To be honest, I can’t think of many Hollywood car scenes that aren’t ridiculous. From the durability of the cars and the laws of physics under which they operate, to the performance capabilities depicted and the (lack of a) toll taken on the drivers, virtually every action scene that puts protagonist and antagonist on four wheels is likely to trip my baloneyometer to varying degrees.
Now, I’m not one to come out of a Star Wars showing and smugly decree, “There’s no sound in space,” and likewise, I am generally unbothered by some artistic automotive license in the interest of keeping the action and the cars moving even when a real-world car would have undoubtedly been immobilized. But there are limits!
One film in particular that irked me deeply was the 2000 remake of Gone In 60 Seconds, wherein Nic Cage plays car-thief extraordinaire “Memphis Raines” and mugs through 120 minutes of car-thieving action that I have entirely forgotten, with the exception of the final plot-capping stunt.
The whole movie builds to Cage making a spectacular leap in the famous Eleanor Mustang (a car I’ve always found it kinda meh, but whatever), and being made in the year 2000, the expectation is that an insane real-car stunt is about to explode across the screen, hopefully in a nice wide shot. But no! We get a quick-cut mess that makes it impossible to appreciate the death-defying action, and worse, everything between the Mustang hitting the ramp and nailing the landing is crappy CGI, completely removing any excitement the sequence could have delivered.
After two hours of slick junk-movie crap, being deprived of a real stunt genuinely pissed me off. Adding insult to injury was that the film expects the audience – many members of which have likely seen or experienced how much damage even a 20-mph crash can do – to accept that a 1967 Mustang can fly what appears to be 100 feet in the air, at least two stories high, then land and keep going. All four tires holding air, frame straight, hood unbuckled, nothing falling off. Speaking of unbuckled: “Memphis” is not wearing a seatbelt during all of this, and not only is his spine not crushed, but he remains squarely seated for the duration. Sure. I mean, this kind of nonsense with the Duke Boys leaping a pond is one thing, but a 100-foot sky-shot across the Brooklyn Bridge (I think)? Come on man.
I also have problems with Batmobiles. Not the 1966 Futura version, that one gets a pass as it existed in a completely unreal camp fantasy. No, it’s the Burton/Schumacher and Nolan Batmobiles that bug me. They’re cool and all, but when such a big hook for these films is (to varying degrees) “gritty, realistic Batman,” the impossibility and dumbness of the ‘mobiles bugs me.
As Batman and Vicky Vale scramble away from whatever, Bats whisper-shouts “shields!” and the Batmobile stop-motion deploys an armored shell. From nowhere. You can see it there above. Where are those panels coming from? Where do they go? Why does the Batmobile need them? Isn’t it bulletproof? Can’t Bruce – er, Batman – just lock it?
The Nolan “Tumbler” is much more plausible than 1989’s land-speed-record Batmobile, and the in-universe origin of the car is a scuttled Wayne Tech military vehicle project. OK, I buy that. What I don’t buy is the thing ejecting its front wheels and somehow configuring them as a motorcycle – a motorcycle that Bats mounts while still inside the Tumbler, somehow. Go ahead, just try and make the whole thing make sense as a military concept first, then try to imagine how it would work. Good luck.
Your turn:
Outside Of The Fast & Furious Films, What Hollywood Car Scene Was Just Too Ridiculous For You?
(Note, you can totally mention the F&F films. I just put that in there to let you off the hook if you wanted to set them aside, because they are wall-to-wall bananas.)
(Top Image: Bruce Wayne Estate (just kidding, it’s Warner Bros.)
Every single scene in Dukes of Hazzard. Not just the car scenes. None of the scenes in that show are believable. Kind of why I like the show.
Same reason why I enjoy Hardcastle and McCormick. How is a (street legal? Huh?) prototype racecar simultaneously just a little slower than whatever 80s sedan the bad guys being chased are driving, but – often in the same episode – just a little faster than the cops when being chased?
And it can survive jumps!
AirWolf!!!
Best theme song *ever*. Nothing else even comes close, lol.
