The Morning Watch: Analyzing Explosions In Movies Like 'The Dark Knight', 'Chernobyl' VFX Breakdown & More

The Morning Watch is a recurring feature that highlights a handful of noteworthy videos from around the web. They could be video essays, fanmade productions, featurettes, short films, hilarious sketches, or just anything that has to do with our favorite movies and TV shows.

In this edition, an explosive engineer and special effects expert review some big explosions from movies like The Dark Knight, Rush Hour, Desperado and more. Plus, check out a visual effects breakdown from the award-winning HBO miniseries Chernobyl, and listen as Guy Pearce breaks down some of his most memorable roles, including Memento, Iron Man 3 and more.

First up, Vanity Fair had explosives engineer and professor Paul Worsey and special effects supervisor Tassilo Baur take a look at explosion scenes from movies to analyze them from both an engineering perspective and a filmmaking perspective. For example, did you know that shrapnel and frag are two different kinds of explosive debris used in grenades? Find out more interesting facts as they look at The Dark Knight, Rush Hour, Desperado, Batman Returns and more.

Next up, DNEG walks us through the visual effects work they did on the HBO series Chernobyl. The VFX supervisor Max Dennison guides us through some of the 550 shots they created for the series, including the design of the reactor #4 building inside and out, developing complex destruction and smoke simulations, creating CG vehicles like cars and helicopters, and animating crowds.

Finally, Guy Pearce can currently be seen in Bloodshot (coming soon to VOD far ahead of the usual schedule), so he sat down with GQ to look back at some of his most memorable characters. Listen as he reminisces about starring in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Christopher Nolan's Memento, LA Confidential, The Hurt Locker, Iron Man 3, Prometheus, and more.