tom cruise mission impossible ghost protocol stunts

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Mission impossible 4: how tom cruise did the burj khalifa stunt.

The Burj Khalifa sequence in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is Tom Cruise's craziest and most famous stunt. This is how he achieved it.

• Cruise's Burj Khalifa stunt in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is a defining, heart-stopping moment for the franchise.
• With dangerous stunts like the HALO jump in Fallout, the Burj Khalifa climb remains Cruise's most famous feat.
• From carefully fixing harnesses to rigorous training, the Burj Khalifa stunt was a logistical nightmare that paid off well.

The Burj Khalifa stunt in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is a defining moment for the franchise, but audiences wonder if Tom Cruise climbs the Burj Khalifa in real life. With a growing list of extremely dangerous stunts on his resume, scaling Burj Khalifa's exterior in the fourth installment of the Mission Impossible franchise is one of Cruise's most famous feats of courage. Since then, Cruise has continued to defy death in multiple movies with stunts like Mission Impossible: Fallout 's HALO jump. Still, the Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa stunt has become a cinema landmark.

Ghost Protocol takes Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt to Dubai in search of nuclear launch codes after Kurt Hendricks, a.k.a. Cobalt (Michael Nyquist), steals a devastating weapon. It's obvious by now that Hunt never takes the easy route. Ethan must reach the 130th floor of the 2,722 ft skyscraper and ditch the elevator in favor of a pair of questionable suction gloves. Starting the climb 123 floors up is the easy part as he then rappels down the building and makes a jump of faith. The Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa stunt is one of the most intense and thrilling scenes ever.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video and Paramount+

Tom Cruise's 14 Mission: Impossible Stunts Ranked By Most Dangerous

Tom cruise's burj khalifa stunt explained, the actor was equipped with a harness that was fixed to strategic points on the building.

For the Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa stunt, the actor had to be equipped with a harness that was carefully fixed to strategic points in the building , which required that the studio get special permits to drill on the floors and walls, and the Mission: Impossible 4 crew broke 35 windows . Director Brad Bird ( The Incredible s) consulted with multiple professionals from different areas like engineers, pro climbers, and stuntmen to ensure the safety of the shoot. He even considered using a dedicated stuntman, but, as he's done for the majority of his career, Cruise did his own Mission: Impossible 4 stunts.

Tom Cruise didn't know that the tight harness would cut off his circulation, so the shoot had to be completed as efficiently and quickly as possible. Otherwise, his lower body would start feeling numb. The helicopters that were shooting had a flight limit of 30 minutes at a time too, so the crew had to make every take count. The sequence was also shot in IMAX, which meant that the cameras would run out of film fast. The footage had to be flown back to Los Angeles, and Bird couldn't check if everything was perfect until the film was developed.

The training for the Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa stunt was also extremely thorough and calculated. The crew built a wall of glass to simulate the exterior of the real building and had Tom Cruise climb up and down several times to get him familiarized with the discomfort of the harness and the physical toll of the climb. They went so far as to heat up the wall with artificial lights to simulate the temperature of the windows of the Burj Khalifa. The stunt was a logistical nightmare, but the planning all paid off.

Mission Impossible Movies Ranked - From The 1996 Original to Dead Reckoning Part 1

Why tom cruise on burj khalifa is the best mission impossible stunt, the stunt is like a live-action incredibles scene.

Tom Cruise always does his own Mission: Impossible stunts , including hanging off a plane, holding his breath for six minutes to perform an underwater heist, and conducting 109 HALO jumps to get the perfect shot. But of all these movie stunts, the iconic Burj Khalifa sequence is the best proof of the actor's dedication to his craft. The Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol scene is the most nail-biting sequence for audiences, and it was extremely dangerous, exhausting, and probably terrifying for Cruise himself.

Nevertheless, the results are impressive, to say the least; Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol has one of the best stunt scenes caught on camera. Having scaled the side of the world's tallest building – for real – grants eternal franchise bragging rights for any self-respecting action series. The stunt plays out like a live-action Incredibles scene too, as the sequence is layered with clever action comedy, such as the suction gloves having a mind of their own. The Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa stunt has an equal balance of edge-of-your-seat thrills and laugh-out-loud comedy, which few other Mission: Impossible stunts have.

Mission: Impossible 8 - Release Date, Story & Everything We Know About Dead Reckoning Part 2

Was the tom cruise burj khalifa stunt his most dangerous, the motorcycle jump in mission: impossible - dead reckoning as arguably more dangerous.

Following the Tom Cruise Burj Khalifa stunt, the actor performed more stunts that were just as dangerous. In Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation , Cruise hung onto the side of a plane as it took off. The actor also held his breath underwater for a record-breaking 6 minutes (that's until the record was broken by Kate Winslet in Avatar: The Way of Water ). Following that, Cruise committed to a HALO jump for Mission: Impossible - Fallout . The HALO jump was so dangerous that Henry Cavill wasn't allowed to take part because it would have put Cruise's life at risk (via AutoEvolution ).

However, the motorcycle jump in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 was the actor's most dangerous stunt yet . It would have been impossible to foresee where the bike would land when Cruise let go, and so many other things that the production couldn't properly plan for. Accurately conducting a risk assessment of the scene must have been the most frustrating part of the movie's development. The impossible-to-determine physics, along with controlling a vehicle in mid-air and being dangerously close to rocks on a cliff edge, makes Cruise's motorcycle jump the most dangerous stunt in the Mission: Impossible franchise.

Tom Cruise has injured himself a number of times due to his commitment to performing his own stunts (via MovieWeb ).

