Tom Cruise’s action franchise is mostly known for its grandeur and of course its dangerous stunts play the most important role in this attraction. The Mission: Impossible films and their stars have clearly tried to push the level of danger to new heights in recent films. This not only means greater dangers for Ethan Hunt and his companions in each new episode, but the stunts of Mission: Impossible have always become more complex, more precise and more dangerous. While action movies contain many actors who do their fair share of fighting and stunts, Tom Cruise leads the way in performing the most dangerous stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise.
The challenging action sequences that are performed in each new installment of the Mission Impossible movies have always become more interesting and impressive than before, thanks to the commitment of Cruise and the directors and stuntmen of this franchise. While even Mission Impossible stunts sometimes require special effects, there’s real danger in all of the franchise’s big sequences. The growing interest and admiration for these films shows that Tom Cruise’s dangerous games have paid off. The result of Tom Cruise’s ambitions is a complex filming and long training for him to be able to make the most impossible stunts of this franchise possible.
8- Rope landing stunt in the CIA building in Mission: Impossible 1
The 1996 film Mission: Impossible is undoubtedly best known for the tense rope descent sequence by Tom Cruise. This sequence is about Ethan Hunt and his team breaking into the CIA to get the NOC list. In order to avoid the activation of a series of alarms, one must enter from the top of the roof with a rope through a hatch and use a computer to access the said data. Thanks to a slip that causes Ethan Hunt to fall to the ground, a simple rope descent turns into a dangerous operation until at the last moment Hunt manages to control himself and avoid hitting the ground, where He is only a few centimeters away from the ground.
While it’s not the most dangerous stunt ever done in the Mission Impossible franchise, the rope landing stunt is still dangerous for Tom Cruise. While he is trying to do this sequence in action, he hits the ground with his face many times. It gets to the point where Brian De Palma, the director of the film, decides to change this sequence and film the fall and balance in two separate sequences. Cruz begs her to let him do it one last time and puts coins inside his shoes to keep his balance better. In the final take, Cruise manages to balance himself within inches of the ground after the fall, and thus this incredible Mission Impossible stunt is created well without the use of digital tricks.
7- Cliff climbing stunt in Mission: Impossible 2
Tom Cruise’s return to Mission: Impossible 2 comes with a scary and extremely boring stunt. In this sequence, Hunt is shown enjoying the extra time between his two missions, rock climbing on a view of Moab Rock in Utah. Instead of doing it safely with hooks and other rock climbing equipment, this stunt sees Hunt opt for free climbing, which requires great strength, flexibility and endurance while climbing. This is a very memorable sequence of the film that immediately puts the audience in a situation to worry about the health of Cruise’s character, especially in the moment when he is hanging from the cliff with only one hand.
The filming of the rock climbing sequence of Mission: Impossible 2 is a little less dangerous than the movie makes it out to be. Tom Cruise uses a safety rope to make sure he doesn’t fall and die if he slips. But the sequence is performed entirely by Cruise, and the safety rope and hook are only used to make sure it’s safe. This stunt from Mission: Impossible 2 was so daring that the director of this episode, John Woo, did not look at retakes. It was also in this stunt that Tom Cruise was injured and suffered a torn shoulder muscle while performing the jump between rocks.
6- Burj Khalifa stunt in Mission: Impossible 4
The Burj Khalifa stunt in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is known as one of the most iconic and dangerous sequences in the entire Mission Impossible franchise. This sequence, which occurs in the second part of the film, is a sequence about Ethan Hunt climbing the tallest building in the world: the Burj Khalifa, which is about 830 meters long. This Mission Impossible stunt sequence has Hunt climbing 11 stories on a building facade using sticky gloves, one of which gets into trouble during the climb. While trying to break the window pane, Hunt falls and experiences a terrible fall and ends up saving his life by jumping in the air.
The danger factor in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is extremely high for the Burj Khalifa climbing sequence. Tom Cruise uses a safety hook and rope in this sequence, although what we see in the film appears to be a ropeless climb with no chance for error. However, climbing, running down, and jumping onto the facade of the world’s tallest building when you’re half a mile off the ground is inherently dangerous. After extensive training, Tom Cruise was able to perform one of the most dangerous stunts in Mission Impossible.
