10 Insane Movie Stunts They Filmed FOR REAL

The action genre in film has long been one of the most entertaining and nail-biting. While it went into a predictable pattern in the early 2010s, it has still provided many a thrilling moment throughout its long history.

They say an action film without stunts is like a comedy without laughs and across the decades, many an actor has put their physical wellbeing on the line to provide the biggest thrills for the audience. When an action film makes an impact, it's often down to the unbelievable stunt work that went into its production.

For this list, we're looking at stunts that were done full-on, with no digital or visual trickery masking the moment. The following ten stunts really were carried out within camera by fearless actors with a love of their craft. In doing so, they each made a far greater impression on their audience in the process.

We can all agree it took some serious bravery and care from the filmmakers to pull these incredible sequences off. Let's take a look at ten of the finest action stunts which were pulled off, unbelievably, for real.

Starting off the list is Christopher Nolan, who has always been a major advocate of completing action stunts within camera. As a director given free rein to do whatever he wants, the ambitious lengths he goes to with each major release remain consistently high.

For the final entry in his superb Dark Knight Trilogy, he wanted to take on a massive set piece that would establish the enormous scale of the production while also introducing its lead antagonist, Tom Hardy's Bane.

The sequence in which the villain makes a death-defying aerial escape was filmed in Scotland in 2011. The six-minute scene involved two planes and took three days to film. The smaller plane we find Bane in was actually a massive turbo-prop that was towed along behind the larger C130 Hercules.

From that larger craft, four stuntmen on wires dropped onto the CIA plane, who then took apart the turbo-prop to simulate the plane losing its tale. Finally, this remaining "fuselage" was dropped to the ground in a vertigo inducing shot. With these external shots completed, the final piece was the action inside the plane.

For the interior, a separate set was built so the actors could perform their action shootouts without being miles above the ground. With this set of shots being seamlessly blended with the outdoor footage, the end result is a sublime opening.