A clip of Tom Cruise filming a PSA during a stunt in South Africa has been making waves online for being, well, insane.
In the video, Cruise is squatting on a biplane talking to the camera. “As you can see we are filming the latest instalment of Mission Impossible,” he shouts across the wind. He has climbed out of his seat and is not attached - at least as far as you can see - to the plane in any way. He is simply hanging onto the rig with one hand, while using the other to gesture to the camera.
Then, as if that isn’t enough, as he speaks in the one-minute video he actually stands up. Director Christopher McQuarrie (who also directed the last two instalments of the franchise) interrupts Cruise saying they need to keep filming because they’re losing light.
“See you at the movies,” says Cruise and then the plane nose dives to the left - so fast and angled that the plane is 90-degrees from its upright position - and all the while Cruise is still standing up and holding on with one hand.
“Tom Cruise has lost his damn mind,” said one Twitter user, which succinctly summed up the majority of the internet’s response.
I feel less thrilled by this stunt and more nauseous
— SPENCE, TODD (@Todd_Spence) September 5, 2022
“Pffft!i’m sweating and my legs are numb!” replied one viewer, while another Tweeted: “Tom Cruise is just going to keep doing stunts forever until one kills him.”
Tom Cruise every time he does a death defying stunt for the sake of audience's entertainment knowing all too well nobody else on this planet would even dare dream of doing such things https://t.co/4IO9IVmjUa pic.twitter.com/Ontwt47rS3
— ChunkyDickster (@wa_ge69) September 4, 2022
According to TMZ, the clip was leaked online with no traceable source, but had already been shown at CinemaCon in April.
Cruise is currently filming part two of the last two instalments of Mission Impossible. Filming of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has already wrapped and is set to be released in July 2023, while part two will be released the following summer.
When the first film’s teaser trailer was released in May, it racked up 12 million views. It will see Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames and Vanessa Kirby reprise their roles, while Esai Morales (Ozark, Titans), Henry Czerny (Revenge, The Tudors) and Hayley Atwell (Avengers: Endgame) join the cast.
60-year-old Cruise is well-known for doing his own stunts, which seem to be getting more complicated and dangerous with every film. In September 2020, while filming for the seventh film, Cruise was seen riding a motorbike off a cliff in Norway. The motorbike went crashing to the ground while Cruise launched a parachute.
As reported by Variety, Cruise later said: “This is far and away the most dangerous thing I’ve attempted. I wanted to do it since I was a little kid.”
Tom Cruise is an absolute madman #MI7 https://t.co/tWzd7GkWPb pic.twitter.com/c7PXYuWPj7
— Tom_Cody (@Tom_Cody_SP) September 7, 2020
According to Variety, the costs of the stunts (which have been exacerbated by filming delays), plus the filming delays themselves, have caused the cost of the Mission Impossible films to balloon. Multiple sources reportedly said that Mission: Impossible 7 cost as much as $290 million to make (for comparison, the sixth film cost approximately $178 million).
Nevertheless, it’s a gamble worth making as the films will undoubtedly turn a profit: 2018’s Mission: Impossible - Fallout made $791 million, while 2015’s Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, made $682 million.
Tom Cruise is having a very good year. His May-released Top Gun: Maverick - the 36-year later sequel to the film that made Cruise famous - pulled in a massive $1.4 billion, becoming Cruise’s most lucrative film of his career.
