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How Tom Cruise Executed His 'Most Dangerous' Stunt in 'Mission: Impossible –Dead Reckoning Part One'

The death-defying moment in the franchise's seventh installment involves Cruise driving a motorbike off a cliff

Collection Christophel/Alamy

Tom Cruise  turned up the action for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning   Part One .

While the film marks the seventh installment in the highly successful franchise, Cruise, 61, made the occasion even more special by challenging himself to perform one of his most dangerous stunts yet.

The death-defying moment involved Cruise driving a motorbike off a cliff, fly off the bike, and parachute to the ground. While fans got a glimpse of the stunt through the film's action-packed trailer in May, Cruise, along with writer-director  Christopher McQuarrie , first teased the big moment in 2021 at CinemaCon.

The pair explained in a special behind-the-scenes video at the event that the stunt took 500 hours of skydiving training and 13,000 motorbike jumps to get it just right. The stunt involved Cruise being attached to a set of wires as he rides a speeding motorcycle off of a large ramp before he throws himself from the bike, backed by the safety wires attached to his back.

Speaking about its execution, McQuarrie, 54, explained in the video that it was "by far the most dangerous stunt we've ever done." The clip then ended with Cruise performing the stunt himself, with a crew member saying, " Tom Cruise  rode a motorcycle off a cliff six times today."

McQuarrie "tried to kill me," joked Cruise at the New York City premiere.

Christian Black/Paramount Pictures

The film's long-awaited release comes after multiple delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic . According to an official synopsis, it finds Cruise's Ethan Hunt as he and his team are tasked with tracking down "a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands."

During its world premiere in June , Cruise gave a speech about his passion for the franchise and filmmaking. He said in part, "It’s something that I grew up with, that made me and inspired me to dream and want to travel the world. My goal since I was little was to make movies and travel. And not just be a tourist but work in that world and understand their culture."

"Through my movies, I’ve been able to have that because everyone here has allowed me to entertain them," he continued. "It’s a privilege that I have never taken for granted."

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The Nine Wildest Mission: Impossible Stunts, Ranked By the Danger They Posed to Tom Cruise

Over the last 27 years, the Mission: Impossible franchise has continued to establish itself from other movies in the spy genre by being synonymous with two things: Tom Cruise and insane stunts. With the subsequent release of each Ethan Hunt adventure comes another behind-the-scenes featurette about how far out there—read: how close to actual death—Cruise went to entertain and enthrall the audience, whether it’s learning how to hold his breath underwater for six minutes, or scaling the exterior of the world’s largest building.

With the release of the seventh installment in the series, Dead Reckoning Part One , Hunt states to a character that their life “will always be more important to me than my own,” which feels like a declaration of Cruise’s guiding philosophy for stunt work. To wit: Matt Damon recently recalled a conversation he had with Cruise about a stunt in Ghost Protocol —which started with Cruise deadpanning that he fired the film's first safety coordinator who deemed the stunt too dangerous.

Cruise fulfills his mission statement in the latest film by driving a motorcycle off a cliff and then parachuting down a ravine—establishing a new landmark in Hollywood stunt work. As the franchise reaches this new height, we’re looking at some of the most dangerous stunts from the Mission series and ranking by degree of danger, from least to most.

Danger Level: Mild

An exploding fish tank feels like small potatoes in the larger scope of the Mission series, but Cruise has said the stunt was indeed “very crazy.” Talking to Graham Norton in 2018, Cruise recalled that he and the stunt coordinator couldn’t get on the same page about the timing of the explosion, resulting in a Who’s On First -like back and forth about whether the go was on the count of three or the count of one. Considering the sequence involved a detonation, glass, and plenty of water, the potential for danger was high, but hardly life-threatening. miscommunication is enough for someone to get seriously injured if it wasn’t timed correctly.

Danger Level: Unnecessarily High

Cruise’s wholehearted approach to dangerous stunt work began in earnest with John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 . The actor put Alex Honnold to shame with an extensive free solo climbing stunt in the film’s opening . "I was really mad that he wanted to do it, but I tried to stop him and I couldn't," Woo told Entertainment Weekly back in 2000 . "I was so scared I was sweating. I couldn't even watch the monitor when we shot it." Woo’s nervousness stemmed from the fact Cruise was insistent on not only doing the climb himself but only wearing a thin safety wire through the staggering seven different takes it took to get the shot as he climbed over the constructed cliff face. His dedication comes through in the final product and is easily the highlight of an otherwise lackluster installment in the franchise ( despite my editor’s attempts to convince me otherwise ).

Danger Level: Probable Death

After Ghost Protocol —more on that later—the Mission franchise shifted into featuring a signature, outrageous stunt for each of its installments. For his first Mission , Christopher McQuarrie conjured up the idea of Cruise strapped to an A400 cargo plane—an image so memorable it became the central focus of the movie’s marketing. McQuarrie recently stated the fear around A400 stunt wasn’t so much about Cruise falling off (he was strapped into the door through a rigged vest) but external factors beyond their control, like a rock on the runway or a bird strike while the plane was taking off. With so little protection, the timing had to be perfect.

Danger Level: Technically Low, made higher by insane repetitions

While still extremely dangerous, the challenges around the HALO (high altitude, low opening) jump in Fallout were mostly logistical. McQuarrie and crew had to create a new style helmet for the sequence that not only provided oxygen for Cruise (who is the first ever actor to perform the jump typically reserved for military operations) but also had lighting in the interior so audiences could see his face. The timing of the natural lighting made it so the jump could only occur in a three-minute window, so the jump required over 100 attempts to get it right. The real risk came from ensuring Henry Cavill, Cruise, and the cameraman all hit their marks so they wouldn’t collide in midair while falling at 200 miles per hour. In any other movie, this would be the showstopper. And yet, in Fallout , it’s just the aperitif.

Danger Level: Navy Seal levels of difficulty

Much of the pre-release marketing of Mission films in the last decade typically includes Cruise discussing his training to execute on a stunt accordingly. Rogue Nation leaned into the fact he learned how to hold his breath underwater for a staggering six minutes to shoot the underwater vault heist sequence as practically as possible—and all in one long take despite the fact the finished sequence is intertwined with multiple cuts. Legend has it that safety and compliance teams on set were extraordinarily nervous about the whole thing, and it wasn’t until Cruise convinced them otherwise that it was safe and that he could handle it accordingly.

Danger Level: Low, but it’s always the one you least expect

For all the dangerous stunts in Mission movies, it’s odd that something as simple as a broken ankle is the only major injury to befall Cruise. While jumping from one building to another, Cruise sustained that injury and knew immediately he’d messed something up, as the take in which he broke it is the one McQuarrie used in the final cut. Filming on Fallout was subsequently delayed while he recovered, but Cruise seemed to take it in stride; a behind-the-scenes clip shows him shrugging it off like he forgot to grab something at the grocery store.

Danger Level: Extremely High

There are approximately three different “holy shit” moments throughout Fallout ’s third-act helicopter setpiece: Cruise jumping onto the rope as the helicopter takes off, free-falling off the helicopter, and then piloting the chopper himself while performing a 365-degree corkscrew dive. The scariest bit of all included the drop—Rebecca Ferguson declared that she thought Cruise actually fell from the helicopter. If you remember, Cruise falls and hits the accompanying load dangling at the bottom so hard that it knocks the wind out of him each of the several times he performed it. Not to mention, the corkscrew dive was so dangerous that “most pilots wouldn’t attempt it,” per stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood .

Danger Level: Technically Very High…(but less blatantly flirtatious with death than the movies that followed?)

In other movies, a stunt involving scaling the side of the Burj Khalifa would have taken place on a set with a replica or with CGI. Not in the world of Mission . For Ghost Protocol , Cruise climbed the world’s tallest building with only a single safety rope. A single misstep and everything could go south very quickly. The stunt set the tone for everything else that’s followed, as dedicating himself to the reality of it all makes it one of the defining stunts of the Mission franchise.

Danger Level: Trolling death at this point

In comedy, there’s the concept of putting “a hat on a hat,” which means that layering one joke on top of another different joke leads to the whole thing falling flat. In less-skilled hands, the now legendary cliff bike jump in Dead Reckoning could feel like a hat on a hat. It combines elements of previous Mission stunts, notably the HALO jump and the Paris bike chase from Fallout , but it’s accomplished and shot in such a way that it feels breathtaking at every single stage. The fact that Cruise performed the stunt several different times, despite its high risk, is stunt work at its very best.

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Tom Cruise is back in action as Ethan Hunt on the set of Mission: Impossible 7 , and the 58 year-old actor is showing no signs of slowing down as he continues to perform his own stunts for the movie. Cruise's commitment to wild and dangerous stunt setpieces is a crucial part of what has made the Mission: Impossible movies so jaw-dropping, and he seems determined to one-up himself with each new entry in the series.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol took Cruise to queasy heights as he scaled the side of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. For Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation he clung to the outside of an Airbus 400 plane during takeoff. And for 2018's Mission: Impossible - Fallout he performed a HALO jump from a C-17 military transport plane and broke his ankle in two places during a rooftop parkour sequence, pushing through the pain to finish the take (he can be seen limping on that foot in the movie).

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The as-yet untitled Mission: Impossible 7 is currently filming in various locations across Europe, and is set for release in November 2021. The Mission: Impossible films are largely shot on location, which means that many set photos have emerged during filming that tease some of the stunts Cruise will be performing this time around. Here are the sequences that have been revealed so far (note: where we don't have permission to use photos of the stunts, we have recreated them).

A Fight On Top Of A Train

The very first Mission: Impossible movie saw Ethan Hunt engaging in a dizzying fight with a helicopter while riding on the top of a TGV bullet train. Even Cruise has his limits, and since this scene defied the laws of physics in many ways, it was mostly filmed on sound stage with a wind machine used to recreate the effect of a train traveling at 200mph. Perhaps to redress the CGI trickery used in the original movie, Mission: Impossible 7 will revisit the theme of fighting on top of a train - only this time, with Cruise doing it for real. Set photos from Norway showed Cruise rehearsing a fight with a stunt performer on top of a stationary train, and videos have showed the crew travelling in the train on motion. Cruise's co-star, Haywell Atwell , shared a video of the serene Norwegian countryside filmed from the roof of the train, which means she'll be involved with this stunt as well. It may not be moving as fast as the bullet train, but the fact that the stunt's being performed on a real train rather than a set in a studio could make it look even more exciting on the big screen.

A Motorcycle Jump From A Mountain Ramp

Mission: Impossible 7  director Christopher McQuarrie (returning after the outstanding entries Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation and Fallout ) celebrated the sequel's return to filming, after it was paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a set photo that teased a particularly crazy stunt. The photo showed a long ramp constructed on the side of a mountain, which ends with an upward curve promising a leap into the abyss. A video of the stunt  reveals that Cruise will ride a motorcycle at high speed and leap off the mountainside ramp, dropping the motorcycle at the peak of the jump. The video ends with Cruise deploying a parachute, but it's unclear whether this part will be in the movie, or whether Ethan will find some other way to land safely after this insane leap. The video shows a helicopter with a large camera mount following along behind him during the stunt, which promises a very cool shot of the jump in Mission: Impossible 7 . However, the noise and rotor downwash from the helicopter can only have made the stunt even more challenging to pull off.

A Car Chase Through Rome

The Mission: Impossible franchise has had some memorable car chase sequences over the years, and McQuarrie's films have delivered two of the best: a pursuit by motorcycles through the narrow streets of Marrakech in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation , and Ethan fleeing Paris authorities on a motorcycle in Mission: Impossible - Fallout . Set photos from the filming of Mission: Impossible 7 in Rome have teased yet another high-speed (and then slightly slower-speed) car chase involving Ethan and the new character played by Atwell. In  one set video  Cruise is helping Atwell's character out of a crashed police vehicle, and photos shared by the Daily Mail show the two of them driving in a tiny yellow Fiat.  The Italian Job and its 2003 remake both had great car chases involving Mini Coopers, so watching Ethan maneuver the small car around the streets of Rome promises to be a lot of fun. Other set photos, shared by  Just Jared , show Cruise riding on a police motorcycle - perhaps in the first half of the chase.