5- Airplane stunts in Mission: Impossible 5
In the opening sequence of the movie Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, the audience is immediately faced with another dangerous stunt by Tom Cruise. In this sequence, Ethan Hunt tries to board a cargo plane in Minsk, Belarus, and grabs onto the outside of the fuselage as the plane takes off. The audience sees this elite secret agent clinging to the plane’s hatch at a height of a thousand feet, and the way the director, Christopher McQuarrie and the stunt coordinator were able to depict this sequence, it seems very real. In this sequence, big fans and special decorations are not used, but Tom Cruise really grabs the plane door.
It took eight takes to film the airplane stunt sequence in this episode of Mission Impossible where Tom Cruise clings to the side of an Airbus A400M. The production team took all safety precautions into account, and Tom Cruise was strapped with safety cables, to ensure that he would be able to hold himself when the plane reached speeds of more than 400 kilometers per hour. But the high speed and danger of flying about a mile in the sky meant that he had to use a special hook to secure himself to the plane. While the Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation plane sequence was done as safely as possible, any mistake or broken wire could have spelled the end of Ethan Hunt and Tom Cruise’s characters.
4- Underwater stunts in Mission: Impossible 5
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation had another dangerous stunt when Ethan Hunt is assigned to carry out a submarine operation. In this mission, he must enter a high-security chamber completely submerged under water to retrieve computer chips. The task becomes even more complicated for Ethan Hunt when he is underwater, where chips fall from his hand and water enters the chamber, creating a strong current of water. This happens after Ethan Hunt is unable to open the hatch he needs to escape, until he is saved by Rebecca Ferguson’s character Isla Fawcett before he dies.
This Mission Impossible stunt is different from other stunts in this franchise for several reasons. A completely underwater location was impossible due to the lack of assurance of complete safety, so the stunt was performed inside a pool surrounded by green screen. This meant that everything around Hunt in this sequence was CGI. But the risk that Tom Cruise takes in this sequence is still real and significant. To complete the stunt, he learned to hold his breath for six minutes, which required extensive training with breathing experts and the film’s stunt designer, which Cruise and Ferguson participated in. But the end result of one of the most dangerous mission impossible stunts is very attractive and believable.
3- Hollow jump stunt in Mission: Impossible 6
Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie and stunt designer Wade Eastwood performed one of the most breathtaking stunt sequences in the Mission: Impossible – Fallout franchise. The film’s halo jump stunt was used throughout the film’s promotional campaign, in which Tom Cruise performs a daring jump through the sky. The sequence shows Hunt jumping out of a plane at the start of his mission and then going on to help save August Walker’s character, played by Henry Cavill. This happens when the two jump out of a plane during a storm, and in one sequence Tom Cruise is seen flying in the middle of the sky.
The filming of the Hollow Jump sequence in Mission: Impossible – Fallout is clearly the most complex stunt in the franchise. The sequence consisted of filming three different types of jumps by Tom Cruise and timing it with the cameraman’s initial jump with a fall on his back. The sequence was also challenging in that it was filmed at night, which meant that there was only one attempt per day to capture the sequence. Tom Cruise performed all the jumps and aerial maneuvers, while the oxygen helmet he wore was specially made for the film to shine light on his face. But some computer special effects were also added to the elements of the storm and different jump impressions were also glued together.
2- Helicopter stunt in Mission: Impossible 6
Another of the most dangerous stunts in the Mission Impossible franchise is the helicopter stunt sequence. This action sequence consists of several parts, first it starts when Ethan Hunt is holding on to a rope under the helicopter. Here he climbs a rope and takes control of a helicopter, which enables a chase through the mountains between him and August Walker’s character. Also during this sequence, there is an encounter with the mountain, which leads to the final confrontation between Hunt and Walker.
Once again, Tom Cruise does all the stunts in the helicopter sequence as much as possible. He hangs from the helicopter, climbs this rope and grabs the door of the helicopter with only the hook that kept him from falling. But there was still a significant risk of falling on top of the helicopter’s cargo. If Tom Cruise didn’t fall on the cargo properly, his neck could be broken. There was also the potential for many life-threatening errors, especially when maneuvering the helicopter between mountains.
1- Jumping off a cliff with a motorcycle stunt in Mission: Impossible 7
Even before the release of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the motorbike jump off a cliff was considered Tom Cruise’s most dangerous stunt in the franchise. In this sequence, Tom Cruise jumps off a cliff on a motorcycle and experiences a free fall before opening his parachute. It is only because of Tom Cruise’s perfect acting that the stunts of Mission Impossible 7 were successful. This stunt from the seventh installment of the franchise required some CGI to remove the ramp needed to jump off, but everything else seen in the sequence was done by Cruise on a real engine, where the fall with The engine, parachute failure and many other events could have meant Cruise’s death.
