Vultures inaugural celebration of stunt professionals is here.
Because if the Oscars wont recognize them, we will.
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Jackie Chan isdangling off a helicopter!
Which is why the Academy Awards persistent lack of recognition for stunt professionals feels like such an egregious affront.
While we at Vulture cant rectify this, we can launch our own honors.
Importantly, this group emphasized that stunts did not need to be purely practical to qualify for our awards.
The sheer breadth of themovies nominated by our academyproved that stunts arent just for action movies.
.The Nominees
.
ForRRR, they singled out the rousing nature of the bridge sequence as well as its sheer creativity.
Jean Jacket), so Em is racing against time to save her brother.
Nopeis a surprisingly melancholy blockbuster, with a deadpan sense of dread that makes anything feel possible.
I just cant forget how good these concluding minutes orNopeare, wrote one voter.
The slide is just slick as hell.
The runner-up in this category?
You cant deny Adkins vs. Long in this orgylike assault on the senses, wrote one voter.
I mean, come on, this is blood and popcorn at its finest!
We forget sometimes that action movies are supposed to be fun.
Suddenly, shit seems real.
This led to an unpredictability in the action that revolutionized cinema across the world in the ensuing years.
The action in thisHitmansscene feels like a throwback to some of that old-school insanity.
BestShootout
Awarded to any sequence involving guns at relatively close range.
The art of the movie shoot-out is becoming something of a lost art.
Once upon a time, it was the defining feature of an average action flick.
ThinkThe Rockor theLethal Weaponseries orHeator the great westerns of the past.
The winner,Bullet Train, might seem like an unlikely choice at first.
Directed by David Leitch (himself a legendary stunt coordinator), its basically a catalog of eye-popping elements.
BestVehicularStunt
Awarded to any sequence involving motorized vehicles.
And its not just the stunts and the CGI.
BestAerialStunt
Awarded to any sequence that takes place predominantly in the air.
BestPracticalExplosion
Awarded to any sequence that involves any reactive substance that amounts to an explosion.
I got you!!
But how much of it is really real?
The runners-up in this category offer a variety of different approaches to practical explosions.
It looked very dangerous for all involved, wrote another.)
The explosion of the decoy ambulance inAmbulanceis a classic Michael Bay moment, seen from pretty much every angle.
Whats left to say aboutTop Gun: Maverick?
Weather, safety, terrain, light placement.
He added: It was very tedious it would bore you to tears.
Theyd come back, review the footage, and then go back up in the afternoon.
They did this formonths.
It sounds backbreaking and soul-sucking, but it all paid off.
The same goes for the planes doing real-life maneuvers.
Its a mixture of emotion and action, character design and delivery, wrote one voter.
Theres nothing like it.
BestAchievementinStuntsOverall
Awarded to the best overall stunt professional (or duo) in 2022.
That year, by the way, was also when Jason Stathampunched Adkins into a helicopters tail rotor.)
That certainly gives him a certain aura as an actor.
Maybe that is why some have taken to calling him The Human Special Effect.
The power of this cannot be understated.
Something striking happens when you watch a film that is built around sheer human ability.
The very grammar of filmmaking is upended, and you simply have no idea what to expect.
LifetimeAchievementAward
Read about our first ever Lifetime Achievement winner, Albert Pyun,here.