To this day I hate the ending to Back to the Future III. Doc’s flying train is just so dumb. Why does it need wings to pop out when every other flying vehicle we saw in part 2 doesn’t need them? Why is he lugging around the tender that fishtails around like an out of control trailer? And why does it have the same style vents on the rear like the Delorean had but now they are flaming jets instead of vents? And when the train lifts off and the wheels fold under it the wheels aren’t flanged- they’re just flat discs. How did that locomotive manage to stay on the track? Why didn’t Doc just fly in to begin with instead of using the same track he sent Marty back to 1985 on? If the Delorean wasn’t crushed by that train when Marty arrived then Doc’s train would have anyway. It was a great trilogy ending with one giant eye-rolling scene.
Totally agree – it was a fun trilogy, but that last scene just made me groan. Even more so after thinking that the guy who could build a time-train couldn’t manage to brew up a tank of ethanol in order to get it up to speed. I would’ve much rather Marty hit a rock out in the desert putting a hole in the car’s oil pan and seizing the engine than the whole arrowed-fuel line setup.
Not to mention how in the first movie (which is near perfect), Doc talks about the parts needed to build a time machine don’t exist in the 1950s, but apparently, by the final movie, they do in the 1850s?!
Smokey & The Bandit FTW.
Best movie ever!
Oh, it’s a guilty pleasure of mine. You see two people ACTUALLY falling in love. A who cares plot. I’m past due for a rewatch.
Yeah, and the smugglers, the bad guys, are really the good guys. And the cops are the bad guys and cars and a truck. 10+ no notes
Alfred Hitchcock considered it a cinematic masterpiece. Who am I to judge?
Now, my profile picture will obviously tell you where I stand on this film, but: other than the bridge jump across the creek, and maybe the cop car landing on the back of the flatbed trailer, the car stunts look pretty real life to me. And they were, performed in real cars by human drivers long before CGI existed. Other than apparently every cop in the southeastern United States being a terrible driver, the car scenes mostly seem plausible enough to me.
Any time the car casting choices are rendered unrealistic by product placement. Or the inverse where someone you’d expect to have a reasonably nice or even really fancy car has a beater you know will be sacrificed in a crash stunt from the first moment it’s on screen.
Honorable mention to Charlie’s Angels where it fit the logic that they all have same model year Fords since they’re company cars in-story, but blow it with option loads no fleet manager would approve.
Right, and wasn’t Sabrina just a little annoyed the whole time that Jill got a Cobra II while she got a Pinto? I can see Kelly talking herself into being okay with the luxury of the Ghia, but it’s near impossible to rationalize that Pinto.
And, lest we forget, Bosley had a rotating fleet of nicely-equipped mid- to full-size Fords, including a dark green T-Bird and, in at least one episode, a LTD woody wagon.
Professor Fate’s car in “The Great Race” was ridiculous.
But then so was the entire film “Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies” (aka: “Monte Carlo or Bust”)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_or_Bust!
The buggy chase scene in “what’s up doc?” Is almost too good but somehow I manage to suspend my disbelief and laugh every time.
https://youtu.be/Lm1OgL5jjyc?si=IV_X0CMcOjL1kQZ5
Well, for the time the GPS tracking system Bond’s Aston had in Goldfinger. Not to mention the tire slashers and .30 cal Browning’s. In the book it was a radio beacon that increased/decreased volume in proportion to proximity.
Corvette Summer. Had an op to buy one here in phoenix 30 years ago. Body glam, ham-fisted repairs to a stock car. Reminding me of mad max, not one I saw in person, but damn that was a cool car
It was when Dick Dastardly had Muttley deploy the long claw arm from the back of his car to pick up Penelope Pitstop’s car and move it behind his. How did the entire length of that claw arm fit in his car???
Actually Ronin and The French Connection got it right.
Yes! Ronin has some of the best car chase scenes!
My favorite car chase movie. It would be a good movie without them, but so much better with.
National Lampoon’s Vacation!
Wow dad, you must have jumped like 50 yards! Not something to be proud of Russ (proudly whispers) 50 yards….
Christmas Vacation subjects the ole front wheel drive sleigh to similar unlikeliness.
Any Transformers movie. I enjoy them, but it requires max suspension of disbelief.
The FF movies got steadily more ridiculous. Turning a car into a space capsule? Leaping a super car from tower to tower in Dubai? A string of tow trucks dangling over a cliff attached to a helicopter? Uffda. (I also enjoy those movies, and weirdly, so does my wife – but the car stuff is ridiculous.)
