Useless Movie Trivia For
The Sum Of All Fears
Memorable Movie Quotes
Bill Cabot: When I asked for your advice, I didn't mean that you should actually speak.
Jack Ryan: General, the President is basing his decisions on some really bad information right now. And if you shut me out, your family, and my family, and twenty-five million other families will be dead in thirty minutes.
President Nemerov: I can't stop what I did not start.
President Robert Fowler: [during an argument after arriving aboard the E-4B airborne command post] This is too much goddamn bullshit! And not enough fact.
Trivia
Director Phil Alden Robinson changed the villains from Islamic extremists (in the novel) to Neo-Nazis. This was done because prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks, he did not believe Arab terrorists could plausibly accomplish all that was necessary for the plot to work on film. After 9/11, the production staff had to review how to present the movie to the public.
Morgan Freeman plays a ranking member of James Cromwell's Presidential administration. In Deep Impact (1998), the roles are reversed.
The U.S. aircraft carrier shown in the movie is CVN-74, the U.S.S. John C. Stennis, identified by the large white "74" on the side of the ship.
The "Super Bowl" scene takes place in Baltimore. The two teams playing in the game are portrayed by the Toronto Argonauts and the Montreal Alouettes. The Montreal Alouettes used to be known as the Baltimore Stallions of the Canadian Football League. The Baltimore Stallions were part of the failed American expansion of the CFL, and relocated to Montreal in 1996.
During the opening, a nuclear bomb is shown being rolled out to be loaded onto an Israeli A-4 Skyhawk. However, the bomb designed for the scene could not be physically carried by the A-4 so the subsequent scenes of the plane had to have a CGI bomb attached in post-production.
When Ben Affleck first arrived on the set he told director Phil Alden Robinson, "Nice working with you again." Robinson said, "What do you mean 'again'?". Affleck explained that when Robinson was filming the scene in Boston's Fenway Park for Field of Dreams (1989), he and Matt Damon were among the thousands of extras.
The title is paraphrased from a Winston Churchill speech; "Why, you can take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together - what do you get? The sum of their fears."
Ciarán Hinds (President Nemerov) who did not previously speak a word of Russian, learned all of his large chunks of Russian dialogue in two weeks.
When shooting at the desert locations, several Panavision cameras reportedly malfunctioned when the heat caused some of the internal parts to soften and fail.
The lines, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss," are from The Who's, "Won't Get Fooled Again," written by Pete Townshend.
The wintry Moscow scene was shot in the summer, so the snow is artificial.
The spray can that Liev Schreiber uses to cut through the chain link fence is supposed to be a real-life CIA chemical spray known as "Ice Piss". When asked if a real can of Ice Piss could be acquired for the scene, the technical advisor said, "I don't want to go to prison!"
According to the director's DVD commentary, this was the first American film unit (the second unit) to enter the Kremlin. Red Heat (1988) was the first American unit to film in Moscow.
The nuclear bunker that James Cromwell and Morgan Freeman walk into at the beginning of the movie is a real nuclear bunker. The scene was shot at a real Canadian nuclear bunker in Carp, Ontario. This bunker was designated as the one that members of the Canadian government, including the Prime Minister, would be housed in during a nuclear attack. The bunker was in operation from 1961 until the mid 1980s, and was known as the "Diefenbunker" in honor of former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who was PM during its initial construction.
The town they zoom in on in the satellite shot near the beginning of the movie is actually Frogtown, Virginia.
This film is not a prequel to the others in the Jack Ryan series. The 'Harrison Ford' films are direct follow-ups to The Hunt for Red October (1990) despite the recast of Alec Baldwin's role. Nevertheless, in this film we see Jack Ryan meet John Clark, something which also happens in Clear and Present Danger (1994) . Therefore this film might be best understood as a reboot of the Jack Ryan series.
Goofs
When Ryan tries to summon help after his helicopter crashes, he reaches into the cockpit and turns a knob on the radio transmitter. The film has been flipped and the word "frequency" under the knob is clearly spelled backwards. This would also explain why Ryan reaches through the cockpit window with his right arm, but it's his left hand that adjusts the radio frequency.
The scenes in the Golan Heights are obviously not shot in the Golan Heights, a relatively mountainous and forested area.
There are at least two different "Tail Numbers" shown for the President's aircraft - a four digit (42xx) tail number is used when the aircraft is on the ground, and later a five digit (7xxxx) number is used when the plane is flying.
When President Nemerov first meets Jack Ryan, he is having his portrait taken with a Sinar 4x5 view camera. We correctly see the President's image upside down in the camera, however the photographer continues to take pictures with an empty camera. In a 4x5 view camera film is loaded with individual sheets placed in front of the glass viewscreen. Seeing the President's image in the camera would be impossible if the camera were actually loaded. Also the sound effect is that of an SLR medium-format camera which uses a focal-plane shutter and flipping mirror. The Sinar uses neither. Its shutter is actually inside the lens and makes very little noise.
When the nuclear bomb detonates, its shock wave is strong enough to flip the presidential limousine in the outskirts of the city over. It would have to have a yield of at least 1 megaton to do this, but news broadcasts describe the explosion as being smaller than that of the Hiroshima bomb. The Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 15 kilotons.
When the American planes are attacking the Russian airbase, they are all using their anti-collision lights, something that would never be done on an actual combat mission.
The digital clock in Air Force One continuously displays the wrong time. Changes from 22:52 to 22:50 in a cut scene.
The three primary effects of nuclear detonation -flash, heat and blast- are confused. In the blast scene from inside the hospital, the shock wave and flash of arrive together. The only way for this to happen is if the hospital was right next to the stadium, in which case the hospital would be obliterated. Furthermore the heat from the blast appears to have no effect. Everyone else, further from the explosion, would first be blinded/burned by the light/heat before the shock wave would hit them -as the shock wave travels only at about the speed of sound. Also in the TV the blast in the stadium is seen the fraction of a second before the blast hits the hospital. Even with a direct link to the camera in the stadium the picture of the blast couldn't arrive earlier than the flash of the light from the bomb itself.
It is next to impossible to get radiation poisoning from skin contact with plutonium.
In the climactic scene in Baltimore during the Super Bowl it is clearly dark when the president is shown arriving and during the game and during the game from on-field scenes. During and after the explosion it is daylight.
USA Box Office Info
Budget: $68,000,000
Opening Weekend: $31,178,526
Gross: $118,471,320
Filming Dates:5 November 2000 - 16 March 2001
Filming Locations
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Carp, Ontario, Canada
Death Valley National Park, California, USA
Mojave Desert, California, USA (Shoshone)
Montréal, Québec, Canada
Moscow, Russia
Olympic Stadium, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
San Diego, California, USA
USS John C. Stennis CVN-74
Washington, District of Columbia, USA