Set your hero an impossible task that can only be accomplished through devilish cunning and godlike derring-do, involving planes, trains and automobiles, and watch the money come rolling in. Then make him do it all over again. And again.
This might be a reductive way of looking at the Mission: Impossible series, over whose seven-film span nuclear catastrophe has been prevented, biological warfare averted and international arms dealers foiled, but it is what generations of fans have come to expect.
For an action hero like Ethan Hunt, it is all in a day’s work. For Tom Cruise, the actor who has played him since 1996, it has involved a 27-year run of high‑jeopardy projects, the most recent of which – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One – has swept away any previous scepticism.
It is astonishing that Mr Cruise should still be leaping from motorbikes on to moving trains aged 61, especially after breaking his ankle five years ago in an earlier Mission: Impossible chase. But it is equally surprising, in an increasingly risk-averse world, that stunt work itself has survived the safer, more insurable option of computer-generated imagery (CGI).
It is, after all, a dangerous and sometimes fatal business. Michelle Yeoh, winner of best actress at this year’s Oscars and another sexagenarian who does her own stunts, has said: “I think the worst I have to live with is having a dislocated shoulder, a cracked rib, one of my neck vertebrae is slightly dislocated, ruptured artery, torn ligaments... ”
Mr Cruise and Ms Yeoh are part of a predominantly male “method-action” tradition stretching back to the silent film era. Ms Yeoh earned her chops in Hong Kong action films, starring alongside Jackie Chan in 1992’s Police Story 3: Super Cop, in which she pipped Mr Cruise to the motorbike-to-moving train leap, but without a parachute. She is not the only female star who insists on doing her own stunts. But most are performed by highly trained body doubles.
The idea that such risky exploits are the preserve of men faced its first legal challenge in 2017, when an American stuntwoman, Deven MacNair, filed a discrimination complaint about a stuntman doubling for a female actor in a horror film. Though the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled against her, her suit sent a strong message that “wigging” – as such impersonation is known – should no longer be standard.
Just as CDs have reawakened us to the pleasures of vinyl records, the ubiquity of CGI has created a connoisseurship of real bodies hurtling through real space. There is, of course, always a certain amount of illusion involved: nobody blames a stunt worker for falling on to a mattress that has to be digitally erased in post‑production. Protecting these men and women must be paramount, and studios have not always done so sufficiently. But there is a power in knowing that a gravity-defying feat actually happened, and a beauty in the skill involved.
When support crafts such as makeup and costume design have a place on the red carpets, it is shocking that there is no Bafta or Oscar for those who offer up life and limb to serve the thrill of film. They could start with a lifetime achievement award for Yuen Woo-ping, the kung fu-trained master of a stunt metaverse that extends from The Matrix to Kill Bill and Ms Yeoh’s own breakthrough film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
