Cruise famously performs his own stunts in the franchise, and the latest instalment features what is being billed as the most dangerous one he has ever attempted.
The actor rides a motorbike off a cliff then base jumps hundreds of feet to the ground, a stunt which took a year of training.
At 61, Tom Cruise could be forgiven for stepping back, but he said at the film’s Australian premiere that he hoped to be “still going” in his 80s like Ford, who recently completed his final Indiana Jones movie.
“Harrison Ford is a legend. I’ve got 20 years to catch up with him. I hope to keep making Mission: Impossible films until I’m his age,” said Cruise.
The cliff stunt was filmed in Norway and was something the actor said he had dreamed of doing since he was a child.
His training involved making over 500 skydives and more than 13,000 motocross jumps before the scene was shot in Norway.
‘Biggest stunt in cinema history’
Wade Eastwood, the stunt coordinator, called it “pretty much the biggest stunt in cinema history” and Cruise performed it six times in order to get the perfect shots.
The film’s other set-piece stunt takes place aboard a moving train at 95km/h, as Cruise fights a villain played by Esai Morales.
“I’ve done fight scenes but to do them on a moving train was trial by fire. That’s how Tom likes to do things,” Morales said.
The production team built the train and the director, Christopher McQuarrie, said: “There was not a surplus of trains available to be wrecked, so we had to build the train if we wanted to destroy it.
“No one else in the world is doing this level of practical film-making and it may never be done again.”
Explaining why he performs his own stunts, Cruise said: “I want to give everything. To have that experience, to see that it communicates to an audience when it’s real. It’s different. There’s stakes, there’s real stakes.”
The actor joked that he did not wear a helmet for the bike stunt because “it just doesn’t look cool”.
Another stunt, in which Cruise and co-star Hayley Atwell appear to drive down Rome’s Spanish Steps, was shot at another location and the backdrop added digitally. The film includes a disclaimer stating that “in no way, shape or form were any vehicles driven down the Spanish Steps”.
Authorities in Rome are keen to stress that the landmark is not accessible to cars, after a Saudi national last year drove down the steps in a rented Maserati.
He was charged with damaging cultural assets but claimed that he had been wrongly directed by the vehicle’s sat-nav.
The 10 greatest set pieces from the Mission: Impossible films
Mission: Impossible is back in cinemas on Monday, July 10 with the seventh instalment, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. At this stage, the most impossible thing about the series is how Tom Cruise and co keep coming up with bigger, better, more jaw-dropping stunts and set-pieces. But which is the most nerve-jangling of them all?
1. The train cliffhanger – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
It takes a lot to top the stunts and set-pieces from the last six Mission: Impossible films, but Dead Reckoning Part One does it with the ultimate cliffhanger – in the literal sense. It begins with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt jumping off a cliff on a motorcycle and launching into a base jump (Cruise’s preparation for the well-publicised stunt included 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps). After an immense fight with Esai Morales’s villain atop the Orient Express, Hunt finds himself on a runaway train – and hurtling towards a blown-up (i.e. no longer there) bridge. Dead Reckoning then serves up the series’ most inventive set-piece yet, as Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell clamber through the train’s carriages – but vertically, as the train tumbles off a cliff one carriage at a time. The stunt was originally meant to shoot in Poland in 2020 at the delapidated Pilchowice Bridge. But following international outcry about Tom Cruise supposedly planning to blow up a “national monument”, the scene was completed in the Yorkshire Dales, where a 70-ton replica antique steam train was sent crashing into Darlton Quarry in Derbyshire. “We built that train, purposely, to be destroyed”, explained the film’s director Christopher McQuarrie.
2. The CIA break-In – Mission: Impossible (1996)
Twenty-seven years on, and the sight of Tom Cruise dangling on a wire is still the series’ defining image. The set-up for the sequence takes its cue directly from the impossible missions of the 1960s TV series. Arguably, it’s the most impossible of the missions from the films, with Ethan Hunt having to steal a top-secret list from inside the CIA HQ – from a vault so alarmed that Hunt can’t let even a bead of sweat touch the floor. He dangles from a ventilation shaft in the ceiling and hacks the computer while suspended in the air. Cruise was held – and dropped – by a pulley system and spent a considerable amount of time hanging upside-down. The genius of it is director Brian De Palma’s masterful suspense.
3. The helicopter duel – Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)
For the final set-piece in M:I 6 – still the best of the sequels – Cruise’s character embarks on one of his many “I’ll figure it out when I get there” attempts at the saving the day. In a nerve-shredding sequence, he climbs into a helicopter mid-flight – by scaling a rope and payload hanging below the chopper – then shoots the pilot and takes the wheel before chasing down and crashing into a second helicopter then beating Superman (well, Henry Cavill) to death on a mountaintop. Cruise learned to pilot a helicopter for real for this sequence – clocking up serious hours to get to the right level of chopper expertise.
