10 Ways Movies Blew Your Mind Without You Even Realising

4. The Freeway Chase Was More Practical Than It Seems - The Matrix Reloaded

The Matrix sequels get plenty of justified flak for their over-indulgence in goopy visual effects at the seeming expense of a coherent story, but there's little arguing with the technical brilliance of the second film's jaw-dropping freeway chase sequence.

The lengthy chase does of course feature plenty of CGI, and you'd be forgiven for assuming that the majority of it was just shot in front of green screens or a small chunk of fake freeway built inside a warehouse.

But the "bones" of the scene, if you like, are entirely practical, with the Wachowskis having a 1.5-mile freeway built at the cost of $2.5 million at a disused Californian naval base.

General Motors donated more than 100 cars to be totalled during the sequence, and aside from the action beats which would simply be too dangerous for actual stuntmen or actors to perform - typically those set on top of vehicles - the rest were largely done in-camera.

Not only are the car crashes all practical, but Carrie-Anne Moss actually rode a Ducati, with no helmet no less, along the freeway. For the sequence where she drives into oncoming traffic, though, the other vehicles were of course digital.

It's easy to watch the scene and just assume it was largely cobbled together in a VFX house somewhere, but the practical shoot took seven whole weeks after an entire year of planning, not to downplay the considerable post-production job making it all come together seamlessly.