I agree.
Unfortunately I also have the urge to add that when they film one of these scenes, it’s known as…
…
…wait for it…
…
duct tape! :rolleyes:
I think that addressed in Last Action Hero where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a movie cop who gets transported to the real world (kind of like what happened in Purple Rose of Cairo) and pals around with a kid. During one scene, the kid is hanging off of a building. Arnold grabs him, using one arm, and pulls the kind onto the roof. Afterwards he mentions what a hard thing that was to do.
Anyway, I guess I don’t have anything to add. Everybody pretty much covered everything. The only thing I can think of is a car rolling over several times, and then, after stopping, the people just crawl out and walk away, mostly, or completely unharmed. 20 years ago, my mother and I got into a minor (at least, comparitively speaking) fender bender and got hurt worse than that.
As did Hot Shots! Part Deux, in the scene where the bad guys (about 8 off them) are lined up along a rail, and the good guy shots them all, and they all fall over the rail in the manner of a group of swimmers going into the pool in an old MGM water musical.
I’ve been in ducts big enough to walk through (hi-rise HVAC rooms). I was too scared to wander in any direction, lest I plummet 14 stories to the sub-basement through a riser, because yes, they’re dark as heck.
Another cliché: police officers are always comically bad drivers. The miscreant, even in a crappy car, will always outmanoeuvre the half-dozen police cars chasing them. Not only that, but the police cars will always then end up crashing into each other in a big pile, leading to the sirens slowly fading and slowing down to a stop: Wooo-Wooo-Wooo-Wooooooo…Wooooooooooooooo…[sub]wuhh[/sub]
(Cue police officers clambering out of cars, at least one of which is now upside-down, and beating the bodywork with their fists in frustration as our hero/villain makes his escape.)
My favourite bit in the same sequence is when Arnie shoots an escaping car with his handgun. Nothing happens. “They usually blow up when I do that.”
Very underrated movie.
See, I read your post. I really did. However, for some strange reason, I thought you were talking about a car flipping end over end, like when Hellboy punched the hood of the car.
Siddhartha “I would never ignore Mr. Blue Sky” Vicious
Two thrilling chase scenes:
Scenario 1 - Car leaps over drawbridge or unfinished highway overpass. It my bottom out on landing and produce a shower of sparks, but is otherwise undamaged.
Scenario 2 - Car goes over side of cliff and immediately explodes into a ball of fire slightly larger than that produced by nuclear weapon test.
That’s funny. Although Hot Shots! was trying to be funny. 
You forgot something – our hero will conveniently find some place to turn around just before exiting the vent, allowing him to exit feet first, rather than falling on his face.
Just wanted to point out an amusing scene in Top Secret! where Nick (Val Kilmer) escapes from his jail cell by crawling through ducts.
He actually needed tools to open the grate.
Luckily, there was a crowbar leaning casually against the wall of his cell. 
If you haven’t seen it, watch the move. I can’t do justice with a verbal description. 
Not to mention the fact that the ducts are apparently engineered to support the weight of a full grown male.
What other movies use that so-called cliche from The Right Stuff? I can only recall seeing it in deliberate parodies. It was also parodied in Armageddon - Bruce Willis’ crew is called ‘The Wrong Stuff’ at one point.
I have in a gym, but those ducts were way up in the rafters and I don’t see how one could get to or into them
You forgot a couple.
-The Ducts hold the hero’s weight.
-The vents are always big enough to get in and out of.
And god forbid if you need to turn around.
I have similar problems with Sewers. They are almost always far too clean, well lit and spacious to be real.
Or how about that bit in horror films where the heroine is alone in the creepy house when there’s a killer on the loose. She goes to investigate a mysterious sound and finds an open door or window. She shuts and locks it, breathes a sigh of relief, and then slowly backs away.
You’ll know what she’ll see when she turns around, right?
Or she’ll close the medicine cabinet - and there’s the boogyman!
And in a similar scene in “Weird Al” Yankovic’s UHF, Al’s character has a daydream where he’s a muscle-bound Rambo rescuing his friend Stanley from evil Viet Cong soldiers. During the rescue, three dozen Viet Cong appear at the top of a hill, firing madly at them, and missing. Al then pulls out a humongous chain gun, fires it on full-auto while swinging it–
–and we cut to the Viet Cong, who all wait a beat before falling down simultaneously.
So true. Man, it’s been forever since I’ve seen it. There’s also that good scene where the bad guy (It’s been over 10 years or so, I forgot everybody’s names) in the real world shouts out that he just killed a man, only to have somebody shout back “Shut Up!!!”. And in the movie world, Sylvester Stalone played all of Arnold’s parts.
OK, OK, I’m babbling. I’ll shut up now and order the movie on Netflix.
Oh, and so I don’t just babble, I’ll try to add something else useful to this thread. It’s not really a stunt, but any time there’s a timer counting down, say, there’s only 15 seconds, yet it’s counting down very slowly, and in reality, all the action actually takes about 2 or 3 minutes.