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The Best Hollywood Explosions

News
15 July 2015
M-Net Movies looks at the best filmic explosions in Hollywood.
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Hollywood: home of the blockbuster, mind-blowing special effects, and awe-inspiring CGI. All these help create the awesome, adrenalin-fuelled scenes you see in your favourite action movies, including the explosions;

With that in mind, M-Net Movies is taking a look at ten of the best Hollywood explosions.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Sarah Connor dreams about Judgment Day - envisioning a frightening future in which Los Angeles and everything in its path, including Sarah herself, is seared and eradicated by Skynet’s nuclear holocaust.

Armageddon

Nobody creates an explosion quite like Michael Bay, especially when it’s coming from outer space. In Armageddon, an asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, with the beginning of the disaster reducing Paris to nothing.

Independence Day

Talking about outer space, aliens cause havoc in Independence Day as an invasion leads to the destruction of the White House, giving Americans more than just fireworks for the 4th of July.

V for Vendetta

Remember, remember the 5th of November? Not like this we don’t. The dystopian Natalie Portman vehicle sees an explosion festooned with fireworks, as an anarchist inspired by Guy Fawkes successfully blows up London Parliament. The explosive destruction is elevated to triumph by Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

Fight Club

Project Mayhem’s rampage of destruction culminates in Fight Club’s conclusion as the city’s skyline collapses in a rain of rubble and fire. Like V for Vendetta, it successfully employs music to help deliver a more powerful impact – although here the effect is more chilling than triumphant, as the narrator and Marla Singer contemplate chaos to the sound of The Pixies’ Where is My Mind?

Stealth

The song used in Stealth’s explosive hangar scene does not deliver the same mood as either Fight Club or V for Vendetta's music do, but the explosion that hurls bodies and vehicles alike through smoke and fire is still rather impressive.

The Matrix

Keanu Reeves playing cowboy with a helicopter that slo-mo crashes into a building with warped style is as mind-bending as any of the sci-fi actioner’s posited reality.

Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Slim Pickens, as Major Kong, takes the cowboy metaphor one step further. Yelling jubilantly, the major straddles a nuclear bomb as if it’s a mechanical bull…and stays there as it plummets to the earth below, giving literal credence to the movie’s title.

Jaws

Got an unwanted guest? Apparently the best way to get rid of them is to blow them sky high, as Police Chief Brody does to the shark in Jaws. Although there’s no denying how awesome it looks, the movie sadly helped give sharks a bad rep that they’re sill trying to shake off today.

The Dark Knight

Bombing buildings is an explosive staple when it comes to action movies, but the reaction Heath Ledger’s Joker has when he blows up Gotham General Hospital in Christopher Nolan’s second Batman instalment makes this explosion both iconic and comical.