Related:  Why The Next Mission: Impossible Sequels Were Split Into Two Parts

Water Taxi Hopping In Venice

The striking canals and old buildings of Venice are a popular filming destination, with Spider-Man: Far From Home  featuring a major action setpiece in the Italian city, and 2006's Casino Royale staging its final act inside a building sinking into Venice's Grand Canal. Mission: Impossible 7 set photos from Venice showed Cruise rehearsing a stunt in which he jumps between water taxis and other boats on the canals. As those who've played Assassin's Creed II can testify, the city is a perfect parkour playground, and therefore the ideal setting for an ambitious stunt sequence. Photos shared by Just Jared show Cruise and his returning co-star, Rebecca Ferguson, running across some of the many bridges in Venice, and Atwell has been spotted filming a fight scene with Esai Morales , who is playing Mission: Impossible 7 's villain.

Details of Mission: Impossible 7 's plot remain under wraps for now, but the story has never really been the star of this franchise. One way or another, Ethan Hunt and the rest of the crew will get tangled up in trouble once again, and the only way to get out of it will be performing outlandish and death-defying feats.

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'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning' Director Christopher McQuarrie Ranks Tom Cruise's Most "Terrifying" Stunts

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Director Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise are a power duo in cinema, no doubt. Between collaborating together on last year’s blockbuster sequel, Top Gun: Maverick , and buzz about working on the first film to shoot in space , Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is just one of their many cinematic ambitions. While it may not be in space, McQuarrie’s new Mission movie does provide Cruise with ample opportunity to execute some more gnarly stunts, and Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with the filmmaker to find out what exactly that planning process looks like.

Dead Reckoning Part One takes IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) to beautiful locations on a deadly new mission to obtain a powerful weapon before it can fall into the wrong hands. This time, Hunt will have to confront the possibility that the mission comes before everything else — even those closest to him. The movie also stars Hayley Atwell , Rebecca Ferguson , Shea Whigham , Esai Morales , Simon Pegg , Cary Elwes , and more.

While the previous Mission: Impossible installments featured Cruise performing his own death-defying stunts , we were curious which ones ranked highest on McQuarrie’s list, as far as nerves go. In their one-on-one, which you can watch or read below, the filmmaker explains what the discussion around these stunts looks like during production, the precautions taken, and why none of them are without risk. We also learn which stunt, since helming Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation , gave McQuarrie the most grief and why. Despite Part One seeing Cruise riding a motorcycle off the side of a cliff and freefalling through the air, McQuarrie also tells us that there will be sequences in Part Two that will be “beyond anything” we’ve seen to this point.

COLLIDER: I really want to start with a sincere congratulations. I loved the movie. I wish I could watch Part Two, like, tomorrow.

CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE: Me too. [Laughs]

So you and Tom [Cruise], in the Mission: Impossible movies, have done incredible stunts and we all know Tom does these things, they're incredibly difficult, they're risking his life. In terms of all the stunts that you've worked with Tom on, how would you rank the difficulty of the stunts for the Missions and how nervous you were watching Tom do them?

MCQUARRIE: They all have their own risks, and it's not always what you perceive the risk to be. For example, with the A400, the concern was less that Tom would fall off the plane than he would be hit by a rock on the runway or a bird when we were in mid-air. So there's all of these different factors and variables that you're constantly thinking about that could go wrong outside of all the variables that you've eliminated. The more variables, the scarier the stunt. I think that's kind of, to me, what makes it terrifying is how many different ways Tom could be killed doing the stunt, but they're all knowns. They're all things that you've thought about and can't control.

Going off that ramp, he was entering the unknown. We had eliminated everything we possibly could. We just didn't know what would actually happen when he did it because we could, in no way, shape or form, test or replicate those conditions anywhere else. So when he went off that ramp, we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know if the bike would get away from him, we didn't know if a crosswind would tangle him up, and we didn't know if the drone would hit him based on the environment that we were in. So once we called “action,” you had to hold your breath until the parachute opened. That was pretty terrifying.

I do want to bring in all the Missions you've worked on. What I'm curious about is how would you rank all the set pieces that you've worked on. What are your top three or top five in terms of level of difficulty and how nervous you are before Tom did them?

MCQUARRIE: I would say they probably go in chronological order. Only because when we were doing Rogue Nation and we were doing the A400, it was really my first time directing anything like that. It was obviously Tom's first time doing anything like that. And everything you are seeing, every movie you're watching, is Tom and I applying our knowledge from the previous movies to the next one and pushing it a little bit further. So the motorcycle jump in this film, for example, is taking all of the motorcycle stunts from Rogue Nation , taking the BASE jumping from Fallout , and applying them to the same stunt. They're all just, in order of magnitude, scarier. If you just follow them in order, each one is scarier for me and more of an unknown because we're just pushing ourselves that much further. And I can tell you there's stuff coming in [ Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two ] that is beyond anything we've done.

For me personally, the scariest thing we ever did was the helicopter chase in Fallout , for the simple fact that I had to be in a helicopter chasing after Tom [laughs]. So there's the added factor of my own life [being] at risk. When you're watching Tom go off the bike ramp, I'm there, I'm definitely watching my life flash before my eyes as well as his, but I also know in the event of anything terrible, I'm still going to be there. So I would have to say probably number one scariest, most stressful was the helicopter chase in Fallout just because I was there.

Tom risks his life, for real, making these movies.

MCQUARRIE: Yes.

Have you guys ever had a conversation or talked about…god forbid?

MCQUARRIE: That's definitely a specter in every single one of those conversations, but that's a reality in simple things. In Jack Reacher , a shot where Rosamund Pike was backing out of a parking spot with a camera over her shoulder, and revealing Tom standing in front of her, she went to drive away. That's a very dangerous stunt. That's an extremely dangerous stunt. Because Rosamund Pike, who is not an experienced stunt driver, could make one simple mistake, hit the accelerator instead of the gas, and that's lights out. So we treat everything the exact same way. In the stunt where he broke his ankle in Fallout , jumping from building to building, there are a million variables where something could go wrong. We have an expression we repeat all the time, which is, “Don't be careful, be competent.” You can't make these movies without taking risks and without doing extremely dangerous things. But you could be very, very, very smart and very, very considered about the way you do it.

The other thing that's really critical whenever we're doing it is I deputize the crew down to camera operators, focus pullers, anyone can yell, “cut.” If you see something wrong, you can stop the movie, it's not worth doing. And we don't want a culture where people are thinking, “I felt something was wrong, but I didn't think it was my place to say.” So there's a huge bubble that everybody is participating in, that everybody is aware of, just to make those things safer. But yeah, we think about that all the time, but you can't factor it into your planning. It's that thing of, I was watching a video recently where someone was saying, “If you're skiing through the woods and you're saying, ‘don't hit the trees, don't hit the trees,’ all you're thinking about is the trees.” You really have to be thinking, “Stay on the trail, stay on the trail,” and that's what we do. It's just, how do you do it safely? Just safety, safety, safety.

You know I like talking about editing and runtimes and all that stuff, so I'll just bring it in now. The movie’s like 2.5 hours, maybe a few minutes over. Did you have a much longer cut?

MCQUARRIE: Oh, yes. Yes, very, very long, but that's not unusual. I think probably every movie I've done has been– Your first assembly is close to three hours.

I don't even want you to say the assembly because everyone thinks that's the real running time. What was your first director's cut that you were like, “Oh, this is really good, and I'm showing the studio?”

MCQUARRIE: I never had that. With every cut, we knew it could be better, we knew it could be tighter. When we finally screened it for the last test audience and were happy with the result, we were about two minutes longer than we are now, and we walked away from it. The studio was very happy, the scores were great, but we still knew we had issues. We knew we had issues with pace and length, and we went back into the editing room, reconfigured the first act, and ended up taking two minutes out of the movie, which was critical. And it can literally be that close. The difference in two minutes can make the difference between the movie feeling long or feeling just right.

Fallout , we had a cut of the movie that was five minutes shorter but scored lower. It was cut too tight, it couldn't breathe. We're just absolutely microscopic and surgical about it in terms of how we get there. But I'd say where the movie started to work for me– Because what you're seeing is the director's cut. I mean, that's really how we look at it. There's not some extended version of the movie that I would show you, thinking it was an improvement on it. Where we got into a place where I was approaching satisfaction, it's the difference of a couple of minutes.

When Part Two is eventually done, do you want people to watch Part One and Part Two in one sitting, or will you always want people to take a break after the first one, digest, and come back?

MCQUARRIE: Ideally, I will have made two movies that you can watch on their own or together. We never want you to have to check out of the movie you're in to remember another movie. We did the same thing with Top Gun: Maverick . We've done it with all of the Missions that we've done. We want to keep you immersed in the movie. That's a big red line for us.

How did you decide where to end the movie in Part One, and was it ever going to be something else?

MCQUARRIE: When the movie was so long, and we were too close to it, we couldn't figure out how to cut it down further. We talked about breaking the movie up, and the problem was there was just no place for the movie to end. The story was so interconnected. That was the only time we really discussed any other kind of ending, and that’s just, frankly, exhaustion and not wanting to confront the reality of, “We still have work to do.” The movie always ended where it did, we just didn't know what the ending exactly was. It was really critical for us that when you watch this movie as part of a two-parter, you feel satisfied at the end of Part One, that it's not just suddenly ending, and, “We'll see you later!” It had to feel like a complete movie. It had to be a movie that if Part Two didn't exist, or we hadn't figured out what Part Two was, or you had to wait two years to see the next one, you would have been satisfied with this one, I think. That's what we did.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One freefalls into theaters on July 12. Can’t believe Tom Cruise would go to such lengths? Check out Collider’s interview with him on the red carpet in Rome below.

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Tom Cruise hangs on for dear life to his 'Mission' to save the movies

Justin Chang

Tom Cruise is back, and doing his own stunts, in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. Paramount Pictures and Skydance hide caption

Tom Cruise is back, and doing his own stunts, in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.

For some time now, Tom Cruise has been on what feels like a one-man mission to save the movies. Back in 2020, when Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One was shooting in the U.K., Cruise was recorded screaming at crew members who'd violated COVID-19 lockdown protocols, all but claiming that the industry's future rested on their shoulders. Earlier this year, Steven Spielberg publicly praised Cruise for saving Hollywood with the smash success of Top Gun: Maverick .

Now, with the box office still struggling to return to pre-pandemic levels, Cruise has become a kind of evangelist for the theatergoing experience, urging audiences to buy tickets not just to his movie, but also to other big summer titles like Barbie and Oppenheimer .

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Cruise's save-the-movies spirit goes hand-in-hand with his self-styled reputation as the last of the great Hollywood stars. In this seventh Mission: Impossible movie, the now 61-year-old actor and producer still insists on risking life and limb for our viewing pleasure, doing his own outrageous stunts in action scenes that make only minimal use of CGI. And so we see Cruise's Ethan Hunt, an agent with the Impossible Missions Force, or IMF, tearing up the streets of Rome in a tiny yellow Fiat, riding a motorcycle off a cliff and — in the most astonishing sequence — hanging on for dear life after a deadly train derailment.

The plot that connects these sequences is preposterous, of course, but reasonably easy to follow. In an especially timely twist, the big villain this time around is AI — a self-aware techno-being referred to as the Entity. It's an invisible menace, everywhere and nowhere; it can wipe out data systems, control the flow of information and bring nations to their knees.

'Top Gun: Maverick' is ridiculous. It's also ridiculously entertaining

Hunt and his IMF team are determined to destroy the Entity before it becomes too powerful or falls into the wrong hands. But his old boss, Eugene Kittridge, played by the sinister Henry Czerny, warns Hunt to fall in line with the U.S. government, which wants to control the Entity and the new world order to come.

This is notably the first time we've seen Kittridge since Brian De Palma 's 1996 Mission: Impossible — the first and still, to my mind, the best movie in the series. That said, the director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie has done a snazzy job with the most recent ones: Rogue Nation , Fallout and now Dead Reckoning Part One .

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Sorry, tom cruise fans — new 'top gun' and 'mission impossible' movies delayed again.

Here, he seems to be paying sly tribute to that 1996 original, even evoking its horrific early setpiece in which Hunt watched helplessly as his IMF teammates were murdered, one by one. That trauma was formative; it explains why, in movie after movie, Hunt has repeatedly put his life on the line for his friends.

