By Izzy
Movie directors love car crashes. The higher the value of the vehicle, the better the crash; or so it appears. Give a James Bond movie the most expensive autos on earth and you can be guaranteed they won’t still be on the road by the end titles.
The vehicles used are mostly real cars. Sometimes manufacturers believe they will gain good marketing coverage if they provide a few autos to get broken into small pieces, but if the autos are part of a placement deal, they will get good coverage and close-ups in the movie first.
Here is a selection of good movie crashes – you probably have your favorites, so it’s a place to start the discussion over which smash was the very best.
The Terminator
In Terminator 2 they showed a semi crashing into the Los Angeles River. In Terminator 3, a fire truck managed to take out a number of vehicles in one scene. But the best of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s crashes came in the original movie. When he crashed into the police station it allowed him to utter the famous line – ‘I’ll be back’ – and he was.
Vacation
The Griswolds’ holiday vacations ran to a set of movies. The family managed to crash itself around the US and then most of Europe. Their car broke down many times, but it was probably when it flew through the air and then all four of the tires went down at once, that it did the most damage. The comedy might have been a little thin, but the air bag blowing up in Chevy Chase’s face must be admired.
No Country for Old Men
The Coen brothers write excellent screenplays and you will expect something out of the ordinary to occur. They show a clear day’s driving when all of a sudden; the vehicle is hit from the side in a moment of real surprise. People were jumping out of their theatre seats, such was the revelation. You only just get to see how quickly the auto is traveling and know it is bound to collide in the real time frame for accidents; barely seconds.
The Blues Brothers
It should not be difficult to choose an auto crash in this movie because it’s littered with them. The best is probably where the Blues Brothers try to avoid the police by driving down the aisles of a toy store. Think back; was there enough space when you visited? The joy of this scene is how the brothers come out of the toy store and find themselves in the middle of a mall, finally exiting from a J C Penney leaving at least ten police cruisers awaiting collision repair.
Armed and Dangerous
The title informs you that there could be some danger to vehicles and their drivers and it doesn’t let you down. Best bit? When a driver, stuck on a highway during rush hour traffic, steals a 16 wheeled truck and drives across the other vehicles in a way we’ve all thought about once or twice; it is a must see.
The Matrix Reloaded
You would expect to see the best car crash in the original movie, but they left the finest to the follow-up; Reloaded. The highway crash scene was specifically built for the movie. They built the entire set at an old naval base for the best scene in the movie where two semis hit full on. The stunt actors must have had a fun day when they filmed it. You don’t get to spend that much money on a set and only film it once.
Death Proof
The detail in this crash is perhaps a little too much for most people to stomach. Shown in slow motion so you don’t miss anything, the scene, by Quentin Tarantino, is replayed from all the different lines of sight. The full head on crash into a car filled with attractive girls shows the fate of each girl and lets you know what happens to a body when you crashes at that speed. It’s not nice.
Final Destination 2
The choice of who will win in the crash isn’t an easy decision. On one side you have the garbage truck, while on the other you see the logs falling from the logging truck and the man on his motorcycle. The sequence is long and drawn out to get maximum impact from the movie’s expenditure on this one-take scene.
The best way to avoid these types of auto crashes is to take a much slower van, but get your van insurance in place first.
We haven’t even mentioned the Mini Coopers in the Italian Job. Did any of them actually crash and cause damage? Michael Caine will be disappointed he didn’t blow the bloody doors off…
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.