Boomtown: a visual history of Toronto getting blown up in movies
Boomtown: a visual history of Toronto getting blown up in movies
The White House was blown to smithereens by aliens in Independence Day. Michael Bay has let the Transformers and other astral forces wreck Chicago and Hong Kong. New York City’s Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty and other landmarks have been flooded, hit by asteroids, abandoned to ravenous vampires and left half-buried in post-nuclear, ape-controlled wastelands. You might think Toronto, perennial Gardiner construction and Rob Ford’s mayoralty notwithstanding, has been spared its own apocalypses—but we’ve had our share, too.
The recent release of the trailer for Adam Sandler’s new flick, Pixels, gave us a chance to see Pac Man, Donkey Kong and other video game villains wreaking havoc on the downtown core, albeit thinly disguised as a Manhattan city block. It may have been jarring to see split-second clips of Pac Man hanging out outside First Canadian Place, but this isn’t even remotely the first time Toronto has been blown up—blown up real good!—for the sake of cinema. Here, a rundown of a bunch of times Hogtown has been laid to waste by special effects.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Resident Evil: Apocalypse</em> (2004)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> City hall<br /> <br /> This early entry in the <em>Resident Evil</em> series of movies features evil mutants firing massive miniguns outside council chambers.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Resident Evil: Apocalypse</em> (2004)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> The entire city<br /> <br /> The movie's <em>piece de resistance</em> comes when the whole city (a.k.a. "Raccoon City" for fictional purposes) gets the mushroom-cloud treatment.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Resident Evil: Afterlife</em> (2010)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> Robarts Library<br /> <br /> The city is reduced to a post-apocalyptic wasteland and Robarts, in a bit of typecasting, plays a massive prison complex.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Dawn of the Dead</em> (2004)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> Brampton<br /> <br /> Zack Synder's remake of George Romero's cult classic opens with Sarah Polley trying to escape the newly undead as they rage through the suburban hell that is Brampton.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Dawn of the Dead</em> (2004)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> Thornhill Square Mall<br /> <br /> For most of the film, the characters are locked in here. The exterior shots feature the real mall on the left, but the rest is CGI.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>The Incredible Hulk</em> (2008)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> Yonge Street<br /> <br /> You probably remember the Yonge-Dundas area being shut down as they shot this movie. The computer-generated superhero ended up laying waste to the strip, which acted as a stand-in for Harlem. The Big Slice lives on.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>The Incredible Hulk</em> (2008)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> Knox College<br /> <br /> Bruce Banner also did some damage to Knox College’s quad when he hulked-out, but otherwise he left the city largely un-smashed.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Total Recall</em> (2012)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> Knox College (again)<br /> <br /> Much of this movie's world was created with special effects, but we do get this glimpse of real-life U of T.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Total Recall</em> (2012)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> The Gardiner Expressway<br /> <br /> It's easy to imagine Colin Farrell is actually dodging falling pieces of concrete.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Pacific Rim</em> (2013)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> Elizabeth Street<br /> <br /> This Guillermo del Toro monsters-versus-robots fightfest was one of the biggest films ever shot here. Sadly, most of its destruction was generated entirely on computers—except for this bit, a one-on-one fight in Tokyo that was shot behind city hall.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>X-Men</em> (2000)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> The Distillery District<br /> <br /> This was one of the first mega-productions to come to town. Most of the collateral damage was shot in studios, but the first time we see Wolverine put up his dukes it's in a bar, shot in the then-dormant Distillery District.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>X-Men</em> (2000)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> Rouge Park<br /> <br /> Wolverine meets his first mutant pals in the snowy environs of Rouge Park.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>X-Men</em> (2000)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> Hamilton's LIUNA train station<br /> <br /> The closest thing to a local landmark taking real damage happens when Cyclops accidentally lets loose in Hamilton.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Last Night</em> (1998)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> The entire world<br /> <br /> Toronto has actually played itself in some world-ending fare. It was a rather gentle and benign Pete Seeger-scored fade to white at the end of this Don McKellar film. You know things have really gone crazy when you can actually get a seat on the Queen streetcar.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Starship Invasions</em> (1977)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> First Canadian Place<br /> <br /> Most people probably don't remember it, but this so-bad-it's-actually-bad B-movie allows the city to play itself amidst an invasion of aliens. UFOs (strings nearly invisible!) eventually blow up the then-brand-new First Canadian Place.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Scott Pilgrim vs. the World</em> (2010)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> Lee's Palace<br /> <br /> Despite all the stylized fisticuffs in this film, in which Toronto plays itself, the city remains largely unscathed. That said, the back wall of Lee's Palace does get blown out.
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- <strong>Movie:</strong> <em>Scott Pilgrim vs. the World</em> (2010)<br /> <strong>Thing Destroyed:</strong> A patch of land south of Casa Loma<br /> <br /> Lucas Lee (Chris Evans) explodes after making the mistake of trying to grind his skateboard down the rails of Baldwin Steps, below Casa Loma.
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![](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://torontolife.com/culture/boomtown-visual-history-toronto-getting-blown-movies/&title=Boomtown: a visual history of Toronto getting blown up in movies&picture=https://cdn.torontolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/toronto-destroyed-the-informer.jpg&description=
The White House was blown to smithereens by aliens in Independence Day. Michael Bay has let the Transformers and other astral forces wreck Chicago and Hong Kong. New York City's Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty and other landmarks have been flooded, hit by asteroids, abandoned to ravenous vampires and left half-buried in post-nuclear, ape-controlled wastelands. You might think Toronto, perennial Gardiner construction and Rob Ford's mayoralty notwithstanding, has been spared its own apocalypses—but we’ve had our share, too.
The recent release of the trailer for Adam Sandler's new flick, Pixels, gave us a chance to see Pac Man, Donkey Kong and other video game villains wreaking havoc on the downtown core, albeit thinly disguised as a Manhattan city block. It may have been jarring to see split-second clips of Pac Man hanging out outside First Canadian Place, but this isn't even remotely the first time Toronto has been blown up—blown up real good!—for the sake of cinema. Here, a rundown of a bunch of times Hogtown has been laid to waste by special effects.
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