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Tom Cruise reveals morbid reason why Mission: Impossible 7 stunt was shot on the first day of filming

‘well, we know either we will continue with the film or we’re not. let’s know day one’ cruise explained, article bookmarked.

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Tom Cruise had a good reason for filming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One ’s most dangerous stunt on the first day of production.

In the seventh film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Cruise join forces with Avengers star Hayley Atwell to track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens humanity.

In what is being billed as “the most dangerous stunt of his career”, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt rides a motorcycle off a cliff before pulling a parachute and drifting off to safety.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight , Cruise explained that if anything went wrong while filming the stunt, at least they wouldn’t waste any time with filming.

“Well, we know either we will continue with the film or we’re not. Let’s know day one!” Cruise explained. “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.”

In a recent interview with Empire magazine, Dead Reckoning director Christopher McQuarrie further explained: “Doing that on day one gave us all the time in the world to understand why he [Ethan] was doing what he was doing.

“If we sat around and tried to figure out these movies the old-fashioned way, you’d never find it, simply because it’s such a living, breathing thing.”

Critics got a chance to see the movie for the first time this week at its red-carpet premiere in Rome.

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For the most part, reviewers fawned over Cruise and the film’s breathtaking action sequences. Back in April, the star treated Cinemacon attendees to an “epic” 20-minute motorcycle chase sequence from the movie , which saw the 60-year-old action star bombing around the Italian capital.

Dead Reckoning sees the return of cast members including Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Henry Czerny, Vanessa Kirby and Frederick Schmidt.

They are joined by newcomers Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Cary Elwes, Rob Delaney, Indira Varma, Shea Whigham, Mark Gatiss, Esai Morales and Charles Parnell.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is out 12 July in cinemas.

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Tom Cruise says 'Mission: Impossible 7' motorcycle stunt was shot on the first day of production so everyone knew if they could keep going or if it needed a 'major rewrite'

• Tom Cruise said the motorcycle stunt was done on the first day of shooting so everyone knew how to go forward.
• "Do we all continue or is it a major rewrite?" he told Entertainment Tonight.
• The director told Empire that doing it early also let production figure out how to use the stunt in the plot.

Tom Cruise says there's a simple explanation for why his thrilling stunt of driving a motorcycle off a cliff was completed on the very first day of production on "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1" — there would need to be a major change to the story if it wasn't successful.

"We know either we will continue with the film or we're not. Let's know day one!" Cruise told "Entertainment Tonight" (at the 2:00 mark). "Let us know day one what is going to happen: Do we all continue or is it a major rewrite?"

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"I was training and I was ready," Cruise continued. "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."

The stunt is the latest thrilling moment in the "M:I" franchise that has seen Cruise do everything from hang onto the side of a plane as it takes off to perform a HALO jump with a broken ankle.

Though those stunts were all extremely dangerous for Cruise to pull off, this one might be the most death-defying to date for the superstar.

The stunt has Cruise driving a motorcycle off a cliff in Norway. Then in mid-air, he disposes of the bike and free-falls until he opens his parachute.

To train for it, Cruise did 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps. And that wasn't just so Cruise had the skill and comfort to pull off the stunt; the training also made it possible for director Christopher McQuarrie and his crew to map out camera angles to capture it. 

McQuarrie recently told Empire a stunt like this has to be done at the start of production because then plot points can be written into the movie as to why Cruise's character Ethan Hunt jumped off the cliff in the first place.

"Doing that on day one gave us all the time in the world to understand why he was doing what he was doing," McQuarrie said. "If we sat around and tried to figure out these movies the old-fashioned way, you'd never find it, simply because it's such a living, breathing thing."

Cruise ended up doing the stunt six times on the first day of shooting. That meant a lot of cleanup.

Insider has learned from a source close to production that after each jump, a team at ground level in Norway was responsible for recovering and disposing of all the broken pieces of motorcycle that shattered on impact before the next jump was attempted.

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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 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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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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Tom Cruise Explains Why This ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ Stunt Was the Most Dangerous of His Career

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With each successive Mission: Impossible movie, Tom Cruise has made a habit of putting his life in danger for the sake of audience entertainment. This all really began with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol , for which Cruise dangled off the tallest building in the world for a high-flying set piece that made viewers positively nauseous. For Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation , he attached himself to the outside of an airplane while it lifted off a runway. And for Mission: Impossible – Fallout , he both dangled below a helicopter and also flew a helicopter himself for the thrilling finale set piece. But for Mission: Impossible 7 , he’s outdone himself.