However, it's comical to compare the Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol stunt and the motorcycle-parachute stunt, as neither are things that anybody should ever attempt. Nevertheless, Cruise competes with himself, and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 2 could feature his two most dangerous stunts yet. Mission: Impossible 8 features a water stunt in which Cruise could claim back his breath-holding record from Winslet. The upcoming movie also features another airplane stunt, only this time it isn't taking off but is sky-high. Either way, Mission: Impossible's stunts are almost equally dangerous, and Cruise is happily risking his life for the audience's entertainment.

Sources: AutoEvolution , MovieWeb

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

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The fourth film in the franchise, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, is an action-thriller film set years after the events of Mission: Impossible 3. It sees Ethan Hunt and the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) see themselves falsely accused of a crime. Following a terrorist attack on the Kremlin, the IMF is implicated in the attack, forcing the government to disavow knowledge of them. To clear their names and find the true culprit, the United States initiates the "Ghost Protocol," forcing them all to go off the grid with no support to solve the case.

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How Tom Cruise pulled off that 'Mission: Impossible 4' skyscraper climb and canceled his retirement from the blockbuster franchise

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As the star of the Mission: Impossible movie series, Tom Cruise has been pulling off impossible missions — and improbable stunts — for a quarter century and counting. From the 1996 franchise-starter to the currently filming seventh and eight installments, the first of which will hit theaters in 2022 , the actor's alter ego, super-agent Ethan Hunt, has traveled the globe and saved the world many times over.

But Cruise's license to thrill almost got revoked a decade ago in the fourth installment, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol . Directed by Brad Bird and released in theaters on Dec. 15, 2011, the movie was widely assumed at the time to be the star's final outing. In a new interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Ghost Protocol stunt coordinator Gregg Smrz confirms that's how things went down in the original script, which features an extended climax where Ethan chases rogue nuclear strategist Kurt Hendricks (played by Michael Nyqvist) around a towering carpark.

"There was a point in the script when he's fighting Michael Nyqvist where he was supposed to get his leg broken," Smrz remembers now. "They wanted it hyper-extended at the knee, just shredded — end of career, you know? The studio was going to write him out, and Tom did not want it. He was strapping in his harness, looked at me and said, 'I ain't going nowhere.' Then he walked out on set and did his thing. We had [the leg break] all set and ready to go, and it disappeared."

Turns out that Cruise called his shot correctly. Far from becoming his last Mission: Impossible movie, Ghost Protocol relit the franchise's fuse with a mighty $210 million domestic box-office gross and a wave of ecstatic reviews. The movie also boasts a sequence that consistently ranks on or near the top of any list of the very best Mission: Impossible stunts : Ethan's nail-biting climb up the side of Dubai's world-famous Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.

As stunt coordinator, Smrz — who first collaborated with Cruise on Mission: Impossible 2 — oversaw that scene and agrees that it's one for the record books. "I said to Brad, 'Do you have any idea what we're doing?'" he recalls. "'We're climbing 1,700 feet in the air, 200 feet up a building. This has never been done before, and it'll never be done again, because they're never going to allow it.' It's a work of art, and I don't think it can ever be beat as far as a climbing sequence on a building."

And as Smrz reveals, it's a stunt that very nearly didn't happen. Early on in pre-production, Paramount seemed poised to cancel Ghost Protocol outright before shooting started. "We had started prepping the building climb immediately on a studio lot, and were on the payroll for about before weeks when we heard that they were going to pull the plug. Tom went to have a meeting with [the studio] and we would know the outcome at the end of it."

Fortunately, Cruise emerged from that meeting with a greenlight, and Smrz and his team restarted preparations for pulling off the Burj Khalifa climb — a sequence that was always designed to serve as the movie's spectacular centerpiece. Initially skeptical that the building's owner would let them turn the 2,722-foot skyscraper into a movie set, the crew recreated three floors of the Burj on a soundstage in Prague. "We built an adjustable wall, slowly raised it until it was vertical and practiced for 200 hours on it with a crew of seven or eight guys. But Tom kept saying, 'I really want to climb that building.'"

Eventually, a compromise was reached: the production could shoot for one day on the exterior of the building, and the rest of the sequence would be shot on another 60-foot adjustable wall that has been constructed in the desert outside of Dubai. Once again, though, Cruise changed the course of production with a single sentence. "The first day [on the Burj] went so well that Tom said, 'We're filming the whole thing here on the real building.' We ended up doing one day of shooting over on the set, and the rest of it was on the real building."

With Cruise leading the charge, the Ghost Protocol crew worked out a deal with the building's owners that gave them full access to several floors that weren't yet in use. Smrz and his team then knocked out roughly 17 glass panels to make room for the stunt and camera cables and other rigging.

"I told them, 'We won't scratch your building; we're not going to damage anything.' As they saw that we were not destructive and really cared about their building, they started to work with us. There was this one guy I called Dr. No, because every time I'd ask if we could do something, he'd go, 'No!' at first. But towards the end, if I said, 'Hey, we need to drill another hole,' he'd say, 'Just tell me where.'"

As designed by Cruise, Bird and Smrz, the eight-minute Burj sequence has two distinct movements: Ethan's slow, deliberate climb up the side of the Burj in order to recover all-important nuclear launch codes and then his rapid descent. The upwards journey includes a gasp-inducing plunge where Hunt falls from an unsteady perch outside his target floor. Cruise performed the fall himself, dropping roughly forty feet from a height of 1,700 feet off the ground.

"That was probably the most nail-biting day of the show," Smrz says, adding that they only did a single take of Cruise's fall. "Somebody said, 'What if the cable breaks?' And I said, 'That's not an option.' We actually did the math, and there was enough time of free fall for him to text me on the way down, and for me to receive it!"

