5 Impossible Stunts That We Wouldn’t Get To See If Not For Tom Cruise

Here are 5 stunts in the Mission Impossible franchise, where Tom Cruise tests the limits of what's possible for an action hero.

By: Tatsam Mukherjee |
July 24, 2018 6:48 pm

The sixth Mission Impossible movie is upon us. And if Imagine Dragons’ Friction (from the teaser trailer) didn’t already take your breath away, wait till you see the glowing reviews. It seems Mr Cruise has once again delivered on his promise of an action blockbuster, in the best possible manner.

The teasers, trailers have already shown us how Ethan Hunt is going to dangle from beneath a helicopter and jump across buildings. And if the word on the street is to be believed, the finale set-piece between Cruise and Superman Henry Cavill is something that poses a serious challenge to Cruise’s already sky-high bar for stunts. There’s no part of himself that Cruise will not indulge, to give his audience their buck’s worth.

Here are 5 stunts in the Mission Impossible franchise, where Tom Cruise tested the limits of what was possible for an action hero in Hollywood. And which make us really, really pumped for the next installment.

1. CIA break-in (Mission Impossible 1)
That splendid first film by Brian De Palma, was a perfect mixture of intrigue and spectacle. And in one of the finest moments of the film, Ethan and his crew sneak into the CIA headquarters in Langley. Crawling their way through vents, they make their way to a temperature-controlled chamber holding a secret disk. Never has sweat looked SO cinematic.

2. Shanghai mission (Mission Impossible 3)
In this JJ Abrams film, Cruise did the unthinkable by using a Shanghai skyscraper as a ‘fulcrum’ and leapt off the opposite side to swing all the way to the roof of the adjacent skyscraper, and land on its roof. Full of practical effects, this jaw-dropping stunt confused the audience as to which part was shot in front of the green screen. None of it was, and there was no body-double.

3. Burj Khalifa (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol)
As if the Shanghai stunt wasn’t big enough for Tom Cruise, he conquered the world’s tallest building in his next film. An integral sequence in Ghost Protocol, has Tom Cruise hanging outside the Burj Khalifa trying to scale, with two IMAX cameras fixed on him. And when he’s short on rope, he makes that heart-stopping jump to the nearest window. Of course, he makes it but not before giving anxiety to everyone.

4. Hanging out of an airplane (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation)
Collaborating with Christopher McQuarrie for the first time in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Cruise literally hung out of an airplane as it takes off. Beat that.

5. 6-minute dive underwater (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation)
Too fast, Cruise beat his hanging-outside-an-airplane stunt by learning to breathe under water for close to six minutes. A medical miracle in itself, Cruise described his training for the same as ‘agonisingly painful’. But he pulled it off with plenty of elan, in Rogue Nation.

We won’t even get into the Top Guns of Tom Cruise’s career. And he only seems to be tearing the envelope for what’s possible in the Ethan Hunt universe.

Mission Impossible: Fallout releases on July 27. Are. You. Ready.