There are plenty of car crashes in action movies. But sometimes, like enjoying a sumptuous meal, movies take their time to destroy a car (or other type of vehicle) one piece at a time until they’re basically unusable. Here are six examples.

Half of these take place over many scenes, and the other half happen in a single scene. But in the end, a perfectly good mode of transportation looks ready for the trash heap. Let’s have a total blast watching these vehicles get totaled and blasted.

Jumanji – Police Car

My favorite running gag in Jumanji involves poor Carl. Everything goes wrong for him in this movie, and he can never make heads or tails of it until the very end of the movie. As a dutiful police officer, he bears the brunt of the wild-animal antics as deadly creatures escape the Jumanji board game.

His police car is a good symbol of how bad things get in the film’s story. At first, it’s just a dented hood, but soon its roof gets shot to shreds by a shotgun blast, the car gets crashed into a tree, the hood falls off completely, and then the whole car finally gets compacted and crunched by a giant ill-tempered plant.

Return from Witch Mountain – Van

I adore Escape to Witch Mountain, the 1975 Disney movie about two orphans looking for their long-lost home. Return from Witch Mountain, the 1978 follow-up, also has plenty of highpoints, one of the biggest being the put-upon social worker named Mr. Yokomoto. He drives a mighty fine van that gets absolutely wrecked during the film’s biggest action set piece.

It gets T-boned by a semitruck and nearly crushed in between two vehicles before it flies into the air over a train and crashes into another vehicle, flips upside down, and comes to rest over a fire hydrant. In a word, it’s vanquished. Thankfully, magic comes to the rescue at the end of the movie, and Tony and Tia completely undo all the damage to the van so it’s just like new.

Serenity – Serenity

Okay, so this one isn’t a car; it’s a spaceship. And a lot of the damage done to Serenity is deliberately done by the crew itself to sneak past bloodthirsty bad guys, but I’m including it mostly because I just want to talk about this awesome movie.

The first and last lines uttered by Captain Malcolm Reynolds are in reference to an important piece of hardware falling off his gorram ship. In the middle of the film, he rips his ship to pieces, and at the end, large chunks of it fall off and the landing gears are crushed during a crash landing. But it’s all made right in the end, thanks to an extensive repair montage. I’m glad Return from Witch Mountain isn’t the only film on this list that took the time to fix what it broke.

Smokey and the Bandit – Police Car

Every time I watch Smokey and the Bandit, I’m dumbfounded by all the funny one-liners spewing from Sheriff Buford T. Justice. And I’m also gobsmacked by how much damage his police car takes over the course of his multistate pursuit of the titular Bandit. It’s not quite as extensive as the damage done to the police car in Jumanji, but it’s still pretty catastrophic.

At one point, a police officer even pulls over the sheriff and demands to know why he’s driving a vehicle that is clearly unsafe. His answer is surprisingly adroit and coherent, noting that it’s evidence of a crime. I don’t think that would really convince an officer of the law, but then again, I’m nowhere near as convincing an orator as Buford T. Justice.

Tron – Recognizer

The scene where Flynn puts together a destroyed Recognizer with user powers in the digital world is one of the highlights of Tron. And the scene where he proceeds to utterly destroy it again as he attempts to fly to his destination is equally as iconic.

From the moment the ship comes together, it already begins to fall back apart. Flynn just helps it along by being a less-than-ideal pilot. The commentary from his little companion named Bit is just icing on the cake. If you haven’t watched Tron in a while, prepare for a treat. This whole sequence is absolutely perfect.

A View to a Kill – Taxicab

Bond movies are famous for their car chases, so it makes sense that at least one would have a spot on this list. In the last Roger Moore outing, A View to a Kill, James Bond has to chase a parachuter through Paris. To do so, he commandeers a taxicab and doesn’t do a very good job obeying the rules of the road.

It’s understandable since he’s attempting to follow someone who’s high up in the air and doesn’t have to follow the path of any roads. His inattentiveness leads to several big stunts, two of which rip off the top half of the car and the back half of it. So he winds up with a quarter of a car by the end. It’s something you truly have to see to believe.

Nice Change of Pace

After the last two articles, which were about heavy topics, I needed a change of pace. That’s why I wrote this article. It’s always fun to do things like this.

I’m sure there are other examples of vehicles that get destroyed in creative ways in films. Feel free to let me know if I missed some good ones.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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