Parkour in popular culture

Parkour—an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body—has appeared in various television advertisements, news reports and entertainment pieces, sometimes combined with other forms of acrobatics like free running, street stunts and tricking. Such acrobatics are not part of parkour.

Films

• The 1977 theatrical documentary Gizmo! included Paramount Pictures newsreel footage dating from 1942 and featuring Italian-American urban acrobat John Ciampa performing numerous parkour-like techniques including wall-runs, speed-climbing a vertical drainpipe and leaping from building to building.
• After including parkour moves in a chase sequence in the film Taxi 2 (2000), in 2001 French producer Luc Besson produced a feature film, Yamakasi—Les samouraï des temps modernes (Yamakasi—the modern-day Samurai), featuring members of the original Yamakasi group. The film tells the (fictional) tale of a group of young friends who use their parkour skills to evade capture, while stealing money to fund the healthcare of a child that was injured copying their parkour training. In 2004, Besson wrote Banlieue 13, another feature film involving parkour, starring David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli; English-dubbed and -subtitled versions were released in 2006 as District B-13 in North America, and the UK. Later, members of Yamakasi group filmed for France 2 channel a documentary called Génération Yamakasi - Vol au dessus des cités.

• The biggest interest surge to date was created by the documentary Jump London, which explained some of the background to parkour and culminated with Sébastien Foucan and two other French traceurs (Johann Vigroux and Jérôme Ben Aoues) demonstrating their parkour skills at many famous London locations: HMS Belfast, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Somerset House and the Tate Gallery and Saatchi galleries amongst them. It is perhaps worth noting that David Belle received no mention in Jump London, despite often being accredited as the most important founder of parkour. Jump London was followed up by the sequel Jump Britain, once again featuring Foucan and Ben Aoues.

• The 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale features Sébastien Foucan in a chase taking place early in the movie that implements many aspects of parkour, specifically Foucan's related discipline of freerunning. The mainstream success of Casino Royale served to bring parkour to the attention of a wider audience and was emblematic of that movie's attempt to unite the superheroics of the James Bond franchise with a "real world" aesthetic. Casino Royale's release sparked a renewed media interest in parkour and related disciplines and a large amount of recent mainstream parkour coverage dates to around Casino Royale's release. Along with The Bourne Ultimatum, Casino Royale is credited with starting a new wave of parkour-inspired stunts in Western film and television.

• Parkour is featured prominently in the 2006 film Breaking and Entering, in which two of the characters employ parkour techniques to burgle an office in the Kings Cross, an area of London.

• The werewolves in the movie Blood and Chocolate used (in their human form) what appeared to be parkour as a demonstration of their superhuman agility.

• In the movie Live Free or Die Hard, Rand (played by Cyril Raffaelli), a sharpshooting hitman, uses parkour to both escape and pummel detective John McClane.

• In the movie Cop Out (2010), Dave (played by Seann William Scott) is a robber practicing Parkour, or so says Paul Hodges (played by Tracy Morgan). His partner (played by Bruce Willis), stunned by this display of knowledge, replies "What are you, Wikipedia ?".

• The 2010 film Iron Man 2 features several techniques performed by actress Scarlett Johansson that appear to be a a combination of martial arts and parkour.

• The character of Dastan (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) in the 2010 film "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" uses parkour extensively to highlight his fighting and escape abilities. David Belle was hired as parkour choreographer for the film and appears in the DVD and Blu-ray featurettes.

Literature

• Issue 6 of the limited series Global Frequency, written by noted comic book author Warren Ellis, tells the story of a young traceuse named Sita Patel who is tasked with the seemingly impossible mission of crossing London in under twenty minutes to defuse a biological weapon. The issue, titled The Run, is a varied and detailed (and mostly believable) treatment of the topic and remains one of the most memorable issues of the comic's publication. The series was published by Wildstorm Comics. In 2004, Global Frequency was nominated for an Eisner Award. This depiction in a critically acclaimed series by a high-profile speculative fiction writer helped give parkour a fashionable, exotic, and mysterious image among a young, educated and trend-conscious demographic.

• Adrenaline, a novel by Jeff Abbott, is about a CIA agent who practices parkour for exercise as well as using it in his work to evade capture.

• Kraków Melt, a novel by Daniel Allen Cox, is about a queer pyromaniac living in Poland who practices parkour in Kraków and in his district Nowa Huta.

Television

• In Top Gear (series 8) episode 7 which aired 23 July 2006, and on The Challenges DVD, James May races two parkour (free running) athletes across Liverpool in a Peugeot 207.

