10 Movies That Took Extreme Measures To Shoot Scenes

10. A Real 1.5-Mile Freeway Was Built - The Matrix Reloaded

The standout set-piece in the second Matrix movie is undeniably the exhilarating freeway chase, during which Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) attempt to get the Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim) to safety.

Though most viewers likely assumed the bulk of the scene was shot on a green screen soundstage, that's actually not the case at all.

Rather, armed with a $150 million budget, the Wachowskis decided to build a real, functional 1.5-mile stretch of freeway on a decommissioned Naval Air Station to the tune of $2.5 million.

That's just the practical cost of construction, though: when you factor in the extensive VFX employed in the final version of the scene, it clearly ended up costing many, many times that.

Even so, the fact that the Wachowskis did things "the hard way" where possible, rather than just keying everything in after-the-fact, is an impressive commitment to practical filmmaking craft.