But Smrz also makes it clear that he would have overruled Cruise if he truly felt the star would be in danger. "If he wasn't an actor, Tom could have been a stuntman, and I would put anybody in anything if I didn't think it was safe for a stunt guy. I've got to be 99.9 percent sure it's going to be successful before we do it, whether it's a stunt person or an actor. So putting Tom into the harness was no different than a stunt guy. I expect the stunt to work, because we've already proven it over and over. "

Ethan's journey down the Burj starts with him running down the side of the building until he literally reaches the end of his rope. But he's the opposite of home free: He's still one floor above the rest of his team — William (Jeremy Renner), Benji (Simon Pegg) and Jane (Paula Patton) — and has to make a daring leap into the void to reach them. In order to gain the necessary momentum, Ethan runs in the opposite direction alongside the building and then power jumps into the air, swinging on the cable in a wide arc as he heads for the open window where William and Jane stand.

"When Tom swung on that rope around the building, Brad wanted him to go out farther," Smrz remembers. "I said, 'We'd have a problem: He has to come back, and I can't soften the impact on the glass. So the farther he goes out, the harder he's going to hit the glass, and he's already hitting it really hard.' Brad came from the world of animation where anything he wanted to do was possible, but I have a reputation for trying to keep everything real. I like to see when they hit the ground, that it hurts. But Brad was great to work with, because we'd always just sit down and talk and make sure we both were happy."

Ethan's cable swing also includes some shots that were filmed on the recreation of the Burj, including the moment where he unclips in mid-air and the moment where he flies at the window, hitting his head. But the scene where Renner clutches Cruise's leg high above Dubai was filmed on location. "We had Tom suspended on the real building, and then we dropped him," Smrz explains. "Jeremy and Paula were on cables, and they actually did dive out the window and caught Tom by his ankle. The actors did a fantastic job, especially because it was hot. We were working on glass, and it got up to 125 degrees."

The Burj Khalifa climb wasn't just a franchise-best stunt: It was also a personal best for Cruise, one that the actor has been trying to top ever since. "He wants to beat it," says Smrz, who hasn't worked on a Mission: Impossible movie since 2015's Rogue Nation , where Cruise awarded him the opportunity to choreograph the wild motorcycle chase of his dreams . "We took it to a whole other level, but it wasn't beating the building, you know what I mean? It was just a motorcycle chase. So they came up with that plane stunt . Tom's going to try to step it up to the next level in every movie, but he's also getting older: I used to tell him, 'Tom, you're going to end up walking like I do if you keep this up!'"

In that case, it's just as well that Cruise is better known for his running anyway. Asked about the actor's famously meme-friendly fleet feet , Smrz confirms he's the last person you want to be in a race with. "He can run 17-and-a-half miles an hour," he marvels. "In the scene where he's running away from the Burj, I had my stunt guys chasing him, and he was killing them. I said, 'Can you slow down a little?' And he started laughing and said, 'I'm not slowing down — tell them to speed up!' He's really fast and he has this odd style where he really lifts his legs high, and he's got the arms and legs pumping. Maybe that's his secret."

Reflecting on the Burj Khalifa climb a decade later, Smrz feels that it's increasingly rare for a studio to allow a movie star, and a stunt crew, the time and resources necessary to pull off a major setpiece on that level. "The big thing was that we really could have done that entire sequence on a stage and with visual effects. But Tom refuses to do that, because he wants climbing the Burj to be part of the thing that he does. He likes to do his own stuff, it's great for publicity and he enjoys it. It's always funny when somebody tells me, 'Tom's not going to do that — the studio's not going to allow it.' And I just say, 'He'll be doing it.'"

At the same time, with the tragedy on the set of Rust still fresh in everyone's minds , Smrz acknowledges that the industry is potentially facing widespread change in terms of how major action sequences are handled, especially when guns are involved. For his part, he believes that safety is always paramount even if it comes with a price tag. "I've been told [by studios], 'You and your guys are too expensive,'" Smrz says. "But at the end of every film, I always ask, 'Still think I'm too expensive?' and they go, 'No, we got what we paid for.' It's so busy out there right now ... and it has a lot to do with the experience of the person they hire. And right now, they're kind of hiring anybody, so it's a little scary.

"I don't think squibs and gunfire are going to go away," Smrz continues. "It's part of the job, and you have to be extra safe and unafraid to stand your ground. You have to be willing to get fired if you know that you're right and they want to push on anyway. On five occasions, I've started to walk off the set and never made it off because they realize how serious you are. You're willing to leave the movie, and that's what it takes if they expect us to keep it safe. I don't think it can get any safer: I mean, if they're going to make it so problematic that they'll just stop doing stuff, it'll all be cartoons."

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is currently streaming on Paramount+.

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How the 'Mission: Impossible' franchise pulled off its wildest stunts

The road to the 'biggest stunt in cinema history'

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For nearly 30 years, Tom Cruise has chosen to accept his mission of risking his life to entertain us. The "Mission: Impossible" franchise is famous for its increasingly jaw-dropping stunts that Cruise personally performs, and he may have outdone himself for the newest installment, "Dead Reckoning Part One." One of the sequel's stunts has been described as the biggest in cinema history.

In honor of his latest mission, here's a peek behind the curtain at how Cruise pulled off the wildest stunts in the series, including a few from "Dead Reckoning," which hits theaters on July 12:

"Mission: Impossible" - The Langley vault

For the famous scene in the original film where Ethan Hunt infiltrates CIA headquarters, Cruise really hung upside down from the ceiling and was quickly dropped to the floor like seen in the movie.