You may recall that set photos revealed Cruise riding a motorcycle up a ramp, flying off a cliff, and then immediately pulling a parachute to safely make his way down to the ground. That is indeed one of the central set pieces of Mission: Impossible 7 (for which Rogue Nation and Fallout filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie returns), and now Cruise is pulling back the curtain on why it’s the most dangerous stunt of his career.

RELATED: Tom Cruise Rides a Train in New 'Mission: Impossible 7' Image, Talks Pandemic Filming

Speaking to Empire, Cruise broke down the challenging logistics of riding a motorcycle off a cliff:

“If the wind was too strong, it would blow me off the ramp,” he explains. “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.”

The actor and producer said the pressure was on, largely because he pushed to resume production safely on Mission: Impossible 7 during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to get people back to work and ensure theaters would be supplied with a big blockbuster to lure folks back to theaters:

“All those emotions were going through my mind,” he says. “I was thinking about the people I work with, and my industry. And for the whole crew to know that we’d started rolling on a movie was just a huge relief. It was very emotional, I gotta tell you.”

This will surely make for a hell of a behind-the-scenes documentary, so here’s hoping McQuarrie and/or Paramount Pictures had someone onhand to chronicle the challenging production of Mission: Impossible 7 , which is being shot back-to-back with Mission: Impossible 8 . Filming is still ongoing at this moment in time, but McQuarrie and Cruise have a bit more time to put the finishing touches on the first sequel before it hits theaters – M:I 7 ’s release date was recently delayed to May 27, 2022.

KEEP READING: Tom Cruise Says He Was Told to Lose the Smile While Filming Death-Defying Stunts

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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.

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Tom Cruise Pulled Off The Biggest Stunt In Cinema History in ‘Mission: Impossible 7’

"You know the only thing you have to avoid while doing a stunt like this is serious injury or death..."

Image: Paramount Pictures

Tom Cruise’s latest movie Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has received widespread acclaim since it premiered worldwide this week, with Cruise upping the stakes for the seventh instalment in the Mission: Impossible franchise. But ahead of release to the general public, there’s one unbelievable stunt that has left everybody wondering… ‘How did they do it?!’

One cold September day in 2020, on Norway’s picturesque Helsetkopen mountain range, the ripples of a modified Honda CRF 250 motorbike engine cascaded across the vast glacial scene, as Tom Cruise and a Hollywood film crew put years of preparation into practice, to undertake the biggest stunt in cinema history.

The stunt was filmed on the first day of principal photography, “in classic Mission form,” says director Christopher McQuarrie, in which Cruise would charge a custom-built motorcycle over a sheer mountain edge and freefall almost 4000 feet before deploying a parachute canopy before certain death.

To pull something off of this magnitude required years of meticulous planning and training to achieve perfect execution. “There’s a lot going into this stunt. 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.”

WATCH Tom Cruise’s biggest stunt ever below.

“Don’t be careful. Be competent.” Tom Cruise

Hollywood’s movie maverick Tom Cruise is well known for his daring on-screen stunts, whether it’s climbing a 2000-foot cliff in the opening scene of  Mission: Impossible II ; hanging onto the edge of a huge Airbus A400M plane as it takes off in  Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation ; or ascending 1700 feet up the tallest building in the world with no more than a harness for  Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol , Cruise is the king of on-camera chaos, bringing the Mission: Impossible story to dizzying new heights with each subsequent flick – literally.

The preparation for such a stunt was immense that Cruise had to master a year of BASE training and advanced skydive training, doing 30 jumps a day and 500 skydives to perfect his canopy skills and spacial awareness, tracking, freefalling and positioning.

This continued with specialised motocross training, carrying out over 13,000 individual jumps to determine the perfect speed, distance and overall trajectory of the final stunt. This is a feat in itself, not considering the fact that Cruise’s bike had no internal speedometer, so with each successive launch, he had to become so perfectly aligned with the determining factors of his jumps, using no more than his body to land effectively and safely.

“The key is me hitting certain speeds and being consistent with that. 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 here and I’m cupping my chest. That will give me lift,” Cruise explains.

In Norway, where the final stunt was to take place for Mission: Impossible 7 , a swarm of helicopters were brought in to expertly assemble the “masterful” track and ramp. Following years of precise preparation, the conditions were right for the real thing.