If you're kept up with the series, you'll recognize those friends here, including Hunt's fellow operatives played by Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson. You may also remember Vanessa Kirby , reprising her Fallout role as a ruthless arms broker and giving, in a single sequence, perhaps the movie's best performance. There are some intriguing new characters, too, including a wily thief, well played by Hayley Atwell, who draws Hunt into an extended game of cat-and-mouse. Pom Klementieff steals a few scenes as a mysterious assassin, as does Esai Morales as a glowering enemy from Hunt's past.

That's a lot of characters, double-crosses, chases, fights, escapes and explosions to keep track of. But even with a running time that pushes north of two-and-a-half hours — and this is just Part One — the movie never loses its grip. McQuarrie, a screenwriter first and foremost, paces the narrative beautifully, building and releasing tension at regular intervals.

Compared with the visual effects-heavy bombast of most Hollywood blockbusters, Dead Reckoning Part One feels like a marvel of old-school craftsmanship, just with niftier gadgets. Even Hunt wears his devil-may-care recklessness with surprising lightness and grace, spending much of the movie's third act on the sidelines and even playing some of his most daring escapades for laughs. Not that the actor doesn't take his mission seriously. I don't know if Tom Cruise can save the movies, but somehow, I never get tired of watching him try.

Tom Cruise did that motorcycle stunt in ‘Mission: Impossible’ on Day 1 — here’s why

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More than half a year before the release of the upcoming movie “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One,” Paramount Pictures made sure audiences got to see Tom Cruise once again risking his life.

Cruise’s mind-blowing stunts have become a signature of “ Mission: Impossible ” films, each one seemingly topping the next. The key stunt in the franchise’s seventh installment involves Cruise driving a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff, dismounting and parachuting into a Norwegian valley. With the drop of its behind-the-scenes footage in December , the studio billed it as “the biggest stunt in cinema history.”

Though the moment has already been watched on YouTube more than 13 million times, and 30 million more times in the film’s trailers, it’s among the film’s most anticipated scenes. After all, we still don’t know how the stunt fits within the plot — What could be so dire that agent Ethan Hunt must jump off a cliff?

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While answers won’t come until the movie’s theatrical release July 12, we now know that the risky stunt was the first thing Cruise did on Day 1 of filming, which began in 2020. And it was all about risk assessment.

In a recent interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” Cruise said they started with the scene, in part, to allow the cast and crew to see whether he would be able to star in the $290-million film. After all, he could either get injured or die — or both.

“Well, we know we’re either going to continue with the film or not,” Cruise said, letting out a laugh. “Let’s know Day 1, what is gonna happen: Do we all continue, or is it a major re-run?”

Cruise added that he wanted to make sure his mind was clear enough to focus solely on the stunt.

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“You have to be razor sharp for something like that; I don’t want to drop that and shoot other things and have my mind somewhere else,” Cruise said. “You don’t want to be waking up in the middle of the night, ‘It’s still, I still, I still,’ and it has that effect.”

Cruise is no stranger to aerial stunts with a high probability of death. The “Top Gun” actor said preparing for the recent stunt “was years of planning,” a culmination of all the training he’s done with motorcycles, cars and aerobatics.

In the franchise’s last film, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” (2018), Cruise jumped into a helicopter in midflight , taking the controls to chase another helicopter. In the same movie, he parachuted from a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III from 25,000 feet, close to five miles up, becoming “the first actor” to do so in a major motion picture, according to Paramount (most skydiving attempts occur at 10,000 feet).

In 2011 for “ Ghost Protocol ,” the “Jerry McGuire” actor climbed along the exposed walls of the world’s largest building, the Burj Khalifa of Dubai. And in 2015 for “Rogue Nation,” Cruise hung off the side of an Airbus A400M Atlas as it was taking off, a stunt that veteran stunt coordinator and frequent Cruise collaborator Wade Eastwood called “a stressful experience.”

The recent motorcycle stunt, which Cruise had apparently repeated six times, was no exception. Though the film’s computer-generated images make Cruise appear to be jumping off the rocky surface of the cliff, the scene required a large ramp to be built.

While Cruise is seen atop the motorcycle in the behind-the-scenes video, accelerating off the ramp, a helicopter and drone fly overhead to gather footage. The film’s crew, including director Christopher McQuarrie, are huddled in a nearby tent, faces glued to a set of monitors. After he abandons the bike and hangs in the open air, Cruise releases his parachute and the crew erupts in cheers.

“The only thing you have to avoid when doing a stunt like this are serious injury or death,” Eastwood, who has managed stunts for the last three “Mission Impossible” films, said in the BTS video. “You’re falling. If you don’t get a clean exit from the bike and you get tangled up with it, if you don’t open your parachute, you’re not gonna make it.”

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See Tom run. See Tom jump.

July 13, 2018

The scene wasn’t the only stressful one to shoot: Cruise said he also worried about a car chase that involved him handcuffed to a small car, steering with one hand while drifting along the cobblestone streets of Rome, with his co-star Hayley Atwell in the passenger seat.

“It’s plenty of challenges,” Cruise said with a wide grin, laughing once again.

“Dead Reckoning” had its world premiere Sunday at the Auditorium Conciliazione in Rome with Cruise and other cast members, including Atwell and Vanessa Kirby , in attendance. “Part Two” is expected to be released in June 2024. Filming wrapped in September for what has been rumored to be Cruise’s final appearance in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.

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Jonah Valdez is a former reporter at the Los Angeles Times on the Fast Break entertainment news team. Before joining The Times as a member of the 2021-22 Los Angeles Times Fellowship class, he worked for the Southern California News Group, where he wrote award-winning features. His work can also be found at his hometown newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Voice of San Diego and San Diego Reader.

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Tom Cruise’s Most Dangerous Stunts in ‘Mission: Impossible’

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By Ben Kenigsberg

• July 30, 2018

The older Tom Cruise gets, the more fun it is to watch him risk death in elaborate age- and gravity-defying ways.

One person who has seen him face danger up close is Christopher McQuarrie, who directed the now-56-year-old actor in the two most recent “Mission: Impossible” movies: “ Fallout ,” currently in theaters, and “ Rogue Nation ” from 2015. I asked him to rank the most difficult stunts he and his star, who is known to dislike doubles, have executed.

Mr. McQuarrie ranked them in order of what he called “inherent danger,” basically risk multiplied by the amount of time Mr. Cruise was exposed to that risk. But you could rank these sequences “five different ways in terms of their technical difficulty, their strain on the body, the real-time danger and difficulty,” he added. “If you arranged them alphabetically, they would be correct.”

Here are edited excerpts from our conversation:

5. Underwater Sequence, ‘Rogue Nation’

Without the benefit of oxygen, Mr. Cruise swaps a file in an underwater security system.

Given just 10 days to shoot this sequence, Mr. McQuarrie figured that his best use of the time would be to film it in a series of continuous takes. “It put a huge burden on Tom because Tom had to hold his breath longer,” the director said. “You and I can hold our breath for a minute, maybe two minutes. The minute you start exerting yourself, you consume oxygen at a much higher rate. Which meant that for Tom to be able to hold his breath for anywhere from a minute to two and a half minutes that each take required, he had to learn how to hold his breath for longer,” because he would be swimming.

Mr. Cruise and his co-star Rebecca Ferguson “trained with an extreme diver,” Mr. McQuarrie said. “He learned how to hold his breath for six and a half minutes. By the time that sequence was over, Tom was so physically and mentally exhausted, he had nitrogen in his blood, he was achy all over, he was very punchy, it was hard for him to focus and remember lines. He was exhausted all the time. It took a really severe physical toll on him.”

4. Paris Motorcycle Chase, ‘Fallout’

Having been separated from his co-star Henry Cavill, Mr. Cruise evades capture on two wheels.

“The initial idea was he would do a portion of the sequence free riding and the rest of it on these safety rigs, and when the rigs didn’t work, we just went for it. Everything that you’re seeing Tom doing, he’s doing free riding on cold cobblestones. Sometimes there was rain; sometimes there was morning dew. There was always a danger of skidding and wiping out.

“Sometimes he’s going in excess of 100 miles an hour with cars chasing him and coming at him. They were all stunt drivers, but some of them were local, so there was a language barrier. A couple of times there were miscommunications and drivers were not where they were supposed to be, which was always scary. Tom had to be hypervigilant.”

“And of course, every time he’s doing stunts like this, he’s got to act. You’re designing the camera moves so you can show that it isn’t a stunt man. One of the dangers becomes the camera itself. Tom is driving into close-up in certain shots. He’s inches away from the camera. If the camera vehicle stops short, Tom is going right into the camera headfirst.”

3. Sky-Diving, ‘Fallout’

Anatomy of a scene | ‘mission: impossible — fallout’, the director christopher mcquarrie narrates a scene where tom cruise leaps from an airplane at 25,000 feet..

“My name is Christopher McQuarrie. I am the writer, director, and co-producer of ‘Mission: Impossible - Fallout.’ The biggest challenge of this sequence is constantly maintaining a connection with Tom Cruise, knowing that Tom Cruise is going to jump out of a plane at 25,000 feet, and that the camera is going to stay with him. When Tom and I discussed this idea, right away the challenge became making it the most subjective sequence we possibly could, putting the audience with the character of Ethan Hunt. And that means that everything that Tom does, as he’s jumping out of his plane, the camera operator has to do with him in reverse. So of course, this shot right here, once this starts, we were determined to have no cuts from this moment until Tom reaches the ground. Just prior to this clip starting, he’d had a conflict with Henry Cavill, and Henry Cavill has disconnected his air hose as a way of getting Ethan Hunt out of his way, so he can jump out of the plane. So Craig O’Brien, our camera operator, is jumping backwards out of the plane, and Tom has to come towards him and come within three feet of the camera to remain in focus. Which means Tom has to stop himself, and he has a three inch margin of error because of the light at that time of day. It’s very difficult to maintain focus, and we had exactly three minutes of light everyday to gather these shots, and if you didn’t get the shot, it meant you came back the next day.” “What’s the matter, Hunt, afraid of a little lightning?” “The decision here to have all of the sound drop out was a practical decision to maintain that subjective reality, put you in Tom’s experience, and Tom is now coordinating all of his movements with Craig O’Brien. They’re actually doing a dance, so that we can maintain all of the storytelling without ever cutting, and so you’ll notice that the other actor is falling in the background there. His movements had to be coordinated with Tom, and then of course, the real danger in the sequence was a mid-air impact in which everyone could have collided — Tom, the camera operator, and the actor.” “Walker!”

Mr. Cruise, Mr. Cavill’s stunt double and a sky-diving videographer jump out a plane over the United Arab Emirates, standing in for Paris. The sequence stitched together three shots, combining jumps from 18,000 to 25,000 feet, for the appearance of a continuous take.

“Probably the most technically difficult one we’ve ever done. The costume that he’s wearing — all of that stuff is designed so that you can see that Tom is doing all of the stunt work. That helmet didn’t exist, the air tanks didn’t exist. It all has to be certified as a lifesaving device. It’s not just a prop. Layer No. 2, we need to find a country that would let us do it. And then of course, Tom has to get certified to be able to jump at that altitude.

“The jump is divided into three pieces. The first piece is when he jumps out of the plane and goes past the camera. The second piece is when he’s looking for Henry” — actually his stunt double — “in the air and grabs onto him. And the third piece is as he’s falling with Henry where he disconnects his oxygen bottle and connects it to Henry. And that’s the most time-consuming piece, which of course means that he’s got to be able to complete all of that action before he reaches his minimum safe altitude by which he has to deploy his chute.

“Because the sequence is at dusk, we have three minutes of available light every day to shoot. They would just rehearse until the light was right, and they’d go up and they’d get one take every day, to get one of these three pieces. It took several tries to get the first piece, several tries to get the second piece, several tries to get the third piece. And so that took 106 jumps of us rehearsing and shooting to get that two-and-a-half, three-minute sequence.”

(Why couldn’t they just land and take a cab? “Landing on the Grand Palais looks a lot more spectacular than landing in a parking lot on the outskirts of Paris,” Mr. McQuarrie said.)

