Ron Howard is a hell of a director. He knows how to get the image that he wants. And he knows how to do it so that it will hold up practically forever. His 1991 fire-fighters movie Backdraft is not an exception. The fire sequences are so real and so visceral in this film, despite being done 3 decades ago, that perhaps this film is even better when it comes to planning shots that hold up than his Apollo 13 movie ( where he used real weightlessness to shoot the space scenes ).