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"It was all done by hand and weights" with "two guys feeding him up and feeding him down," stunt coordinator Greg Powell explained in a behind-the-scenes featurette. Cruise also recalled that initially, he kept hitting his face when falling to the floor, but he finally got the shot to work by putting coins in his shoes.

"Mission: Impossible 2" - Rock climbing

The opening of "Mission: Impossible 2," which finds Ethan Hunt dangling off rocks and nearly falling to his death, was shot in Utah with Cruise doing the entire sequence himself.

"The scary thing was, the cliff was 2,000 feet high, and there were no protections on the ground," director John Woo explained in a behind-the-scenes featurette. "I was sweating and in a panic."

According to Entertainment Weekly , Cruise only wore a thin safety cable, and getting the scene took seven takes. "We had five cameras on the cliff, including a helicopter camera, a camera on a crane, and cameramen hanging from safety cables, but we had focus problems, so we had to do it again and again," Woo told EW.

"Ghost Protocol" - The Burj Khalifa

The Burj Khalifa sequence was shot by having Cruise — you guessed it — legitimately hang off the side of the tallest building in the world, 2,000 feet in the air, while attached to harnesses. "We thought we'd have to recreate the building and do it in a more traditional way, and it was Tom who said, 'No, I'm going to go out there,'" producer Bryan Burk said in a behind-the-scenes featurette.

The crew set up on an empty floor of the building and had to get permission to drill holes into the ground and ceiling for their equipment, as well as take out more than 26 windows to film. To prepare, Cruise repeatedly climbed up and down a glass wall that was built for rehearsal purposes. But the actor noted in the featurette that he couldn't stay out for long because with the gear he was wearing, he was "being cut off in two main arteries" across the harness, and his legs became numb. Jeremy Renner also really had to partially hang out of the side of the building for the shot where his character grabs Ethan.

"Rogue Nation" - The plane

Yes, that was really Cruise dangling on the outside of an airplane, 5,000 feet in the air, at the start of "Rogue Nation." He "was in a full body harness" and "cabled and wired to the plane through [its] door," cinematographer Robert Elswit explained to The Hollywood Reporter , adding that "inside the aircraft was an aluminum truss that was carefully bolted to the plane, which held the wires that went through the door, which held Tom." Cruise also wore special contact lenses protecting his eyes, though director Christopher McQuarrie noted in a behind-the-scenes featurette that "there was nothing to protect his face." So McQuarrie feared debris could be sucked into the propeller and hit Cruise "traveling at the speed of a bullet," and "if a bird hit Tom at that speed, on any part of his body, that would have been the end." Despite the risks, Cruise performed the stunt eight times.

"Rogue Nation" - Diving underwater

The sequence in "Rogue Nation" where Ethan dives underwater and holds his breath for an extended period of time was filmed in a water tank, and at one point, Cruise held his breath for six full minutes. While filming the sequence, he had to "hold his breath, wait for everyone to get into position, wait for all the bubbles to clear, wait for the cameras to roll, then he does a long take, and then he has to wait for the divers to come back and give him air," visual effects supervisor David Vickery explained in a behind-the-scenes featurette.

"You have these free divers that came in and trained me how to do it," Cruise said on the Graham Norton Show . "It's not pleasant." In fact, he noted that after filming the stunt, "There'd be times I'd be sitting there talking in meetings, and I wouldn't breathe. I realize I am not breathing, and I had to turn my autonomic system back on to breathe again." Though the scene was shot underwater, Cruise was surrounded by green screens so much of the environment around him could be added in post-production.

"Fallout" - The HALO jump

For the HALO (high altitude low opening) jump sequence in "Fallout," not only did Cruise really fall out of a plane traveling 165 miles per hour at a height of 25,000 feet, but he did it over 100 times. The film crew also built a large wind machine that was used to rehearse, and a special helmet had to be developed that would both provide oxygen and ensure Cruise's face could be seen in the shot, according to a behind-the-scenes featurette.

"It'll look like one continuous take, but they're really three long takes," Cruise explained, and he had to fall to exactly three feet in front of the camera. The sequence also had to be filmed during a tight window to get the lighting right. The lightning storm, though, naturally had to be added in post-production.

"Fallout" - The rooftop chase

Though the rooftop chase in "Fallout" isn't as dangerous of a stunt as some of the others, it stands out because Cruise was injured making it. He jumped across a rooftop for the sequence but broke his ankle by accidentally landing in a way that his leg smashed into the side of a building. The injury forced the film to shut down production, but footage of Cruise breaking his ankle and running past the camera while limping was used in the movie.

"I knew instantly it was broken," Cruise recalled on The Graham Norton Show . On the blu-ray commentary, director Christopher McQuarrie remembered Cruise "laying on a couch with [his] foot up and a bag of ice on it" and asking, "Did we get the shot? Good, because we're not coming back."

"Fallout" - The helicopter fall and chase

For the finale of "Fallout," Cruise actually dangled from a helicopter before dropping 40 feet. Director Christopher McQuarrie told the Los Angeles Times a pulley system and safety line were used, but he added, "The only thing the safety line was ensuring was that if Tom was killed during the stunt, we wouldn't be looking for his body in the bushes. Because if he made the fall at the wrong angle, it's picture wrap on Mr. Cruise. If he hits the payload headfirst as opposed to back first or legs first, he'll break his neck and just be a rag doll."

In fact, Cruise's co-star Rebecca Ferguson revealed in a behind-the-scenes featurette that as the stunt was being shot, "I heard myself scream" because "I actually thought he fell," while McQuarrie recalled, "We heard on the radio, 'I think we just lost Tom.'" Cruise also flew the helicopter through the mountains for the chase sequence, and he was trained in flying specifically for the film. Cameras were attached to the helicopter, meaning Cruise "was performing three jobs: he's the pilot, he's the camera operator, and he's acting," McQuarrie noted.

