>> 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 subscribe to Cinefix for more indie wire movie List. >> [MUSIC]
