Tall orders: the best film skyscrapers – in pictures

Jeremy Renner and Tom Cruise, ahem, hang out in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) Photograph: Paramount/Everett/Rex Features Cruise as Ethan Hunt in the same film Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar Sam Worthington as a suicidal ex-con in Man on a Ledge (2012) Photograph: PR Christian Bale's Batman takes off in The Dark Knight (2008) Photograph: Warner Bros/Everett/Rex Features A still from Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) Photograph: Paramount/Everett/Rex Features King Kong stands on top of the Empire State Building in the original 1933 version Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/RKO Photograph: O/Allstar/Cinetext/RKO And here's Kong at the same point in Peter Jackon's remake (2005) Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar Silent comedy titan Harold Lloyd in Safety Last! (1923) Photograph: Rex Features Philippe Petit balanced a quarter of a mile above the New York sidewalk in Man on Wire (2008). Here, he is pictured on a high wire in Sydney Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar A shot from The Towering Inferno (1974) Photograph: 20th-Century Fox/Everett/Rex Features