With Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One nearly upon us, promising even more death-defying Tom Cruise action, Daniel Rutledge looks at the best of the superstar’s stunts.
Tom Cruise’s motorcycle parachute jump in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
This epic, instantly iconic stunt has driven the marketing for the latest Mission: Impossible because who the hell wouldn’t want to see a movie with this in it? It’s being billed as the most death-defying stunt of Tom Cruise’s career thus far and he undertook 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps to prepare for it.
Tom Cruise gets a knife super close to his eye in Mission: Impossible II
Legend has it director John Woo wanted the knife in this scene to be held pretty far away from Tom Cruise’s eye for safety reasons. But Tom Cruise being Tom Cruise meant that shit would not fly. He demanded it get really close—one quarter of an inch, to be precise. It’s a prop knife, but that doesn’t stop the end result being a wonderfully exciting moment that made millions of people wince hard.
Tom Cruise’s HALO jump in Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Tom Cruise breaking his ankle while jumping between buildings for this movie shuffled the schedule around and meant he actually did this HALO (high altitude low opening) skydive for real from 25,000 feet above the earth. He did 106 jumps over two weeks to get this done and for many of them, he flew himself there by helicopter so he could clock up the required helicopter pilot hours he needed to complete a later stunt in the film. This man is superhuman, he truly is.
Tom Cruise flopping about in a zero-gravity plane in The Mummy
The best thing about this movie is that the trailer was somehow uploaded with half its sound missing—one of the most insane Hollywood mistakes ever. The second best thing about this movie is Tom Cruise firing on all cylinders while being thrown about in a real zero-gravity plane set, grunting as hard as a man can grunt. It took 64 takes and a lot of people on the set apparently spewed heaps—but Tom Cruise didn’t spew. He maybe never has.
Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a flying plane in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
Similar to the motorbike stunt in Dead Reckoning Part One, this plane from Rogue Nation was teased early and used on all the posters and promotional material. Because it’s super awesome. It’s something we’ve all imagined doing while taking off on boring old bog-standard commercial flights and, thanks to its realness, it one-ups Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mental plane scene in Commando.
Tom Cruise’s cockpit scenes in Top Gun: Maverick
It’s unbelievable how great the Top Gun sequel is and a big part of why it’s so great is down to Tom Cruise seemingly flying actual fighter jets for real. In truth, he did learn how to fly them but always had another pilot in there flying with him, given how much these things cost and how cautious the US military is with lending them out to the entertainment industry. But Tom Cruise is for real experiencing those Gs and delivered the most thrilling movie of 2022 with this astonishing jet action.
Tom Cruise gets flung into a car by a missile explosion shockwave in Mission: Impossible III
People don’t generally rate this Mission: Impossible and it definitely has issues, but Phillip Seymour Hoffman is arguably the franchise’s best villain and the bridge attack scene is undeniably awesome. One of the best moments in that sequence is the best stunt in the film – Tom Cruise getting yanked sideways full tilt into a car. Behind the scenes footage shows he was not harmed in the slightest, laughing with his colleagues while watching it being played back straight after.
Tom Cruise flies a helicopter like a madman and hangs out of it in Mission: Impossible – Fallout
The more you read about this sequence the more impressive it becomes. Because Tom Cruise is an absolute freak of nature, in a ridiculously short amount of time he learned how to fly a helicopter better than most stunt helicopter pilots can after several years in the job, then did some extremely dangerous shit in it for real. In New Zealand. Thanks, Tom Cruise, this scene was really choice to watch in the cinema.
Tom Cruise holds his breath for 6.5 minutes in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
How long can you hold your breath underwater? I reckon I could go 50 seconds or so. In this movie, our guy went for a mighty six-and-a-half minutes. That is very impressive, but the world record is just shy of 25 minutes. To be fair, the chap who did that was just chilling underwater, while Tom Cruise was thrashing about saving the world as Ethan Hunt. That chap was also an actual free diver whereas Tom Cruise is an actor. But then Kate Winslet went and held her breath for over seven minutes in the Avatar sequel, so pretty soon Tom Cruise is going to have to up it to over 10 I guess.
Tom Cruise playing around on the Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
This is my personal favourite of all the Mission: Impossible scenes. The way Brad Bird directed Tom Cruise jumping about on exterior windows of the world’s highest building excellently captured what we love about this franchise and this actor. It was wickedly spectacular to experience on an IMAX screen, which really hammered home the Burj Khalifa’s extraordinary height in a visceral and exhilarating way.
Tom Cruise dangles about a vault room in the first Mission: Impossible
The most iconic scene from the first entry into what has become the definitive Tom Cruise franchise is a doozy. It sees him being dangled into an extremely secure vault room to steal secret info. The famous bit where he’s dropped accidentally and almost hits the floor required many takes—because, yes, many times he did actually boink his head. The resulting sequence set the standard for the Mission: Impossible films and is also one of the most thrilling heist scenes ever.
