keep an American accent continually were hampered by the fact he would receive new script pages on a regular basis, forcing him to learn new lines at short notice.
Chris Evans improvised most of his dialog.
Michael Chiklis got to fulfill a childhood fantasy. He was an avid reader of the Fantastic Four, and his favorite comic book character was The Thing.
Michael Chiklis' wife called into the set one time without announcing she was coming. She saw her husband in full make-up as The Thing and was so distressed by what she saw that she had to be physically escorted from the set in order to compose herself.
Michael Chiklis fought to have a "real" Thing rather than a computer-generated character.
For most of the shoot, Michael Chiklis was terribly uncomfortable in the hot Thing suit. The final street battle, however, was filmed in Vancouver in December, leaving Chiklis as the only comfortable one of the four (the rest were in the skintight blue uniforms).
Jessica Alba had a kidney infection during the filming and nearly fainted when she was with Julian McMahon in the space station scene.
(at around 1h 35 mins) Jessica Alba wore a Star of David when Mr. Fantastic proposes to her.
Was shipped to theaters simply under the name "Bug".
At one point, Susan Storm looks at an issue of People Magazine with her face on the cover. Also on the cover is James Marsden with the headline "James Marsden eyes next superhero role" and Rebecca Romijn with the headline "The Mystique of Rebecca Romijn". In the X-Men film series (based on another Marvel comics franchise) Marsden plays Cyclops and Romijn plays Mystique.
Just after Victor throws his doctor into the X-Ray light, we see Reed writing on the board. The writing visible is the Acid-Dissociation Equilibrium (Ka) expression for nitrous acid (HNO2). It reads [H3O+][NO2-]/[HNO2]. It has absolutely no relevance to the plot or any of the other scientific ideas in the film.
Reed's smart phone, which he uses to control the holographic presentation at the beginning of the movie, is a Samsung SPH-i700 on Verizon. Verizon was a marketing partner for the film.
During development Chris Columbus pushed for the film to have a heavily comedic tone along the lines of the Batman TV series. Despite being hired because of his comedy background, Tim Story was able to persuade Columbus that going for an outright comedic tone would end in disaster, and pointed to the success of Spider-Man as proof that the film could still contain plenty of humor while having a generally serious overall storyline.
In 2003, Peyton Reed pitched a Fantastic Four film to Fox, describing it as "A Hard Day's Night with superheroes." The proposed cast was Alexis Denisof as Reed Richards, Charlize Theron as Sue Storm, Paul Walker as Johnny Storm, John C. Reilly as Ben Grimm and Jude Law as Dr. Doom.
When Chris Columbus was attached, he wanted real couple Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan to play Reed Richards and Sue Storm.
When Peyton Reed was attached as the director, Renée Zellweger was considered for the Sue Storm/Invisible Woman role.
When Sean Astin wanted to do a film version of Fantastic Four, he wanted either Cameron Diaz or Christina Aguilera for the role of Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman.
The scene on the bridge took about 5 weeks to shoot.
A one-minute sequence showing Johnny Storm morphing into a ball of flames and soaring over Manhattan took 4 months to create. The background was an entirely digitized rendering of New York City.
Michael Chiklis was offered the role of Thing after Jennifer Garner suggested him for it.
Jessica Alba met future husband Cash Warren on the set of this movie. Cash was the assistant to the film's director Tim Story.
The screenplay had to be extensively retooled after The Incredibles came out as many of the latter's jokes were making fun of things that already existed in the Fantastic Four (2005) script.
This feature is included in the first wave of Blu-Ray releases by Fox. A total of five movies were included in this initial wave. The others were Ice Age (2002), Behind Enemy Lines (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) and Kiss of the Dragon (2001).
(at around 12 mins) When Victor is proposing to Sue in the spaceship he says he has "four little words that will change their lives forever". Right after he says it, Reed bursts into the room saying "The cloud is accelerating" referring to the deadly cosmic storm they were observing; exactly four words that did change their lives, they received superpowers as a result of the storm.
(at around 45 mins) While Sue Storm is unpacking in the Baxter Building, in the background a signed photo of the band Devo can be seen.
(at around 23 mins) The wine Reed and Sue are drinking in the dinner scene when their powers emerge is Robert Mondovi Sauvignon Blanc.
The name of the ship in the final shot means "tip of the toe" in Russian.
WILHELM SCREAM: used at least twice during the last fight of the film. Once as the bus is thrown, and then again shortly after.
Not the first Fantastic Four movie. Another was made (The Fantastic Four (1994)) but never released because, unbeknown to the cast and crew, it was never intended to BE released; it was made only because the studio that owned the rights to make a Fantastic Four movie would have lost them if it did not begin production by a certain date.
(at around 1h 14 mins) When Johnny holds up a Thing toy (it says the "Clobberin' Time" line), it's a figure from Toy Biz's 2002 line of "Marvel Legends" action figures, a line of highly-detailed toys based on various characters from Marvel Comics. The particular figure shown is from the second wave released, and was packaged with a reprint of "Fantastic Four" (volume one), #263.
