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.)
Speed Racer and the Jumping on the Roller coaster type practice track.
Boo this man!
(Ok, it’s my favorite movie, I can’t help myself lol)
Anytime a conversation is happening in a car. Every scene I’m anticipating a crash, how can anyone not be looking at the road that long and not hit something. Even people who text and drive look up more often (though they are a real world scourge).
While my opinion on the remake of Gone in 60 seconds have softened over the years, that cgi jump is unforgiveable, especially considering the ultimate fate of the car.
Fast and Furious is almost OK, because they started the 5th film by brake checking a bus with a Charger then tripping it,(without destroying the Charger) so that it rolled down the highway, not in an attempt to murder Dom, but to save him…So it established that from now it’s all cartoon physics.
The worst outside the FnF series for me is Terminator Genisys. It’s essentially a parody of the Terminator series with Arnold himself as the Terminator. And Matt Smith (famous from another series involving time travel and scary robots)as Skynet.
There’s a scene on the golden gate bridge where the Connor/Terminator hybrid rips the driveshaft out of a clearly rear engined bus causing it to pole vault 100 feet into the air, and flip and roll etc.and like in FnF, the people in the bus survive. It’s hilarious, but hardly realistic.
People being able to have silent conversations while doing high speed always bugs me. Unless you are in an EV doing legal speeds on flat road, there is going to be a lot of noise.
Those silent scenes in fury road? Come on, have you ever lowered your window next to a truck at some kind of speed? They are loud!
Also, I doubt very many of the vehicles featured in that film are running OEM exhaust systems, and none of them have had their inspection tags renewed in quite a while.
They do the same thing in clubs and bars where the characters can actually talk to the person next to them without yelling over some shitty pop music, never mind the general din of masses of drunk people. If those places exist, I want to know where they are.
Most scenes involving a motorcycle.
Seeing a literbike rev out and shift three times? That thing is going over 100 mph. No way they are doing a fighting scene or holding a conversation at those wind speeds.
Does the car chase scene in Blues Brothers count?
In gone in 60 seconds. The protagonist chirps tyres at launch, completely floors it and agressively shifts before reaching 60 … after about ten seconds.
You can see it is going slow from the outside views as well.
Wasn’t this supposed to be somekind of highly prepped custom car here? My dads volkswagen was faster than that.
It is completely unbelievable that someone would try to steal a car that unremarkable.
In the original, it’s just a long list of cars he’s contracted to steal (For overseas shipment? It’s been a while, so I don’t quite remember.) and Eleanor is just a regular Mustang which makes more sense than the ugly custom Shelby in the remake.
I know it’s a bit of an odd sticking point in the context of him already driving conspicuous silver Aston Martins around East Germany all the way back in the 1960s, but the later Craig movies giving Bond an Aston Martin that wasn’t even a real car was a bridge too far for me.
Although, Craig driving a Ford Mondeo in Casino Royal, is probably the most realistic car in the entire series.
Even though the civil service accountants would have strung him up for not picking a cheaper hire car.
Back to the Future: the idea a DeLorean could reach 88mph more than once beggars belief.
If my ’83 and ’84 Subarus could do 110, I’m sure the DeLorean could hit 88, though Doc could have modified the engine. He did build a time machine.
I mean, it does feel like it takes forever to actually get to 88 mph despite the aggressive launch (once it finally starts, a few seconds late) – Doc has a chance to reconnect the cable up at the clock tower top, slide down the cable, fall, unwrap it from the tree limb, and reconnect it at the lamp post in time.
Must be that leaded gas clogging/destroying the cats in the DeLorean…
All the futuristic stuff. Back to the future, MIB, irobot, etc. The part in mib ii where the ps2 controler comes out of the merc always bothered me.
The Herbie movies are hokey but it sort of works. Where the transformers loose me. I remember being super disappointed in the bad boys movies from the stunts and thinking how impossible it is and just in general. I put ff sort of in the Herbie category they did get little better then much worse. Most of the time it sort of works if you take it for what it is a very hokey movie. Though anytime they are too serious they loose me. But that’s the way with any subject. Try to get a lawyer to watch a lawyer show or a doctor to watch a doctor show thats not scrubs or the pitt.
I love both the original Gone in 60 seconds and the remake- it’s awesome! What fun movies. The batmobile w/ shields is so awesome too. I love the original Batman and Batman Returns. I really don’t mind all the Fast and Furious movies either…the 1st one is definitely the best though. I can’t think of any ridiculous car chases since I love them all. My favorite chase would be the last long chase in Blues Brothers
I rewatched the remake pretty recently and it wasn’t as horrible as I remembered.
