What did you do this summer? Did you try and chill out amidst all the rollercoaster news cycle? Or did you turn 60 and have the biggest success of your career? If you did the latter, then in some ways you’re a lot like Tom Cruise, who’s capped off one crazy summer the only way he knows how: by risking life and limb for a little teaser for movie theaters.
The footage, which you can watch above, features the Days of Thunder vet perched on a red biplane high up in the sky, cruising above the Blyde River Canyon in South Africa. They were busy filming some no doubt psychotically dangerous stunts for Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. So why not film an extra death-defying one for a little intro for CinemaCon, the convention for movie theater owners?
The stunt mostly finds Cruise sitting on top of — not in — one of the plane’s seats, in front of his pilot. There’s only one hitch: Cruise struggles to talk. Surely it has something to do with the speed and the altitude. Whatever the case, it gives him a mushy-mouthed voice similar to Eric Cartman’s brace-faced sister, struggling to enunciate as he extols the glories of seeing big movies on big screens in big movie theaters.
Eventually he’s joined by the film’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, in his own plane, at which point the plane takes a big sideways dip, Cruise apparently glued or cemented to the plane’s surface.
In any case, this much is clear: Cruise is not going to let entering a new decade stop him from putting his life at risk just to entertain. He’ll even do it for quickie intro films! Perhaps it will endear him to another famous movie star who’s also been recording short films about the greatness of movie theaters: Nicole Kidman.
(Via IndieWire)
