The cargo plane drop scene in Fast and Furious 6 offered a "cars vs cargo plane" finale that would, in reality, require a 30km runway. For 2015's Furious 7 though, director James Wan's first idea for an action sequence was to drop cars out the back of a plane.
The narrative reason for Dom and his crew to drive their souped-up cars backward out of a cargo plane is ostensibly to rescue Nathalie Emmanuel's Ramsey, a hacktivist who's created the God's Eye (a computer program that can find someone anywhere on the planet, and Furious 7's MacGuffin). The team needs to ambush the villain's convoy to free Ramsey, along a stretch of road in the Caucasus Mountains that is impenetrable from the ground. In true ridiculous Fast and Furious fashion, the solution is to parachute the cars and their drivers onto the road.
Furious 7's filmmakers rose to the challenge set by James Wan, with stunt veteran Spiro Razatos (Captain America: Civil War, X-Men: First Class) and his team tasked with coordinating the cargo plane drop. Initially, the producers expected the stunt sequence to be realized by CGI special effects. Razatos, however, eager to make it feel as authentic as possible for the audience, convinced the producers that the stunt could be done for real. As a result, Furious 7's cargo plane stunt actually dropped real cars for the set-piece.
While the sequence inevitably contains CGI to insert the actors into the action, Furious 7 did drop real cars from planes. Filming for Furious 7's cargo plane drop stunt took place in the skies above the Arizona desert. The cars were dropped from two Lockheed C-130 Hercules, flying at 12,000 ft, dropping two cars each. A team of 3 skydivers wearing helmet cameras both led and followed the cars out, with the first skydiver having to jump from the ramp just before being hit by the exiting car. Additional cameras were attached to the cars, the plane, on the ground, and in a helicopter circling the action, with 10 cameras in total. The cars were equipped with parachutes and GPS to both control their fall, and then to land safety in the desert. Inevitably with such an ambitious stunt, there were a few mishaps with the cars. One car's parachute didn't deploy, resulting in total demolition. Another was unintentionally dragged by its parachute towards the freeway.
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