2. Hanging Off a Plane, ‘Rogue Nation’

Mr. Cruise dangles from an Airbus A400M as it takes off.

“When we proposed it to Airbus, they said it was impossible. And our approach was to say, well, if we were going to do it, how would it be done? And once people start to consider the possibilities, it’s a slippery slope to the place where they find themselves doing what they deemed impossible.

“Tom’s wearing a harness under the suit. But of course the harness doesn’t protect him from the real dangers of the sequence. One, if the pilot overaccelerates the plane, there’s no harness in the world that’s going to keep Tom on the plane. The other danger is any debris on the runway. Tom was struck by a pebble. He said it was like being shot. And the real danger is bird strikes. If a bird flew past and struck Tom, it would be like a cannonball. The exhaust from the engines is extremely punishing and very toxic.

“And finally, Tom is wearing earplugs and contact lenses. They cover half of his eye — they’re not like the little lenses that just cover your iris. So he couldn’t really see. He couldn’t really hear. I would have to direct him with very large gestures and communicate in the simplest possible way. And Tom said to me, ‘If I look like I’m panicking, I’m acting. Don’t cut. Only if I tap my head’ — he put his palm on top of his head — ‘it means something’s wrong.’ There was one point at which Tom brushed his hair out of his face, and we were wondering, is he just fixing his hair, or is something wrong?”

1. Helicopter Chase, ‘Fallout’

Mr. Cruise pilots a chopper through mountainous terrain to retrieve and disable the remote detonator of two nuclear bombs.

“The hairiest one I can think of is the helicopter chase in the third act of ‘Fallout.’ Tom qualified” — for pilot certification — “on this helicopter in six weeks. Normally it takes three months; he trained with two crews working 16 hours a day so he could cut his training time in half. And we’re in New Zealand in low winter light, which means visibility is always a little tricky. You have two helicopters. The way you measure distance in a helicopter is a rotor width. And Tom was at times inside one rotor width from the other helicopter. He was less than a rotor width away. In some parts of the sequence, Tom’s doing the chasing, and in other parts he’s being chased — and we were always pushing for proximity, because that of course sold more danger. Tom is weaving in and out of canyons and gullies. There was one where his rotor blades were just a few feet away from the rock walls on either side. It was like flying through a broom closet.”

The director recalled that he and a producer “said while we were making it, if we knew what it took to shoot this sequence, we never would have started. Tom was having the time of his life.”

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All of Tom Cruise's big 'Mission: Impossible' stunts ranked from worst to best

• The "Mission: Impossible" franchise is best known for Tom Cruise's exhilarating stunts.
• Cruise has boasted that he's done most of the practical stunt work himself. 
• The star even B.A.S.E. jumped off a mountain for 2023's "Dead Reckoning Part One."

17. Vatican wall-climb and abseil — "Mission: Impossible 3" (2005)

Like the fact that there are no bad "Mission: Impossible" movies , there are no bad "Mission: Impossible" stunts, but something has to go at the bottom – and it's the Vatican wall stunt .

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has to infiltrate Vatican City to attend the same party as arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). So what does he do? He scales the side of the wall, before abseiling down the other side and quickly donning a disguise as a priest.

It's a fun, quick stunt that leans into the silliness of the franchise, while still looking cool. But it's far from the biggest sequence of the franchise.

16. Eye spy — "Mission: Impossible 2" (2000)

"Mission: Impossible 2" sees Hunt try and stop former IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) from releasing a terrifying virus that would decimate the world's population, all so that he could make billions from also manufacturing the cure. 

But when Hunt thwarts his plans, they wind up in a hand-to-hand brawl on a beach, with Ambrose nearly stabbing the hero through the eye with a knife . According to IMDb , Cruise requested that the knife, which was attached to a cable, come down to "one-quarter inch" away from his eyeball. 

It's not worth thinking about what would've happened if the stunt went wrong. But that's child's play compared to all the other stunts Cruise has done over the years .

15. Infiltrating the CIA — "Mission: Impossible" (1996)

1996's "Mission: Impossible" introduced Cruise's hero to the world for the first time, and he definitely made an impression. The film's defining image comes from the scene where Hunt descends into a secure CIA vault to hack a secure computer.

The slightest noise or impact on the floor would trigger an alarm, with Hunt presumably being locked away for life. 

So with help from Franz Krieger (Jean Reno), he gets lowered into the vault and hacks the computer. Although it nearly goes wrong when a rat in the air vent scares Krieger, who drops the cable that's holding Hunt in the air, and the spy has to steady himself an inch or two above the floor.

When looking back on the scene for the film's 25th anniversary, Cruise recalled that they only got the shot done on the last take because he kept hitting his face on the floor.

14. Shanghai leap of faith — "Mission: Impossible 3" (2006)

"Mission: Impossible 3" takes Ethan and the gang to Shanghai as they chase Owen Davian, the arms dealer in the possession of a dangerous object called the "Rabbit's Foot." 

As part of the mission, Ethan has to steal the mysterious object out of a skyscraper — and he gets inside the building by swinging from one building and free-falling onto another . If Spider-Man was a spy for the IMF, this would be the outcome. 

Although the scene is impressive, the frenetic editing style means the weight of what Cruise is putting himself through is lost. It doesn't match up to some of the star's other jumps later on in the series, which proves that Cruise wasn't lying to Insider when he said that he's always "pushing" to do better with each movie .

13. Free climb leap —"Mission Impossible 2" (2000)

"Mission: Impossible 2" gets a lot of criticism for its over-the-top action, cheesy script, and a peak-nineties soundtrack. But the way it reintroduces audiences to Ethan as he's free-climbing Dead Horse Point in Utah is nothing short of awesome.

While the film definitely overuses slow-motion, it works brilliantly when Hunt jumps from one ledge to another , scored to Zap Mama's song "Iko-Iko."

Surprisingly, the actor actually tore his shoulder muscle doing the jump. It wouldn't be the only time he'd get injured on a "Mission: Impossible" movie.

12. London rooftop chase — "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" (2018)

Hunt chasing August Walker (Henry Cavill) across London rooftops in "Fallout" feels too generic to get any higher up the list, since it's the type of thing audiences have seen in other spy thrillers like the James Bond franchise or Matt Damon's "Bourne" movies .

But Cruise deserves a lot of credit for actually breaking his ankle during a moment where he leaps from one building to another.

Cruise admitted during an appearance on "The Graham Norton Show," that the take in which he broke his ankle was the one that actually made it into the final film .

11. Ethan's motorbike escape through Paris — "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" (2018)

While "Fallout" contains some of the wildest moments in the franchise, the Paris motorbike chase feels a little bit average compared to the rest of the film.

It's still an entertaining sequence, as Hunt flees from both the authorities and the Mitsopolis goons, but it doesn't exactly reinvent the (motorbike) wheel. 

The high point is definitely the moment Cruise hurtles his way through oncoming traffic at the Arc de Triomphe. Talk about road rage.

10. Train-top brawl — "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" (2023)

The "Dead Reckoning Part One" finale is basically an endurance test for Cruise and the cast, as the star gets into a hand-to-hand brawl with villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) on top of the Orient Express as it chugs through an Austrian valley.

Yes, the crew really did shoot this choreographed fight on top of a moving train , and it paid off. The fight looks excellent, especially when Gabriel tries to repeatedly stab Hunt as they go through a tunnel. 

But while the scene is made better because audiences can tell they were actually on top of the train, the actors were obviously restrained by what they could actually do in the fight.

This means it doesn't pack the same punch as other action franchises ( we're looking at you, "John Wick") but it's still a feat of filmmaking nonetheless.

9. Train obstacle course — "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" (2023)

While Christopher McQuarrie and Cruise shocked everyone with the mountain jump in "Dead Reckoning Part One," there's another surprising stunt in the climax that is equally commendable.

When the train that Hunt and Grace are on is about to plummet from a ruined bridge, they have to climb through each carriage as it dangles above a rocky ravine below, dodging a variety of objects as they go.

There's a "Looney Tunes"-level of ridiculousness that just keeps getting more extreme with each passing carriage. Whether it's falling furniture, a grand piano teetering on the edge, or a boiling hot vat of oil from the kitchen car.

McQuarrie just piles on the stress for the characters (and the audience) in the best way possible.

8. The Casablanca car chase — "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" (2015)

"Rogue Nation" doesn't exactly give Ethan an easy ride. While it introduces audiences to the incomparable Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) for the first time, she betrays the IMF and steals a digital ledger for herself.

This leads to a huge chase through the streets of Casablanca and onto a nearby highway. There's so much carnage on the road, it may as well be a "Mad Max" outtake.

Christopher McQuarrie keeps things fun though, especially when Cruise and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) bounce their way down a set of stairs in a BMW. It's an electrifying sequence, as cinematographer Robert Elswit puts the audience right in the action, making it one of the most visceral car chases in the series.

Cruise oozes movie-star cool at one point in particular when he trades the BMW for a motorbike , and swoops across the road to avoid villains and civilians alike. 

No wonder Paramount got McQuarrie back to direct "Fallout" and "Dead Reckoning" after seeing this.

7. The Fiat 500 Rome pursuit — "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" (2023)

"Dead Reckoning Part One" aims to shock fans, creating high octane stunts that are as real as possible — including a thrilling pursuit through Rome.

Ethan and Grace (Hayley Atwell) flee from the police, bounty hunters, and a ferocious assassin named Paris (Pom Klementieff) in a BMW which gets absolutely wrecked in hectic traffic. The hair-raising sequence cranks up the tension, with Ethan and Grace crashing off course, and Paris hot on their heels in a hulking S.W.A.T. truck, the feisty killer reveling in the chaos.

McQuarrie adds a dash of comedy to the carnage when Hunt finds an IMF car to escape in, and it's a tiny, bright yellow Fiat 500. Yes, Cruise and Atwell are both crammed into the tiny car as they're flung all over the streets of Rome, and they even go hurtling down the Spanish Steps. 

While most of the scene was shot on location, it seems highly likely that they replicated the Spanish Steps elsewhere for the scene, since Paris' truck destroys the tourist spot. Regardless, the riotous sequence is guaranteed to thrill audiences.

6. Flooded computer dive — "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" (2015)

It says a lot about the franchise that Cruise's record-breaking dive isn't at the top of the list. In "Rogue Nation," Hunt has to dive into a flooded computer to add a login profile so Benji can walk into a facility undetected.

For the stunt, Cruise dived from a 120-foot high ledge, before holding his breath for six minutes while acting underwater. Stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood previously told Insider that Cruise actually blacked out several times while training for the dive, which helped him learn his limits. 

While Hunt manages to get the profile into the computer, Ilsa Faust has to save him when he starts to black out. There's no wonder he has so much chemistry with the ferocious MI6 agent.

5. The take-off — "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" (2015)

When Christopher McQuarrie took over the reins as director for the franchise for 2015's "Rogue Nation," he made his debut with style. The film kicks off with Ethan and Benji in the middle of a mission in Belarus, as a huge crate of nerve gas is being flown away by the Syndicate — a rogue group of former-intelligence agents.

In order to stop the Syndicate's plan, Hunt clings onto the side of the plane as it takes off — and eventually manages to get inside when Benji hacks the plane's security system. But it's just another perfect example of Cruise's commitment to these outrageous stunts. 

It may have finally cracked the fearless Cruise though; in 2015 he told CinemaCon attendees that the plane stunt "scared him shitless."

The image of the star holding on for dear life as a plane takes off is one hell of a way to start the movie.

4. Burj Khalifa jump - "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" (2011)

Tom Cruise. Dubai's Burj Khalifa. Need we say more? In Brad Bird's "Ghost Protocol," Cruise's hero has to climb the outside of the tallest building in the world, retrieve a set of nuclear codes, and then rappel back down .

Cruise effectively becomes Spider-Man thanks to a pair of high-tech sticky gloves, which are great, until they stop working.

There's something so visceral about the scene, whether it's the idea of falling from that height, or Cruise's terrified expression when one of the gloves starts to fail. Yikes.

Cruise did the whole thing himself (obviously) and even took a photo on top of the Burj Khalifa... Now that's just showing off.

