Top 10 Movie Skydiving Scenes

There’s a variety of ways to get a bomb off of a loaded passenger jet. Doing that while the jet is travelling at thirty thousand feet though… that’s a slightly different story. However, no mission’s too big for this group of heroines, so after a little tongue-in-cheek humor, the mysterious savior and the mad bomber take a step out of the 747’s emergency exit. After a mid-air rendezvous with a second skydiver, all three parachute to safety where finally, the eponymous angels are revealed.

In a film about extreme sports, you expect things to get a little nerve-wracking. But after a bad jump from the plane goes wrong, things go from exciting to terrifying. When one skydiver knocks his head on the way out of the plane and the disorientation causes him to have a mid-air collision with another jumper, he begins to fall out of control, and Stephen Baldwin’s Vic Cooper scrambles to rescue him. Right when we think that his friends will be forced to pull their chutes and save themselves, team leader Red Line swoops in and pulls the chute. But is it too late?

How far would you go for the one you love? How about jumping out of a plane alongside a troop of men dressed like Elvis? When Nicolas Cage finds himself in a desperate situation, needing to get back to Vegas in order to rescue his fiancée from James Caan, he dons the jumpsuit of the King and straps on a parachute. We’re in stitches as Cage conquers his fears, and joins hundreds of Flying Elvises parachuting through the night’s sky into Vegas.

As titans do battle in San Francisco, an American strike team attempts a Hail Mary pass. Our hero finds himself with a bomb-disposal crew, preparing to perform a high altitude low opening jump, or HALO. As the plane doors open and light pours in from the sunset, the men know it may be their last. Red streaks trace their path to Earth, and as the sky turns dark, we see, through the eyes of the jumpers, the lightning and monster below and realize: This is no peaceful skydive, this is a descent into hell.

Nobody’s perfect, but a series of unfortunate mistakes lead Agent 86, played by Steve Carell, to be falling out of a plane… Without a parachute. From here, he must rely on the quick thinking of Agent 99 to rescue him. Although she seems to have saved the day, a third skydiver quickly proves otherwise, and quick thinking is required once again. When the three find themselves falling while bundled together, Anne Hathaway must rely on her, ahem… charms to save the day. Exciting and hilarious, we can’t get enough of this scene.

If only we had a nickel for every time Bond was expected to die. When a romantic moment turns sour, Bond finds himself falling out of a plane, and… you guessed it… he’s without a parachute. As skydiving was still a relatively new sport at the time, moviegoers were thrilled when Bond managed to “borrow” a parachute from the very skydiver responsible for this mess. Right when we think he’s in the clear, 007 realizes his favorite dental hygiene enthusiast is pursuing him. A quick pull of the chute gets him off the hook though, and Jaws finds himself on a trip to the circus.

This scene is a two-parter, and features one of the first popular uses of the wingsuit. When Burt Lancaster’s character, the leader of the Gypsy Moths, goes in search of the thrill of the crowd, pushing himself farther than ever before, he finds himself in a jump he will not walk away from. Among questions of whether or not he did not pull his chute on purpose, his crew is saddened by the death of a friend who died the same way he lived. We are even more touched when the youngest member of the team performs the same stunt that killed his mentor in order to pay for the funeral.

In this 1994 action flick, Wesley Snipes hunts a rogue DEA agent, and in the process finds himself infiltrating a team of skydiving professionals. During one of their jumps, a member ends up with a sabotaged parachute, and must cut away the chute and deploy his backup before falling to what may or may not be his death. When his backup chute fails to open, the team’s leader and a die-hard professional ditches his own chute in order to try and assist. His heart-pounding display of bravery is in vain though, and the exciting scene ends up makings our stomachs drop.

All the cocaine in the world cannot prepare you for the excitement of this 1994 action romp, but you can bet Charlie Sheen probably tried anyway. The heart-pounding thrills of this sequence begin with our tiger-blooded hero driving a convertible out the back of a cargo plane, villain on the roof, and lady in the trunk. After shaking the baddie and loosening up some trunk space, the tandem skydiving couple narrowly avoids a cliff-side explosion, before dodging some wind turbines on the way to a safe landing. Over the top? Yes! But, we wouldn’t expect anything less from the man who’s “winning.”

Before we pull the chute on our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
- Go Go!
“Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie” (1995)
- Geronimo
“The Bucket List” (2007)
- Hang On!
“Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay” (2008)
- For Queen and Country
“Fathom” (1967)

It’s the classic story… while trying to hunt down bank-robbing surfers, our goodie two-shoes FBI agent finds himself forming an unlikely brotherly bond with them as they push each other to the limit in one of the coolest skydiving scenes ever. However, it’s in the film’s climax that we get our finest thrill. Patrick Swayze’s bank robber is about to make a daring escape, when Keanu Reeves’ federal agent pushes himself to the absolute edge, and us to the edge of our seats. Jumping after his adversary with nothing but a handgun, the two find themselves in a vicious mid-air standoff. With gravity acting as a ticking clock, these best frenemies take our number one spot with flying colors.

Do you agree with our list? What gravity-fuelled adrenaline pumping scenes did we miss? For more top 10s about your favorite movies, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.