Stunts·Sequences
Sequence-level rigging detail. The pole-cat poles, the decelerator manufacturers, the picture-car modifications, the named coordinators, and the SAG-AFTRA safety bulletins observed on set. Each entry ties back to the film page where the work appears.
Maverick test-flies the Darkstar prototype past Mach 10 against shutdown orders. The Darkstar mock-up — a full-scale practical airframe built at Plant 42 with consultation from the Lockheed Skunk Works — was static, but Scott Fisher's SFX team gimballed it on a hydraulic pivot to sell the buffeting. The flight footage cuts to plate photography of the actual Skunk-Works-derived A-12 airframe at Edwards.
A magic-hour beach-football scene in lieu of mission chalk-talk: practical sun-position blocking, four consecutive afternoons of 25-minute shoot windows, no electric supplements. Stunt coordinator Casey O'Neill choreographed the running pattern + tackle blocking; cast performed their own choreography over multiple takes.
Cruise + cast performed actual G-loaded BFM (basic fighter manoeuvres) flights in the rear seats of VFA-122 F/A-18Fs. Cast underwent a Navy-administered "C-pole survival" training programme + centrifuge run before being cleared for the rear-seat flights. Flying instructors from VFA-122 ("the Flying Eagles") were in the front seat for every take.
Mission-rehearsal canyon-run flights at 100 feet above ground level over the Cascade and Owens Valley canyon systems. Real F/A-18s at 580 knots over real terrain; camera Astar B2 helicopter at 200ft AGL with a Shotover F1 gimbal. The flight envelope was the most aggressive low-altitude profile the Navy has ever cleared for a film production.
Maverick + Rooster commandeer a parked F-14A from the enemy hangar and dogfight a pair of Su-57 Felons en route to home plate. No airworthy F-14s remain in service — practical photography used a static F-14A on long-term loan from the Naval Aviation Museum, mounted on a hydraulic gimbal at NAS Pt. Mugu. The F-14 + Su-57 in flight are CG composites by MPC over plate photography of Northrop F-5s and an L-39 Albatros standing in for the Felon energy state.
Steve Rogers's confrontation with his own past self during the Battle of New York time-heist. Sam Hargrave performed both halves of the choreography to the working-take camera plate — first as Cap-A facing an empty mark, then as Cap-B reacting to the playback. The composite stitches the two passes together via plate-matching at the marble-floor pivot.
Black Widow's sacrifice on Vormir to retrieve the Soul Stone. Heidi Moneymaker performed the rigged fall from the cliff edge on a hydraulic decelerator system, with the upper section of the cable disappearing in compositing. The decelerator was tuned to produce a 6-G arrest profile in the last two metres so the body's pose at the bottom of the fall would read as motionless on impact rather than rebound.
The mass-portal opening at the climax — every prior Avenger arriving via Doctor Strange's mandala, Cap raising Mjolnir, the cavalry charge across the battlefield. Coordinated as a multi-day shoot across more than two hundred stunt performers, with separate units handling each character's entrance and rigging. The "Assemble" line and the leading charge were a single working day, with the wide-shot hero plates pulled from twelve cameras simultaneously.
K's opening retirement of Sapper Morton — a brutal close-quarters fight in the cramped protein-farm kitchen. Choreographed by Vic Armstrong's team; the practical kitchen-table impact (Bautista crashing through the table) used a Korda Studios-fabricated breakaway prop with foam-core supports.
Niander Wallace inspects a newly-decanted female replicant prototype in the Wallace Corp inner sanctum, and casually murders her — a single-line stab, performed in one take by Sallie Harmsen on a body-rig wrist-knife with a retracting-blade prop. The blood reveal is a practical Tom Savini-derived squib synced to the prop's retraction. Choreographed in tight 360° camera sweep.
K and Luv's climactic fight on the breached sea wall as the storm-surge crashes through the pylons. Practical water dump in Hungary — 10,000 gallons per dump cycle — with Sylvia Hoeks's drowning sequence performed on a sealed-air-line rebreather rig at depth, on a controlled-descent harness for the final sub-surface beat.
Performers ride long carbon-fibre poles fitted to picture vehicles, swinging cab-to-cab while the convoy travels at speed. The pole-cat rig was designed in collaboration with Australian rigger Glenn Suter (ARK Stunts) — a rear-mounted carbon-fibre pole, counterweighted at the base, with the performer harnessed to a sliding ring along the pole length. A safety cable ran from the harness to a winch-controlled tether mounted on the chase vehicle.
The War Rig rollover sequence — the multi-axle truck collapsing onto its side mid-convoy — was performed practically using the actual picture-car War Rig with internal roll-cage reinforcement and a counterweighted impact rig. Multiple cameras (eight to twelve, depending on take) covered the sequence; reset between takes took roughly 24 hours.
The five-minute continuous-take grizzly bear attack — DiCaprio performed against a stand-in actor in a rough motion-capture suit; ILM's photoreal CG bear was animation-blocked to the stand-in's motion. The choreography combined practical impact + body-roll work by stunt double Mark Mottram with ILM's digital bear handoff in compositing.
Glass rides his horse off a 50-foot tree-lined cliff edge and lands in a pine grove below. Practical horse-fall stunt + pine-cushion landing rig + ILM CG horse for the in-air mid-flight beats. Stunt rider performed the take-off; Mark Mottram doubled DiCaprio for the on-ground aftermath.
Sandra Bullock spent the bulk of principal photography suspended on a 12-axis rig inside the Light Box. The rig's motion-control was timecode-locked to the camera move and the LED panel imagery — when Stone tumbled, all three motion vectors phased together as a single edited motion plate. Bullock performed extreme positional + rotational arcs over 80+ shoot days while wearing the prop NASA EMU suit. Riggers + stunt coordinator Steven Pope supervised every take.
Practical fire-bar SFX inside the Light Box capsule mock-up. Bullock performed at close proximity to a controlled gas-bar fed at 35 psi. SFX coordinator Neil Corbould (later Best VFX Oscar winner) supervised the gag with full medical + fire suppression on standby.