BLASTERMIND Demolition Time

Some have argued that Avengers Assemble blew the box-office away so extraordinarily because it’s the first movie to recover from tip-toeing around 9/11 and destroy New York with reckless abandon.

There’s few tropes movies relish more than demolishing famous landmarks, firstly because of the pure scale of the CGI spectacle, but also because it can touch on powerful nationalistic fears. For American audiences, nothing says disaster like The White House reduced to rubble, but Washington is far from the only city to be the victim of cinematic devastation. Five of the most picked on are New York, Los Angles, Paris, Las Vegas and London, with Big Ben becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination for silver screen explosions. Not to mention that 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow managed to trash pretty much the entire planet between them.

In honour of such carnage, today’s Blastermind features some of movie history’s biggest bangs, as well a few trickier firecrackers. One point for the film, one point for the landmark.

Usual request: please don’t put answers in the comments section below (though feel free to use it to boast/bemoan how well/badly you’re doing) but the folks on this thread are quite happy for you to post and discuss answers if you follow the golden rule of only posting answers in invisible text (if you don’t know how ask somebody there – they’re very friendly).

This week’s quiz written and complied by Emma Geen

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Answers on the next page…