Any chase scene that ends with the car randomly exploding. I just rewatched Dr No and the henchman car rolls down the hill and decides to just explode randomly during the roll.
Famously lampooned in various Austin Powers movies, Archer, Venture Brothers, Aqua Teen, etc
If you want to see a lot of exploding cars, watch T.J. Hooker. Seems like after every crash (and most episodes include at least one), they have to run a couple of hundred feet away and take cover because “it’s gonna blow!”
And always a single flaming tire rolling away from the wreck
Popping a wheelie in a tractor + trailer in the Timothy Dalton Bond film License to Kill, so absurd I’m still mad about it like 35 years later.
Dammit, I had repressed that memory. Now I have to call my therapist
I know “that’s the entire point!” but Herbie “the Love Bug” being able to keep up with and even pass contemporary racing cars while even being shown to have a regular VW engine and mechanicals and such threw off even my young childhood brain. Still charming as heck (at least the first one and Monte Carlo), and I remember being fascinated with Diane’s Lancia Scorpion.
The sequel to the first one, Herbie Rides Again, may be my favorite out of all of them. Fewer nice/racing cars but I enjoy the cast, particularly Helen Hayes as old Mrs. Steinmetz, Herbie’s owner. Some very unrealistic stuff there too, such as driving up the cables of the Golden Gate bridge, jumping across streets, driving sideways, etc. Worth a watch if you enjoy the others!
I remember seeing that at least once. As a child I liked the dynamic between Jim Douglas, Buddy Hatchett (and Don Knotts in Monte Carlo, and Herbie such that I didn’t take to Rides Again that much, and the bridge scene -much like the suicidal scene on the bridge in the original – was unpleasant.
I was also confused what happened to Carole from the first movie as Jim’s wife and why he was interested in Diane. Was that ever explained?
Nowadays decades later I recognize that Jim Douglas is kind of a jerk and Herbie deserved better, ha.
Even the chase scene in Bullit was ridiculous with all the magically respawning wheel covers. And IIRC, a giant fireball at the end for the baddies? I have to admit I haven’t watched the movie in 25+ years.
Though I think the most spectacularly ridiculous action movie in the past several decades has to be Top Gun 2, even though it has nothing to do with cars. I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief a fraction of the amount necessary to enjoy THAT mess.
Also, as someone who grew up in S.F., the entire chase is geographically impossible. Near the beginning, they drive up Potrero Hill, get to the top and then drive down Russian Hill 7 miles away. Don’t get me started on that damn VW Bug.
Casino Royale is my favorite Bond film, but watching him swerve his Aston Martin on wet pavement and… violently barrel roll? It takes me out of the moment every time.
Bond films are definitely top offenders. Where do you hide dual mini-guns in the wings of a DB5?
Behind the front turn signals?
Yes! Just turn your brain off and enjoy the ride.
I know, right?
Where to put the ammo supply is the bigger question.
There’s actually a real minigun outfit for sale at gunbroker dot com. Just $400,000. The “minigun” part is a small part of it.
One of my favorite trivia bits about Predator is that it would be humanly impossible for them to carry all the ammo the expend, esp Jesse Ventura.
It’s important to remember that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was also Ian Fleming’s original IP. If Astons with ejection seats or a submarine mode snag up the ability to suspend disbelief, a 1920s boattail speedster that can fly by deploying a wingsuit with beanie propellers on the tips can make Q’s mods seem fit for patent.
Ironically, Fleming’s Bond novels were fully grounded in the era, technology and politics. Blame the screenwriters.
The chase in the moon buggy comes to mind.
I love the fact that the DBS couldn’t do it, so they had to cut the floor and use an air cannon to make it roll.
Quadrophenia. Jimmy and his Mod pals find a pair of Norton-riding rockers and chase them down an alley.
It makes for some fine cinema, but ain’t no way those 160cc scoots run down a Norton.
Next you’ll be claiming that thirty to forty extra mirrors don’t help a Lambretta’s aerodynamics.
“From the durability of the cars…”
Durable up to the moment when the protagonist throws any sort of projectile at one or forces one off the road, at which point it spontaneously erupts into the world’s biggest fireball.
