>> Narrator: Everyone loves a great action sequence, but
as audience members we don't regularly take into account the incredible physical
prowess portrayed by these stunt men and women of Hollywood.
These are the top 10 stunts of all time.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Vin Diesel: I used to drag here back in
high school.
That rail road crossing up there is exactly a quarter mile away from here.
On green, I'm going for it.
>> [NOISE] >> Narrator: Starting us off at number 10,
The Fast and The Furious.
The whole franchise is basically an exercise in constant stunt one-upmanship.
>From crashing cars, to jumping between cars, to jumping off trains,
to jumping cars off trains to a fucking tank.
The Fast and the Furious series did it all.
But we prefer to go old school for
our number 10 slot with the original 2001 film that kicked the series off right.
No, not the lowered Honda driving under a moving semi, but
the original Dodge Charger flip from the final fateful drag race.
Lots of modern films flipped cars with something called a cannon.
A stunt device attached to the vehicle that releases compressed air into a metal
piston which shoots into the ground knocking the car trunk over hood.
The Dark Knight's truck flip uses one.
Fast Five's prison bus tumble used three.
But the original Fast and The Furious took a slightly easier approach,
they built a ramp onto the truck with just a single metal pipe, and drove onto it.
Simple.
>> Simon Pegg: Okay, now, remember,
it's a rolling off motion that disengages the bond.
When the meter is blue, that's full adhesion.
Easy way to remember, blue is glue.
>> Tom Cruise: And when it's red?
>> Simon Pegg: Dead.
>> Narrator: Mission Impossible is another series
predicated on ridiculous stunt work.
>From jumping off buildings to dangling from cliffs,
Tom Cruise has had his fair share of high altitude encounters.
But nothing else from the franchise quite matches our number nine.
Mission Impossible Four's Burj Khalifa sequence.
Not only is this stunts seem stunning but it's entirely real.
That's Tom does all his own stunts Cruise, running around like a maniac on
the outside the world's tallest building 160 floors above the ground.
They did build an 80 foot tall replica at Paramount Studios but
Cruise only used it for the 200 some odd hours of rehearsal before
actually jumping out the window of the real thing.
Of course he's harnessed in for safety but
almost every frame of the sequence takes 1700 feet off the ground,
with the only exception being the dialog, which was recorded at 60 feet
due to the overwhelmingly loud cross winds that occur at a quarter mile in the air.
But before you write that off as tame in comparison, consider that 1,700 feet or
60, it's all the same if you hit the ground.
>> Judi Dench: You both know what's at stake here.
We cannot afford to lose that list.
>> Daniel Craig: Yes, mom.
>> Narrator: But if you like Mission Impossible stunts,
the James Bond franchise is basically it's big brother.
We could fill this whole list with James Bond pre-credit sequences, but
for number eight we're just going to go with Skyfall.
Joining the likes of other classic motorcycle stunts that nearly missed this
list, like Terminator 2, Triple X, and the movie it pays homage to, The Great Escape,
Skyfall's pre-credit sequence has a motorcycle chase for the history books.
Apart from the few obvious green screen bits with Daniel Craig,
almost the entirety of this incredible sequence consisted of world record
holding motocross riders jumping from rooftop to rooftop on real motorcycles,
flying along ledges barely a meter wide without even a helmet to protect them.
Now if you think Daniel Craig deserves a little more recognition for
his Casino Royale parkour sequence,
maybe direct your attention to something even better.
Number seven, District B13.
>> Speaker 7: [FOREIGN] >> Speaker 8: [FOREIGN] [NOISE]
>> Narrator: While most of modern action
films have tried to capitalize on the recent novelty of Parkour by
incorporating it into their set-pieces,
they've usually use a combination of stunt doubles, wire work and CGI to do it.
But District B13 took a different approach.
They just cast the guy who invented it.
David Bell, who you see here, is credited as the founder of the parkour movement.
Everything you're seeing happen on screen is actually real.
No wires, no CGI, no pads.
Just parkour.
>> Speaker 9: Okay, here we go.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Narrator: Stuntmen often find themselves falling from uncomfortably high
places, but,
it's not often that they base whole scenes on extended periods of free fall.
Fortunately for us, the pass few years have seen a number of movies with
ridiculous stunt skydiving sequences.
There's been the new Godzilla with a stunning scene,
which did use real skydivers but also, a whole lot of CGI.
Iron Man 3, which had the RedBull Skydiving Team hide parachutes
beneath their costumes for an incredibly choreographed mid-air rescue,
that took over 600 parachute jumps to pull off, but our number six is
actually Transformers three, Dark of the Moon, which employed a team of wing suit
base jumpers to perform the first ever proximity flying through sky scrapers.
The team spent two weeks practicing their formations and
movements on building shaped mountains in Switzerland before attempting this stunt.
