Sign in to your Collider account
Custom Image by Zanda Rice
The Academy Awards have added many new categories to their awards ceremony over the years, with a “Best Casting” award set to be included in the next few years. However, the Oscars have consistently overlooked the work by stunt performers and coordinators that perform the dangerous work that some movie stars are not equipped to do. While the work of stunt artists is often associated with all-time great action films, they are just integral to musicals, fantasy epics, historical dramas, and slapstick comedies.
Many of the greatest blockbusters of all-time would not have been possible without stunt performers that make all of the most exciting moments feel realistic. It’s rather shameful that the artists whose work the industry relies on are not honored by an awards voting body. Here are the ten movies that prove that the Oscars need a stunt category.
10 ‘Modern Times’ (1933)
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Image via United Artists Modern Times is one of the most influential films in the Golden Age of Hollywood, and is often regarded as one of the greatest achievements of the silent era. While Charlie Chaplin is a director whose work on City Lights, The Circus, The Kid, and Limelight was all worthy of admiration and praise, Modern Times stands out for the incredible ways in which it used stunts to produce physical comedy.
Modern Times is a film that pays tribute to the “old fashioned” way of doing things during the rise of the Industrial Revolution, and that’s a theme that would certainly resonate with many stunt artists. The real danger that Chaplin and his team got into whilst making Modern Times make it far more exciting than any modern film that tries to swap out practical stunts for computer generated imagery moments.
9 ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (1981)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Image via Paramount Pictures Raiders of the Lost Ark created one of the most iconic action heroes of all-time, as Harrison Ford’s performance as Indiana Jones launched a great film franchise that turned him into a sensation. Raiders of the Lost Ark has some remarkable moments using makeup and special effects, but the film’s best action scenes are all done practically, including the boulder escape, the marketplace chase, the iconic truck chase, and Indy’s brawl with a Nazi pilot.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is easily the grittiest film in the Indiana Jones franchise, and is often cited as the best because of the stunt work that was done by Ford and the rest of Steven Spielberg’s team. Additionally, the film was certainly worthy of awards from the stunt community because it is responsible for inspiring many stunt workers to get into their profession in the first place after Spielberg opened the door to their imagination.
8 ‘Die Hard’ (1988)
Directed by John McTiernan
Image via 20th Century Fox Die Hard is often cited as the quintessential action movie, as the wave of classics that emerged in the subsequent decade all took the premise that John McTiernan perfected and made only a few slight deviations. It’s easy to forget that despite being cited as an all-time action classic, the original Die Hard is a fairly stripped down, gritty thriller in which John McClane (Bruce Willis) is faced with seemingly insurmountable odds when the plaza is taken over by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his terrorist.
The use of practical stunts turned McCalane into a character that the audience could relate to, as at the end of the day he was still a vulnerable hero who was trying to reunite with his wife and save their Christmas. McClane’s final jump from the building is perhaps the single most iconic stunt in film history.
7 ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ (1991)
Directed by James Cameron
Image via Tri-Star Pictures Terminator 2: Judgment Day is cited as one of the most exhilarating action films ever made because writer and director James Cameron is a master at combining practical stunt work with amazing leaps forward with computer generated imagery. While the changing form of the T-800 (Robert Patrick) was created using CGI, many of the street chases, explosions, and shootouts that the T-1000 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) get into were performed with real stunt performers.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day showed that CGI and stunt work were not counter-intuitive, and that combining the two fields of interest would be in the best interest of the industry moving forward. The reliance on actual work from stunt performers is something that Cameron would pay to throughout his career when he ended up directing True Lies, Titanic, Avatar, and Avatar: The Way of Water.
6 ‘Léon: The Professional’ (1994)
Directed by Luc Besson
Image via The Walt Disney Company France Léon: The Professional was a very stylized action thriller from director Luc Besson, who introduced an interesting new way of shooting close quarters shootouts that became highly influential in the subsequent years. Although the film earned its dramatic strength due to the terrific chemistry between Jean Reno and Natalie Portman, it's hard to imagine that Leon: The Professional would have been as exhilarating as it ended up being if the stunts hadn’t felt so authentic.