"Dead Reckoning Part One" - The train fight

For an action sequence on a train in "Dead Reckoning Part One," an entire functioning train was built, and a fight was shot on top of it while the vehicle was moving at 60 miles per hour, according to a behind-the-scenes featurette . The train was then filmed being destroyed by falling and crashing into a quarry.

"Dead Reckoning Part One" - The motorcycle cliff jump

The marquee stunt of "Dead Reckoning Part One" involves Cruise riding a motorcycle off a cliff into a base jump, which director Christopher McQuarrie described as "far and away the most dangerous thing we've ever attempted." Cruise's training involved more than 13,000 practice motocross jumps and over 500 skydives. A ramp was constructed in Norway for Cruise to ride off and deploy a parachute in the air — and he then did it five more times.

Cruise told Entertainment Tonight the stunt was shot on the first day of filming so the crew would know whether he would be alive for the rest of the movie. "We know either we're gonna continue with the film or we're not," he said. "Let's know day one … Do we all continue, or is it a major rewrite?" But to quote Anthony Hopkins in "Mission: Impossible 2," this is not mission: difficult. It's mission: impossible.

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Brendan worked as a culture writer at The Week from 2018 to 2023, covering the entertainment industry, including film reviews, television recaps, awards season, the box office, major movie franchises and Hollywood gossip. He has written about film and television for outlets including Bloody Disgusting, Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Heavy and The Celebrity Cafe.

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10 Years Ago, 'Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol' Gave Tom Cruise's Career New Life

(Welcome to Man on a Mission , a monthly series where we revisit the films of the Mission: Impossible franchise as we sprint toward the release of the seventh film.)

Modern action-movie franchises are typified by recurring tropes and action aesthetics. Watch an entry in the John Wick films, and you can rest assured you'll see bloody, intense, and impressively staged fight scenes. Check out the latest Fast and Furious film, and you know that you'll see increasingly outlandish and ridiculous chases and fights, from underground heists to scenes literally set in outer space. And if you watch a Mission: Impossible movie, you are all but guaranteed to see at least one stunt in which Tom Cruise appears to indulge in one of the most grandiose death wishes known to man.

Even now, a decade later, it's possible that the fourth entry in the series, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol , has the most jaw-dropping stunt of all, simply because of how willing Cruise was to place himself in a deadly, risky situation just to entertain an audience he can't see.

An Animated Leap

Mission: Impossible III was well-liked by critics, and its reputation a few years later was far stronger than that of Mission: Impossible 2 , in spite of the 2000 film vastly outgrossing it at the box office. But the intervening few years were spotty for star Tom Cruise. After the very public controversies he courted (and largely created for himself) related to his Scientology beliefs and his relationship with Katie Holmes, films like Valkyrie and Lions for Lambs fizzled at the box office, and more action-heavy fare like Knight and Day failed to make an impact. ( Lions for Lambs is the last straight-up drama Cruise has appeared in. Just about everything since that time has been either a full-on action/genre film, or a film with elements of action, like Valkyrie . The jukebox musical Rock of Ages is the exception to this rule.) The only late-2000s film featuring Cruise that raised his profile in a good way was Tropic Thunder , the outrageous comedy in which he appeared in prosthetics as an obnoxious and aggressive Hollywood executive.

The one standard for Cruise was the Mission: Impossible franchise. Even with the third film being less successful at the box office, Paramount was willing to pursue a fourth entry. As with the previous three entries, Cruise would work with a different director, though J.J. Abrams would shift to a position he's become vastly more comfortable with throughout his career, as producer. (His Bad Robot Productions shingle has produced all remaining Mission: Impossible films, including the upcoming entries.) In some ways, the choice for the director of the fourth entry made vastly more sense than Abrams did. But just as Abrams made the jump from television to feature films with Mission: Impossible III , so too would the Ghost Protocol director jump: from animation to live-action.

By the late 2000s, Brad Bird had proven himself to be one of the great living animation filmmakers. He was invited to join the braintrust at Pixar Animation Studios earlier in the decade, serving as the first filmmaker to be both writer and director, helming the dazzling and propulsive superhero action-comedy The Incredibles . Upon the success of that 2004 film, he took over the struggling production of a story of a rat in France who wants to cook, and turned it into Ratatouille , the best film Pixar has ever made. And if those titles weren't enough, he'd previously written and directed The Iron Giant , a fine feature debut, and served as creative consultant on the first eight seasons (AKA the best seasons) of The Simpsons . But Bird hadn't directed live-action...until Cruise and Abrams took a chance on the animation filmmaker (roughly around the same time that Disney was taking a chance on fellow Pixar filmmaker Andrew Stanton with John Carter ).

The Next Ethan Hunt

There's one other aspect of Ghost Protocol that serves as the production considering taking a chance on an untested quantity. Early in the film's production, there were whispers that perhaps it was time for Cruise to move on, or pass the torch symbolically. Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit  confirmed as much a couple years ago: the film was originally meant to end with Ethan becoming the next Secretary of the IMF, with another agent taking over in the field.

Just as the public seemed to move past Tom Cruise in the late 2000s, the thinking went, maybe Ethan Hunt needed to take a rest, especially with the star approaching his 50th birthday. (He turned 50 just six months after Ghost Protocol was released in theaters.) Enter Jeremy Renner, the Academy Award-nominated breakout star of Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker . That film's success led to some big-deal roles for Renner: he was going to be the next Jason Bourne in The Bourne Legacy , he got a meaty supporting role in The Town that netted him his second consecutive Oscar nod; and he was going to be one of The Avengers as gifted archer Hawkeye. But he approached receiving another feather in his cap: being the next Ethan Hunt.

