Total Film - May 2015

[P-Tron]

While I've not seen the film, I remain cautiously pessimistic about it, and the claims about "all real stunts." Exhibit A. Clearly the guy jumping from the truck to the car is NOT a real stunt, in that he didn't actually do that. So, that's a half-truth or lie. My guess is that was done on a green screen and inserted. Or there were other safety wires and harnesses, slower speed, etc. Again, cheating. Not a stunt, as they are intended.

I think you have an over romanticized idea of what real stunts are.

Even in the Road Warrior there is plenty of "fake stunts", watch the behind the scenes video on Youtube, there is plenty of hidden ramps so the cars can jump over guard rails of to roll over. Or all the car board boxes for the stunt riders to safely land on or the obvious dummy in the back of the Charger that jumps the wall into the compound.

Or most of the close up shots of the truck in the final chase that were shot with the truck stationary with fans to give the illusion of movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_XtkfoCLPw

And that was 30 years ago, no major studio would ever allow your idea of real stunts on a set.

[Ol' Coyote]

Because obviously they let the actor who played the feral kid hanging on the truck without any safety harnesses on at high speed. That's "real stunt" there.

[MWFV8]

Real stunts is a very ambiguous and personal term.

Sometimes a real stunt can look unreal. For example, in Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift viewers judged one particular stunt, the drift up a multistory parking garage carousel as laughably unrealistic - and then it turned out to be real. Sigourney Weaver's over-shoulder slam dunk in Alien: Resurrection was a genuine first try that sadly travelled out of frame.

Sometimes CGI overlaid stunts just lose all their impact. For example, in Snow White & The Huntsman, Kristen Stewart's genuine 10m jump into water looks completely fake. In the Matrix, Keanu Reeves did some excellent martial art work and motorcycle riding.

Sometimes stunts are even more risky than they look. For example, in Death Proof, Zoe Bell genuinely hung on to that Challenger hood with nothing more than grip tape and gloves as a safety measure. In Jack Reacher Tom Cruise genuinely does most of the stunt driving.

Sometimes they are even more dangerous and spectacular than planned. For example, in Severance, the Hungarian stunt driver decided to crash the bus at a higher speed than planned to make it more spectacular and required rewriting the screenplay to keep things realistic. Again, in Death Proof, a father and son stuntman team rolled a pickup truck in the background of a shot simply because the crew had fitted grab handles. As we know, the compound explosion in RoadWarrior was much more violent than the crew were expecting.

Sometimes real stunts and cgi just blend seamlessly and so convincingly you're left stunned and taken to a new level of modern filmmaking, for example, the car crash scene in Let Me In.

[Ol' Coyote]

in Fast and Furious 4 ( i know, i know not exactly real stunts in there) the scene where Brian slides his R34 GTR to avoid the bimmer that crashes looked real to me, then i found out it was a little bit of both while watching it again and again.

[MWFV8]

in Fast and Furious 4 ( i know, i know not exactly real stunts in there) the scene where Brian slides his R34 GTR to avoid the bimmer that crashes looked real to me, then i found out it was a little bit of both while watching it again and again.

That's the good stuff and I'm expecting to see a lot of that in Fury Road. It's just that it will most likely seem almost nuanced in comparison to stuff like the storm and the pole antics.

[blackmocco]

That's the good stuff and I'm expecting to see a lot of that in Fury Road. It's just that it will most likely seem almost nuanced in comparison to stuff like the storm and the pole antics.

Nope.

[DetritusMaximus]

I think some of my point was missed. In Mad Max and RW, if a car or bike did something, it really was there and did it, staged and rigged or not. Think of Need For Speed, there were shots that just didn't happen and were done in cgi, like the frontal shot of the Shelby making that one particular jump...and being able to continue on as if there wouldn't have been any damage. If it was cgi and the car was crumpled I'd say okay, but it is that kind of stuff that Miller tends to avoid (except for the bridge scene in MM and the ramps to get the bikes over the wall). To be fair, even though the stunts were real, I couldn't stand Dukes of Hazard (the series) for the simple fact that no matter the stunt (and obvious catastrophic damage to the car) the General just kept going. Just think much the MM movies would be diminished if they were done like FF/NfS or as unbelievable as Dukes of Hazard. I haven't seen anything in FR that makes me worry too much, except maybe the storm...I just have to wait and see.

Cliffhanger (Stallone) had an overhead shot of Stallone hanging from a rope with a helicopter underneath him. Sure there were wires that were deleted, the helo was there instead of just putting in a cgi helicopter.

As for The Matrix, as stated, there was a reason and logic for the 'fantasticness' of it and I'm okay, it all makes sense. The cgi used in District 9/Elysium/Chappie looks great and gritty without being silly. Did I mention The Fifth Element? Even though the cgi doesn't hold up quite that well, it doesn't bother me one bit. But the superhero movies...I liked IronMan, where as The Avengers/Thor and The Spiderman sequels leave me cold.

[Ol' Coyote]

wasn't that frontal shots of Shelby is real ? It is true that the car should be crumpled when it lands but it was done for real. The only thing that is CGI is the rolling interior shot of Tobey and the girl after the Shelby got hit.

[DetritusMaximus]

The jump may have been real, but that frontal shot just looked terrible and silly. I think it was a composited shot of a car with actors on rigging placed into another shot (real or not doesn't really matter) looking from the landing point. I may be wrong about it and if they did the car rigging on the jump site then I guess it may be more like the Morsov Suicide, so it would be a bad example.

[Ol' Coyote]

Wait wait, which frontal shot are we talking about again ? The grasshopper jump or the one where the shelby hangs on the helicopter ?