Part of the Tom Cruise movie Knight and Day was filmed in Boston. There’s a car chase scene through the underground highway tunnels at one point. Anybody that’s driven here for more than a few days would recognize that there’s no way the chase could play out the way it did. The tunnels don’t interconnect the way the movie shows it.
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I know a guy who spent 40+ years in special effects. He now goes around giving talks/demonstrations about it all. He has a series of photos showing how a typical car is rigged to explode into a fireball.
Depending on what the director is looking for, steel horns are welded to the car frame inside each door, the hood, trunk, windshield, etc. The horns will direct the fireball out the car when ignited. Each horn holds an explosive similar to gasoline connected to a detonator.
After that, each window is wired with a squib, a small explosive smaller than a coin that will shatter the window about 1/10th of a second before the fireballs are ignited.
If necessary the hood, trunk, and/or doors are also wired with smaller explosives to pop them open immediately before the fireball as well.
All those smaller explosives are needed to get the doors/windows out of the way for the main fireball explosives. The fireball doesn’t have enough punch to push the doors open on its own, and it also provides significantly more control of the whole explosion. (You’re not guessing where the windshield might get blown to, etc).