Tom Cruise turned 60 last summer, but as we all know he’s living life in reverse. When he was younger he mostly did dramas, with few action movies with which to risk his life. Now he almost exclusively does action and almost exclusively puts his life at peril. The seventh Mission: Impossible — the franchise that really got him hooked on the genre — features some batsh*t stunts, even for him. Indeed, one was so daredevil that it basically gave the crew a panic attack.
It takes a true team effort to perform and film one of the most dangerous sports in the world – Speed Flying. pic.twitter.com/4jHSM1dMMA
— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) June 29, 2023
As per The Hollywood Reporter, a new behind-the-scenes video for Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One shows Cruise sbows him prepping for “speed-flying.” What is speed-flying? It involves parachuting but, like, really fast. Very few people on the planet dare do it. Director Christopher McQuarrie, who’s handled the series since Rogue Nation, calls it “one of the most dangerous sports in the world.”
McQuarrie added that “while it may look similar, speed-flying is not skydiving. Skydiving is fairly predictable. Speed-flying is incredibly unpredictable.”
So of course Tom Cruise took it up.
In the video, Cruise describes speed-flying, and it sounds completely terrifying. “We’re gonna do spirals,” he says, “and we’re landing at an incredibly high speed, over 80 kilometers an hour.”
Perhaps Cruise wasn’t afraid, but his crew sure was. McQuarrie said that while his star flying close to some rocks at high speeds “looks quite beautiful,” behind the camera everyone was in “absolute terror.”
In a way this is moviegoers’ fault. They keep rewarding Cruise with money for risking his life in creative ways. So, McQuarrie says, with each M:I movie they have to “become a little bit more adventurous every time.” But just a little, as in taking up one of the deadliest sports known to humankind.
The speed-flying scene in Dead Reckoning Part One isn’t the only one in which Cruise risked life and limb to entertain us. That motorcycle cliff jump he did was filmed on Day 1 — you know, just in case it didn’t pan out.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 12.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
