Doctor Who Series 15 Episode 1 Review: The Robot Revolution

Warning: contains trailers for Doctor Who: The Robot Revolution. Doctor Who is up and feeling pretty confident despite widely exaggerated accounts of its demise. The season premiere successfully establishes new companion Belinda Chandra ( the excellent Varada Sethu ) and her compellingly spiky dynamic with the Doctor, though the surrounding story – in which a seemingly ]… ]

The initial assessment of Doctor Who Series 15 Episode 1: The Robot Revolution appeared initially on Den of Geek.

It’s usually good to hear pleasant information, even when it arrives 97 decades later. The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Thursday that an Oscar for Achievement in Stunt Design will be given out every starting in 2027. Or: there may eventually become an Oscar for Best Feats beginning at the 100th yearly Academy Awards.

This is truly glad tidings given that feats and derring-do have always been the norm in the history of film since Harold Lloyd hung ostensibly from a clocktower in Safety Last! ( 1923 ) or Douglas Fairbanks shimmied up literal draw bridge chains in Hollywood’s first Robin Hood movie circa 1922. The Academy has, in fact, abandoned the bikers that generate the biggest tentpoles in the box office today. It’s amazing to see that changing, but we would like to recognize a baker’s dozen or so efforts that have stood the test of time and deserved Awards in their day.

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Charlie Chaplin ends up a cog in the modern-day machine ( 1936 ).

When Charlie Chaplin decided to retire his Little Tramp persona with one beautiful bird melody in Modern Times, his form of physical comedy and exquisite stunt work were presently things of the past. In the 1930s, audio placed an emphasis on kooky and musical comedy and brought film. But for all intents and purposes, Modern Times is a passive movie, and one of Chaplin’s best as he got to do everything that made him a celebrity 20 years earlier —now with an explicit political bent.

Take a look at one of the most visually stunning puns ever written to criticize capitalism and modernization. Midway through Modern Times, Chaplin’s Small Hobo ends up swallowed by the precise system of a mill that grinds him through its wheels where he is expected to perform basic maintenance. Although it is not the most lethal trick on this list, it is an example of natural stunt work that achieves a humorous and creative grace that makes movies richer. The prank created an indelible image that almost a 100 years after packs allegory punch.

In Stagecoach ( 1939 ), Yakima Canutt jumps between horses.

So much of our imagined picture of the Old West, both as a traditional building and as a film genre, is derived from the imagery of John Ford. Several of Ford’s best movies are defined by mythic images of men riding horses and apparently thornier depictions of Native Americans pursuing. And 1939’s Stagecoach is great among them. This was Ford’s first movie collaboration with his on-screen artist John Wayne in Monument Valley, and it exemplified the motifs that many Westerners still acquiesce to. What is Light if no Joss Whedon’s Stagecoach in place?

The” horses and Indians” chase scene on Stagecoach features the definitive” cowboys and Indians” and features Apache raiders rushing up and down the titled carriage as it makes a frantic run across Indigenous country. The fight features two memorable feats executed by the show’s stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt. Canutt plays an Apache hero who jumps from his horse to the stagecoach’s group of steeds in the first of which, only to fall beneath the wildlife and the coach’s tires. It’s like a stunning image that Steven Spielberg remade it 40 years afterward in Raiders of the Lost Ark, minus the horses. The even more remarkable stunt occurs when Canutt, who is now made up to look like Wayne, leaps between the two horses pulling the carriage to take the reins from the controlling leader and protect both man and beast. It’s also amazing nearly a century later.

In Ben-Hur, there is a Chariot Race ( 1959 ).

Ben-Hur became the first video to ever get 11 Academy Awards. No movie has ever surpassed that amount ( though some have tied it ). Also, it would have been 12 if there was an Oscar for daredevil work. There are few patterns as astounding as the Roman horse race, which serves as the core of this gigantic Biblical epic, 65 years later. Running at 11 minutes in length, the race was never actually directed by Ben-Hur director William Wyler, but rather second product executives Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt (yes, him once ). The series is stunning eye candy to merely stare at, adorned with beautiful 65mm cameras and 72 horses under a radiant Roman sun. But the daredevil function is itself so lovely that to this day industrial traditions persist that either a artist or horses died while making it.

There is no historical evidence for either to occur, but a close contact can be seen in the movie, in which Judah Ben-Hur is flipped over his own carriage as it travels past a barrier along the arena wall. That wasn’t scripted, and the actor who performed it roughly died: Joe Canutt, Yakima’s child. However, he didn’t, and the scene’s script was altered as a result, with Charlton Heston being forced to pull himself up in.