Defying gravity, fear and limitations require a specific piece of kit. For his death-defying stunt, Tom Cruise’s goggles in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One were Oakley’s one-of-a-kind ECLP23, featuring High-Speed Protection, an expanded field of view and Zero Gravity making sure that the eyewear was a perfect fit for his face, leaving no room for error as Cruise freefalls over a cliff edge with no stunt double in sight.

RELATED :  Tom Cruise Touches Down In Sydney Wearing A Lowkey $200,000 Watch

Cruise would perform the final stunt a total of eight times off the sheer edge of the Helsetkopen mountains, at a height of 4,000 feet into a jagged and unforgiving ravine. “Every time I went off the ramp, it was dangerous,” explained Cruise. “It was risking my life. And we wanted to keep that to a minimum.”

The final cut is pure cinematic perfection; an addictive action sequence that raises the stakes in this latest saga of Ethan Hunt’s adrenaline-filled anthology. So there’s no surprise then that Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has received a score of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and is set to be the highest-rated movie of the Mission: Impossible franchise.

As director, Christopher McQuarrie says: “This is far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted. The only thing that scares me more is what we have planned for Mission 8 …”

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A new behind-the-scenes featurette from Paramount Pictures' Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One reveals the intricacies of Tom Cruise's latest death-defying stunt, which the production calls "the biggest stunt in cinema history."

The nine-minute video details how Cruise raced a motocross bike off the side of a mountain into a parachuted free fall, a feat he performed six times. The stunt occurred in the small village of Hellesylt, Norway, where pieces of a ramp were flown in by helicopter over several months during the Covid-19 pandemic. "This is far and away the most dangerous thing we've ever attempted," director Christopher McQuarrie says in the clip. "The only thing that scares me more is what we have planned for Mission 8 ."

RELATED: Top Gun 2's Stunt Training Required the Actors to Escape an Underwater Cage Blindfolded

Cruise trained for several years to pull off this latest stunt, performing 500 skydives and more than 13,000 motocross jumps. On the technical side of things, Cruise and McQuarrie worked with a team of engineers to develop new cameras specifically designed to capture the stunt. The team used a GPS to track Cruise's movement so they could pinpoint the exact locations their cameras needed to be for various close-ups. Because there was no speedometer in his bike, Cruise relied on the sound and feel of the vehicle to hit the necessary speeds required for the sequence.

As a performer, Cruise is known for doing his own stunts and for escalating the size and scale of them with each passing project, especially when it comes to the Mission: Impossible franchise . As spy Ethan Hunt, the three-time Oscar nominee has scaled the Burj Khalifa (the world's tallest building), hung from the side of an airbus as it took flight and corkscrewed a helicopter down a mountainess cavern as it careened toward the ground.

The motocross stunt is not the only big action set piece in Hunt's future. In September, a video emerged online of Cruise balanced atop a biplane that takes a sudden sideways dip. It is unknown whether the sequence will be part of Dead Reckoning Part One or Two , which are shooting back-to-back. Paramount originally showed the clip at CinemaCon back in April ahead of a screening of Cruise's latest box office juggernaut Top Gun: Maverick . The actor also recently shared a look at a stunt from Dead Reckoning - Part Two , falling from a plane while thanking fans for Maverick 's success .

RELATED: Top Gun: Maverick's Best Picture Nomination Returns the Golden Globes to Its Roots

Released in May, Top Gun: Maverick remains the highest-grossing film of 2022 with a $1.49 billion box office haul. The film was also a hit with both critics and audiences, earning a 96% score with the former and 99% with the latter on Rotten Tomatoes. The National Board of Review recently named the long-awaited sequel Best Film of 2022, and many awards analysts expect the film to earn several Academy Award nominations, including those for Best Picture and Best Actor for Cruise.

In Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One , Cruise is joined by franchise regulars Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Rebecca Ferguson. Also returning from previous entries are Vanessa Kirby and Henry Czerny, while new recruits include Cary Elwes, Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff . McQuarrie is writing and directing Dead Reckoning - Part One and Two after shepherding the franchise's previous two installments ( Rogue Nation and Fallout ).

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 14, 2023, with Part Two expected on June 28, 2024.

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Mission: Impossible 7 will feature Tom Cruise's most dangerous stunt ever

By Sam Moore

Most people have limits – but then, most people are not Tom Cruise . In the name of cinema, the diminutive action legend has flown a real fighter jet, hung off the side of the world’s tallest building and strapped himself to the wing of a plane as it was taking off. Now, if that wasn’t enough, he claims Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One will feature his “most dangerous” stunt yet.

