6. "Action" Was All About Cars Doing Impossible Things
Seen In: Spectre, Furious 7, Mad Max: Fury Road, Jurassic World, The Martian Of course, the car chase has always been a mainstay of action cinema, but 2015 was the year that really kicked it up a notch. When James Bond trashing an Aston Martin equipped with flamethrowers and an ejector seat is at the more realistic end of the year's motor carnage spectrum, you know it's been a big year for implausible automotive action. The Fast And The Furious franchise started out almost fifteen years ago with relatively low key street racing stunts, but has got bigger, more overblown, more ridiculous and much more popular with each passing installment. 2015's Furious 7 has the series' highest Rotten Tomatoes score and earned almost double the box office of any previous episode, all fuelled by scenes that saw cars parachuting out of planes and jumping between skyscrapers. Furious 7's car stunt work (and critical popularity) was topped, however, by the vehicular lunacy on display in Mad Max: Fury Road. Essentially, the ultimate destructive car chase turned into the narrative for an entire movie, Fury Road turned a dystopian future in which oil is scarce into an opportunity for a thrilling demolition derby on the grandest scale (complete with flame thrower guitars that made Bond's motor look unimaginative in comparison). But perhaps the most implausible car moment came in the action adventure that did even bigger box office numbers than Furious 7. How Jurassic World's kids managed to restart a decades old jeep from the first movie and just drive off without worrying about a flat battery, tires, gas etc. is anybody's guess. At least stranded Martian Matt Damon had the science the sh*t out of his old Mars rover to get it going again.