On March 1, the 2026 Actor Awards<\/a> (that\u2019s still so weird to type) will include two of the few major honors for stuntwork. The Award for Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture, and the same for a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Show. That got the IndieWire Craft team thinking about some of the trickiness and nuance behind stunt performances and their excellence \u2014 what are we really talking about there?<\/p>\n Is it about honoring the team capable of the most extreme physical feats captured on film<\/a>? Or is it more about the level of beauty, intricacy, and artistry in a given stunt, like a cinematography conversation but with even more harnesses and carabiners? Or is it even more of a question of direction and how integrally a stunt sequence contributes to the film or show its in? Or something else?\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n None of these are the wrong answers, either. Really great stunts<\/a> tick all of those boxes, and sometimes one of them is way more important to the success of a film or show than the others. But it\u2019s not always clear, even when stuntwork is being honored, what aspect of the incredibly demanding and complex discipline is in the spotlight. So, since nobody stopped us, and since there will be a Best Stunt Design <\/a>Oscar in 2028, we decided to play a similarly speculative game to our fictitious Best Casting winners of the 21st Century<\/a> and guess who would be nominated for a Best Stunt Design award from the crop of 2025 films.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, before we just give it to the biplane sequence from \u201cMission Impossible: The Final Reckoning<\/a>,\u201d it\u2019s worth thinking about what we at IndieWire, at least, mean when we\u2019re talking about great Stunt Design.<\/p>\n \u00a0Because, OK \u2014 I, Sarah Shachat, will never get over watching some behind-the-scenes footage for the \u201cAssassin\u2019s Creed\u201d movie and how they did the stunt for the iconic \u201cLeap of Faith<\/a>\u201d from the video game. It\u2019s so impressive! Stuntman Damien Wells performed a 125 freefall at over 60 miles per hour, and they got it on film. But when you look at that scene in the movie\u2026 you\u2019d never be able to tell. And not in a good way. It\u2019s smoky. It\u2019s colorless. Because there\u2019s very little tactile detail for the viewer\u2019s eye to grab onto and because of the way the camera moves, it looks<\/em> like CGI, even though it isn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n Which is all to say that the Academy will do whatever it wants (and eligibility rules for the Stunt Design Oscar aren\u2019t dropping until 2027), but the first rule we<\/em> are imposing is that the stunts<\/a> have to be both physically and visually impressive. We want to be able to tell we\u2019re watching real people do real things.\u00a0<\/p>\n The second rule is that this is going to be limited to the stunt design in action films. There are great and often invisible stunts in movies you wouldn\u2019t ever think about having them \u2014 of course, A$AP Rocky had a double when it came time to fall through that flooded apartment flooring in \u201cIf I Had Legs, I\u2019d Kick You<\/a>\u201d \u2014 and there is artform to that. But we\u2019re going to look at films where the action is integral to the progression of the story and the means by which protagonists solve both their physical and emotional problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n The third rule is that we are looking at the stunt design of a particular sequence. The nominees don\u2019t have to have the most stunts or even the stunts with the highest degree of physical difficulty. What they have to have is one or more outstanding stunt sequences where architecting, coordinating, and executing them safely makes or breaks the movie around them. We\u2019re talking about the Octoboss drag race in \u201cFuriosa\u201d and the overhead shootout sequence in \u201cJohn Wick.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The fourth rule, as always, is that this is for fun.<\/p>\n Now, with that, here would be our 2026 nominees for Best Stunt Design.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBallerina\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0 Why:<\/strong> You rarely think of flamethrowers as tactical weapons, but hey, the \u201cJohn Wick\u201d franchise is nothing if not creative. \u201cBallerina\u201d has a ton of great instances of gun-fu and even some duelling grenades that are sharply and spectacularly choreographed by Stephen Dunlevy and his team. The flamethrower fight pulls at the audience\u2019s collars just as a matter of logistics \u2014 we haven\u2019t seen a lot like this before and can\u2019t quite anticipate the rhythm of the sequence. The progression of it is very creative, showcasing Ana de Armas\u2019s scrappy Eve problem-solving in real time. It\u2019s a great partnership between stunts, camera, and sound design (they\u2019re almost using lightsaber noises) to help us really feel it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cF1\u201d\u00a0<\/strong> Why: <\/strong>It\u2019s handy that \u201cF1\u201d had so much race footage from the actual cars and teams on the grid and even snuck their modified F2 cars into some of the functions of real F1 races to double as the fictional Apex GP. But Joshua Pearce\u2019s (Damson Idris) crash at Monza had to be fully constructed \u2014 and it is well constructed indeed. Gary Powell and his team had to deal with a lot of variables to make that sequence look seamless, including rocketing a (empty) car into one of the corners at Brands Hatch, fire and crane work, and integration with F1 cars going 200 miles per hour around corners. It is definitely the stuntiest, most \u201cHollywood\u201d moment in a film that\u2019s trying to play-act at racing, but it\u2019s a great stunt.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMission: Impossible \u2014 The Final Reckoning\u201d\u00a0<\/strong> Why: <\/strong>I mean, we watch Tom Cruise getting tossed around in the air on the side of not one but two<\/em> airplanes. It\u2019s unreal. Please watch it if you haven\u2019t yet. The honest truth is that what\u2019s impressive isn\u2019t the Tom Cruise of it all, either, although he\u2019s the only man in the world who could anchor a sequence like this. Cruise will continue to come as close as he can to dying on camera as possible, as evidenced by the fact that we also could have picked the submarine fight from later in this same film! It\u2019s Wade Eastwood and his team for figuring out the logistics of even how to do this safely, from wind direction to particle inhalation to preventing bird strikes. They did. And it looks absolutely incredible.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d\u00a0<\/strong> Why: <\/strong>Look, a lot of the fun of the sequence in its buildup is about location, shot framing, and editing, but it also requires getting the timing of the driving and the ultimate stunts exactly right. It\u2019s quieter and lower intensity than all our other fake nominees \u2014 no stakes, no flamethrowers \u2014\u00a0but it really requires a lot of Teanna Taylor in particular, and therefore a lot of training for and building around what the actors are able to do. Brian Machleit does this flawlessly, with driving stunts into traffic so teeth-grindingly manic and tense you\u2019ll need a new night guard.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"BOXCAR](\"https:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/MBDBOBE_EC005-1.jpg?w=300&h=168&crop=1\")
<\/div>\n![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Tom-Cruise-dans-Mission-Impossible-The-Final-Reckoning-2030621.jpg?w=650\")
![\"BALLERINA,](\"https:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/MCDBALL_LG012.jpg?w=650\")
Stunt Coordinator:<\/strong> Stephen Dunlevy
The Sequence:<\/strong> Fighting fire with flamethrowers\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n
Stunt Coordinator:<\/strong> Gary Powell
The Sequence:<\/strong>\u00a0Monza GP<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Sequence:<\/strong> Hanging out on some biplanes<\/a>
Stunt Coordinator:<\/strong> Wade Eastwood\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Sequence: <\/strong>All the car chases are so good, but this one<\/a> is great.
Stunt Coordinator:<\/strong> Brian Machleit<\/p>\n