3. Helicopter chase — "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" (2018)

There's a reason why 2018's "Fallout" raked in $791 million at the box office, and it comes down to the unhinged action sequences that Cruise and the cast throw themselves into — like the helicopter chase through the mountains in the film's climax.

It's simple, August Walker (Henry Cavill) is flying away with a nuclear detonator, and Hunt needs to deactivate said detonator. It starts with Cruise hanging on for dear life to a net of cargo that one helicopter is carrying, before he eventually climbs up and forcibly takes control of the vehicle himself.

What follows is a breathtaking feat of aerial stunt work — with two helicopters swooping through a mountain range at break-neck speeds while the cameras try to keep up. 

It all comes down to a literal cliffhanger before Hunt finally puts Walker down for good and saves the day. The nail biting sequence deserves every cliche movie description possible, as it pushes audiences to the edge of their seats in true "Mission: Impossible" fashion.

2. Paris sky dive — "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" (2018)

"Fallout" sees Hunt skydive into Paris alongside August Walker to sneak into a secret meeting, and it's a visually stunning sequence because the camera dives with Cruise as he's falling through the sky.

Not only does it look gorgeous, but Hunt has to catch Walker in mid-air after a storm knocks him unconscious and his oxygen tank is disconnected . So there's a lot going on in what should be a straight forward skydive. 

Then again, this is "Mission: Impossible," nothing's ever straight forward. The whole thing is only made better when Walker lands in Paris, completely unaware that Hunt actually saved his life and replaced his oxygen tank. Typical!

1. The mountain jump — "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" (2023)

There's no question about it, "Dead Reckoning Part One" takes the top spot with Cruise's exhilarating Austrian mountain jump.

The scene sees Ethan try and catch the train where a deal for the AI is taking place — but the quickest way to do so is by riding a motorbike off the side of the mountain, and parachuting down to the locomotive… As you do.

Considering the risk involved, it's a miracle that Paramount even signed off on Cruise doing the stunt himself — but it paid off. The scene is nothing short of breathtaking, as the star falls through the valley and sails through the air, seemingly with ease.

It's a common thing for actors to say they do their own stunts, but Cruise really goes the extra mile for the audience . He told Extra that the jump is "something I've wanted to do for a long time. When I was a little kid, I used to build ramps and go off and have some terrible crashes on my bicycles, but it was a lot of fun doing that."

And when speaking to Insider on the "Dead Reckoning" red carpet, Cruise teased that he's trying to go bigger for "Part Two."

"I'm always pushing. I just remember, every time they say, 'Can you top it? Can you not top it?' we're always pushing," the star said. "Every film I do, whatever genre it's in, I want to make it as entertaining as possible for that audience. I know I can do things better." 

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Mission: Impossible is a long-running action spy franchise revolving around Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt as he takes on threat after threat and conquers the impossible. Based on the TV series of the same name created by Bruce Geller, the film franchise began in 1996 and has spawned a total of six films, with two more on the way. While the franchise is known for its ensemble cast, the one staple character to appear in every Mission: Impossible film is Ethan Hunt, portrayed by Tom Cruise .

Update July 2, 2023: This article has been updated with even more great Mission: Impossible stunts in honor of the upcoming release of Misson: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One.

Part of what makes the Mission: Impossible movies so fantastic is Cruise's insistence on performing many of his own stunts. From Mission: Impossible to Top Gun , Cruise has been at the helm, performing a number of crazy stunts that many actors would not dare go near. While many of Cruise's action films feature him performing stunts of varying degrees, his stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise are the most daring. These are Tom Cruise’s best Mission: Impossible stunts in the franchise, ranked.

10 Exploding Aquarium — Mission: Impossible

Although the first entry in this franchise is best known for its iconic shot of Tom Cruise suspended above the entrance of an alarmed vault, Mission Impossible probably has the least stunts of any in the series. However, Cruise was happy to get physical when requested, including one scene in which Ethan Hunt attempts to escape his enemies in Prague by exploding a restaurant aquarium. According to Parade , director Brian De Palma initially used a stuntman, but he didn't like how the scene looked. Despite a risk of being injured by flying glass or drowning in 16 tons of rushing water, Cruise agreed to do the scene himself.

Related: These Action Movie Stars Do Their Own Stunts (And Some Who Refuse To)

9 Knife on the Eye — Mission: Impossible 2

Arguably the most iconic stunt in the whole of the Mission: Impossible franchise is the knife on the eye seen in Mission: Impossible 2 . While this stunt could have easily been faked with CGI, the choice to do it for real was a gutsy one that definitely paid off. During the knife fight between Cruise and his co-star Dougray Scott, the knife is lowered through the use of a measuring cable until the sharp point was only a quarter inch away from Cruise's naked eye. Despite the fact that the overall size of this stunt is rather small compared to many others, that a single flinch or mistake while the stunt was done could have cost Cruise his eye is part of what makes this stunt so amazing.

8 The Shanghai Skyscraper Basejump — Mission: Impossible III

One thing is for certain. Ethan Hunt likes to take big leaps of faith, and his biggest was arguably featured in 2006's Mission: Impossible III. To rescue his kidnapped wife, Ethan and his team need to retrieve an item from the 56th floor of a building. As one does, the MI crew decides the best solution is for Ethan to jump from one building to another and slide down the glass windows until he reaches the floor he needs.

Director J.J. Abrams employed a green screen and stage rather than risk his star jumping from a real skyscraper. However, production notes from the movie reveal Cruise did a 50-foot free fall from a crane to enhance the scene. "Tom drops, stopping 18 inches above the concrete, and I found myself talking to someone else between takes," Abrams added. "I realized I had become complacent about having Tom Cruise — who was entirely my responsibility — dangling from a crane, dropping at breakneck speed, stopping just above the ground. I remember thinking: 'I have to get back to being terrified.'"

7 Speed Flying — Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

A behind-the-scenes video from Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One proves Tom Cruise isn't slowing down on death-defying stunts for the Mission: Impossible franchise anytime soon. The MI crew filmed Cruise speed flying through mountains in the United Kingdom, explaining that speed flying is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. Similar to paragliding, speed flying employs smaller wings and faster speed, making it more unpredictable. The movie's scene required Cruise to dodge numerous rocky surfaces as he flew close to the ground and toward the camera. As director Christopher McQuarrie says, "Filming next to rocks looks quite beautiful. Behind the scenes, we were in absolute terror." The film isn't even out yet but just the footage in the trailer alone lands it on this spot.

6 Riding a Motorcycle Off a Cliff — Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Tom Cruise was 60 when he performed what he calls one of the most dangerous stunts yet in the Mission: Impossible series' history — riding a motorcycle off a cliff and base jumping to the bottom. A behind-the-scenes video from Dead Reckoning Part One begins with ominous music and director Christopher McQuarrie's voice saying, "This is far and away the most dangerous thing we've ever attempted." Shot in Norway, the scene sees Ethan Hunt driving a motorcycle off a cliff, falling, and launching into a base jump. BASE jumping coach John DeVore calls it "pretty much the biggest stunt in cinematic history."

Related: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One: Everything We Know So Far

5 Helicopter Chase — Mission: Impossible - Fallout

When Ethan Hunt takes control of a helicopter in Mission: Impossible - Fallout , he goes on a high-speed helicopter chase, navigating the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Despite Cruise's experience, this is possibly one of the most dangerous stunts Cruise has ever performed, considering that he had to maintain a great level of focus in order to fly with precision and speed, all while remaining in character for the film. While this is not Cruise's first airborne stunt, it is, without a doubt, his most daring one in the air. Per Variety , the shots of the chase were long takes and, in classic Mission: Impossible style, it was filmed without any special effects in sight.

4 Deep Dive — Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

In Rogue Nation , Tom Cruise performed an underwater stunt. During this, Cruise held his breath for a total of six and a half minutes. Experts were brought in to help Cruise train him to be able to slow down his heart rate so that he would require less oxygen. As epic as this stunt is, Cruise admitted that this did not come without its discomforts as the training had conditioned him to breathe far less. When he was still and not performing any physical activity, Cruise would have to actively remind himself to breathe. This stunt ranks fifth on the list because, despite how tame it may seem on-screen, it's pretty hardcore to train yourself to hold your breath for over six minutes.

3 HALO Jump — Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Fallout was full of stunts that put Cruise's life at risk, including one that actually caused him to break his ankle during filming. Aside from that injury, Cruise became the first actor in history to film a HALO (High Altitude, Low Open) skydive, which is a high-risk military maneuver. A behind-the-scenes video explains nearly a year of preparation went into the stunt, which required the crew to specially design a helmet that would not only allow Cruise to breathe at 25,000 feet but also show his face. The actor also had to prepare by inhaling pure oxygen for 20 minutes straight to avoid decompression sickness. Then, he jumped out of a C-17 plane for the memorable free fall.

2 The Burj Khalifa Climb — Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

What better to add to this stunt-heavy franchise than the tallest building in the world, referred to as the Burj Khalifa. Despite the fact that this extremely dangerous stunt could have been pulled off using CGI, the choice to perform the stunt for real is certainly a risk. Of course, this stunt certainly paid off, and despite Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol 's challenging shoot, they managed to capture Cruise scaling, running along the side of and smashing through a window of the Burj.

This stunt was particularly challenging, considering that Cruise had no physical assistance and merely had consultations with dozens of stuntmen and professionals before performing one of his greatest stunts of all time. He even sat at the top of the building without any harnesses or wire for a photo to commemorate the moment.

1 Hanging From a Plane — Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Topping the list is Cruise's stunt in Rogue Nation, where he hung from the outside of an airbus while it was in flight. While Cruise was strapped onto the plane, the plane was flown for a total of 48 hours and landed eight times before they managed to snag the perfect shot. According to Cruise, a pebble even hit him in the ribs, and at the speed, the plane was going, that tiny pebble could have shattered a rib. If something had gone wrong during this scene, Cruise would not have been able to get inside the plane until after it had landed. This shows Cruise's pure dedication to giving an authentic, entertaining experience for the audience, keeping them on the edge of their seats.

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Watch Tom Cruise Rehearse and Perform the 'Biggest Stunt in Cinema History'

Here's how the movie star prepared for his most ambitious action sequence yet in 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning.'

Tom Cruise is known for committing fully to the part in each of his movies, including doing much of his own flying in Top Gun: Maverick and throwing himself into doing his own stunt work on the increasingly explosive action sequences in the Mission: Impossible franchise. The latest installment in the spy thriller series, due to be released on July 12, features the actor's most ambitious stunt yet, and has been dubbed the "biggest stunt in cinema history."

A mini-documentary released on YouTube by Paramount Pictures follows the months of preparation that went into planning and executing a heart-stopping chase scene in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One , in which Cruise's character, secret agent Ethan Hunt, rides a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff and goes into a base jump, free-falling towards the earth before pulling his parachute cord.

"There's a lot going into this stunt," says director Christopher McQuarrie. "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.

Prior to the shoot in Hellesylt, Norway in 2020, Cruise undertook a year of training to master motocross, base jumping and advanced skydiving, including working on his strength and stability to ensure he can control his own position mid-air, and manoeuver the parachute canopy in the right way.

"You train and drill every little aspect over and over and over and over again," says Cruise.

When the prep for the shoot was at its most intense, Cruise was doing 30 jumps per day, and he racked up more than 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps over the course of rehearsal. Throughout this entire process, Cruise also wore a GPS chip so that they were able to track his speed and location in three-dimensional space at every stage of the stunt, which then enabled them to plan exactly where the drone cameras needed to be for the shoot.

"The key is me hitting certain speeds and being consistent with that," says Cruise. "There's no speedometer, so I do it by sound and feel of the bike. And then as I depart the bike, I'm using the wind that's hitting me, I'm pumping my chest, that will give me lift."

On the day of the shoot, all conditions have to be perfect for Cruise to pull off the staggering feat, and things are tense behind the camera as the actor shoots off the edge of the precipice and plummets into the valley below... a total of six times.

"We've been working on this for years," says Cruise. "I've wanted to do it since I was a little kid."

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Tom Cruise explains that death-defying Mission: Impossible 7 stunt captured in an amazing photo

The actor says riding a motorcycle off a cliff was one of the riskiest stunts of his career.

Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.