That, at least, is part of the story of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol . The film spends its first half in Eastern Europe, as Ethan is broken out of a Moscow prison to help out on a mission with two newer IMF agents: Jane Carter (Paula Patton) and a now-in-the-field Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg, who joins Ving Rhames here as a rare returning cast member). Ethan presumes their breaking him out must mean things are worse on the outside. And as you'd expect, Ethan's right: they soon learn that a mysterious, fiercely intelligent, and obsessed nuclear strategist, Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), is trying to get his hands on nuclear weapons to invoke the apocalypse and restart with a new world order. When an attempt to stop Hendricks from getting valuable intel at the Kremlin goes south, the IMF is blamed for a massive explosion at the Russian landmark. As you may already know, the U.S. President has to invoke ghost protocol. (Or, if you were online enough a decade ago, "ghotocol". Do you remember " ghotocol "? Good times.)

Ghost protocol, as explained by the oft-mentioned but now finally seen IMF Secretary (an uncredited Tom Wilkinson), means that Ethan, Jane, and Benji, and a single caravan of equipment are all that remains of the IMF. Well...them and IMF analyst William Brandt (Renner), who soon begins carrying himself with a bit more physical aplomb than the traditional analyst would. But he's onboard for the ride after he and Ethan survive an attack that offs the Secretary. That attack occurs after what is truly the most hilariously demented moment in any Mission: Impossible film, when Ethan draws a detailed police-sketch-style drawing of Hendricks on the palm of his hand in the span of 15 seconds and demands that Brandt identify the person.

Hanging On for Dear Life

Plot is rarely important in the Mission: Impossible films, but it feels especially unimportant in Ghost Protocol . (The script is credited to Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec, but a couple of years after they worked together for the first time on Valkyrie , Cruise enlisted Christopher McQuarrie to revise the script, in an uncredited capacity. It's a collaboration that has led to many fruitful results.) The premise of the film is, in its own way, very much the same as it is in every Mission : the IMF is whittled down to a bare few, and in hoping to win the day, they must prove their own viability as an organization. Perhaps the best running gag of Ghost Protocol is that the equipment the IMF has now, at least the bare-bones gadgets that our remaining quartet can access, are woefully unable to actually do the job. Remember the masks of previous entries? They're gone here because, in a key moment, the mask-making machine that Benji has brought with him conks out. The infamous "This tape will self-destruct in five seconds" device? It's on the fritz – Ethan has to bang on an old-school telephone booth to make the tape blow up, like he's jostling a stodgy desktop computer.

The most obvious example of technology making things harder for Ethan and his crew comes in the middle of a centerpiece sequence, primarily set at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. There are many contenders for this title, but the 30-minute section in this film's middle, from when Ethan and the agents arrive in Dubai to the conclusion of a race between Ethan and Hendricks through a sandstorm, is the single greatest section in any of these movies. There's much more to the sequence than the part you remember – the IMF team has to fool a wily assassin (Lea Seydoux) who previously killed Jane's boyfriend and fellow agent, while also fooling Hendricks' henchman and a hapless nuclear physicist, trying to swap out real nuclear codes for fake ones and retrieving the real ones before any baddies use them.

But before any of that goes down, they have to get access to the security center at the Burj Khalifa, which means that Ethan has to break into a server room from the outside...of the tallest building in the world. Ghost Protocol , above all else, is known for the image of Tom Cruise climbing up the side of the Burj Khalifa, with just his hands and feet holding him up. (Ethan is supposed to be aided by two powerful gloves that adhere to the windows of the Burj, but they stop working almost as soon as he starts climbing.)

Watching the scene now, it's a little difficult to communicate exactly how breathtaking it was to behold the vertiginous sight of Tom Cruise hanging by almost literally a thread in a proper IMAX theater. (Bird, to his credit, advocated for filming roughly 30 minutes of the film with IMAX cameras, as opposed to the film simply being placed in IMAX theaters without using the tech itself.) The shot of Ethan, wearing goggles to protect his eyes from the gusting wind, slowly approaching the side of the building was presented with the aspect ratio gradually shifting from 2.35:1 to 1.66:1, a shift that feels mammoth on an IMAX screen. Rarely has the IMAX tagline that you can "be part" of a movie felt more apt – watching Tom Cruise desperately ascend the Burj Khalifa is thrilling enough, but in IMAX, it felt like the audience was climbing up with him.

A Template for the Future

If there is anything to truly criticize with the Dubai section of Ghost Protocol , it's that the film cannot possibly approach the high quality of its middle portion elsewhere. Throughout, it's eminently clear that Brad Bird is as gifted a filmmaker when working in the medium of live-action as he is in animation. Even the spatial geography of Ethan and a fellow inmate he's breaking out in the opening sequence is communicated clearly, which should not feel revolutionary to the modern viewer, but is simply because of how few action films are staged and choreographed coherently. In the final chunk of the film, set in Mumbai, Ethan's battle with the maniacally determined Hendricks in a revolving and rotating circular parking garage is carefully staged to heighten the suspense. The sequence can't hold a candle to the mid-section, but it's here in Ghost Protocol that an important element of the first entry in the series is brought back to the fore: action that you can actually visually understand .

It's a stylistic choice that hasn't been consistent in each Mission: Impossible  – whatever else is true of the third film, Abrams' directing style is intentionally jittery and harder to visually parse. But clean, crisply shot action is now a hallmark of the franchise, thanks in no small part to Bird's outstanding work in Ghost Protocol . Reviews on the film were positive, by far the highest to date in the series. And more importantly for Paramount, audiences flocked to the return of Ethan Hunt in droves: inflation aside, Ghost Protocol was the highest-grossing entry in the franchise worldwide to date, and nearly outgrossed the second film domestically.

