During Spectre’s action-packed opening scene, 007 had to not only commandeer a helicopter, but also “perform” a couple of amazing stunts that were only made possible by one man.
His name is Chuck Aaron and according to Red Bull, he’s America’s only licensed aerobatic helicopter pilot who can perform amazing maneuvers such as the heli, flip, tumble and spin. After performing in air shows all around the world, Aaron decided to take his BO-105 to the set of the latest James Bond movie and do some breathtaking stunts.
It was director Sam Mendes who first approached Chuck about doing the stunts for the movie, and of course, he accepted, probably knowing that he was about to have the time of his life.
What’s interesting is that the team weren’t able to control the helicopter as they would have liked, because of the very high altitude and thin air, which meant they had to change locations and shoot the scenes in another city and edit the footage.
The end result was pretty great though, as those who have already seen the movie have stated. In terms of Bond-stunts, it may not be as crazy as jumping after after an airplane and actually catching up to it in mid-air, getting inside the cockpit and reversing the dive. As insane as that was (GoldenEye), it kind of upstaged this much newer and a lot more realistic, if we could call it that, stunt.
As for the Red Bull helicopter, it obviously needed a change of appearance, since the bad guys couldn’t have shown up there with a chopper full of decals.
Overall it was still an amazing project to take on for the Spectre stunt crew and we hope that next time they come up with something even crazier.