davidh777

The one where the guys are slow-motion walking away from it

JumpCutz

^ Thank you Michael Bay.

jfoobar

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

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Brian T

I'm partial to full-scale, practical explosions whenever possible (and they seem so rare anymore), but modeds and CG have their place. A few faves of various varieties:

Exploding gas station in UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
Exploding gas station in 1941
Exploding gas station in THE HITCHER
Exploding gas station in THE MARINE
Exploding gas station in BEST OF THE BEST 2
Exploding gas station in TERMINATOR SALVATION
Exploding gas station in ELVIRA
Exploding villain (Dom Magwili) in FIFTY/FIFTY
(seen here at 3:15: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2phKzblesY)
Exploding pirate ship (model) in CUTTHROAT ISLAND
Exploding department store in DIE HARD 3
Exploding factory/hanger in ACES: IRON EAGLE 3
(seen here at 1:17:15 http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...2585427577387#)

The aforementioned house explosion from ANOTHER STAKEOUT is a real corker, and can be seen in this compilation, one of several compiled at YouTube (More here:http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...xplosions&aq=f):

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JumpCutz

A great example of a full scale practical explosion is the bus stop sequence from Sorcerer.

JohnnyMovie

love that one.
also with Halloween II (1981)
Jaws (1975) - best shark death

89981

Spy Game where the truck full of explosives drives into the building in Beirut.
The nuke going off in Broken Arrow.

jdslater1

I love the explosion in the Marine.
Weird you mention the store in DH3. I was watching the BD release and there is an extra about the filming of that scene and some of it looks weird. The delivery truck in the film looks brown/green but in the extra there is a silver delivery truck. And the traffic is going left to right in the final scene but in the BTS footage they are going right to left. presumably the real Bonwit Teller has traffic that goes that way so they reversed it to look realistic for NYers.
BUT Mcteirnan also says about the scene "it's supposed to be a normal New York day which makes me think it wasn't shot there.

Brian T

I've always suspected it was shot somewhere else. The IMDB's "filming locations" lists plenty of real New York locations, but also lists a few in South Carolina. I'm probably misremembering, but isn't there some big set/studio in South Carolina that replicates several city blocks or something like that? I could swear I read about it once . . . perhaps in relation to this film? For some reason, I do recall the subway crash being staged in Charleston, so setting up the Bonwit's explosion in the region wouldn't be out of the question.

THE DH3 explosion inspired Hong Kong stunt coordinator extraordinaire Bruce Law to pinch it for his highly entertaining directorial debut EXTREME CRISIS in 1998, as well as a few other touchstones from the DH franchise. You can spot the homage at the 20-second mark in this trailer:

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SuckaMC

I always liked the exploding bus in The Siege.

jdslater1

It is a great explosion. But it looks like they used the same location twice.
I'm sure that the first time (when it's a dummy run) is on the exactly the same intersection as the one later that explodes. it just looks like that for location and cost reasons they used the same place.

I've always liked the bomb squad explosion in Blown Away. i know it's been mocked many times but I really do like it. The way "Bridges" dives forward when the van explodes. the location aswell looks amazing and the helicopters look great (I like helicopters in slo-mo).