In a newly-released behind the scenes featurette, we see Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie plot, plan and execute a stunt that has to be seen to be believed. The crux of the stunt is Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt will ride a motorbike off a very real cliff before base jumping his way to safety and hopefully not dying in the process. No harnesses and no doubles were used in the making of the scene, meaning if Tom Cruise’s parachute doesn’t deploy, Tom Cruise goes splat (but would probably still survive).

As the nine minute clip shows, the process of putting together such a stunt is anything but simple. As part of his training, Cruise completed over 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps and at one point brags he knows how fast he is going on the bike from its sound and vibrations. The team also make use of simulations and data to perfect the science of how steep to build the ramp and where to place the cameras.

McQuarrie says the stunt wouldn’t even have been possible two years ago due to technological limitations but the scene has apparently been a dream of Cruise’s for some time.

In typical Mission: Impossible tradition, the bike ride to base jump into an actual canyon is the first scene Cruise shot for the film. In a moment as tense as one of the series’ huge set-pieces itself, we watch McQuarrie and the crew watch Cruise perform the stunt for the first time and absolutely nail it – much to the relief of the now very grey haired director.

They got the shot first time but Cruise thinks he can do better and hold on to the bike a little longer before it plummets thousands of feet below. So he goes again and again and again. As base jumping coach John DeVore says with unbridled glee: "Tom Cruise just rode a motorcycle off a cliff six times today."

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Mission: Impossible 7: Tom Cruise On The Most Dangerous Stunt Of His Career – Exclusive Images

Even as a star whose career is defined by daredevil stunts, Tom Cruise is taking it to the next level with his latest high-stakes escapade. The actor and producer has famously always done his own stunts on the Mission: Impossible films, but there were a few reasons why his motorcycle ride off the edge of a cliff for the forthcoming seventh chapter in the franchise mattered more than the rest. And not just because it was the single most dangerous thing he’d ever done.

Cruise tells Empire about the technical eventualities that were running through his head on the first day of filming after months of training, as he was hurtling through the sky. “If the wind was too strong, it would blow me off the ramp,” he explains. “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.”

Check out an exclusive new behind-the-scenes shot of Cruise and his notorious bike:

As the actor-stuntman extraordinaire was focusing on perfectly executing his vehicular freefall, he was also feeling a sense of relief that he was doing it at all, given that the COVID-19 pandemic had delayed production on his movie and so many others, and threatened to do so indefinitely until Cruise and co. found a way to reopen the set safely. “All those emotions were going through my mind,” he says. “I was thinking about the people I work with, and my industry. And for the whole crew to know that we’d started rolling on a movie was just a huge relief. It was very emotional, I gotta tell you.”

Read Empire’s full Mission: Impossible 7 story in the upcoming Tom Cruise issue, on sale Thursday 13 May and available to pre-order online now here. Mission: Impossible 7 is due in UK cinemas in May 2022.

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Tom Cruise attempts cinema’s biggest stunt in Mission: Impossible 7 featurette

Tom Cruise thanked fans yesterday for their support of Top Gun: Maverick   after jumping out of a plane and completing a solo freefall dive . Yet, that wasn’t the craziest thing captured on camera as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One  ( also known as Mission: Impossible 7 or M:I 7 ) released a behind-the-scenes look at the “biggest stunt in cinema history.”

The 9-minute video brings the audience back to the first day of shooting M:I 7  in September 2020 when Cruise prepared to jump a motorcycle off a cliff, complete a base jump, and parachute to safety. While the stunt seems out of this world, Cruise calmly says that he’s wanted to do this since he was a “little kid.”

For a stunt that took seconds to complete, it took well over a year of preparation and training. Cruise had to perfect base jumping, skydiving, canopy control, and motocross before he could even practice the jump. Cruise completed over 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps in preparation for the stunt. Countless hours of practice on a model ramp were needed to calculate the speed and angles of Cruise’s jump so writer/director Christopher McQuarrie knew where to put each camera. When it came time to complete the stunt in Norway, in true Tom Cruise fashion, he did it not once, but six times.

Dead Reckoning Part One will be the seventh installment in the  Mission: Impossible film franchise. Alongside Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg , Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, and Henry Czerny will reprise their roles from the previous M:I films.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 14, 2023. 

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Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One is an undeniable achievement. Like all of the Mission: Impossible movies before it, the film features more awe-inspiring, death-defying stunts than it rightly should. As a result, while the film’s place on fans’ personal Mission: Impossible rankings remains unclear right now, what’s less uncertain is whether or not Dead Reckoning Part One has managed to maintain its franchise’s track record of blowing moviegoers away. Spoiler alert: It definitely, definitely has.

