Skip to main content

Check out this awesome behind-the-scenes footage of Tom Cruise doing ‘THAT’ stunt

Whereas most stunts in Hollywood productions are taken on by highly trained specialists (often in ill-fitting wigs), it’s well known that actor Tom Cruise has always been keen to perform his own action sequences whenever possible.

Take, for example, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, which hits screens later this month. A scene we first glimpsed earlier this year sees Cruise’s secret-agent character Ethan Hunt clinging onto the side of an Airbus A400M military aircraft as it hurtles down the runway before, incredibly, taking off. No green screen, no CGI, no stuntman in a dodgy hairpiece.

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation - Stunt Featurette

Milking the thrilling sequence for all its worth, the production team this week posted a short behind-the-scenes video offering up a few more tidbits about the extraordinary feat, which, when it shows up on the big screen in a few weeks time, could have nervous fliers reaching for the vomit bag (better take your own, movie theaters don’t provide them).

The star admitted a few months ago that he was “scared shitless” about performing the stunt, which took place at an airfield in England last October, but decided it was something he really wanted to do.

Recounting the story behind it, Cruise said he was so nervous that he couldn’t get any sleep the night before. It was probably just as well, as the nightmares would surely have been horrendous – a bird strike taking his head clean off; losing his grip on the aircraft and his harness coming loose; catastrophic mechanical failure the second the plane leaves terra firma, that kind of thing.

On the morning of the big day, the Hollywood actor said his main thought was: “OK, this is really gonna happen.” And happen it did. Eight times, in fact. It’s not clear why so many takes were needed, though perhaps Tom simply looked too darn terrified in the first seven. Cruise was certainly well aware that there was no room for error, saying, “If something went wrong, I can’t get into the airplane.”

Wade Eastwood, the movie’s stunt coordinator, put it more bluntly: “There’s no little crash and a scratch. You’re dead.”

Editors' Recommendations

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Tom Cruise takes a deep dive in new Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation trailer
Tom Cruise Mission Impossible Rogue Nation

The Mission: Impossible franchise is known for having impressive set pieces that test the skills of Tom Cruise's super-spy Ethan Hunt, but the ante seems to have been considerably raised in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation if the latest trailer is any indication.

The trailer begins with yet another seemingly impossible mission that Hunt and his team must undertake, complete with metal detectors, a massive amount of water, a death-defying dive, and all sorts of additionally deadly traps and high-tech security. It's all just another challenge for the Impossible Mission Force, though, as the team's most formidable opponent yet might indeed be the forces of bureaucracy aligned against it.

Read more
Tom Cruise admits he was terrified during airplane stunt in new Mission: Impossible film
weekend box office mission impossible rogue nation  cruise plane

Tom Cruise has his detractors, but one thing you can't fault the actor for is his willingness to risk life and limb to add another level of realism to a cinematic stunt.

Case in point: When a scene in the upcoming Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation called for Cruise's secret-agent character Ethan Hunt to cling to the side of an airplane as it takes off, the veteran actor soon found himself hanging from an Airbus A400M aircraft 5,000 feet in the air. It was a feat he pulled off not once but eight times for the dramatic, death-defying sequence.

Read more
Tom Cruise doesn’t need a ticket to fly in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation trailer
mission impossible 5 adds call duty modern warfare 3 writer ghost protocol

Details regarding the upcoming fifth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise have been hard to come by over the last year or so, but with the weekend debut of the film's first trailer and its official title, we finally know quite a bit more about the next adventure for secret agent Ethan Hunt and his Impossible Mission Force.

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher), the new film is titled Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, and will pit Ethan (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team against a group of rogue international agents that are seemingly their equals in every way -- and determined to destroy Ethan's team. The first trailer for the film offers a taste of what's to come for the IMF, as well as a reminder that 52-year-old franchise star Tom Cruise is still capable of accomplishing the most impossible mission of all: defying age with one impressive stunt after another.

Read more