Yes, Cruise’s free solo climb at the start of Mission: Impossible 2 was impressive – climbing 2,000ft (though with a harness in real life, as if that makes it any easier to stomach). But he went one better (well, about 700ft better) in the fourth film, in which he clambered around the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building. The film – which was a bit of a reboot for the series – caused some fanfare after a photo was circulated of Cruise sitting on the very top of the skyscraper between scenes. But that’s a doddle compared to what he did in the movie itself – a stomach-lurching sequence of his climbing (using some techy gloves), swinging, and actually running around the building horizontally. He was held by safety wires in reality, which were then edited out in post-production. It was a game-changer for M:I, which has been increasingly sold on the escalating thrills of Cruise’s stunts.
You can almost hear the turbines whirring in Cruise’s head with this one: “How can I possibly top the last film?” What about clinging to the side of a plane while it takes off. The sort of thing that Cruise absolutely revels in, bizarrely. As pre-title sequences go, it’s enough to match most Bond films. To create the sequence, Cruise hung on to an Airbus A400M Atlas (though he was strapped down, thankfully). Cruise insisted on filming multiple takes to ensure they got the footage he needed. He did it eight times in total.
6. The Halo jump – Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)
Not content with clinging onto a plane during take-off, Cruise was compelled to jump out of one in the next film. On a mission that involved dropping into the Grand Palais in Paris (quite literally), Cruise’s Hunt and Henry Cavill’s dodgy CIA man, Walker, perform a HALO (high-altitude low-opening) skydive. The scene continues the macho posturing between Cruise and Cavill’s character, as Walker passes out mid-jump – because he was too manly to sort his oxygen bottle – forcing Hunt to switch oxygen bottles mid-jump, and before it’s too late to deploy his chute. It was such an unknown that director Christopher McQuarrie decided to film it last, putting huge pressure on the post-production team. It took weeks to film – with them making 106 jumps in total – all while Cruise was nursing a broken ankle.
7. The helicopter-train chase – Mission: Impossible (1996)
The original Mission: Impossible was much less about the stunts, and more complex game of deception and rug-pulls. Still, its labyrinthine plot leads to a couple of corking set-pieces, particularly the grand, high-speed finale: a fight with Jon Voight across a train as it races through the Channel Tunnel – while a Jean Reno-piloted helicopter gives chase. The sequence used some VFX trickery and soundstages, though Cruise did cling onto train carriages while facing a wind machine blasting at speeds of 320km/h. It’s a gripping, exhausting watch – a sequence that forces you to almost duck, as if you’re the one about to be clobbered by a signal light.
Taking a break from scaling new heights, Cruise’s relentless hero goes underground – and underwater – to pillage some sensitive materials. Apparently, the underwater stunt was something Cruise had been keen on doing for a while. Swimming through a secret underwater facility, Hunt has just three minutes of oxygen. In reality, Cruise trained with an underwater stunt specialist and learned how to hold his breath. You can see Cruise holding his breath for six minutes in a making-of feature. The brilliance of the sequence – which was shot in one continuous take – is that it’s so tense it makes you hold your breath along with Tom.
There isn’t much from the second and third M:I films to match the high-octane super-stunts of later films. But the climactic motorcycle chase from the John Woo-directed Mission: Impossible 2 certainly deserves a nod. It’s pure Woo, with plenty of slow-motion, leather coats flapping in the wind, and guns blazing. At one point, Cruise sweeps his legs off the motorbike – while still riding – and skis along the road. Cruise performed the stunt himself while the bike was being pulled along by a tow truck. The chase turns into a knife fight with villain Dougray Scott, who is just millimetres away from poking the Cruiser’s eye out. A small-scale stunt, perhaps, but likely to turn stomachs as much as any skyscraper jumps.
10. The exploding aquarium – Mission: Impossible (1996)
The idea of an exploding fish tank seems tame compared to Cruise’s death-defying shenanigans in later films. But it’s a key moment from the first movie. In the story, Hunt – framed as part of a double-cross – has to escape IMF boss Kittridge (who returns in the latest film). Sat in a fancy restaurant, Hunt blows up the aquarium with a stick of exploding chewing gum and escapes arrest. Not only is it a great visual, the sequence was hugely risky. With literally tons of water, the steel frame and broken glass flying around, Cruise’s iconic jump away from the water had to be precisely timed.