A lot of good shows and movies have already been mentioned, so I’ll throw out the Viper TV show. Each time it morphed into the “Defender”, it was Michael Bay Transformers-level ridiculous. The vehicle “battles” were often silly, and the story lines were terrible and clearly written around the product placement that was the hero Viper.
Oh goddammit I was literally typing Viper as a response when this comment popped up.
At least someone else remembers that silly show, right?!
There’s dozens of us. Dozens!
Fractions of dozens even!
Dukes of Hazzard movie from mid 00s freeway jump.. like 2F 2furious where a launch 50’ in the air the car comes down and still is decent.. still way 2fun not 2watch.
The scene in Jurassic Whatever were Chris Pratt is riding a motorcycle with a pack of Velociraptors through the jungle in the middle of the night. Honestly, the Velociraptors are the most realistic part of that scene.
Not a specific example, but a generic one.
Good guy has a good guy car. It’s probably an Aston Martin, Mustang, Camaro, Porsche or something else fast and sexy. It might be a convertible, but it’s definitely fast.
The bad guys have a Town Car or Tahoe.
One of the following happens in the movie:
Just once I’d like to see:
The “stunts” in the Nic Cage Gone in 60 Seconds remake must have had Toby Halicki rolling in his grave, considering he nearly killed himself doing the stunts for the original, and actually died attempting to make a sequel.
“Damn, I wish I had the option of CGI”
I remember going to see, I think it was called Torque with my dad. Basically a Fast and Furious but with motorcycles. I remember them riding streetbikes through the woods and a scene where they, like, rear their bikes up and bash the front wheels against each other in some sort of fight. My dad raced GP bikes and HATED that film LMAO
It’s a known fact that for some reason, it’s nearly impossible to make a good* motorcycle movie. Easy Rider is probably the only truly decent one ever made, and yeah, Torque is just plain awful.
*fictional that is…On Any Sunday is near perfection.
Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is (kind of) a motorcycle movie and it’s awesome.
Damn, I love bikes and I love Torque; it makes no attempt at realism. Biker Boyz, now that movie’s drag racing definitely matches F&F. The subject is taken more seriously though. But no one ever talks about that movie, and it stars Laurence Fishburne!
Torque is a guilty pleasure of mine, because it is so awful that it is great. I especially love the when the ladies sword fight with the motorcycles with the strategically placed ads right behind them (Mountain Dew, if I recall correctly). Each time I watch it I find a new way that the movie gave physics and logic the middle finger.
Every single time someone “hotwires” a car by fiddling with literal wires under the dash. That unlocks the steering column how, exactly?
The nicely striped wires are always funny.
CHiPs gave the Dukes a run for their money for the Lifetime Achievement Award in Cheesy Car Stuntsmanship.
In fact there’s a strong case for them beating the Dukes since they used a ramp car much more and had a lot of scenes where the ramp is obvious in the final cut.
Every car hitting something and going over on two wheels was the worst, but on the otherhand, Ponch’s Trans Am with both the Formula scoops and T/A scoop was enough to bring me back.
Much like the Batmobile shields, Knight Rider’s super pursuit mode was pretty crazy, vents and fins and spoilers popping out of everywhere, and then Viper just took that to a whole other level. Both cool as heck but my belief was at risk of losing suspension there.
(You do know that there is a Long Beach on Long Island and also a Long Beach in CA, where that jump was, right?)
Yup. And its the Vincent Thomas Bridge, which connects Long Beach to San Pedro over the harbor.
And the same bridge that director Tony Scott committed suicide from.
And if you want to sound like a native, make sure you pronounce it San PEE-dro, not San PAY-dro.
If I recall correctly, In Gumball Rally, the race was from Long Beach to Long Beach
Them Duke boys driving away in a pristine General Lee after we CLEARLY saw it folding like a Jack knife.
Also Toonces. Everyone knows cats are the best drivers.
Yea because Smokey and the Bandit any every other movie showed expert stunts
That brings back memories! I’ll be wasting time today at my desk by searching for Toonces the Driving Cat videos!
+1 for Tones mention.
That cat must have had 9 lives or something.
I honestly can’t think of one. The ridiculousness is a feature not a bug.
Speaking of bugs, Herbie.
I’m calling out every A-Team vehicle explosion where they always walk away.
Always the same one, in fact.
Fiery explosion under a jeep-like vehicle that just happens to be equipped with a full rollcage.
Always at low speed. Always a barrel roll and always the sound of the trottle mid-air.
Damn, I loved that show. Just call me Mr.B8.
I love it when a plan comes together.
I had to look up one that I remember craziness but not the movie. It’s Wanted, which has a Mustang using a Corvette as a ramp to barrel roll over a car so they could shoot someone through the sunroof as it rolled. Jeez was that stupid.
Mythbusters tried to replicate that
I’ll have to hunt that one up to watch, it’s got to be more entertaining…