10 GENIUS Ways Recent Movies Pulled Off Insane Scenes
The ludicrously clever ways these wild movie scenes came together, from 28 Years Later to Sinners.
At its best, filmmaking is basically a feat of magic - a mesmerising fusion of art and science in order to show the audience something they've never seen before in a way they never could've expected.
At a mega-budget Hollywood level, filmmaking is more about problem solving than anything else, and when it comes to pulling off ambitious, large-scale sequences, the cast and crew often have to come up with some ingeniously creative solutions to achieve the filmmaker's vision.
That's absolutely true of these 10 recent movies, all of which featured buck wild scenes which left the audience asking, "How the hell did they do that?"
Thankfully we live in an era where just about every movie has a ton of behind-the-scenes footage which the cast and crew will eagerly share, and so, we've been given extensive insight into how these crazy scenes came to life.
Each required no small amount of ingenuity, ranging from comprehensive use of VFX to mind-boggling practical logistics, and even some crafty DIY solutions you probably wouldn't expect on films of this scale.
Whatever the method, the stunning quality of the end result speaks for itself...
10. The Submarine - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
Honestly, picking just one insane scene from the most recent Mission: Impossible isn't easy, but the most technically challenging scene in the movie must surely be the sequence where Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) enters the sunken Russian submarine Sevastopol to retrieve the Podkova module.
The scene was shot in a massive water tank set which took two years to build and more than 15 days (!) to fill with water.
Also, due to the submarine being scripted to move around during the sequence, it had to be mounted on a bespoke 1,000-ton steel gimbal, allowing it to be mechanically rotated and have Tom Cruise react accordingly.
And the torpedo props which are flung Cruise's way? Their weight was equivalent to real weapons to ensure they travelled through the water in a believable way, creating a genuine safety hazard for Cruise while shooting, further compounded by poor visibility underwater making it easy for the crew to lose track of the actor.
Director Christopher McQuarrie also learned to scuba dive for the scene, allowing him to direct Cruise underwater rather than helming the sequence from dry land, as is standard.
Basically, shooting the scene was absolute fresh hell, and yet the stunning end result speaks for itself - it feels so real because, while shot in controlled conditions, it basically is.