Now that the film is playing in theaters nationwide, the conversations surrounding its action sequences have only intensified. But which of Dead Reckoning Part One’s stunts, you may be wondering, is its best? And which is its worst? Wonder no more. Here are Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One’s stunts, ranked from the most to least thrilling. 5. Ethan’s runaway fistfight

Very few movie stars have been at the center of more well-regarded action movies than Tom Cruise. It’s not hard to see why, either. Over the course of his career, Cruise has developed an obsessive devotion to practical action sequences, the kind that make audiences gasp and cheer when they’re brought to life on the big screen. His desire to wow and thrill has resulted in him putting himself in some serious danger over the years. It’s also led to some of the greatest action movies ever made.

With Cruise’s latest film, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, hitting theaters this week, now seems like as good a time as any to look back at his career and celebrate some of his biggest achievements. So, without any further ado, here are the seven best action movies that Tom Cruise has ever starred in. (Dead Reckoning Part One notwithstanding.) 7. Minority Report (2002)

Everyone loves the Mission: Impossible movies. There are a variety of reasons why: they offer old-fashioned cinematic thrills; they are a form of escapism akin to the James Bond movies, but tougher and more American; they feature one of the last truly great movie stars, Tom Cruise. Ever since the fourth installment, Ghost Protocol, resurrected the genre from pop culture oblivion, the conventional wisdom is that the modern M: I films just keep getting better and better, and are the series' best entries.

Well, nuts to that. I'm not going to defend the much-maligned M: I 2, which doesn't really deserve reconsideration (seriously, what's with all those doves?), but the original Mission: Impossible, in my eyes, is perfection, and hasn't been topped by any other M: I film ... or any action movie, for that matter. The peak of '90s Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking, Mission: Impossible delivers two cinematic giants, Cruise and director Brian De Palma, at the height of their powers, and is perhaps the most fun mainstream movie Hollywood ever produced. Here are just a few reasons why the original M: I still holds up today. The opening titles Mission: Impossible (1996) Opening Title Sequence

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Tom Cruise Performs Death-Defying Stunt on Set of the Latest Mission: Impossible Film

The latest installment of the Mission: Impossible series recently resumed filming amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic

Tom Cruise is back in action!

The 58-year-old actor was spotted performing a death-defying stunt on the set of the latest installment of the Mission: Impossible series, Mission: Impossible 7 , which recently resumed filming amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic .

In the series of shots, Cruise — who has famously performed many of his own stunts in the series — is seen 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.

According to the Daily Mail , the stunt was filmed on a 650-foot ramp on the film’s set in Oxfordshire, England, and was "estimated to have cost £2 million," or more than $2.6 million in U.S. dollars.

The Mission: Impossible film saga is based on the popular television series of the same name, and the seventh iteration in the famed set of films will follow Cruise's Ethan Hunt as he takes on another mission.

Cruise previously revealed in January 2019 that the seventh and eighth Mission: Impossible films will be shot back-to-back with Christopher McQuarrie writing and directing both films.

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Mission: Impossible 7 was originally scheduled to be released on July 23, 2021 but has been pushed back to a new release date of November 19, 2021 amid the current health crisis.

The film, which halted production in Italy in February due to the pandemic, began shooting earlier than expected, after Simon Pegg , a star of the film, previously told Variety the cast and crew would begin shooting outdoor scenes in September.

RELATED VIDEO: Watch Tom Cruise Force a ‘Terrified’ James Corden to Jump Out of an Airplane

Pegg, 50, told the outlet picking up production is "the plan," and added, "That will begin with the outdoor stuff."

"That feels fairly doable, and obviously there will be precautions put in place," he added.

The actor also joked the action scenes the franchise is famous for would need to be filmed "five feet apart" in compliance with social distancing .

"People that are involved in any close proximity stuff, it will have to be determined that they're safe to do that," Pegg said. "I don't know what the testing situation is, how that works, or whether they'll be able to be tested regularly."

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Watch Tom Cruise pull a Mission: Impossible 7 death-defying airplane stunt on set for PSA

Standing on a biplane while flying over a canyon in South Africa is a typical day in the life of Cruise.

We don't have to wait for Tom Cruise 's next movie to see another daredevil stunt from this Hollywood adrenaline junkie.