Rick Sylvester Skis Off a Glacier in The Spy Who Loved Me ( 1977 )

Actually, the James Bond film series would have probably won close to a dozen Oscars by now if there had been any Oscars for feats in the last 100 years. There are so many to&nbsp, choose from: Bill Suitor operating a real-life jetpack in Thunderball ( 1965 ), Wayne Michaels performing the highest bungee jump ever captured on film in Goldeneye ( 1995 ), everything Sebastien Foucan did in the Madagascar parkour sequence of Casino Royale ( 2006 ).

However, if there is only one item on this list, it must be Rick Sylvester’s skied off a mountain atop a French rock for$ 30,000. It’s still the determining 007 prank which opens one of the line ‘ best movies where Bond, in a ridiculous bright “undercover” snow even, escapes Russian assassins by launching himself into an abyss where he does nothing but fall for a frantic 20 seconds. Then he strikes the chord with a fantastic and absurd Union Jack parachute. Way to keep a low-profile, James. It’s all captured in one incredible long shot that cuts just before one of Sylvester’s skis nearly punctured his parachute, sending him plummeting.

Outrunning a Boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark ( 1981 )

One of the more challenging ones to include was this. There are so many great stunts in the Indiana Jones pictures, so how do you pick just one? In Temple of Doom ( 1984 ), we believe Vic Armstrong might be the best for pure adrenaline spectacle. He is wearing a fedora and torn shirt hanging from a rope bridge. And Spielberg’s homage to Stagecoach where Terry Leonard again is dragged beneath and behind the wheels of a jeep in Raiders is probably the most complex set piece performed in the first Indy flick.

Great stunts aren’t just about real-world danger, though. It can also be about aesthetics, originality, and indelible iconography. The sight of the ragged archaeologist outrunning a boulder by the skin of his teeth, a stunt performed without a stuntman, is still the first thing that comes to mind when you read” Indiana Jones.” That is clearly Harrison Ford outrunning the boulder! It’s a still horrifying 300-pound prop made of fiberglass, of course, but it’s not really a boulder. It is also on a track, hence why Ford was able to do the stunt. One of the greatest movie moments of all time still has the audience on their end as a clearly visible movie star stumbles his way into an enormous spider’s web, making it seem like he’s within inches of becoming a pancake. &nbsp,

Jackie Chan’s 1985 Explosive Slide in Police Story

A performer who should have a whole collection of stunt Oscars, Jackie Chan made a career out of pushing his body to the limits one insane stunt ( and many more broken bones ) at a time. In almost all of his Hong Kong movies, we could pick a trick he performed or a choreographed sequence. But his character’s bizarre choice to chase bad guys at a shopping mall in the first Police Story remains a personal favorite.

Instead of following in close pursuit down a crowded escalator, Jackie decides the most effective way to catch them is to lunge at a near pole and slide four stories down—for real and without wires—while smashing every string of Christmas lights in his path before crashing through a real partition of glass and wood at the bottom. Reminiscing years later about the stunt, Chan said,” I made my jump, grabbed the pole, and watched the twinkling lights crack and pop all the way down, in an explosion of shattering glass and electrical sparks. Then I hit the glass. And then I hit the floor. With a number of unpleasant bruises &#8230 and second-degree burns on the skin of my fingers and palms, somehow I managed to survive.

Michelle Yeoh Catches a Train in Police Story 3 ( 1992 )

Given that this was Michelle Yeoh‘s own jaw-dropping moment in Police Story 3, I was reluctant to include it because we are trying to keep this list limited to one entry per franchise. However, given that this was her own jaw-dropping moment in Police Story 3, it seems appropriate to include the moment where she literally jumped a dirt bike onto a moving train.

The moment comes at the end of the movie when Yeoh’s young Interpol agent is attempting to catch up and help Jackie save the day. Yeoh rode the bike nearly the entire length of the train cars ‘ rooftops before crashing off after losing control of her character. However, even that last bit is somewhat for real since Yeoh, who had never before ridden a dirt bike before making this movie, was unable to cleanly escape the vehicle. So she actually kicked the train off while its wheels are still spinning, right?

Tree Fight in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ( 2000 )

Another instance of the stunt work achieving a gracefulness and artistry that surpasses pure adrenaline, Hidden Dragon’s fight between Chow Yun-fat and Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger is still one of the most surreal and achingly beautiful “fight scenes” in film.

Admittedly, calling it a fight scene is almost a misnomer. Really, this is a chance for two protagonists in direct conflict to properly introduce themselves to one another. As such, there is a serene peacefulness to the ostensible violence occurring between two martial arts masters gliding between treetops. The stunt choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, whose stunt team is probably best known in the West for popularizing wire-fu in movies like The Matrix, helped with the sequence after director Ang Lee had a dream. Yet the wirework in Crouching Tiger is better, and it really is Zhang and Chow up in that wilderness, dancing in the green.

