Windtalkers - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Windtalkers or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Windtalkers

[janice]

In the Camp Tarawa scene, while Ox Henderson (Christian Slater) is running with Joe Enders (Nicholas Cage), Ox tells Joe that people call him "Ox" because he is from Oxnard, California. This scene was filmed at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, which is just a few miles away from Oxnard, California.

[gabriel]

John Woo: [hospital]

[lonnie]

This was the second time that Oscar winner Nicolas Cage worked with director John Woo. Cage co-starred in "Face/Off" with John Travolta, in which Christian Slater who is in this film had co-starred with in Woo's second American-directed film, "Broken Arrow".

[kim]

This is the second time that Christian Slater and director John Woo had worked together. Slater co-starred in the action-thriller "Broken Arrow" with John Travolta, who would work with Woo again on "Face/Off", which came out a year after Broken Arrow in 1997.

[mathew]

When Sergeant Enders (Nicolas Cage) and Private Yahzee (Adam Beach) are doing their prisoner-of-war ruse, Enders surprises the Japanese soldiers with a gun taken from Yahzee's belt. An almost exact method was used by Christian Slater in Broken Arrow (1996), an earlier John Woo movie.

[amber]

Fleming Begaye Sr. one of the 400 Navajo code talkers in the Marines, born in Red Valley, in 1921, died in Chinle, Arizona on May 10th, 2019. Now only seven code talkers remain.

[kenzi]

The desert scene in the opening credits uses the same stock footage of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona as Back to the Future Part III (1990) and City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold (1994).

[melinda]

Prior to filming, most of the principal cast joined a core group of sixty-two extras for boot camp, where they endured a week of rigorous military training as World War II Marines. The production received assistance from the Department of Defense, which made Kaneohe Marine Corps Base available for the actor's basic training. Under the tutelage of Sergeant Major James D. Dever (a retired twenty-five-year veteran of the Marine Corps) and his active-duty Marine instructors, the cast learned how to walk, talk, and think like Marines.

[charlie]

Weapons coordinator Robert "Rock" Galotti amassed over 500 vintage World War II-era firing weapons and 700 rubber replica weapons for the film from private collectors and prop houses. Also featured moving across battlefields are vintage Sherman tanks, their smaller Stuart brethren, and Japanese Hago tanks.

[aaron]

This is the second film in which director of photography Jeffrey L. Kimball worked with John Woo. The first was "Mission: Impossible 2" and their final collaboration would end up being Woo's last (to date) Hollywood film, "Paycheck" in 2003.

[aaron]

Originally slated for a fall 2001 release, but pushed back several months following the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

[sandra]

Steve J. Termath was originally cast for the role of Private Nellie however the role went to Martin Henderson when Termath took a brief hiatus from acting for actual military service, enlisting in the U.S. Army Reserves.

[cameron]

The film was slated to be released at Christmas 2001 for Oscar consideration in a version that ran 153 Minutes. However, MGM pushed back the film due to the events of 9/11 and later released as Summer film in June 2002 in a shortened, less graphic version of 134 Minutes which lost the essence of the storyline despite it's violence.

[gerald]

This was the third consecutive film featuring Mark Ruffalo co-starring with a previous Oscar winner or nominee. They include Laura Linney ("You Can Count On Me"), Robert Redford ("The Last Castle") and this one with Nicolas Cage.

[bernard]

Upon its release, the film was highly criticized by many critics for its racial overtones against Native Americans as well as its depictions.

[harry]

George Smith, one of the Navajo code talkers who helped the U.S. military outfox the Japanese during World War II by sending messages in their obscure language, was confirmed to have died by the President of the Navajo Nation on 2nd November 2012.

[eli]

This would be the second to final film that John Woo would direct in the United States and for a major studio. "Paycheck" starring Oscar Winner Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman would be Woo's final film for Paramount Pictures. Woo left stating "All Hollywood offers me is crap or big action pictures. I want to do something good."