Considering that the film doesn't end as was originally planned, it was a clear-cut case of audiences willing to embrace Cruise as a movie star once more, at least in this specific role. Renner's character William Brandt sticks around at the end, and the Mumbai finale even gives Brandt a brief visual callback to the fantastic CIA break-in sequence of the original Mission: Impossible . But it's clear that Hunt is still calling the shots, a creative decision Elswit (in the above link) acknowledges occurred thanks to the arrival of Christopher McQuarrie to the production. As noted above, McQuarrie's connection to Cruise led to some major creative success.

Next Time: McQuarrie moves beyond just being an uncredited writer, taking the reins with a Rogue Nation .

The Mission: Impossible Franchise’s 7 Wildest Stunts, Ranked

Tom Cruise has a death wish, and his movies are better for it.

After a five-year hiatus, the Mission: Impossible franchise has finally returned to the big screen. The series’ seventh installment, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One , is now playing in theaters, and a sequel is already on its way . The new film continues the series ’ trend of death-defying, practical stunts, a few of which rank high among the greatest set pieces ever brought to life in a movie.

The same can also be said for many of the franchise’s previous stunts. In honor of Dead Reckoning Part One ’s release, here are the seven greatest stunts the Mission: Impossible franchise has ever pulled off.

7. Ethan’s Free Climbing Vacation ( Mission: Impossible 2 )

In Mission: Impossible 2 , Tom Cruise set the stage for the stunts to follow.

The opening minutes of Mission: Impossible 2 have nothing to do with the rest of the film. The sequence, which follows Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt as he free climbs up the side of a desert mountain, is there for one reason: It’s awesome. The stunt is the first time the franchise built a set piece just for the hell of it, an attitude that’s gone on to not only define the series’ four most recent installments but elevate all of them into the Action Movie Hall of Fame. For that reason alone, Mission: Impossible 2 ’s practical, jaw-dropping free solo sequence deserves mention. It’s the kind of cool yet ridiculous stunt only Tom Cruise could sell.

6. The Helicopter Chase ( Mission: Impossible — Fallout )

In Mission: Impossible — Fallout , Ethan Hunt doesn’t let something as trivial as flight stop him from catching his target.

From the moment he begins scaling up a payload in mid-air to the second he crashes his helicopter straight into another helicopter, Ethan Hunt’s aerial chase at the end of Fallout is mind-shatteringly impressive. In a way, the chase is emblematic of the Mission: Impossible franchise’s guiding creative spirit. The sequence takes what could have been a simple on-the-ground pursuit, elevates it into the clouds, then executes it on a higher level than what’s ever been seen before. On top of that, it makes the intense hatred Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill’s characters have for each other palpable even when they’re flying hundreds of feet apart.

5. The Motorcycle Jump ( Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One )

Dead Reckoning Part One features Tom Cruise’s most Evel Knievel stunt to date.

It may have been at the forefront of the marketing materials for Dead Reckoning Part One , but that doesn’t take away from the impact of watching Tom Cruise drive his motorcycle straight off the side of a mountain. The stunt, which comes at a pivotal moment in the third act, follows Cruise as he speeds right off the edge of a cliffside, ditches his motorcycle, then plummets toward the ground before pulling his parachute. It’s Cruise at his most Evel Knievel and the Mission: Impossible movies at their most brazenly, unrepentantly fun. The entire sequence pulses with an infectious devil-may-care attitude, making the seconds when Cruise freefalls through the air all the more exhilarating.

4. The Train Escape ( Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One )

Dead Reckoning Part One ’s final set piece is a showstopper.

None of the stunts in Dead Reckoning Part One top the best set pieces in Tom Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s previous collaborations. The one that comes closest, however, is the film’s climactic trainwreck, which doesn’t center around the actual destruction of the train so much as Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Ethan Hunt’s desperate attempts to survive it. The sequence follows Grace and Ethan as they scramble from one train car to another as each slowly but surely falls off a destroyed bridge.

From the way Cruise and Atwell are tossed around the train cars to the various gags McQuarrie packs into each one, Dead Reckoning Part One ’s final set piece is as stressful and gravity-defying as it gets. It’s, well, impossible to watch the sequence without your jaw dropping at least once.

3. The Cargo Plane Ride ( Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation )

Only Tom Cruise would do something as stupid (and awesome) as attach himself to the outside of a cargo plane.

The opening sequence of Rogue Nation sees Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt hang onto the outside of a cargo plane as it takes off. The stunt, which is framed beautifully by director Christopher McQuarrie and cinematographer Robert Elswit, puts Cruise at the foreground of the shot and lets you watch as he gradually moves further and further away from the surface. It’s a staggering scene, and a perfect encapsulation of what can happen when a movie star like Cruise cares more about entertaining viewers than he does his own safety.

2. The HALO Jump ( Mission: Impossible — Fallout )

Fallout’ s HALO jump is a set piece for the ages.

Quibble with the CGI addition of Paris’ nighttime landscape all you want, but the single-take HALO skydive in Mission: Impossible — Fallout is still one of the ballsiest action sequences ever brought to life on-screen. From the way that the film’s cameraman manages to keep Tom Cruise in the frame even as they both plummet through the sky, to the practically captured horizon in the distance, the HALO jump is as immersive and technically elegant as it is thrilling.

It’s a set piece designed to take your breath away, and it does so with deceptive ease. Fallout is arguably the franchise’s best film, and it’s the bravura filmmaking on display in set pieces like this one that make it an untouchable piece of pop entertainment.

