Hollywood is poised to make a comeback this year after almost a year of inactivity due to the global health crisis. We’re in for a treat as we look forward to upcoming movies filled with action scenes and crazy stunts, after all, we all love stunts. What would action flicks be without them, right? And some of the craziest stunts involve another thing that we love the most: cars.
6 Insanely Outrageous and Outrageously Insane Movie Car Stunts We’ve Ever Seen
Car stunts are some of the trickiest and most dangerous scenes to film. It takes a lot of planning and preparation to ensure that all the actors, stuntmen, and crew involved are safe.
While in some cases, cars that go through some stunt sequences can be patched up with a really good automotive glass repair or body repair job, a lot of the vehicles used in these scenes end up as total wrecks. So you can just imagine the dangers of being involved in one.
1. The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
James Bond movies are almost synonymous with car chase sequences. This Roger Moore-starrer features one of the most spectacular and iconic car stunts in the Bondverse ever. It involves Bond crossing a broken wooden bridge and corkscrewing a 360 in midair and landing perfectly on the other side of the river. Several people tried to replicate it but none have been successful that it’s a wonder how the stunt driver Bumps Willard nailed it on the first take.
2. Police Story (1985)
When a Jackie Chan movie is mentioned, you know for sure there will be some crazy stunts involved. Police Story is no different. Its opening sequence finds our hero (Chan) in an ultra-destructive car chase scene going after some bad guys as they drive, not around, but through a hillside shantytown, causing all kinds of havoc. The scene was so good that director Michael Bay straight-up copied it in Bad Boys 2, only this time they used SUVs.
3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
The second Captain America movie in the MCU is more espionage than superheroey which makes it one of our favorite MCU films to date. In the movie, Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury is chased down by a squad of police cars and other Hydra goons. His beat-up SUV is taken down by the Winter Soldier (played by Sebastian Shaw) by flipping it over with an explosive. The thing is, it was done for real with not CGI to help the scene which all the more makes the movie impactful.
4. Casino Royale (2006)
Another 007 movie makes it to our list, this time with Daniel Craig playing the role of James Bond. In this movie, 007 is in pursuit of his kidnapped love interest, Vesper (Eva Green). With his Aston Martin in full speed, he sees his lady in the middle of the road bound helplessly and swerves at the last minute to avoid hitting her. This caused the car to flip seven times at 70mph. That wasn’t even their intent. It was only supposed to do a single flip. No other car stunt during Craig’s run was as impressive as this.
5. Fast Five (2011)
It’s no surprise for a Fast & Furious movie to end up on this list as the entire franchise is chock full of superb automotive stunt sequences. One of the most memorable sequences we’ve seen in the franchise is when Vin Diesel and Paul Walker’s characters were racing down the streets of Rio with a huge vault in tow. If you think that was purely CGI, you’re mistaken as a lot of it was very real, with a car-body count amounting to almost 200.
6. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)
While the Mission Impossible movie franchise isn’t exactly known for car stunt sequences, Ghost Protocol does have Ethan Hunt, the main character played by Tom Cruise, in a one-of-a-kind scheme that only he can pull off. We’re talking about Hunt’s car dive in a car park to save time and that car collision in a sandstorm in pursuit of an enemy, nearly getting hit by a car that flipped through the air and came crashing just a couple of inches away from where he was lying down.
With all the great movies coming out this year, we can’t wait to see what crazy car stunts are in store for us.