Léon: The Professional is the type of film that needed a stunt award, as it was too peculiar to be considered for a Best Picture award, but did not have enough advanced technical aspects to feasibly contend for the Best Sound or Best Visual Effects categories. A film like Léon: The Profesional needed some form of award, and Best Stunts may have been the exact right prize to give it.
5 ‘The Matrix’ (1999)
Directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures The Matrix is one of the most influential science fiction films ever made, as it combined the philosophy of Plato, the hero’s journey narrative of Joseph Campbell, and the influence of Japanese animation into a story that reflected real anxieties about the overuse of technology. By using an incredible amount of cameras to create the “bullet time” slow motion effects, The Matrix was able to put a bigger spotlight on stunt performers than ever before.
The Matrix celebrates the power of kung fu, and benefitted from the work by stunt performers to train Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss. While it's certainly admirable that two massive stars did so many of their own stunts, the most mind blowing action scenes in The Matrix were only possible through the work of stunt professionals who had perfected their craft over the course of many years.
4 ‘Casino Royale’ (2006)
Directed by Martin Campbell
Image via MGM Casino Royale is often cited as one of the best films in the James Bond franchise because it finally told the character’s origin story in a far more realistic way. While there have been Bond films that featured more extravagant action scenes that were in no way plausible, Casino Royale rebooted the series for a modern audience by showing what espionage looked like in the 21ste century.
The parkour action sequence helped kick off Casino Royale on a high note, indicating that director Martin Campbell had learned all the right lessons from the ways in which he used stunt performers on the Bond film GoldenEye back in 1995. Although Daniel Craig has sadly never received an Academy Award nomination, he deserves a lot of praise for doing more of his own stunts than any other actor who has played 007.
3 ‘John Wick’ (2014)
Directed by Chad Stahelski
Image via Lionsgate John Wick was a groundbreaking vigilante thriller that proved the merits of stunt performers, as director Chad Stahelski had started his career as a body double for Reeves on The Matrix. John Wick was particularly interesting as an example of great stunt work because of the way that it pays tribute to multiple subgenres of action; the film contains allusions to neo-noir crime dramas, Japanese kung fu movies, and classic revenge thrillers.
The success of John Wick has spawned a newfound appreciation for the work of stunt artists, and inspired many other actors to do their own fight scenes in similarly themed revenge films. Although each of the three sequels have been excellent in their own right, the first John Wick film had such a small budget and lack of awareness that the stunt artists were put under even more pressure to do amazing work.
2 ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
Directed by George Miller
Image via Warner Bros. Mad Max: Fury Road was a huge passion project for writer/director George Miller, who had started the franchise back in 1979 with the original film starring Mel Gibson. Although it took years to make and went through multiple production setbacks, Mad Max: Fury Road utilized some of the most amazing stunt sequences and practical effects in film history, and was instantly hailed as one of (if not the single) greatest action movies of all-time.
Mad Max: Fury Road was a smash sensation at the Academy Awards, as it received six trophies and a nomination for Best Picture. That being said, it was unfortunate that the stunt artists were left out of the celebrations regarding the film, as their work is one of the primary reasons why it was hailed as such a massive success that changed the industry forever.
1 ‘Mission: Impossible- Fallout’ (2018)
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
Image via Paramount Pictures Mission: Impossible- Fallout managed to reach new heights for the Mission: Impossible franchise, which is no small statement considering just how consistently excellent each installment in the sequel has been. By showing the extreme lengths that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) was willing to go to in order to protect each member of team, Mission: Impossible- Fallout ensured that every chase, fistfight, and heist would ring true with the fullest emotional impact.
The scale of Mission: Impossible- Fallout is utterly incredible, with epic stunts that included jumping from a plane and hanging off the side of a helicopter. There’s not another action star working today as dedicated to realism as Cruise, who is every bit as worthy of recognition for the stunts he’s done throughout the course of the entire Mission: Impossible series than anything else in his career thus far.
KEEP READING: The 10 Best Pierce Brosnan Movies, Ranked
![Hyun Bin Teases His Adversarial Dynamic With Lee Dong Wook In Harbin [TIFF]](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/hyun-bin-harbin-tiff-video.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24371439/236492_MacBook_Pro_16__2023__AKrales_0247.jpg)
:quality(85):upscale()/2024/09/09/791/n/49351773/91e1c31e66df37933d9bf8.44427956_.jpg)
English (US) ·