Rotating Hallway Fight inception ( 2010 )

A case can be made that the sequence where Joseph Gordon-Levitt and several members of stunt coordinator Tom Struthers ‘ team fought in a rotating hotel was just doing a more elaborate version of that time Fred Astaire wowed’ em by dancing on the walls and ceilings of his own hotel room in Royal Wedding ( 1951 ). Which is accurate, but it’s not less impressive given how incredibly complex director Christopher Nolan created his action-based adaptation of the showstopper.

Choreographed on a rotating set in an air hangar outside London, this sequence was the culmination of months of training by Gordon-Levitt and Nolan’s teams to create the sense that gravity was a fluid, sputtering resource in a dream world where the only limits was your knowledge of kung fu. It’s hypnotic.

Tom Cruise Scales World’s Tallest Building in Mission: Impossible 4 ( 2011 )

Once more, we have a stunt legend, and it’s difficult to decide which sequence to include. Tom Cruise has had a late career renaissance as a modern day Douglas Fairbanks. His most recent appearances in films over the course of 15 or so years are a near-guarantee for you to witness some death-defying hijinks. So should it be the time he hung from a real plane as it took off in Mission: Impossible &#8211, Rogue Nation? Or how about in Mission: Impossible &#8211, Fallout, where he performed hundreds of HALO jumps from 25, 000 feet? The last movie in the series was pretty much marketed around him trying to one-up Rick Sylvester’s TSWLM stunt by riding a motorcycle off a mountain with a parachute as his only salvation.

In the end, we made the decision to pursue the stunt, which so clearly indicated this phase of Cruise’s career. It was in December 2011’s Mission: Impossible &#8211, Ghost Protocol that Cruise revitalized his career by playing a real-life Spider-Man along the sun-kissed glass of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It’s essentially the same trick that Harold Lloyd performed 90 years ago, but this time it’s higher, and in Cruise’s case, he has safety harnesses in place. Yet they don’t even digitally remove that element. They skillfully incorporate it into the narrative, arguing that both the harness and his character’s glue gloves only have a set amount of time to keep him safe. Afterward he’s street pizza. It combines the charisma of movie stars with excellent visual storytelling and traditional derring-do captured in massive IMAX cinematography.

Bane Hijacks a Plane in Midair in The Dark Knight Rises ( 2012 )

Another Christopher Nolan stunt sequence, this one from the director’s Batman trilogy is also favorites. A bit of a riff on a similar scene in the James Bond movie Licence to Kill, Nolan improves on his influence by recording in eye-popping IMAX photography how a team of aerial stuntmen, coordinated by Tom Struthers again, literally jump from one massive plane to smaller charter flight, and commandeer it with little more than wires, explosives, and guts. The effect of the wings coming off is digital. Almost everything else is not.

In Mad Max: Fury Road ( 2015 ), Pole Cat Craziness

We were tempted to just include all of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road as a single entry. This insane fantasy of gas-guzzling grandeur is woven together into a feature-length chase scene to reach a level of cinematic Valhalla where everything is shiny and chrome. But if we must narrow it to one scene that the Academy can point to and go,” Witnessed”! most likely the pole cat spectacle, of course.

With Miller’s gang of Australian lunatics &#8230, er, stuntmen trained by the acrobats of Cirque du Soleil, these blokes really swayed in the breeze ( purely because it looked cooler ) on poles above cars going anywhere between 30 and 60 MPH in the Namibian desert. Then they swung on the aforementioned poles over movie stars, including Zo Kravitz, who is actually swept away by a pole-catter while driving at a speeding car and having nothing but hard desert earth beneath their feet. God Bless George Miller. Actually, that must have been the case because the fact that nobody died makes this something of a miracle.

The Last 40 Minutes of John Wick 4 ( 2023 ), All of It

The John Wick movies are an embarrassment of riches for stunt work and spectacle, much like the James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises. Begun by former stuntmen-turned-directors Chad Staheleski and David Leitch, and with every film in the mainline series so far still directed by Staheleski, the John Wick movies are a chance for those who know the intricacies of stunts to translate that into pure cinema.

Which might explain why the series isn’t ending after what was obviously intended to be John Wick: Chapter 4‘s grand finale. Everything about this entry acted like it was embracing the kitchen sink mentality, including an epic climax of stunt work that begins with one of the most impressive oner action sequences ever conceived—this one taking an overhead, godseye view to the carnage as Keanu Reeves shoots his way through enemy territory—and culminates in an even more impressive, seeming series of oners where Reeves and Donnie Yen fight their way repeatedly up a long, outdoor Parisian staircase in Montmartre filled with assassins who want old Johnny boy dead. It’s a visual crucible of Mr. Wick’s struggles distilled into a masterpiece of carnage.

The post 13 Movie Stunts That Deserved Oscars appeared first on Den of Geek.