Footage of a video PSA that Cruise recorded for Las Vegas-hosted CinemaCon attendees back in April has found its way online. The actor, who was promoting Top Gun: Maverick at the time, recorded a message while standing on a moving biplane while it was flying over a canyon in South Africa, where he and director Christopher McQuarrie was filming were shooting Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One .

"Hey everyone! Wish I could be there with you," Cruise begins as he smiles for the camera mid-flight. "I'm sorry about the extra noise. As you can see, we're filming the latest installment of Mission: Impossible right now. And right now we're over the gorgeous Blyde River Canyon in stunning South Africa. And we're making this film for the big screen, for the audiences to see in your wonderful theaters."

McQuarrie then makes a cameo. Flying his own biplane, he pulls up beside Cruise's craft to say they are "losing the light" and need to go back to filming.

The video has gained traction on social media and was shared by, among others, actor and director Stephen Ford.

The PSA originally screened at CinemaCon ahead of a surprise screening of Top Gun: Maverick , which has since become Cruise's highest-grossing movie to date after debuting for the public in theaters in May.

EW got a driver's seat view of just how intense some of the stunts Cruise pulls off can be. Simon Pegg, one of Cruise's Mission: Impossible co-stars, had previously said in June that he gets "the willies" seeing the actor do what he does.

"There's a frisson you get when there's authenticity: the idea that this guy is actually jumping off a cliff on a motorbike and deploying the parachute 100 feet from the ground?" Pegg said. "It puts the willies up you."

If this PSA is just a taste of what Cruise will do in the seventh Mission: Impossible movie, there will be plenty more willies to be had.

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Both the Mission: Impossible franchise and its lead actor and producer Tom Cruise have become synonymous with blood-curdling, dangerous stunts. With each new film, Cruise insists on doing his own stunts , taking it upon himself to risk his life in increasingly, treacherous sequences for the quality of the finished product. At this point, Cruise is a bona fide stunt performer whose bravery in dangerous stunts allows the capture of unique moments not seen in other movies.

Luckily, Cruise's training, dedication, and ambition, coupled with experts' guidance, film direction, and stunt coordination make these sequences as safe as possible so that Cruise's stunts can get even bigger. Nonetheless, unpredictable elements and variables and there being nothing Cruise won't do for a Mission: Impossible stunt make them life-threatening. Here are 14 of the most dangerous times Tom Cruise has risked everything to make Mission: Impossible's audience's pulse race.

14 Helicopter-Train Jump in Mission: Impossible

Seemingly shot before Cruise had a death wish, the stunts in Mission: Impossible seem tame compared to that of the franchise's later entries. However, that's not to say there weren't a few perilous moments, and one that stands out is during the film's climax. After tussling with Jon Voight's villain Jim Phelps on top of a TGV bullet train and jumping onto a helicopter that soon explodes, Cruise's Ethan Hunt then jumps back onto the train.

This stunt was filmed on a sound stage in Pinewood Studios using a wind generator firing dangerous winds of 140 mph to emulate the blast. Considering his stunt career trajectory, Cruise was initially reluctant to include the stunt. Therefore, this stunt could be the origin story of his passion for doing his own Mission: Impossible stunts. After completing the jump four times, Cruise was bleeding, bruised, and cut; however, it was a sign of even more danger to come.

13 Cable Drop in Mission: Impossible

One of the most iconic scenes, not only in the Mission: Impossible franchise, but in spy movies, sees Hunt rappel down from the ceiling into a locked-down room. Breaking into Langley, the CIA's headquarters, Hunt is lowered into the room to avoid triggering alarms. As if this weren't dangerous enough, Hunt's wire lifeline is also let go by Franz Kreiger, causing him to plummet to the ground and stop just inches from the floor.

The stunt was all about balance, as Cruise discovered quickly, repeatedly overbalancing and thwacking his head on the floor. Brian De Palma was about to shoot the scene differently when Cruise filled his shoes with pound coins for counterbalance and got the shot. Though this sequence is not one of Cruise's most dangerous stunts, hanging and falling 40 feet from the ceiling for days and repeatedly enduring blows to the head isn't exactly health and safety conscious.

12 Aquarium Explosion in Mission: Impossible

Another entry from the movie that started it all, this stunt involves Cruise outrunning 16 tons of water bursting out of an exploding aquarium. After learning that he's been double-crossed, Hunt makes his escape from his untenable position by throwing a piece of exploding gum at a fish tank in a Prague restaurant. After stunt specialists delivered underwhelming attempts, de Palma grudgingly let Cruise undertake the sequence.

