James Cameron has maintained a fierce commitment to authenticity throughout his filmmaking career, from designing breathing apparatus and functional submersibles for his underwater odyssey “The Abyss” to reconstructing an 882-foot cruise ship down to the smallest detail on “Titanic.” Even though his 1994 film “True Lies” leans more heavily into the cartoonish tone of the 1991 French comedy “La Totale!” that inspired it, Cameron was no less dedicated to grounding its oversized thrills in a sense of reality. That includes a climactic sequence in which his hero, Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger), skillfully pilots an AV-8B Harrier jet around a Miami skyscraper in order to rescue his daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku).
Mind you, Schwarzenegger did not pilot a jet over downtown Miami while the actress playing his daughter clung to the cockpit. But in this exclusive clip from the bonus materials of the forthcoming high-definition physical release of “True Lies,” Cameron discusses his collaboration with senior visual effects supervisor John Bruno, who suggested — to even his incredulity — that they mount a model on the roof of a real building to create a more believable action scene.
“We were kind of doing storyboards in the pre-production and he said, ‘Why don’t we put the jet on the building?’” Cameron recalls. “I said, ‘Nah, you’re out of your mind.’”
Bruno acknowledges that the scene is “very comic book in its concept,” but emphasizes that Cameron is one of the only filmmakers with the “cojones” to try and execute it practically. “It could be corny unless it looks totally and absolutely real,” Bruno observes.
The duo subsequently explain how they built a life-size model of the Harrier and put it on a gimbal that sat atop a real Miami skyscraper. “So then we had a real jet and the real lighting in the real city and we can get a lot of the shots,” says Cameron.
Check out the clip below, which features behind the scenes footage of the crew maneuvering the plane during filming:
“True Lies” come to Blu-ray and 4K UHD for the first time on March 12.
