Actor Tom Cruise, who just turned 61 this week, pulled off a death-defying stunt in the newest Mission Impossible film that has been acclaimed as the "biggest and most dangerous stunt in cinema history".
Crew from behind the scenes of Paramount Pictures gave an inside look at the master plan behind executing the daring scene in the seventh instalment of the Mission Impossible series franchise Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
Cruise has been famously known in Hollywood for fearlessly performing his own stunts, and he's not slowing down now. In a 10-minute video posted by Paramount in December, the star shocks audiences with a scene of him driving a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff and falling from the sky, then dismounting the bike and parachuting into a Norwegian valley.
In the video, director Christopher McQuarrie says: "This is far and away the most dangerous thing we've ever attempted. We've been working on this for years."
McQuarrie says that Tom was very hands-on in his involvement with the planning on the scene: "So Tom put together this master plan to coordinate all of these experts in each of the particular disciplines involved to make this whole thing happen."
The stunt required an enormous amount of training and preparation including over 13,000 motorcycle jumps and 500 skydives. Cruise has performed many dangerous stunts throughout the Mission Impossible series, but this film outshines them all with members of the crew even speaking out saying that they 'might lose Tom Cruise' in death-defying stunts.
Simon Pegg, co-star of Tom Cruise, expressed these fears in an interview with Deadline at the premiere saying: "Tom is jumping off cliffs on a motorbike he’s hanging his you know, hanging off trains — it’s genuinely dangerous stuff."
In preparing for this treacherous scene, the Top Gun actor needed to be well-trained in both BASE jumping and on the motorcycle. For the newest film a motocross track was built which Cruise would practice on. On this track, the star would jump 80ft tabletops which was done a total of 13,000 times during the duration of his training.
In the video Cruise shares: "I have to get so good at this that there's just no way that I miss my marks. You train and drill every little aspect over and over and over and over again."
Wade Eastwood, the stunt coordinator of the project, explained that Cruise would do over 30 jumps at day to the point that he was "just a machine." To recreate the jump that was going to take place in the film, the crew created a replica which was made with a ramp and quarry. that was filled with cardboard boxes to catch the motorcycle. This setup was created in England to simulate the jump that was later filmed in Hellesylt, Norway in 2020.
McQuarrie explained that they had to be able to "consistently predict where Tom was going to be in three-dimensional space" when creating the ramps and having Cruise perform the jumps.
To help with this planning a GPS chip recorded all of Cruise's jumps and speed as well as other factors such as crosswind or headwind in order to create an accurate set of data. By analyzing this data, the crew were able to calculate the height the star was reaching and made sure that all of the cameras and drones were placed properly to capture the moment.
Cruise explained that the key to the stunt was hitting specific speeds and being consistent. He said that there was no speedometer, so he had to do it through the "sound and feel of the bike." He said that when he departed the bike he was using the wind that was hitting him, cupping his chest, and through that he was able to get a lift.
Miles Daisher, the BASE jumping coach of the film, said: "Tom Cruise is an amazing individual. You tell him something and he just locks in in. His sense of spatial awareness, he's the most aware person I've ever met."
This was just one of the many wild stunts Cruise performed on set during the newest Mission Impossible him, which is out in theatres July 12. Cruise shares that he loves being able to perform stunts like these and is not looking at retiring from the screen any time soon.
In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Tom says that he is inspired by Harrison Ford acting at 80, and says: "I hope to keep making Mission Impossible films until I'm his age."
