This scene was even funny in Germany where nobody knew about a Ford “Pinto”, let alone the whole exploding tanks debacle, but just because of the existing general trope.
'Splosions are cool.
It depends on the overall tone of the particular film, but I generally don’t mind a little gratuitous blowin’ up for entertainment’s sake. If everything in movies were completely realistic, I’d just watch reality instead.
No, but the “FIND HIM AND KILL HIM” rubber stamp was totally IRL!
Except in Last Action Hero.
And Falfa’s 55 Chevy was NOT a jalopy!
I feel cheated if the car doesn’t explode on the way down the steep cliff, and if it doesn’t turn into a giant fireball when it comes to rest I demand my money back. :mad:
Also, anyone who crashes through a plate glass window IRL will be lucky to survive the blood loss.
Which would actually be a cooler way to portray it on-screen than the way it usually is done.
No offense meant; it’s been probably 40 years since I’ve seen that flick and us old people get confused.
Besides, my Dad had one of those and when he sees this, he will be kicking my butt a lot harder than you ever could. 
eta: the same car was the primary vehicle in the cult film Two Lane Blacktop. In real life, it had a big block, but they didn’t exist in 1962, so the car was “ACTING!” as a small block.
Actually, they kinda did. That movie was based on a real incident with only slightly less drama.
Cars don’t explode when struck, however they are very much flammable. I’ve passed cars on the shoulder full-on on fire way more often than one would think is normal.
Yes, I first saw this when I was still in South Africa and had no cultural awareness of the Pinto issues (or even an awareness of Pintos at all). I remember it being funny, and would have assumed at the time it was just making fun of ridiculously explosive cars in action movies.
Heh. I loved that scene. I owned a Pinto. It was great - no one tailgated me.
my pet peeve in movies and tv is when they have someone playing an xbox 360 with a sega genesis controller and the sounds are from atari 2600s Pacman …
What about this one?
Sometimes you can see a small explosion inside the car before it even hits the ground, followed by the crash and huge fireball. It’s as if the car sees its fate and decides not to delay the inevitable. It always cracks me up. I presume it’s something the pyrotechnics guys have to do to ensure it will explode into an impressive fireball after it hits the ground. I saw this a week or two ago in an episode of the original Magnum, P.I., “Limbo” (1987). I seem to recall it happening quite a few times on the 1970s TV series Cannon but I don’t remember which episodes.
Not that long ago I bought the complete Magnum PI series from iTunes; it was on sale for like $20. Anyways, transferred from film and viewed on an HD TV you can see all of the special effects stuff they didn’t bother to cover up back in the day because nobody was going to see it on their crappy CRT TVs. Those little pre-explosions, wires, ramps, etc., it’s all painfully obvious in HD.
Still a good show.
I think this site might be of interest to readers of this thread: Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics
My brothers and I used to watch CHiPs when we were kids, and we’d be disappointed if there wasn’t at least one explosion per episode.
It happens.
There was a accident on the highway about a mile from me. A full-sized pickup with a scissor-lift on a trailer was hit head on by a full-sized pickup with an overloaded cattle trailer. The three guys in the first truck may well have been dead already, but it ignited within a few seconds and burned the whole mess beyond recognition.
The cattle trailer broke free and went over the embankment, and bust open. They were rounding up stray cows long after the three burnt corpses were recovered and hauled off. I got to watch it all.
Lac-Megantic Irving Oil train explosion that leveled the town and the deadly Montreal Metropolitan gas truck explosion are fairly recent memories in Quebec, so though I might not yank an accident victim out of a car if I didn’t smell fumes, I’d move like mad away from any vehicles carrying petroleum products or even a milk tanker anywhere near a road accident if I wasn’t 100% sure.