It says something about Cruise's body of stunt work that this one is low down the list. The aquarium sequence was incredibly dangerous when taking into account the water, shattering glass, and miscommunication regarding the exact timing of the stunt. Although Cruise limped away with a hurt ankle (not for the last time), the stunt made for a spectacular scene.

Related: Mission: Impossible Movies Ranked - From The 1996 Original to Fallout

11 Casablanca Bike Chase in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

In a movie with such iconic stunts, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation's bike chase is somewhat eclipsed. The thrilling sequence sees Hunt racing after Rebecca Ferguson's Isla Faust, first by car and then on a BMW S1000RR motorcycle. Although Hunt's chase is unsuccessful and Faust escapes, this sizzling pursuit around the extreme turns of the Casablanca highway put Cruise's life firmly in danger.

Having started riding motorcycles at the age of 10, it is no surprise that Cruise is keen to use them in his stunts. Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie even wrote the script around this motorcycle chase, and it pays off as it injects a high-octane punch brimming with raw danger. Cruise rides up to 130 mph and leans over sometimes just inches from the ground, and all without a helmet.

10 Paris Bike Chase in Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Mission: Impossible - Fallout somehow managed to outdo its predecessor's motorcycle chase, but this time Hunt becomes the hunted. For this sequence, Cruise and his fellow biker stunt performers abandoned their safety rigs, meaning that did the whole chase by free riding. All the turns weaving in and out of oncoming traffic and going well above the Parisian speed limits executed by Cruise, were all as dangerous as they look.

Hurtling through the streets at over 100 mph with cars and bikes pursuing and coming at him head-on sounds like enough to deal with, but McQuarrie revealed Mission: Impossible - Fallout's motorcycle chase was more perilous than it seemed. Between numerous automotive variables, slippery wet cobblestones, and cameras seeking close-ups at stomach-turning speeds just inches away from his head, it's amazing Cruise escaped from shooting this sequence without a scratch. Further, a miscommunication problem with the local stunt drivers meant they sometimes failed to hit their mark.

9 Free Climbing Cliffhanger in Mission: Impossible 2

The opening of the franchise's second film establishes that even in Hunt's time off between missions he enjoys getting his heart pumping. It is during some R&R mountain free climbing at Dead Horse Point in Utah that Hunt gets his mission that sets up M ission: Impossible 2 . Despite safety precautions taken by the film's production, it shows what Cruise is made of.

Unlike his adrenaline junkie character, Cruise wore a safety rope throughout the sequence, however, the margin of error was so chillingly slim that even director John Woo had to look away. The only scene where the free climber in the shot isn't Cruise is when Hunt almost slips and tumbles between two cliffs. Other than that, it's really him hanging off the red rocks, 600 feet above a talus slope and a further 2000 feet from the ground. It's a precarious, impressive feat and a great opening sequence.

Related: Every Time Tom Cruise's Hunt "Died" In The Mission: Impossible Series

8 Roof Jump in Mission: Impossible - Fallout

One of the most famous stunt accidents in recent years, Cruise's ankle break occurred while filming a relatively straightforward stunt in London for Mission: Impossible - Fallout . As he leaps from one building to another, misjudging it horribly, Cruise clatters into the building's side and bends his foot nine ways to Sunday.

Though it might not seem as dangerous as the other stunts on this list, as anyone who has seen the nauseating footage of the injury can attest, this jump looked very painful. It was also an expensive injury, as Cruise was unable to continue filming it halted production for seven weeks and cost the studio $80 million. This was of the few times a Mission: Impossible stunt has gone wrong, and it shows how real the stakes are and that Cruise is, in fact, human.

7 Eye-Watering Knife Fight in Mission: Impossible 2

A similarly disturbing stunt that features in Mission: Impossible 2, and the risk was even higher. During the third-act battle, Dougray Scott's villain Sean Ambrose tries to sink his very sharp knife into Hunt's eye. To ensure maximum realism, Woo wanted Scott to genuinely push down with all of his force onto Cruise's eye. During the stunt, the blade gets as close as a quarter-inch away, Cruise being protected only by a steel cable attached to an overhead rig. Needless to say, if these cables malfunctioned, the consequences could be at the very least life-changing and at the very most life-ending.

6 HALO Jump in Mission: Impossible - Fallout

The mission in Paris in Mission: Impossible - Fallout begins with a high-altitude low-open jump that goes awry when Henry Cavill's character August Walker's oxygen supply malfunctions. The sequence is breathtaking and its realism is palpable with Cruise's face alight as he exhibits both expert skydiving and high-caliber acting. It's the fruit borne by hard work and sheer nerve in the face of danger, and not just from Cruise.

