Motorcycles and films are both synonymous with escapism and adventure, so it’s no wonder that the two are a match made in cinematic heaven. Back in 2018 we commissioned a survey to find out which motorcycle movie scenes UK motorcyclists’ thought were the best.

But since then, there’s been a raft of newcomers, whether that be in James Bond flicks or the latest Mission: Impossible, so we’ve now updated the list accordingly. Here’s our new pick of the best. 

The Great Escape is a Christmas classic and provides heart-stopping moment after moment. Arguably the greatest moment of all is Steve McQueen’s epic fence jump.

During the climactic motorcycle chase, director John Sturges let motorcycle buff McQueen play one of the chasing German soldiers — meaning he was sort of chasing himself. While McQueen did many of the motorcycle scenes himself, the film’s insurance barred him from taking on the jump, which was instead done by his buddy and stunt partner Bud Edkins.

The bike itself, meanwhile, has since been rediscovered by Triumph collector Dick Shepherd and is now on show at the Triumph museum in Hinckley.

As will become obvious throughout this ‘Top 10’ movie star Tom Cruise is a big bike fan, with his love of motorcycles being displayed in many action sequences not just in Mission: Impossible but in films like Knight and Day, The Edge of Tomorrow and more.

But it arguably all started with Top Gun. The fighter pilot flick was the highest-grossing film of 1986, pulling in $177 million at the box office with a memorable sequence with him aboard a Kawasaki GPz900R.

The story was then reprised in 2022’s sequel, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ with the bike this time updated to Kawasaki’s supercharged H2R, although if you look closely, the original GPz Ninja does make an appearance early on. 

British brand CCM may have most recently hit the headlines for falling into administration but back in 2019 it roared onto the big screen in style, joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as it supplied six CCM Spitfire bikes for the film Black Widow, starring Scarlett Johanneson and Florence Pugh.

To commemorate it, CCM created the Blackout model, which sold out before the film was even released and featured a pair of high-mounted free-flowing exhausts. 

An 18-wheeler truck, motorcycle chase along a Los Angeles creek featuring Arnie firing a shotgun is a winning combination.

Robert Patrick landed the role as T-1000, however, originally Billy Idol was pegged for the job. Unfortunately, it never came to be as Idol had to pull out of the film after injuring his leg in a motorcycle accident.

The bike used, meanwhile, Harley-Davidson’s then new FLSTF Fat Boy, as developed by HD design legend Willie G. Davidson, became an instant best-seller. 

The action-adventure film series Indiana Jones has featured action sequences with motorcycles not once but twice.

In the  third installment of the franchise, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, released in 1989, the film features a motorcycle chase that was actually added post-production. After viewing a rough film cut, Spielberg decided the film needed more action, so the sequence was shot and added in.

Then, in 2008, for Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, a Harley-Davidson Softail Springer Classic customized to reflect the movie's 1957 period setting features prominently during one of the film's signature action-packed chase scenes with co-star Shia LaBeouf tearing through a college campus with Harrison Ford along for the ride as a passenger.

Harley-Davidson Motor Company prepared five bikes for this movie and after the completion of filming, two were returned to the Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Museum.

The legendary James Bond series is no strange to motorcycle action sequences with the first, a BSA, featuring in 1965’s fourth instalment, Thunderball.

Since then we’ve seen jet bikes and wet bikes, sidecars and motocrossers and, most recently, in the latest instalment, 2021’s No Time To Die, a series of Triumphs.

First, our hero, played by Daniel Craig but with the stunt actually done by world enduro champion Paul Edmondson, leaps a Triumph Scrambler 1200 over a city wall. Then, later, a series of Tiger 900s chase Bond through Norway. 

Tom Cruise again, but this time not a Mission: Impossible or Top Gun, and not a BMW, Triumph or Kawasaki but a Ducati Hypermotard – or not.

In one memorable scene from the action comedy Cruise and his accidental sidekick Cameron Diaz make their escape on a stolen example of the Italian supermoto doing all sorts of implausible stunts including jumps – except it’s since been revealed that the Ducati wasn’t up to the rigours of one of the jumps so was substituted for a disguised Aprilia instead! 

Next, not one, but two Mission: Impossible films – simply because the bike sequences are so good we couldn’t ignore them.

Remember how we said lead man Tom Cruise is a big bike buff? Well, nowhere is this more evident than in his own Mission: Impossible franchise, with bikes appearing from the second instalment on right up to the present day.

2015’s Rogue Nation saw one of the biggest scenes, with Cruise and co-star Rebecca Ferguson in a chase scene in Morocco aboard BMW S1000RRs. Rebecca, incidentally, was stunt doubled by ex-BSB racer Jenny Tinmouth and wore leathers custom made by British firm Hideout… 

… then, in its sequel in 2018, there were more bikes galore: first Cruise, aboard a BMW RNineT Pure makes a daring escape through the streets of Paris (in a sequence, incidentally, partly filmed by British ex-MX champion Rob Herring) then comes across a bike-mounted Ferguson again (and again stunt doubled by Jenny Tinmouth), this time rider a Triumph Tiger 900. 

But the sequence featuring Audrey Hepburn ‘riding’ a Vespa scooter through the streets of Rome with co-star Gregory Peck remains one of the most memorable ‘motorcycle’ movie moments of all time.

It features the world’s oldest surviving Vespa and the third made by Piaggio from the “0 series”. The scooter was recently sold at auction for over a quarter of a million dollars.

Not only did the film propel Hepburn to stardom, but also the Vespa itself. Over 100,000 units were sold after the film’s release in 1953.