15 Most Awesome Explosions In Movie History

12. The Dark Knight

While a lot of contemporary movies tend to rely on CGI in order to convey destruction, Christopher Nolan loves to do things the old fashioned way, and actually levelled a real building for the iconic hospital explosion scene in The Dark Knight.

What really makes the scene isn't just the sheer scale of the explosion - insanely impressive though it undeniably is - but the fact that Heath Ledger's Joker is at ground zero, triggering the explosion from his remote control.

It's been a long-standing, widely-circulated rumour that Ledger improvised the remote control shtick when the explosion failed to trigger, but it's since been debunked. The scene was meticulously planned out as Nolan and co. only had one chance to get it right.

The result is a terrific spectacle which perfectly informs the anarchic nature of Ledger's version of The Joker.