With the advances today in technology, any imagination that creeps into a director’s dream can be put on the screen. However, there are some spectacular stunts a performer would have to risk his life for that no amount of computer trickery can replace.

There are certain directors, such as Christopher Nolan, produces great scenes with minimal CGI trickery, and still manage to knock our socks off.

Unfortunately, that level of realism does not come cheap. From planes falling out of the sky or train crashes, wild stunts made to look real usually leaves a very big hole in the film budget.

Here are some of the most expensive stunts ever;

10: Movie: Terminator 2 (Helicopter Crash)

What happens when your cameraman refuses to shoot a scene because he thinks its too dangerous? Well, if you go by the name James Cameron, director and certified bad-ass, you grab the camera, swing aboard a chopper and film it yourself.

In the helicopter chase scene, digital technology was done away with and the whole sequence was shot in situ. All the stunts in the scene were performed for real.

Out if the movie’s then record breaking budget of $100m, a whopping $51m was spent on special effects and the stunts.

9: The Dark Knight Rises (Plane Hijack)

In The Dark Knight Rises, the last in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, the director is reported to have spent as little as possible of his reported $257m budget on CGI. A big portion of the movie’s opening sequence’s remarkable plane hijack was filmed on location. It is reported that the scene took several months of planning for a 3-day shoot.

8: Swordfish (Helicopter and School bus scene)

Another addition to the list of “OMG was that done for real?”, is the bus hijack scene from 2001’s Swordfish which was filmed almost entirely on location in the skies of Los Angeles. John Travolta’s bus full of hostages is lifted into the sky from the ground by an enormous helicopter and taken across the city to evade the pursuing police.

The scene cost a reported $15m.

7: Mission Imppossible: Ghost Protocol (Free Climbing Scene)

Rather than have Tom Cruise climb up a replica of the Burj Khalifa hotel in Dubai, which stands at 2,700 feet tall, the movie producers thought it would be a better idea if he climed the building for real.

Taking five months to plan and 4 days to film, Tom Cruise can be seen climbing the tallest building in the world, as he tries to gain access to the server room of the hotel.

6: The Spy Who Loved Me (Ski Jump Scene)

All of the James Bond movies have always been known for its stunt work. It is a franchise that features a spy battling bad guys around the world, creating a fair amount of explosions and fight scenes. One of the most dramatic came in the unforgettable The Spy Who Loved Me. The scene was made in one take with stuntman rick Sylvester, where he was paid an sum of $30,000 for the stunt.

5: Cliffhanger (Aerial Rope Transfer Stunt)

There are many ways to make $1 million, one of which was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive aerial stunt in movie history. The aerial stunt led the stuntman, Simon Crane, to walk home with $1 million for making it across two aircraft flying at 15,000ft.

4: Iron Man 3 (Air Force 1 Rescue Scene)

In order for the director to make the scene where an Air Force One blows up and both the crew and passengers have to evacuate look as realistic as possible, the filmmakers hired a team of team Red Bull skydivers to dive multiple times a day for a whole week. An estimated cost of the stunts stands around $3 million, while the budget of the movie topped at $300 million.

3: Inception (Hallway Fight Scene)

As mentioned earlier, director Christopher Nolan would rather avoid CGI wherever possible. So, it comes as no surprise when he decided to build a gigantic spinning set rather than use computer generated imagery for the scene. With about 500 crew members to help build the set, work the rotations and film the action, it is highly likely that the scene cost several millions of dollars.

2: The Matrix Reloaded (Freeway Chase)

The freeway chase scene in the Matrix Reloaded gained plenty of plaudits. This was of course because of the freeway scene where a $2.5m stretch of highway was built on the abandoned Alameda Point Navy Base in California. The freeway stretched for a mile and a half, the 3-lane road gave the directors complete freedom to crash up to 300 cars that were donated by for the movie by General Motors. The scene was shot over a period of 48 days.

1: Ben-Hur (Chariot Race)

Ben-Hur is widely considered a classic, but achieving this title didn’t come cheap. The movie had a record budget of $16 million, which was a very big deal in 1959. A quarter of the budget was reported to have been spent on the scene, which took 1000 men months to construct, while producers trained hundreds of extras and horses that were to be used.