As Hollywood looks for an answer to the audience's seemingly insatiable thirst for excitement and high-stakes thrills, more and more risky stunts become the inevitable crowning glory of certain types of blockbuster. Michael Bay would be nothing without his pockets full of explosion and fans of the Fast & Furious franchise would turn off if the next instalment didn't raise the stakes for the characters, but also for the cast members. That blood-lust in even mainstream audiences is built on the lie that their favourite actors are willing to put themselves through ridiculous hardships, and put themselves on the knife's sharpest edge in the name of entertainment, and there's something of the Colosseum in that dynamic. As those characters dice with death, our pulses race, or senses heighten and the thrills roll in, but with the comforting safety net that nobody really got hurt, and favourite stars survived to make another action movie another day. Except that isn't quite the full story: for every actor dusting themselves off after a huge, explosive set-piece, there's a stunt-man who put his or her body through the tough stuff, or a crew who put aside safety concerns in pursuit of the greatest shots, and unfotunately sometimes things go wrong, and film-makers are left with the tragic task of dedicating the finished film to someone who lost their life in its pursuit. Even worse, some of those people can be no more than innocent bystanders. Unfortunately, with boundaries pushed in the name of thrills, big action set-pieces and stunts can and do lead to deaths, and some of the most impressive sights in Hollywood movies came with the ultimate tragic cost...