This time last year, the much-anticipated seventh Mission: Impossible film was stuck in a production pause as the world reckoned with the COVID-19 pandemic . But now it's 2021, people are getting vaccinated, and film sets have strict health protocols in place. So Tom Cruise is talking about Mission: Impossible 7 as a movie that's going to come out in the near future, which means viewers will soon get to see the superstar actor perform death-defying action stunts.

Cruise always does his own stunts on the Mission: Impossible films, and each installment in the franchise tries to outdo its predecessor. Set photos have already previewed what looks to be one of the actor's most thrilling feats yet: Riding a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff. In a new interview with Empire , Cruise explained why this jump was "the single most dangerous thing he'd ever done." Check out the photo of it below and you'll get an idea of the risk.

"If the wind was too strong, it would blow me off the ramp," Cruise said. "The helicopter [filming the stunt] was a problem, because I didn't want to be hammering down that ramp at top speed and get hit by a stone. Or if I departed in a weird way, we didn't know what was going to happen with the bike. I had about six seconds once I departed the ramp to pull the chute and I don't want to get tangled in the bike. If I do, that's not going to end well."

Thankfully, all's well that ends well. Cruise is still in one piece, and he still loves this stuff. As he recently said on The Graham Norton Show , Cruise has even been told sometimes to stop smiling while performing his stunts because it ruins takes.

Mission: Impossible 7 is currently set to hit theaters on May 27, 2022, and will start streaming on Paramount+ some time after that.

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Related content:

• Mission: Impossible 7, A Quiet Place 2 to stream on Paramount+ after 45 days in theaters
• Tom Cruise reportedly chastises M:I7 crew over broken COVID protocols in leaked audio
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Watch CBS News

Tom Cruise just performed his most dangerous stunt yet – riding a motorcycle off a cliff and BASE jumping

By Caitlin O'Kane

December 21, 2022 / 10:00 AM EST / CBS News

Tom Cruise has performed another daring stunt for the "Mission: Impossible" film series. 

He called this one the most dangerous thing he's ever attempted. Shot in Norway, the stunt required Cruise to ride a motorcycle off a cliff and BASE jump — something he said he's wanted to do since he was a kid. 

Cruise, 60, is currently working on the two-part "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning" film. He's known for performing his own stunts, but this one took years to plan, he said in a video shared on Twitter. 

So excited to share what we’ve been working on. #MissionImpossible pic.twitter.com/rIyiLzQdMG — Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) December 19, 2022

In the video, writer and director Christopher McQuarrie said Cruise put together a "master plan" using experts to help execute the stunt.

He had a year of sky diving training, during which he was doing 30 jumps a day – more than 500 skydives, said Wade Eastwood, the film's stunt coordinator. He also had motocross training, doing over 13,000 motocross jumps. Once he got those skills down, the production team created 3D models to try and predict how Cruise would fly through the air during the stunt so they could film it.

Then, it came time for Cruise to execute the stunt — driving a motorcycle up a long ramp, which lead to a cliff, launching off of it and BASE jumping to the bottom. Cruise first jumped out of a helicopter over the cliff to practice, before attempting the full stunt for the cameras.

"The only things you have to avoid while doing a stunt like this are serious injury or death," BASE jumping coach Miles Daisher said. "You're riding a motorcycle, which is pretty dangerous, on top of a ramp that's elevated off the ground, so if you fall off the ramp, that's pretty bad. You're falling, so if you don't get a clean exit from the bike and you get tangled up with it, or if you don't open your parachute, you're not going to make it."

The behind-the-scenes video show Cruise not only execute the stunt once, but six times in one day. 

"Pretty much the biggest stunt in cinematic history," said BASE jumping coach John DeVore. Viewers can see the final product when part one of the film premieres July 2023. The "Mission: Impossible" series is from Paramount Pictures. (Paramount is also the parent company of CBS.)

Cruise has performed countless hair-raising stunts, including jumping off of scaffolding while filming "Mission: Impossible 6" in —  a stunt that left him injured and limping. 

Cruise has been in Europe filming the seventh and eight "Mission: Impossible" films for several years. The seventh movie was scheduled to premiere in November 2021, but the COVD-19 pandemic shut down production and was pushed to May 27, 2022,  according to Variety . The date was pushed several time after that, and the film will now premier next year. 

While shooting in the U.K. last year, Cruise, who was traveling by helicopter, needed a place to land,  BBC News reports.  He ended up landing in a family's backyard, and then let their kids go for a ride in the helicopter, making headlines.

Caitlin O'Kane is a New York City journalist who works on the CBS News social media team as a senior manager of content and production. She writes about a variety of topics and produces "The Uplift," CBS News' streaming show that focuses on good news.

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Tom Cruise Shot ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ Motorcycle Stunt on Day One So the Crew Would Know: ‘Do We Continue or Is It a Major Rewrite’ If I Fail?

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“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” director Christopher McQuarrie made headlines at the start of June after revealing to Empire magazine that Tom Cruise ‘s insane motorcycle stunt was shot on the first day of filming. The stunt, billed as the most death-defying one of Cruise’s acting career thus far, finds Cruise riding a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff and then parachuting to safety while in free fall.

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“Well we know either we will continue with the film or we’re not. Let’s know day one!” Cruise recently told Entertainment Tonight about filming the stunt at the very start of production. “Let us know day one what is going to happen: Do we all continue or is it a major rewrite?”

“I was training and I was ready,” Cruise added. “You have to be razor sharp when you’re doing something like that. It was very important as we were prepping the film that it was actually the first thing. I don’t want to drop that and go shoot other things and have my mind somewhere else. Everyone was prepped. Let’s just get it done.”

“Dead Reckoning” is expected to be one of the biggest Hollywood tentpoles of the summer movie season, if not the biggest. Cruise is riding high off the blockbuster success of “Top Gun: Maverick” last year, which ended its run as the 11th highest grossing film in history (unadjusted for inflation) with $1.49 billion. While “Dead Reckoning” may not reach those box office heights, it’s certainly expected to outgross 2017’s “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” ($791 million) and become the franchise’s new top earner.

“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” opens in theaters July 12 from Paramount Pictures.

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Tom Cruise looks bewildered as he boards airplane on Mission Impossible set

T he Hollywood actor was spotted soaring through the skies of Oxfordshire, England as he performed his latest death-defying stunt for the new Mission Impossible movie.

This week the Tom Cruise was seen filming his latest heart-pounding scenes for his upcoming film Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two . The A-list star was seen boarding a vintage plane as he was seen suited up in what appeared to be skydiving gear as he performed his latest dangerous stunt that featured two biplanes and helicopters.

This comes Tom is taking on the eighth installment of the Mission Impossible franchise directed by Christopher McQuarrie. The upcoming spy action film is a sequel to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and is based on a screenplay McQuarrie co-wrote. And while the movie's release date has not yet been confirmed, Tom's co-star has claimed it is going to be bigger and better than ever before.

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Actor Shea Whigham teased the thrilling upcoming stunts as he told Business Insider : "Tom Cruise does stuff that's gonna make number seven pale in comparison. He's unbelievable in the next one."

Whigham, who stars as the white-collar criminal Jasper Briggs in the film, went on to add: "What he's doing now, people are going to be floored. He wants to make this one like an adventure film, and he and McQuarrie have an idea of what they want to do with it. So it's going to be amazing."

Whigham went on to confirm that he finished filming his portion of the action movie back in May, but Cruise and director are still working together to perfect all of the thrilling scenes featured in the upcoming flick. This comes as Cruise is famously known for performing his own daring stunts over the years.

Throughout the popular Mission Impossible franchise Cruise has performed many jaw-dropping stunts and even drove a motorbike off a mountain in Norway during the latest installment, a moment that was famously described as “the most dangerous stunt in cinema history." During a red carpet premiere for his last action flick, Cruise told Business Insider that he is "always pushing" to entertain his fans with new never-before-seen stunts.

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How tom cruise’s olympics stunt was inspired by… conan o’brien.

Producer Ben Winston goes deep on that starry Closing Ceremony flag hand-off, reveals where he had to pivot and talks about how it was all slightly informed by a 15-year-old talk show bit.

By Mikey O'Connell

Mikey O'Connell

TV Features Editor

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Ben Winston might soon lose count of how many times he’s sent Tom Cruise up in the air.

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The original plan was for a balaclava-clad stunt person to do most of the heavy lifting, but Cruise would have none of it. “I don’t think there’s anybody like him in the world,” says Winston, who served as creative director and executive producer under the Fulwell 73 Productions banner. “There is no better collaborator.”

Speaking the afternoon after the live Paris jump and the starry beachside concert featuring The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, Winston revealed how he and Cruise kept most of their plan under wraps for as long as they did, what changed in the planning and the unlikely roots of the Olympic flag’s pre-taped journey from France to the U.S.

Are you just a glutton for logistics?

It feels a little bit like having a baby. You’re up all night, it’s all really stressful and you’re changing nappies, and they’re sick on you. Then, when they get to three years old, you’re like, “Oh, they’re so cute and lovely. I think I want another one.” You forget what a nightmare it was. I feel like live television might be that. You forget how much you go through.

Plenty has been revealed and speculated about in the wake of this stunt. How long have you actually been working on this? 

My first meeting was January 2022 when I sat down with Casey Wasserman at LA28. I haven’t been working on it since then, but I had the idea more like 20 months ago when they’d told me there’s this tradition of a 12-minute show that the next nation does in the closing ceremony. Within the first five minutes, I was like, “Well, it would be the coolest thing if we snatched the flag, and we could get Tom Cruise to do it.”

I’ve seen lots of handovers where the country that takes over does something in the stadium, and they’ve been great, but I wanted to do something different. I like to be able to control everything. So I was thinking if we did it in Los Angeles, I’d be able to control all the elements a little bit more. I liked the idea of doing the bulk of it in Los Angeles but with an amazing open in Paris. This is such a weird reference, but remember when Conan O’Brien started on The Tonight Show and moved from New York to Los Angeles? He did a really fun sketch going cross country. That has always stuck with me. So I was like, “How do Tom Cruise and all these incredible athletes take that flag from Paris to L.A.?” It’s a weird inspiration. 

No, I remember that. I can see the through-line.

Yeah. Then, I pitched it to Tom. He was the first pitch I had. If he hadn’t gone with it, I can’t really think who else would work. Who else is synonymous with action and an American hero? When we got Tom, I felt like the whole thing would work — so we went from there. But it’s been over a year and a half to achieve that. 

How’d you pitch it to Tom? This is the third time you’ve put him in a plane after the Late Late Show segments with Corden .

Some things leaked , but you filmed the skydive and the Hollywood sign back in March. How’d you keep it secret for as long as you did? 

When we were filming with Tom , he was never actually holding the Olympic flag. He always was holding a white flag. So, whenever we were photographed with him, the press always said we were filming Mission Impossible . Everyone wonders what was faked and what wasn’t. Interestingly, one of the only things that was faked was the flag. I was disappointed that little things leaked over the last couple of weeks. Suddenly, more and more people need to know what you’re doing when you’re rehearsing in the Stade de France and booking venues.

Such a big deal is made about Tom and the lengths he goes to execute a stunt on his own. I understand who insures him in a movie like Mission Impossible , but what about here, is that your purview? You are putting a very famous man in a risky situation. 

I’m not qualified to answer that. ( Laughs .) There will be a team of lawyers on my production team and his team that would know about that. But you’re right. It was definitely a consideration when we were doing the Top Gun stuff for The Late Late Show . It was like, “Well, who does the liability lie with — the show or Tom?” I still don’t know the answer on this one.

It’s funny because I’ve seen reports about what was live and what wasn’t live. Not everybody’s a 100 percent right on everything, and I don’t want to comment either way. It’s not fair on some artists to say some were live and some weren’t or whatever. But I think there was a lot more live-in there than people think. Will Rogers Beach was the plan a year ago — and, due to something out of my control, that had to change. With four weeks to go, we didn’t have a venue. That was a stressful moment. Ultimately we got there and I was so pleased with the concert element of it.

Did you ever attempt to actually redecorate the Hollywood sign? 

I did look at doing the Hollywood sign for real. We had engineers up there quite a long time, working out how we could do it. I decided against it because I wanted it to be a surprise. In the end, I think we could have done it, but then in March, the whole world would have seen pictures of the Hollywood sign covered in the Olympic rings. So we did it with CGI. The Tom bit is real. He was up there. He climbed up the sign.

