10 Most Incredible Practical Effects In Sci-Fi Movie History

Christopher Nolan wrote the first draft of Inception in 2002. Because the film wasn't released until 2010, this gave Nolan plenty of time to fine-tune the film's most intricate stunts and effects. He managed to create many of the Inception's most complex scenes without CGI including the Penrose stairs, the mountain avalanche, and the zero-gravity scene.

But the showstopper has to be when Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character battles a man inside a spinning hallway. For this scene, Nolan had 500 crew members construct a 100ft-long centrifuge powered by rotating wheels and 255-horsepower electric motors. If one of these wheels malfunctioned, it could have collapsed the blue whale-sized centrifuge and potentially kill the actors inside. For close ups, a camera had to be locked into the corridor floor so it would fall over when the centrifuge turned. The set-up was so meticulous, it took three weeks to shoot.

Nearly every person who worked inside the centrifuge fell ill as they couldn't handle the rotation. Levitt practiced for two weeks to get used to spinning since he didn't want to rely on a stuntman. If Levitt mistimed the rotation, he would've fallen up to 25ft.