According to the actors in the DVD commentary Stan Lee, who makes a cameo appearance as the mailman, was supposed only to say, "Welcome home, Dr. Richards." Instead, Lee says, "Welcome back to the Baxter Building, Doctor Richards!"
Victor makes a few references to the characters of Mr. Fantastic and The Thing before the storm scene happens. He firstly comments on Reed Richards 'stretching' for the stars during the meeting, then later jokes about Ben Grimm doing 'all the heavy lifting'.
This was the third superhero movie to be released in 2005, after Elektra and Batman Begins.
The action sequence on the Brooklyn Bridge was shot using a 200ft set erected against a blue screen in a Vancouver parking lot and then later enhanced with CGI views of Manhattan.
Michael Chiklis wore 60 pounds of latex to play The Thing.
20th Century Fox hired director Tim Story after his ensemble work on the Barbershop comedies.
Ioan Gruffudd was very excited about showing off to his Welsh parents that he was working on a major Hollywood production. Unfortunately, the day they came to visit him on set, he was filming an elevator scene.
Jessica Alba's underwear scene was added after the actress had agree in the film.
In the early 90's Bernd Eichinger's option on the rights to The Fantastic Four were about to expire, to avoid this he commissioned Roger Corman to make a film as quickly as possible so he could keep hold of the rights. This was mainly to thwart Chris Columbus who was after the rights at the same time. Corman's version only cost $2 million, neither him or his cast and crew knew that the film was dumper-bound. It has however been seen in bootleg and download versions, with the general critical consensus being that it was a terrible movie.
Laurie Holden, who plays the fiancée of Michael Chiklis's character Ben Grimm, would later appear alongside Chiklis in the final season of his TV series "The Shield" (2002).
Reed's smart phone, which he uses to control the holographic presentation at the beginning of the movie, is a Samsung SPH-i700 on Verizon. Verizon was a marketing partner for the film.
Jason Schombing, who plays the suicidal man, was recommended by his good friend, Michael Chiklis (the Thing, who rescues him).
During the pier conversation between Reed and Sue, not only were the actors not together (which is relatively common in filmmaking), they weren't even in the same country. Jessica Alba was filmed in New York City, while Ioan Gruffudd was filmed in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
When Johnny holds up a Thing toy (it says the "Clobberin' Time" line), it's an original action figure from the 1970s.
For most of the shoot, Michael Chiklis was terribly uncomfortable in the hot Thing suit. The final street battle, however, was filmed in Vancouver in December, leaving Chiklis as the only comfortable one of the four (the rest were in the skintight blue uniforms).
Cameo
- Stan Lee: Although Lee has made cameos in many Marvel movies, this is the first time he has played a character from the comics: Willy Lumpkin, the Fantastic Four's kindly old mailman. His line was supposed to be, "Welcome home, Dr. Richards," but he changed it to, "Welcome back to the Baxter Building, Doctor Richards!"
- Ralph Winter: the film's producer, playing the construction worker at the end of the film who closes the container door on Dr. Doom.
- Richard Ho: one of Wizard magazine's staff writers, appears as one of the reporters in front of the Baxter Building in a crowd sequence. Wizard is one of the most successful and popular magazines about the comics business.
In the very last scene of the film, the frozen Dr. Doom is being shipped on a cargo vessel with the word "Latveria" on the stern. In the Marvel Universe, Latveria is a primitive, backward country (apparently a mash-up of Latvia and Liechtenstein), where Dr. Doom was born, and where he later becomes head of state.
In the film, Doctor Doom is part of the Richards expedition that grants the Four superpowers. This did not happen in the original Marvel comics (there it was a lab accident of Doom's own doing), but was incorporated into the Marvel Ultimates comics (an expedition to another realm grants Doom and the Four superpowers).
In the very last scene of the film, the now inanimate Dr. Doom is being shipped on a cargo vessel with the word "Latveria" on the stern. In the Marvel Universe, Latveria is the country that is consistently under Dr. Doom's control.
During the scene outside the Motocross arena, the surrounding advertising helps tell the story. As Ben hurls Johnny, flaming, into a Burger King sign, the sign reads, "Fire Grilled Perfection". As the fight progresses, we see SoBe "Adrenaline Rush"...and finally, the super hero's top rule against killing is represented by Mountain Dew Code Red..."Live By the Code".
Doctor Doom was rewritten from a dictator to a businessman because of the success of Austin Powers.
Doom’s helmet is made out of epoxy because it’s more durable than fiberglass.
Doom initially wore clothes with a light shade before he wears clothes with a darker shade later on the movie.
Doom's voice whenever he talks with his helmet on is made with a SCSI drive bay that has metal refractions and recorded through the box into the microphone.
The cast and crew thought Jessica Alba was motherly and hoped she would have kids someday.
During filming of the VDI entrance scene, Michael Chiklis had a run in with a male extra who told him “Don’t you ever touch me!” Chiklis talked to Tim Story and the man apologized.
Julian McMahon grew up watching the Fantastic Four cartoons and reading the comic books before he got hired to play Doom.
Doom originally had a Transylvanian accent before Julian McMahon decided that Doom’s accent is a mix between American and his natural Australian.
Tim Story is a fan of the Fantastic Four comics growing up before he got hired to direct.