“It’s got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it’s got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It’s a model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas. What do you say, is it the new Bluesmobile or what?”
Everything was totally realistic,.. well maybe the hang time of the pinto wagon.
That was where I learned that a C-Body Dodge Monaco with an RB Block and a Torqueflite is the ultimate car.
We’re on a mission from God.
Having built the old MPC Pinto wagon model kit I’m surprised they didn’t use one for that scene.
I’ve totally braked so hard in reverse that I grounded the rear bumper, causing the car to do a double backflip with a half gainer over another car! LOL
Next you’ll tell me Thornton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) does the most difficult dive of all time – The Triple Lindy. From the movie “Back to School” was faked.
Name just about any Michael Bay, and the car chase is ludicrous, but the Hummer v. Ferrari one from The Rock was the first one I saw, and the biggest offender. Yeah, a civilian Humvee can shake off literally bigfooting a Volkswagen, knocking down a utility pole, crashing through at least four other vehicles, and the bodywork is still pristine
I feel like Michael Bay is the cinematic equivalent to waterboarding.
The remote control scene from The Blues Brothers 2000.
I get that The Bluesmobile in the original Blues Brothers was implied to have mythical powers, but Elwood just pulling out a bog-standard Radioshack-style gun RC controller and eyeballing the car through the crowd while onstage seemed like total BS.
That was where my full disappointment with this Blues Bothers installment came to a head.
Transporter 2. He’s forced to drive his car with a bomb attached underneath it. He corkscrew jumps his car off a pile of debris and scapes the bomb off by surgically hitting a hanging construction hook.
That was the first thing I thought of! I love Jason Statham movies, but you have to turn your logical brain off for most of them.
The scene: https://youtu.be/JphuqVtI-3o?t=79
Bond corkscrew-jumping the AMC Hornet in the Man with the Golden Gun.
It’s impressive that it was an actual real stunt, but it was completely gratuitous and too much for even a Roger Moore outting. And the slide whistle sound effect the studio felt it just *had* to add only compounds the ridiculousness.
They should’ve gone whole hog and made the Hornet a wagon with fake wood paneling.
Keeping with the Bond theme, the car chase in “For Your Eyes Only”, in which Roger Moore drives a 2CV, is equally ridiculous.
Came here to reference the 2CV chase.
So instead I’ll mention the tuk-tuk chase in Octopussy. The director does play it off as comedy, so maybe the tuk-tuk chase gets a pass.
“Vijay, we have company!”
“No problem. This is a company car.”
Based on the dialog, I’m pretty sure that tuk-tuk was modified by Q branch. Unlike the offending semi tractor from Licence to Kill.
The Moore era was just pure camp. I’ve gotta be in the right mood to watch them.
Why is it that *every* Roger Moore car chase/stunt scene involved a shot of the local wino momentarily rethinking their life choices?
Such a good observation. No other Bond elicits this; you get the sense Connery would’ve run him down and smirked.
To me the greatest part of that whole thing was that the Joie Chitwood crew that designed and performed the Astro-Spiral jump did all the calculations for the AMC Hornet. So if Cubby Broccoli wanted the stunt in his movie, he had to write Bond into a Hornet. In a movie that took place in Thailand.
Do you suppose there were many AMC dealers in Thailand, or did James Bond just happen to end up at the only one and then run into a vacationing Sheriff J.W. Pepper there to top it all off?
Let’s face it, the spiral jump was the most believable part of the whole thing.
The slide whistle was a big mistake, though.
Yakety Sax – would have been a far more appropriate sound choice for a Moore era Bond film.
I could have bought that scene without the whistle. With the whistle, no way.
It’s a pity that Roger Moore, for my money the handsomest and funniest Bond, also had the misfortune of being in the very silliest Bond movies.
I still maintain the only reason Roger Moore got the gig was because his name is already an innuendo.
I’ll take the spiral jump – slide whistle and all – over the invisible car from Die Another Day
I will always see it. The bus in Speed leaving a perfectly flat and broken off highway, yet the next shot shows it leaping into the air as if a ramp was in place. Loved the movie before that.
Speed as an action movie is such a fun ride that I can actually look past that. But the entire premise of the movie hinges on a plan by the villian that has absolutely no chance of successfully working, unless his plan was merely to attempt to kill a group of innocent people.