Falling from 25,000 feet, Cruise, Cavill's stunt double, and a videographer jumped 106 times (including rehearsals) and shot the sequence in three-minute takes, once per day, to ensure the dusk lighting was perfect. The scene is three takes stitched together, each more dangerous than the last. Jumping out of the plane is hazardous enough, and there was a serious risk of colliding with Cavill's double when filming Hunt plummeting to Walker's aid. Finally, during the take in which Hunt saves Walker, Cruise had to judge the height at which to stop providing him oxygen and deploy his parachute.

5 The Airbus Scene In Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

During the comic opening scene and plane stunt of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation , Benji Dunn fails to remotely open the door to let Hunt onto a plane in Minsk, Belarus. This gave Cruise the opportunity to perform a stunt in which he clings to the side of an Airbus A400M plane as it takes off. The scene follows Hunt ascending thousands of feet into the air; as the seconds elapse the danger proliferates.

Considering Cruise was bolted to the plane via a harness, at speeds of 260 mph, birds and debris became the biggest dangers. Indeed, the actor was actually injured by a pebble at high speed. The stunt is even more terrifying considering that, according to McQuarrie, Cruise was wearing earplugs and contact lenses, meaning he couldn't see or hear. Further, the toxic fumes from the engine added potential long-term effects to the mix.

Related: Tom Cruise’s New Cliff Stunt Creates A Big Mission: Impossible 8 Challenge

4 Helicopter Chase in Mission: Impossible - Fallout

During the Mission: Impossible - Fallout helicopter chase stunt , Hunt finds himself on a rope hanging from a moving helicopter, eventually crawling up the rope to fly it and chase Cavill's character. Again, all that stands between Cruise and certain death, as he hangs out of the side of the helicopter, is a harness. That said, what makes this sequence especially dangerous is the proximity to which the two helicopters come to each other.

Cruise piloted the helicopter himself after becoming certified in an unusually accelerated timeframe and training hard for 16 hours per day. Moreover, flying in dim seasonal light Cruise got as close as a few feet from the other helicopter's rotor blades. It was so dangerous that director McQuarrie has said that he wouldn't have begun filming the sequence had he known beforehand what it took to capture.

3 Underwater Heist in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

In Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation , Hunt and his team are tasked with swapping a file in an underwater database. When he fails to open the escape hatch, Faust must come and save him to prevent him from drowning. This extremely dangerous stunt had real stakes; both Cruise and Ferguson risked their lives holding their breaths while exerting themselves, burning through oxygen at a rapid rate.

Cruise's underwater Rogue Nation heist stunt was filmed in a succession of continuous shots, meaning the actors had to train to hold their breath for over six minutes. According to McQuarrie, by the end of the stunt's 10-day shooting schedule, Cruise was spent, with nitrogen in his blood and brain fog so bad that he couldn't memorize his lines. As if this life-threatening sequence weren't enough, Cruise also had to perform a jump off of a 120-foot ledge to get Hunt into the subaqueous security system.

2 Climbing the Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

The franchise's most memorable stunt saw Cruise climbing the side of the Burj Khalifa , the tallest building in the world. In Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Hunt had to 11 floors of the 2,722-foot skyscraper to get to the 130th floor with only adhesive gloves, one of which fails. Though secured with a harness, Cruise actually performed this climb almost half a mile in the air, including the part where he plummeted when the glove failed.

Both the scene and the shoot itself were a race against the clock. It was time sensitive to film, as Cruise's harness was at risk of cutting off the actor's circulation, and it doesn't tend to be easy to breathe at that height. This stunt is the epitome of danger, a truly petrifying feat; nevertheless, the sensational scene speaks for itself.

1 ​​ Motorcycle Jump in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Cruise himself has labeled the marquee motorcycle cliff stunt Mission: Impossible 7 as the greatest in cinema history. It's a stunt he's wanted to perform since he was a child, and is the most dangerous yet. It certainly delivers the wow factor in the film's trailers.

Shot in Norway, the stunt involves Cruise riding his motorcycle off of a cliff, propelling into a nosedive, and deploying a parachute. Cruise performed 13,000 training jumps for the sequence to ensure he could execute it with the precision required. This Evel Knievel-like jump that's been all over the marketing campaign has unquestionably piqued fans' interest in the eagerly anticipated next Mission: Impossible installment.

Sources: The New York Times , The Independent

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