• Cops and Robbers, a 60-second ad directed by Garth Davis, includes Parkour sequences.

• The Australian version of 60 Minutes aired a segment about parkour on September 16, 2007, which featured Sébastien Foucan on a trip to Australia, and French traceur Stephane Vigroux.

• In House M.D., sixth season, episode five, entitled Brave Heart, a suspect uses parkour to evade the police during the show's cold open.

• In the twelfth episode of the first season of The Forgotten (TV series), aired February 9, 2010, titled "My John", the Forgotten Network explore the world of parkour while attempting to identify a young man who fell to his death from the roof of an office building.

• MTV's Ultimate Parkour Challenge premiered as a one-hour special in October 2009 starring the athletes of the World Freerunning & Parkour Federation (WFPF). This was followed in May 2010 with a six episode series of the same name, also featuring top WFPF traceurs, including Daniel Ilabaca, Tim "Livewire" Shieff, Ryan Doyle, Michael Turner, Oleg Vorslav, Ben Jenkin, Daniel Arroyo, Pip Andersen and King David, and hosted by Travis Wong and Andy Bell (formerly of Nitro Circus). The program format was a two-part weekly competition in different Southern California locations. First round was a "team video" round, the winners of which would advance to the Final Challenge for that week, either a speed or a skills challenge. The same competitors returned each week in order to keep the "competition" collegial and friendly.

• In the first episode of the sixth season of The Office (U.S. TV series), Michael, Dwight, and Andy engage in clumsy physical antics around the office bearing no relation to real parkour moves, including leapfrog, while shouting "Parkour!" Jim remarks, they "get from point A to point B as creatively as possible ... as long as point 'A' is delusion and point 'B' is the hospital."

• The 2010 Syfy miniseries The Phantom (TV series) opens with character Chris Moore (a.k.a. Kit Walker) and his friend performing parkour until a dangerous jump causes injury to the friend. Moore uses parkour again later in the pilot episode when fleeing from an assassin.

• WWE superstar John Morrison used the nickname "The Prince of Parkour" and uses many Parkour moves in his matches.

Video games

• In the Assassin's Creed series of games, Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad (AC1) and Ezio Auditore da Firenze (AC2) makes heavy use of parkour, however it is named freerunning in the game.

• Crackdown (2007) and Crackdown 2 (2010) are videogames released for the Xbox 360 which has been claimed to feature parkour elements. The elements in question are high running speeds, a superhuman ability to jump vertically and horizontally (in some cases clearing entire buildings) and an emphasis on gripping and vaulting from ledges and protruding objects. These elements are designed to make players feel fully in control of their own movement, and by extension fully in control of their environment (the city in which the game takes place), and are noteworthy within a wider movement in game design to achieve these goals.

• Tony Hawk's American Wasteland: the character that the player controls can use several parkour techniques whilst not on the skateboard. In the game parkour is erroneously referred to as free running. It is possible to wall-run, wire-grab and execute other parkour movements.

• Mirror's Edge is a 2008 videogame notable for having its core gameplay consist of parkour techniques such as wall-running, vaulting, break-falls and kick-and-spin jumps. Rather than using movement as a means to travel between goals, Mirror's Edge made movement itself the goal, and allowed players to overcome armed opponents by outrunning and outmaneuvering them rather than engaging them with violence. The game was innovative for presenting this movement-focused gameplay from a first-person perspective, depicting the main character's arms or feet coming into the player's field of view in a way that in earlier first-person games like Doom and Half-Life was used to depict guns or tools, and thereby using the game's interface to coach players to use their avatar's body and athleticism to solve problems rather than weapons or objects.

• In Grand Theft Auto IV, the main character, Niko Belic, performs some parkour movements, like Lazy Vault to jump over a fence or the parkour roll while jumping over great heights.

(Also if you download a mod in the PC version of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, the main character, Carl Johnson will performs a few parkour movements, such as the parkour roll.

• In Devil May Cry series, the main protagonist, Dante, uses parkour and free running movements to avoid enemy attack.

• In Ninja Gaiden, the main protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, uses parkour and free running moves.

• In the Uncharted series, although not explicitly named, is featured heavily around platforming which take the form of parkour movements, such as vaulting, break falls and wall running.

• In the PC game, N, parkour is used to move efficiently through levels.

• In Infamous, the main character, Cole MacGrath, uses an extensive amount of parkour to get around the cities. Other than using his electric based powers to slide across power lines or glide, parkour is his main way of getting around.