Fire Extinguishers in Films
Fire Extinguishers in films are a pretty popular prop, so here are 5 popular encounters with the big red cannisters in famous movies.
1. Gravity (2013)
This film features a notorious scene where Sandra Bullock’s character Dr. Ryan Stone ejects herself from her Soyuz spacecraft and propels herself towards Tiagong. To do this she uses a fire extinguisher as a makeshift thruster to travel to the rapidly deorbiting spacecraft. The fire extinguisher is shown to push Dr. Stone through space and is used to project her towards the passing spacecraft. This scene was actually busted on MythBusters Jr. where they attempted to see if it would actually work. They found that the fire extinguisher lacked enough force to fully change the direction of the user and just didn’t have enough force like it was shown to have in the movie.
2. Irréversible (2002)
This psychological thriller starts off with a horrific and graphic scene featuring a man getting his face smashed in by a fire extinguisher. This comes from Vincent Cassel’s character Marcus thinks he has found the man that killed his girlfriend. The fight then starts in a gay bar in Paris. With the potential murderer getting the advantage in the fight, Marcus’ friend steps in and beats the potential murderer’s face using a fire extinguisher. This scene then gets very graphic and disturbing to watch as the man beats the potential murderer’s face to a pulp, using the fire extinguisher. This film plays in a reverse order of the scenes creating an interesting look on the events that happened on that Paris night.
3. WALL-E (2008)
This fantastic childhood staple film is an absolute classic. The scene near the end of the film shows WALL-E launched into space in a space shuttle in an attempt to retrieve the plant. EVE then projects herself out to save WALL-E but then sees the spacecraft explode. WALL-E bursts past EVE using a fire extinguisher as a thruster in space to project himself through space. The scene then follows on with EVE and WALL-E shooting through space around the giant ship (The Axiom). WALL-E uses his fire extinguisher to propel him around with EVE in celebration of saving the plant. This film tells an amazing story and was selected for preservation in the United States Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
4. Salt (2010)
This American action-thriller film is about the woman Evelyn Salt being accused of being a Russian sleeper agent. She then goes on the run in an attempt to clear her name. The scene depicts Salt stuck in a room with armed police closing on her location. Salt then creates a weapon using chemicals and a fire extinguisher to then shoot at the police when they get into the room to allow for her escape. This then works with her shooting the fire extinguisher at them as they are about to enter. This then leaves them unconscious on the floor, allowing for Salt to steal a gun and escape the complex. In her escape she shoots at security cameras to restrict the over watchers vision on her location.
5. Nightmare at the Museum (2006)
The fantastic fantasy film depicts a museum night guard played by Ben Stiller. His simple job quickly turns into something else when the exhibits come to life after dark. In the scene where the cavemen are depicted ‘discovering fire’, the fire spreads and Ben Stiller’s character Larry quickly puts out the fire with his foam fire extinguisher. This quickly turns into the cavemen tasting the foam and throwing it at Larry’s face. Then follows Larry’s famous quote “Why?”, which erupts the cavemen into laughter. The scene continues with Larry having foam on his face and around his mouth. This then leads to the infamous slapping the monkey scene. Larry and a monkey continuously slap each other over a set of keys to the museum.