And Michael Bay wouldn't be Michael Bay if he didn't throw some extra
CG in the mix but the end result is exactly as death defying as it seems.
A few stuntmen in wing suits weaving between buildings, flying on air.
And while we're on the subject to base jumping we'd be remise if we didn't
mention awesome stunts like Triple X's Corvet bridge jump to parachute and
the Spy Who Loved Me base jump on skis.
But our number five goes to different James Bond pre credit sequence.
Because one simply wasn't enough.
And while we've seen various incarnations of 007 flip both cars and boats,
fight thousands of feet in the air and run on the backs of actual live crocodiles,
our pick goes to the serene bungee jump from Goldeneye.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Narrator: There's no real trick here.
What you see is what you get, but
this stunt makes our list because it's so elegant, which might have something to do
with the fact that the stuntman is a professional sky diver or
that it's just a different, quieter side of Bond than the other stunts on the list
>> [MUSIC]
>> Narrator: And where would we be if we didn't include Jackie Chan on a top
stunts list?
Jackie has been doing his own stunts for over 40 years in more than 100 different
films, and has broken nearly every bone in his body to show for it.
>From his incredible Who Am I building slide, to his Armor
of God jump onto a hot air balloon, to his near-death close encounter with a tree,
Jackie has roller-skated under semis,
dangled from helicopters, tangled with circular saws, and spit
actual hot pepper juice onto his bloody knuckles, all for the sake of a stunt.
The thing that makes him so spectacular is that he's rarely ever faking it.
There's no CGI, no wires, and often not even a safety net.
But the absolute best example of Jackie Chan's stunt work has to be his 70- foot
slide down a pole, through live electrical wires and a giant sheet of glass.
[NOISE] Not only did he suffer cuts,
electrocution, a dislocated pelvis, and near paralysis from the stunt, but
he burned off all the skin on his hands from sliding down the pole.
Commitment or death wish,
there's no disputing that Jackie Chan is one of the greatest stuntmen of all time.
Speaking of all-time greats,
let's not forget some of the classic originators of movie stunt work.
Like Buster Keaton.
A man who ran on top of trains, hung from waterfalls, and
stood under collapsing houses, a stunt which Jackie Chan lovingly paid homage to.
But our number three goes to another stunt that inspired Mr.
Chan, Harold Lloyd in Safety Last!.
Safety Last!
is most famous for the clock-dangling stunt, a feat of real athleticism that was
thankfully less dangerous than it looked, but the rest of Lloyd's climb up
multiple stories very clearly trades in real danger.
This is 1923, where there was no green screen, no CGI, and no painting out wires.
So the shots of him climbing up the sheer building face are exactly that.
So you can thank Harold Lloyd for helping found a tradition of doing crazy shit.
>> [NOISE] >> Narrator: All for
the sake of our entertainment.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Narrator: In keeping with classics,
next up at number two is the chariot race from Ben Hur.
The very definition of an epic,
Ben Hur was the most expensive film shot at the time at a massive $15 million.
A quarter of that money was spent on this chariot scene which featured 78 horses and
15,000 extras on an 18 acre set over the course of five weeks.
What's even more astounding is that with only one exception, Charlton Heston and
Stephen Boyd drove their own chariots in every shot.
The one occasion Charlton Heston used a stunt double was for
the 100% real chariot jump.
Now the stunts were co-directed by legendary coordinator Yakima Canutt
who used his son Joe to double Heston for the Jump.
But, when Joe went to do the jump, he didn't listen to his father's suggestion
to slow down and hook himself in, and consequently tumbled out of the chariot,
a moment which made it into the final cut completely unplanned.
But, everyone watching, his father included,
thought he had surely died as they saw the horses drag him along the ground,
untethered, until he was fortunately enough to crawl
back into the chariot to safety with only a scratch on his chin to show for it.
But, it almost seemed hypocritical of Yakima talk to his son about hooking in
and slowing down if you consider our number one spot, Stage Coach.
Now we mentioned Yakima being a legendary stunt coordinator, but
it's pretty tough to get to that position without being a legendary stunt man first.
And that's exactly what Yakama did.
Getting started as a rodeo rider and
moving on to perform the stunts in The Lone Ranger and Zorro series.
But before he did that,
he pulled off one of the craziest stunts of all time in John Ford's Stagecoach.
After jumping from one horse to another, Yakama dropped down beneath him and
let go, passing underneath the galloping legs of six horses and
the wheels of a stage coach.
Steven Spielberg even paid homage to this stunt in Raiders of The Lost Ark.
But Knutz 1930 drop was both ground-breaking and
death-defying, which is why we think it's the number one stunt of all time.
So what do you think?
Did we leave any of your favorite stunts out?
Were any of the ones we mentioned here not up to snuff?
Let us know in the comments below and
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more indie wire movie List.
>> [MUSIC]