If you thought Hollywood’s Tom Cruise stunt in the last edition of the Mission: Impossible film series where he jumped off a building, plane, and helicopter was the best he could do. You are wrong. The latest action scene in the next installment will take your breath away as the superstar has jumped off a cliff in Norway while performing it six times to get the best shot.
“Don’t be careful, be confident,” he says in the behind-the-scenes video of his stunt for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning in Hellesylt, Norway. He uploaded it on Twitter.
The film, which has a multi-star cast, would be released in July 2023.
More than nine minutes video, uploaded on Twitter, starts with the background voice of American filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie: “this is far away the most dangerous thing we have attempted”. Then comes, the Top Gun actor’s voice: “we have been working on this for years”.
It is a motorcycle jump off a cliff into a base jump scene, apparently following a scene in which he and his fellow actor would jump out of a helicopter and the latter chases him. Cruise then opens the parachute to complete the landing scene.
It was shot in September 2020. Before filming it, Cruise coordinated with all the experts from each of the particular disciplines involved to complete this “masterpiece”.
He took a year of base training, advanced skydive training, a lot of canopy skills, and a lot of tracking. He practiced stability, freefall, backtracking, front tracking, and multiple drills with the crewman, wearing a camera on his helmet, while skydiving. The film crew said the canopy control skills improved with back-to-back practice sessions.
They had three canopies, the director said.
The motor crossing was the next part of the scene for which a special track was built for the cliff jumping.
Director McQuarrie added that putting a camera on the bike was another challenge like finding the right lens, platform, and medium. It was put on a stand connected to the bike driven by Cruise.
“How do we involve the audience that is we want to give them that thrill,” says the lead actor. The crew used drone cameras to show the film the scene from different angles.
The Rain Man actor stresses the need for consistent training in every aspect of the scene.
“It came to a point where he was just a machine. I mean he had 500 skydives,” says Second Unit Director-cum-Stunt Coordinator Wade Eastwood. This is the amount of practice they did:
The crew replicated a scene in a quarry in England. The quarry was filled with card boxes to catch the falling motorcycle so that Cruise can simulate the jump.
The following list helped in the position of the drone camera close to him.
A GPS was connected with Cruise that recorded the jumps.
The ramp in Norway was constructed in months and materials were brought to the cliff via helicopters.
When the final day, Hunt—Cruise’s name in the spy-thriller movie—did it as it was supposed to be. But, he was not convinced in one scene, saying that he can hold onto the bike a little longer. He jumped off the cliff six times on the day, leaving the crew and the director in awe: “what he can’t do”.
