6. An Amputee Stuntman Was Used For The Sandman Chest Punch (Spider-Man 3)
I'm all for practical special effects (I prefer them, in fact), though I'm struggling to see how or why the lengths that filmmaker Sam Raimi went to achieve this particular shot were all that necessary. I mean, it's nice to know that the chest punch moment in
Spider-Man 3 was the result of practical effects, I suppose, but I'm not sure that - at this brief point - you'd even have the time to register the fact anyway. What am I talking about? The part I'm referring to is the one where Spidey comes across the Sandman (he's literally a man made out of sand, in case the name isn't clear enough), decides to try and punch him, and finds that his fits movies straight through the chest of his opponent. You know, 'cause of the sand. Inside of using CGI for this part, Raimi hired Baxter Humby, a stuntman without a right hand, and used him in place of Tobey Maguire. A few additional effects were in added in post-production afterwards, of course, to make it seamless. Which is fine, of course, but given the notoriously high levels of SFX inherent to the rest of
Spider-Man 3, this moment just seems sort of insane for other reasons, don't you think?