How Christopher Nolan Pulled Off The Dark Knights Truck Flip (Without CGI)

How Christopher Nolan Pulled Off The Dark Knight’s Truck Flip (Without CGI)

The Dark Knight’s truck flip is one of the film’s most impressive scenes, and Christopher Nolan actually made the moment happen without CGI.

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How Christopher Nolan Pulled Off The Dark Knights Truck Flip (Without CGI)

The biggest stunt in The Dark Knight, flipping the Joker’s semi-truck, was done entirely without CGI. Director Christopher Nolan uses practical effects where possible rather than CGI in his movies, and this runs across The Dark Knight Trilogy. Scenes such as the plane hijacking in The Dark Knight Rises, for instance, were really executed rather than being VFX, and the truck scene in The Dark Knight is another memorable example of this.

The chase sequence is the big action setpiece in the middle of The Dark Knight, as the Joker (Heath Ledger) tries to catch up to Harvey Dent’s (Aaron Eckhart) police transport. Batman (Crhstian Bale) ejects the Batpod out from the Batmobile and attaches tow cables to the Joker’s semi-truck. Using those cables, he manages to flip the 18-wheeler truck over, stopping the Joker (though his real plan to get caught goes off without a hitch). While many moviegoers may assume this was CGI – and many filmmakers surely would’ve used that option – Nolan opted for the real deal.

The big truck flip in The Dark Knight was done without CGI, with the film’s crew actually flipping over a semi-truck in the Chicago banking district. The special effects team added a piston to the underside of the trailer with a TNT charge set up at its base. When the charge was set off, the piston struck the ground hard enough to flip the truck over, the trailer going over the cab. For as simple as it was in principle, there were a lot of complicating factors. They had to do the full stunt multiple times because of the damage it would’ve caused if things went wrong. According to stunt coordinator Paul Jennings, “If it gets halfway up and falls to the side – we were in the middle of the Chicago banking district – it would’ve gone through a bank’s window.” (via IGN).

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Even the street presented problems, as La Salle street had several sewer lines and underground structures like bank vaults. This meant that there were only a couple places on the street they could fire the piston without causing serious damage to something underground, making it so the driver could only trigger it at one of a couple of specific locations. Yes, there was also a driver involved: stunt driver Jim Wilkey was in the truck during the stunt.

The truck had been reinforced for The Dark Knight, especially in the cab, to make sure that the driver could safely be inside without getting crushed during the stunt. Instead of detonating it remotely, Wilkey drove the truck and triggered the explosion from inside at the right location on the street, and the stunt went exactly as planned: trailer up over the cab, lands perfectly upside down. With a lot of work and planning, The Dark Knight was able to pull off its biggest and most memorable stunt without the need for any CGI. Flipping the Joker’s truck was done purely with practical effects, in keeping with Christopher Nolan’s preference for using real effects and stunts whenever possible.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/dark-knight-movie-nolan-truck-flip-scene-no-cgi/

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