You booked Snoop Dogg, a national treasure and someone so synonymous with Los Angeles, a long time ago — yet his stock has risen even more in the last two weeks. Were you psyched watching him become one of the stars of the Olympics? 

Well, I hope you get a bit of a break.

No. ( Laughs .) This week we’re filming Ellen DeGeneres’ stand-up show . Really excited about that. And then it’s on to the Paralympics closing. But I did have like 13 hours of sleep last night. I went to bed at 9 o’clock.

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• Motorcycles

10 Coolest Motorcycles Tom Cruise Has Ever Ridden In Movies

Following the financial success of "Top Gun: Maverick," Variety reported that Steven Spielberg told Tom Cruise that he might've saved Hollywood after COVID-19 shutdowns forced many theaters to close. Honestly, Spielberg might not have been wrong in that assessment, as Cruise is one of the last genuine movie stars who can get people in seats on his name alone. Cruise is known for dipping into all kinds of genres, but action/adventure pieces seem to be where he shines, especially within the last few years. Of course, if Tom Cruise is in a movie, it's a safe bet that a motorcycle won't be far behind.

Cruise frequently does his own stunts, which includes riding on bikes himself a good amount of the time, and he's a gearhead even when the cameras aren't rolling. Cruise has many rare cars in his personal collection , and  he even owns more than one plane . It's clear that Cruise has a need for speed, and sometimes, the only way to let that out is to hop on a bike and film an incredible stunt.

Motorcycles can be found in Tom Cruise movies going back to the early days of his career all the way to the modern day. Whether you're a fan of Triumph, Kawasaki, or BMW motorcycles, there's something for everyone on this list.

Kawasaki GPZ900R from Top Gun

In the 1980s, it became readily apparent that Tom Cruise would soon be a force to be reckoned with breakout roles in the likes of "The Outsiders" and "Risky Business." However, it's safe to say that 1986's "Top Gun" helped launch him into the stratosphere as far as being a bona fide movie star. Cruise plays Lieutenant Pete "Maverick" Mitchell who fulfills his need for speed by flying military-grade aircraft. When he's not maneuvering fighter jets, Maverick's behind the wheel of a Kawasaki GPZ900R.

It's an appropriate bike for the character to have in the film, considering it was the fastest stock road bike in the world at the time, capable of exceeding 150 miles per hour. Whether he's in the sky or on land, Maverick just needs to be the fastest around, but the bike featured in "Top Gun" almost wasn't a Kawasaki at all.

Something about the Kawasaki GPZ900R that only hardcore Ninja fans know is that the production initially tried to get a Honda, but the company was concerned about Cruise not wearing a helmet during the riding scenes. The crew went to Kawasaki instead, and it was that company's bike that ended up being in the highest-grossing movie of 1986.

Triumph Speed Triple from Mission: Impossible 2

Tom Cruise was once more in the highest-grossing film of the year for 2000's "Mission: Impossible 2." Despite some mixed reviews, most everyone could agree that at least the action was on point. Arguably, the most memorable action sequence came when Ethan Hunt (Cruise) has to evade capture, and a thrilling bike chase ensues with Hunt on a Triumph Speed Triple. Meanwhile, his nemesis, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) pursues him on a Triumph Daytona 995i . 

There are jumps, pirouettes, and even Hunt riding through fire. The Speed Triple proved to be a formidable addition to the franchise, with its signature three-cylinder engine as well as dual, bug-eyed headlights. 

Ethan Hunt may have gotten a magical Speed Triple, as many have noted how the tires would change from street to dirt depending on the terrain he had to ride over. This was likely done for practical reasons so that Cruise could look cool and maneuver his bike over anything. The Triumph may have been just as significant as any of the actors in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, as Cruise has continued to ride Triumph bikes throughout his career. 

Triumph Bonneville from Mission: Impossible III

You'd be forgiven for not remembering that "Mission: Impossible III" has a Triumph Bonneville in it. Unlike the Triumph in "Mission: Impossible 2," which gets a ton of time to shine onscreen, the Bonneville only has a brief scene where it's merely a method of transportation. Ethan Hunt rides it across an airstrip to rendezvous with his team. There are no big chases or moments where the bike comes through fire, but it feels appropriate Tom Cruise would still find an excuse to find a motorcycle at some point to stay in line with Hunt's character.

The Bonneville is certainly a great choice. Five Bonnevilles were actually built to make "Mission: Impossible III," which does seem to be a bit of overkill considering how brief its screentime is. Plus, it's built in the street scrambler style and further customized for the production. One of the bikes even went up for auction and managed to sell for nearly $30,000.

Perhaps riding a motorcycle is like running in a Tom Cruise movie. Even if it only happens for a few seconds, it needs to happen one way or another. 

Ducati Hypermotard from Knight and Day

Tom Cruise has found a niche for himself in action flicks, including those outside of major franchises like "Mission: Impossible." In 2010, he appeared alongside Cameron Diaz in "Knight and Day," and the most thrilling sequence is arguably the one where Cruise's character, Roy Miller/Matthew Knight, drives June Havens (Diaz) around Seville on a Ducati Hypermotard, which is definitely one of the coolest bikes we've reviewed here at SlashGear .

The Ducati is so stylish that it was used frequently in the marketing materials and even some posters for the flick. However, according to Gregg Smrz, the stunt coordinator for "Knight and Day," the Ducati was not, in fact, used for the big jump scene. Instead, that distinction went to an Aprilia SXV that was made up to look like the Ducati. Smrz set the record straight in the comment section on a Hell for Leather  article that has since been archived: "The Aprilia mock up was used in the 'Knight and Day' movie for the motorcycle jump through the archway. The jump was 100 feet long and 8 feet high. Sorry guys, but nobody is jumping the Hypermotard that far."

Additionally, Cruise's stunt double did the jump for that particular scene, although it appears Cruise did do a fair bit of riding otherwise with Diaz behind him. Still, it's good to hear that the stunt team knows the limits for both the actors and the bikes being used.

Honda CRF450X from Oblivion

Seeing as 2013's "Oblivion" takes place in the year 2077 following an alien attack on Earth that humanity won at the cost of making the planet uninhabitable, one might assume including a motorcycle of any kind would be out of the question. Of course, when Tom Cruise is in the picture, a cool bike sequence is typically not too far behind. Cruise's character, Jack Harper, takes out a foldable dirt bike from the ship that turns into a futuristic-looking motorcycle, instantly making it one of the coolest motorcycles in all of science fiction . 

Making the bike look like it belongs in 2077 was necessary, as the base is actually a Honda CRF450X. It proved to be the most ideal bike for the stunts that would be demanded of the bike in the film, as Justin Kell of Glory Motor Works in Southern California told Maddix Park . "We knew we were going to do a lot of jumping and they are such good bikes to work with," Kell stated. "They can stand up to a lot and are such a minimalist design." 

Kell's team also had to adjust the size of the fuel tank so that it wouldn't be too visible, meaning Cruise could only ride it for about 20 minutes at top speed before needing more gas. Kell revealed that they made three bikes for "Oblivion," although one got wrecked pretty bad. As for the other two, one's in storage and one was given to Cruise as a birthday present.

Triumph Thruxton from Edge of Tomorrow

Tom Cruise returned to Triumph bikes for 2014's "Edge of Tomorrow," which sees him as Major William Cage who has to repeat the same day of an alien invasion repeatedly until he can find a way to defeat the extraterrestrial threat. Similar to the Triumph in "Mission: Impossible III," the bike — a Triumph Thruxton 900 — doesn't get a ton of screentime in this flick. It comes in halfway through the film when Cage drives away from the war effort, clearly having a crisis of faith over the impossibility of his situation. He's called a coward in the pub after talking about how it doesn't matter what the aliens want with Earth. They're winning all the same. 

Cruise has a history of riding Triumph motorcycles in movies, but it makes sense he'd ride one in this particular project. Triumph is a British motorcycle manufacturer with roots going back to the 19th century. The Thruxton is a great example of what the business offers, combining old-school sensibilities with modern touches, as the model first made its debut for the 2004 model year. Seeing as "Edge of Tomorrow" is set in Britain, it makes sense Cage would have one of these bikes readily available. 

BMW Motored S1000RR from Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

"Mission: Impossible 2" set the bar high when it came to motorcycle chases within the franchise. Amazingly, "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation" may have topped it with a sequence involving Ethan Hunt chasing after Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) along with some bad guys along for the ride. As tends to be the case with these movies, Cruise does a lot of his own stunts. There's plenty of behind-the-scenes footage showing Cruise actually on a BMW Motored S1000RR driving through the Atlas Mountains.

While a lot gets made about actors doing their own stunts, it's vital to recognize the valuable work done by stunt teams. It can require immense work to make actors look cool, and JEM FX, which worked on "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation" uploaded a clip to Instagram showing off the team's biscuit rig that also had to go 90 miles per hour along those twisty roads. Cruise may have been able to do many of his own stunts, but it seems Ferguson's bike was attached to the rig with a camera in front of her to make it look like she was riding all on her own. 

The BMW Motored S1000RR can get up to almost 200 miles per hour, and reportedly, Cruise rode his around 130 mph for "Rogue Nation." Some special effects are to be expected for anything of this caliber, but it definitely seems Cruise wants to do as much in-camera as possible.

BMW R NineT Scrambler from Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Tom Cruise may have ridden Triumph bikes earlier in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, but BMW was the name of the game. "Mission: Impossible — Fallout" has many astounding stunts, including yet another bike chase where Cruise's Ethan Hunt leads the police through Parisian streets on a BMW R NineT Scrambler, ending with a fun sequence where Hunt rides against the flow of traffic around the Arc de Triomphe.

Wade Eastwood, stunt coordinator for "Mission: Impossible — Fallout," spoke with Jalopnik about making the sequence a reality, especially considering they had about an hour to film around the Arc. "Whether we shot, whether Tom was on the motorbike or not, those cars just kept going around, changing lanes, and going around doing their thing," he explained. "Tom would feed into the circle, and they would make adjustments. And we kept going like that for the one hour, it was the most amazing sequence to be a part of."

Cruise isn't the only one to have fun on a bike for "Mission: Impossible — Fallout." Henry Cavill, who plays August Walker, rides a Triumph Triple Speed for the Paris chase, perhaps as a nod to that bike being used in "Mission: Impossible 2." Rebecca Ferguson returns as Ilsa Faust, and she gets to ride a Triumph Tiger 800 XCX.

Kawasaki H2 from Top Gun: Maverick

"Top Gun: Maverick" contains plenty of references to the original film. There's a scene where Rooster (Miles Teller) sings "Great Balls of Fire" like Goose (Anthony Edwards) did originally. There's a beach scene, and, of course, Maverick has to ride another Kawasaki motorcycle while watching fighter jets take off. Only this time, it's a Kawasaki Ninja H2 Carbon that shows just how far the company's motorcycle engineering has come over several decades.

The Ninja GPZ900R from the first movie still makes an appearance, as it's stowed away in an aircraft hangar. However, the H2 gets the prime limelight this time around, and it's a worthy successor to the GPZ900R. It comes with a centrifugal supercharger that allows it to hit 200 horsepower and reach speeds in excess of 220 miles per hour. Four Kawasaki H2s were provided for the film as well as some restored GPZ900Rs for some bonus nostalgia points. 

Anyone wanting to live out their own fantasies of being Maverick will have to fork over a pretty penny, thought. The Kawasaki Ninja H2 Carbon is the most expensive bike from the brand , but the power one gets makes the price tag worth it.

Honda CRF250 from Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1

"Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One" is the seventh film in the franchise, and by this point, standard motorcycle chases had become old hat. They needed to up the ante, and they did so in a big way. Tom Cruise does ride a BMW G310GS earlier in the film after he takes it from the police, but the main motorcycle stunt everyone remembers is when Ethan Hunt rides his bike over a cliff to catch a train. That motorcycle is a Honda CRF250, but it's understandable if you couldn't catch that. The decals had been blacked out, likely not to upset the folks at Honda since the bike got destroyed after the scene.

