7 Movie Scenes That Could ONLY Be Done On The First Take

Christopher Nolan is famous for preferring practical effects over digital ones, going out of his way to capture as many scenes as possible in-camera.

This greatly benefits us, the viewers - scenes like the reverse car chase in Tenet are so adrenaline-pumping because they feel totally real - but from a behind-the-scenes perspective, shooting all this crazy action practically is a logistical nightmare.

For starters, there are many more safety concerns involved, and on top of this, it's also really time-consuming - and sometimes impossible - to reset each shot and do another take, and as a result, many action beats in Nolan's films simply had to be captured the first time they were attempted.

The hospital explosion in The Dark Knight is a perfect example of this. To record the stunt, Nolan's team converted an old candy factory into Gotham General, and blew it up for real. Obviously, once the building went up in a ball of flame and smoke, it couldn't be used for a second take, so everything had to go smoothly on the first go.

Similarly, Nolan also destroyed some valuable property in his most recent movie, Tenet. The plane crash scene in the middle of the film was accomplished by driving a real Boeing 747 into a real building (which Nolan claimed was more cost-effective than CGI), a stunt that, by its very nature, also needed to be pulled off in one take.

For such a mild-mannered British guy, Nolan has quite the thirst for destruction.