10 Recent Movie Effects You Thought Were CGI (But Weren't)

The Fast and the Furious movies of course incorporate extensive visual effects to achieve their cartoonish action sequences, and with the recent F9 even taking the series to space for the first time, more VFX than ever were required to achieve director Justin Lin's vision.

But it's also fair to say that the cars themselves are a lot less digital than you probably think, with a lot of the spectacular car crashes actually achieved through clever compositing of real live-action elements which were filmed separately and then stitched together.

Perhaps the most technically challenging sequence in the movie is the chase through Edinburgh in which an electromagnet is switched on and starts launching around anything metal in the surrounding area.

One of the most startling beats in the scene involves large kitchen appliances being ripped out of a shop window, smashing the glass and flying towards the passing cars, which is so intense and obviously dangerous that one would surely assume the flying appliances were just digital props.

But incredibly, it was achieved for real, with stunt coordinator Andy Gill explaining that the appliances were launched through the windows at the cars using compressed air. Everything from the appliances to the cars, the glass windows, and the human extras were 100% practical. Wow.

Check it out for yourself at 3:30 in the video below: