Tom Cruise’s Craziest M:I Stunts
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is now playing
The MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE series is known for a few consistent elements. There’s the star power of Tom Cruise. There’s the supporting cast, which features a consistent set of players including Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Michelle Monaghan, and Rebecca Ferguson.
Then there are the stunts. In the six films so far (the seventh, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE, opens on July 12) we’ve seen Cruise crawl on cliffs, leap from buildings, and hang from a giant plane in mid-air. “They seem to let you do everything,” director Christopher McQuarrie jokes to Cruise on the ROGUE NATION Blu-ray commentary, as they discuss one of his insane stunts.
The first part of DEAD RECKONING is sure to have even more stunts we could add to this list, but for now let’s look back at Tom Cruise’s greatest MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE stunts so far.
Yes, there are bigger stunt scenes in the series. But Ethan Hunt’s CIA break-in, during which he hangs from wires just a couple feet, and in some cases only a few inches, off the floor, is a standard-setter. First, the stunt itself requires incredible physical control, and Cruise nails it, showing off his character’s poise and control. Secondly, it’s one of the greatest suspense sequences ever filmed, period. Brian De Palma, who has made a career out of great suspense, outdid himself here. For nearly two decades, images from this sequence were iconic enough to represent the entire series, and it’s easy to see why.
The first sequel, from director John Woo, has some motorcycle and fight set pieces that are ridiculously fun, but which don’t quite clear the bar we’ve set for stunt work. But the film’s opening, in which Cruise performed the rock climbing seen in long shots, is impressive. Yes, there was a harness, but that’s still him out there on sheer rock faces, hundreds of feet off the ground.
The third MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE film has fewer big stunts than most films in the series. The bridge attack scene, however, in which Cruise doesn’t quite escape an explosion, has a simple but very effective bit of stunt work. While running, Cruise is jerked into a nearby car to simulate the effect of the explosion. He only cracked a couple ribs in the process.
Digital effects don’t do everything. Like the train sequence in the first film, this M:I–III stunt does feature a lot of digital additions. The entire city around Cruise as he jumps from the “top” of a building is actually created digitally. But Cruise did jump from the top of a set built several stories high, allowing the camera to begin close on his face and follow as he runs, then leaps off the roof. No matter who you are, falling multiple stories while attached to a cable is no easy day at work. A very cool one, but not an easy one.
The fourth film, GHOST PROTOCOL, is where the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE stunt machine went into overdrive. This was also the first M:I film that featured shots in IMAX format, and this showstopping sequence mixes both elements. Ethan Hunt has to climb the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, because – well, it doesn’t matter why. What matters is that Cruise himself did the stunt work, hanging from the side of the building over a thousand feet in the air.
The fifth film in the series, ROGUE NATION, has some tremendous stunt work, and let’s begin with Cruise’s escape from the bone doctor. He spends the scene hanging from a pole, arms locked above him – and then he crunches up to kick a guy before crabbing UP THE POLE and flipping off. It’s the greatest Crossfit video ever shot. According to director McQuarrie and the star himself, the action is all Cruise, who was 52 at the time he shot it.
How long can you hold your breath? Cruise held his breath for three minutes while performing this sequence. That’s not just sitting around trying not to breathe, but doing a complicated scene in character for those very long minutes. He also dove 120 feet into a tank for the shot that opens this incredibly tense underwater sequence.
Why not open a movie with a sequence you’ll never see another actor repeat? For the beginning of ROGUE NATION, Cruise clung to the side of a military plane as it took off. Of course there was a harness, but that’s still Cruise, clinging on and looking great in a NORTH BY NORTHWEST-inspired suit. He did this eight times. EIGHT TIMES. Maybe after the first one you’d be begging to go back up… but maybe you’d be screaming to never fly again after two. “It was freezing cold, we were worried about bird strikes… and the fumes from the engine,” Cruise says on the blu-ray’s commentary track. And that’s all on top of the minor danger of simply falling off the plane.
Now, if we really want to talk about cool and extremely difficult jumps, let’s talk about the scene from the sixth installment, MISSION: IMPOSSION – FALLOUT, when Ethan Hunt and August Walker (Henry Cavill) literally drop in on a party in Paris by jumping from a plane an into a storm. You might be astonished to find out that – save the lightning strikes – everything about that HALO jump was real and achieved by rigging a camera to the head of an operator skydiving with Cruise at a close distance. Not to mention, because the scene is set at sundown, the sequence had to be shot in one take in order to capture the right lighting, but not after Cruise endured a year of training, according to a featurette released by Paramount.
While hanging from the outside of a plane is a tough act to top, Cruise came shockingly close in the next installment, FALLOUT, when he was dangled from a helicopter flying over a mountain range. That is what Ethan Hunt must do in order to hijack the aircraft – which Cruise trained for weeks in order to actually fly on camera – but nearly dies in the process when he falls, only to be saved by the payload at the end of the hanging rope. According to The Wrap, the actor very well could have died in real life when he actually performed five takes of that dropping stunt, which cast members did not realize was intentional at first, much to their distress.
Fans who have been following any of the marketing for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE know that Cruise has more daredevil tasks in store with this latest installment, including that one that sees him riding his favorite vehicle – a motorcycle – off the cliff of a mountain. See the full sequence in all its glory on the big screen by experiencing Hunt’s next mission at an AMC Theatres location near you!
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is now playing
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