It took quite a lot to make riding a motorbike off a cliff a reality . Cruise told Men's Journal , "The key was hitting the right speed up the ramp. There's no speedometer on the bike, so I do it all by the sound and feel. Then, as I launch off the bike, I create separation by cupping my arms and chest to give me that lift into the jump." There were drones all around the vicinity to capture the footage of the jump, and there was yet another challenge for Cruise — trying not to smile for the cameras. 

As for the Honda CRF250, it unsurprisingly didn't make it. The "Mission: Impossible" Instagram account uploaded a video showing them having to airlift the bike's wreckage from the bottom of the cliff. It's truly one of the best stunts put to film, and something that will be an impossible mission to top. If anyone's up for the task, however, it's Tom Cruise. 

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Is Tom Cruise performing a stunt at the Paris Olympics Closing Ceremony?

The "mission impossible" star may be taking on his most high-profile feat yet — if rumors are true., by danielle abreu • published august 9, 2024 • updated on august 11, 2024 at 1:41 am.

From scaling a skyscraper to hanging on to the side of an airplane taking off, actor Tom Cruise is no stranger to death-defying stunts.

And the "Mission Impossible" star may be taking on his most high-profile feat yet — if rumors are true.

📺 Los Angeles news 24/7: Watch NBC4 free wherever you are

Back in March, Cruise was spotted with a film crew at the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, scaling the famous landmark, People reported at the time . He was also captured on video appearing to pass a flag to someone. A spokesperson for Cruise did not respond to the outlet's requests for comment on what the actor was filming.

In late April, he was also spotted on the streets of Paris riding a motorcycle at night, before official filming for his latest "Mission Impossible" movie began. At the time, he was spotted with a film crew and carrying a white flag near the Saint-Georges metro station, the Pont de Bir-Hakeim and around the Arc de Triomphe.

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Tom Cruise était à Paris cette nuit pour le tournage de Mission Impossible 8 🎬 pic.twitter.com/vHgBNXF34l — Cine Phil 🎬 (@cinephiloff) April 26, 2024

This week, French media reported that Cruise, who is currently in Europe filming “Mission: Impossible 8” and has been spotted in the stands at several Paris Olympic events, including artistic gymnastics, swimming and track & field, will perform a stunt at the Closing Ceremony, which is set to take place at the Stade de France. Part of his performance will include pre-taped scenes.

With the next Summer Games set to take place in Los Angeles in 2028, a Hollywood connection seems fitting for an Olympic handoff from Paris.

However, organizers in Paris are tight-lipped on confirming any names, only saying it will feature “world-famous performers” along with “acrobats, dancers and circus artists.”

"An original soundtrack, new interpretations, musical performances and the participation of world-renowned singers will complete the picture," Paris organizers said in a statement. "Part of the show will take place in the air, while the giant sets, costumes and spectacular lighting effects will take spectators on a journey through time, both past and future." 

One performer that has been announced is H.E.R. The five-time Grammy winner is expected to sing the U.S. national anthem live at the Stade de France as part of the handover for the Los Angeles Summer Games.

We'll have to wait until Sunday, Aug. 11 to see who's-who among the star-studded celebrity spectacles. The Closing Ceremony will start at 3 p.m. ET/Noon PT at the Stade de France.

Katie Ledecky and Nick Mead named Team USA flag bearers for Closing Ceremony

What is the last event of the 2024 Paris Olympics?

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‘I’m Out To Make Tom Cruise Look Like A Big Fat P—y’: Jackass Alum Steve-O Discusses His Drive To Keep Performing Wild Stunts At 50

If Tom Cruise can do crazy stunts in his 60s, then Steve-O figures so can he.

At the age of 62 Tom Cruise isn’t only one of the biggest movie stars in the world, but one who is known above all for his impressive stunt work. Cruise and his stunts are certainly an inspiration to many, but perhaps none more so than Jackass alum Steve-O, who is apparently inspired by Cruise to continue his own crazy stunts, in an attempt to outdo the Mission: Impossible star.

While most of the members of the Jackass crew have seemingly pulled back on doing the sorts of things that might permanently injure them, Steve-O has continued to tour while doing some of the most bizarre, and legitimately dangerous things that he can imagine. The man considered giving himself breast implants , and while he has decided against that, he recently told EW that he’s come up with crazier ideas, all in an attempt to try and do things that make Tom Cruise stents look mundane. He said…

If it wasn't for Tom Cruise being as badass as he was through his 50s and now into his 60s, I don't know that I would have so much inspiration. I'm out to make Tom Cruise look like a big fat p---y. That's my mantra. It's a tough spot to be in, but I'm a persistent bastard, and I've made up my mind that I'm going to be badass and I'm going to keep pushing boundaries at 50 years old. That's what this whole boob job idea was and what the whole exercise has turned into, putting together this new tour. It's been largely a comedy of errors, and there's been a lot of surprising success.

I guess it’s an understandable feeling. If you see Tom Cruise driving motorcycles off of cliffs in his 60s, and you’re 50, you figure you must still be able to do things just as nuts, even Steve-O has a professed fear of skydiving . It’s actually quite the compliment that Steve-O, one of the world’s foremost authorities on doing crazy stuff, is just as impressed with what Tom Cruise does as the rest of us.

Steve-O tells EW he considered firing a bullet through the side of his mouth, believing it would pass through his cheeks with minimal damage. Luckily, it appears Steve-O does do research on his stunts, and he realized that wouldn’t actually work out well for him.

Still, while he is trying to make Tom Cruise look bad, Steve-O is realizing that he may be coming to the end of his time putting his body on the line and causing people to pass out at his shows . His current tour has pushed his body to its apparent limit. The main problem is Steve-O doesn’t seem to know what to do if he’s not doing this. He continued…

I might not have another show like this in me. As far as the high-impact physical stunts, I just don't know if I could one-up this one. At the same time too, every single project that I've ever worked on in my career was always going to be my last one. Maybe I will evolve and figure out what comes next, but I just don't see how I can push my body further than I've been pushing it for this.

Steve-O has done some crazy stunts in his life and fans certainly love to see him do them. Those fans (hopefully) also want him to stop before he pushes himself too far. He’s certainly shown what he can do at 50 years old. Maybe leave the crazy stuff to Tom Cruise now.

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Tom Cruise, 62, feels the strain as he films daring stunts on a World War II plane during the heart-stopping final scenes for Mission Impossible 8

• Have YOU got a story? Email [email protected]

By Laura Fox For Mailonline

Published: 09:15 EDT, 18 September 2024 | Updated: 12:56 EDT, 18 September 2024

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He's normally front and centre of dramatic stunts in his biggest roles.

But even Tom Cruise showed that even he can get spooked by some of his biggest roles, as he prepared to film daredevil plane scenes for Mission Impossible 8 in Oxfordshire on Sunday.

The actor, 62, climbed into the cockpit of a World War II biplane in preparation to take to the skies.

Getting back into character as Ethan Hunt, the legendary actor was filmed soaring into the skies in the plane, as part of the heart-stopping final scenes of the eighth Mission Impossible film.

Tom, who has had his pilot licence since 1994 and owns several aircrafts, was dressed in Ethan's famous leather jacket as he jumped into the plane.

Tom Cruise showed that even he can get spooked by some of his biggest roles, as he prepared to film daredevil plane scenes for Mission Impossible 8 in Oxfordshire on Sunday

The actor climbed into the cockpit of a 20th Century biplane in preparation to take to the skies

Getting back into character as Ethan Hunt, the legendary actor was filmed soaring into the skies in the plane

The star had previously been filming scenes for the long-awaited sequel Mission Impossible 8 at Longcross Studios. 

Back in April, Tom was last seen filming just a stone's throw from Downing Street  in London. 

Dramatic scenes signalled trouble for the Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt as the actor was seen kneeling on the road in surrender. 

Other scenes have been shot across Derbyshire, Surrey and central London at landmarks including the Natural History Museum in Kensington and Westminster Bridge.

The filming of the UK scenes of the eighth instalment of the Mission Impossible franchise initially took place between March and December 2022.  

Production on the eighth film had originally halted so that the cast could promote Part One, and then the strike began causing further delays.

Production restarted soon after, but was suspended in July due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes.

Filming resumed in March 2024, but came to another halt in May, allegedly due to a faulty gimbal (a camera tool). It has since restarted again.

The moment will form part of the heart-stopping final scenes of the eighth Mission Impossible film, which will hit cinemas in May 2025

Tom, who has had his pilot licence since 1994 and owns several aircrafts, was dressed in Ethan's famous leather jacket as he jumped into the plane

The star had previously been filming scenes for the long-awaited sequel Mission Impossible 8 at Longcross Studios

After getting into the cockpit, Tom's plane was seen soaring into the skies

Back in April, Tom was last seen filming just a stone's throw from Downing Street in London

Dramatic scenes signalled trouble for the Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt as the actor was seen kneeling on the road in surrender

Other scenes have been shot across Derbyshire, Surrey and central London at landmarks including the Natural History Museum in Kensington and Westminster Bridge

The filming of the UK scenes of the eighth instalment of the Mission Impossible franchise initially took place between March and December 2022

Production on the eighth film had originally halted so that the cast could promote Part One, and then the strike began causing further delays

Production restarted soon after, but was suspended in July due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes

Filming resumed in March 2024, but came to another halt in May, allegedly due to a faulty gimbal (a camera tool). It has since restarted again

Mission Impossible 8 was originally meant to be filmed back-to-back with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which raked in over half a billion at box office

If not for the strikes, MI:8 would have been with fans by the end of summer: its scheduled release date is now May 23, 2025

As well as Tom, the eighth Mission Impossible film will also see the return of Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Vanessa Kirby

It is hoped that the actor will not have to resort to desperately begging studio bosses to extend the film's run this time around 

When the seventh film hit cinemas, the actor was concerned about Oppenheimer overshadowing the film, as it required the same limited screens

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One underperformed at the box office compared to the previous films in the franchise, despite Tom's attempts to extend its run

He was proved right as Oppenheimer achieved almost $400 million more than Mission: Impossible at box office

The Mission: Impossible film series began in 1996 and is based on the 1966 television series of the same name

1941 Boeing-Stearman Model 75 

The Boeing Stearman Model 75 was the most prolific American biplane trainer aircraft of the Second World War.

Over 10,000 were built and they were the first aircraft flown by many of America's WWII fighter pilots.

In the post-war years thousands of them were sold into private ownership as military surplus where they became popular leisure aircraft. 

They were famously robust aircraft with strong landing gear - an important feature when teaching new pilots how to fly. 

The Model 75 is a tandem two-seat biplane with dual controls.

It was designed with a distinctive unfaired radial engine upfront that helped give the aircraft its signature flying characteristics. 

The aircraft was designed and built before Boeing became involved.

 Originally it was just known as the Stearman Kaydet as it had been developed by the Stearman Aircraft Corporation of Wichita, Kansas. 

It was previously reported that the Minority Report star was learning to fly a World War II plane for the eighth installment of the action franchise. 

A source told The Sun   : 'Tom had started to learn to fly a Boeing Stearman biplane earlier this year for a major stunt scene in Mission: Impossible 8.

'It’s obviously a highly skilled task but as usual he has no plans to cut any corners or bring in a stuntman.'

Tom Cruise hangs off the side of a plane for his latest daredevil stunt for Mission Impossible

The insider went on: 'Filming has only just wrapped on Mission: Impossible 7 but Tom has not given himself a break. And trying to film jaw-dropping scenes with an 80-year-old plane is particularly dangerous.'

Mission Impossible 8 was originally meant to be  filmed back-to-back with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which raked in over half a billion at box office .

If not for the strikes, MI:8 would have been with fans by the end of summer: its scheduled release date is now May 23, 2025.

As well as Tom, the eighth Mission Impossible film will also see the return of Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Vanessa Kirby.

It is hoped that the actor will not have to resort to desperately begging studio bosses to extend the film's run this time around .

When the seventh film hit cinemas, the actor was concerned about Oppenheimer overshadowing the film, as it required the same limited screens.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One underperformed at the box office compared to the previous films in the franchise , despite Tom's attempts to extend its run. 

He was proved right as Oppenheimer achieved almost $400 million more than Mission: Impossible at box office. 

The Mission: Impossible film series began in 1996 and is based on the 1966 television series of the same name.

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