1. The Burj Khalifa Climb ( Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol )

The Mission: Impossible franchise has yet to top its Burj Khalifa sequence.

It was, and still is, the greatest stunt Tom Cruise ever pulled off. Regardless of where Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol sits in your personal M:I rankings, the film’s central Burj Khalifa sequence is the most immaculately composed, edited, and nerve-shredding in franchise history. The Mission: Impossible movies have delivered many memorable action shots over the years, but none have been as powerful as the first time Ethan Hunt leans out the open window of the world’s tallest skyscraper and the camera goes with him, tilting down to reveal the stomach-churning drop that waits below.

The scale of Ghost Protocol’s biggest stunt is made strikingly real, which sets the stage for the spell-binding 10 minutes that follow. There has never been a Mission: Impossible stunt more edge-of-your-seat intense, and there likely never will be.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is playing in theaters.

This article was originally published on July 15, 2023

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12 of tom cruise’s most jaw-dropping stunts.

From scaling a skyscraper to hanging on to the outside of an airplane as it takes off, here are some of the actor's most death-defying stunts.

By Carly Thomas

Carly Thomas

Associate Editor

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Tom Cruise has never steered away from challenging himself in his roles for projects. Especially since 1986’s  Top Gun , he has continued to push the limits of his body and acting, taking on his own stunts in most of his top films, including Mission: Impossible ,  The Last Samurai  and  Jack Reacher .

Most recently, Cruise took on several death-defying stunts in  Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , including speed-flying down a mountainside as well as driving a motorcycle off a cliff and parachuting to safety.

The actor has previously said during an appearance on  The Graham Norton Show  that he has been “doing different stunts” since he was a child and that once he got into acting, he wanted to keep doing it to help with the “storytelling.”

“I feel that [when] acting you’re bringing everything, you know, physically and emotionally, to a character in a story,” he explained at the time. “And I’m able to do it [stunts], and I’ve trained for 30 years doing things like this that it allows us to put cameras in places where you normally are not able to.”

More recently, during a  conversation at Cannes  in 2022, Cruise reiterated that he enjoys performing his own stunts despite the danger, only this time he referenced one of the best athletes of Hollywood’s golden era.

“No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance?’” the actor said. “Why do you do your own dancing?’”

Below, The Hollywood Reporter has compiled a list of some of Cruise’s wildest stunts, some downright death-defying, throughout his decades-long career.

'Mission: Impossible' (Aquarium Scene)

In the first installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise in 1996, Cruise reportedly never swapped out for a stuntman in one particular scene involving an aquarium. In the sequence, Ethan Hunt, who would become one of Cruise’s most well-known characters, intentionally blows up a giant aquarium that stretches the length from the floor to the ceiling to help get away quickly. The explosive was so powerful that another person was sent flying through a glass panel, while Cruise went running with 16 gallons of water following right behind him.

'Mission: Impossible II' (Rock Climbing Scene)

In 2000’s Mission: Impossible II , Cruise showed no signs of plans to stop testing his limits. In the opening scene of the John Woo-directed film, the actor can be seen climbing and hanging off giant rocks on the side of a cliff. During filming, Cruise reportedly had only a safety cable to help soften any impact, which led to Woo actively sweating throughout the entire sequence because of how dangerous it was.

'Top Gun' (Parachute Scene)

In 1986’s  Top Gun , Cruise began seeking the thrill of doing his own stunts. But the scene when Maverick (Cruise) and Goose (Anthony Edwards) are ejected from the jet and parachute into the water (leading to his co-pilot’s death) nearly didn’t go as planned. Top Gun ‘s Barry Tubb told the  New York Post  on the film’s 25th anniversary that “Cruise came as close to dying as anybody on a set I’ve ever seen.” During filming, when Cruise was lifting up Goose’s body from the ocean, Cruise actually began to sink due to water building up in his parachute. According to Tubb, Cruise would have drowned if it was not caught early enough to get him out.

At the time of filming Top Gun , it was also reported that a veteran fighter pilot  died while shooting aerial footage for the movie.

'The Last Samurai' (Samurai Sword Scene)

In 2003’s  The Last Samurai , Cruise once again nearly avoided a tragic accident while doing his own stunts. While filming a fight sequence between Nathan Algren (Cruise) and Ujio (Hiroyuki Sanada), the two were riding on what were actually mechanical horses, in which one was supposed to stop moving before Sanada takes a swing at Cruise with a real samurai sword. But the horse didn’t stop, and Cruise reportedly came within an inch of the sword before Sanada was able to pull back, avoiding contact with Cruise.

“Tom’s neck was right in front of me, and I tried to stop swinging my sword, but it was hard to control with one hand,” Sanada previously told the  Daily Mail .  “The film crew watching from the side all screamed because they thought Tom’s head would fly off.”

'Collateral' (Car Crash Scene)

At this point, on-set accidents are nothing new to Cruise, and the same goes for an incident while filming an action scene with Jamie Foxx for 2004’s  Collateral . During an interview at the time , Foxx thought he nearly killed his co-star when he smashed into Cruise’s Mercedes-Benz during a chase sequence. “I hit the gas, the cab goes straight head on into [Cruise’s] Mercedes, and the Mercedes lifts off the ground and goes off the set,” he explained. Cruise added that although he was OK, he was tossed around the car. “I was hitting the roof,” he said. “I was down on the ground.”

'Edge of Tomorrow' (Another Car Crash Scene)

While filming 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow , Emily Blunt confirmed to Conan O’Brien on  Conan at the time that Cruise “really does everything and wants to do everything” when it comes to doing stunts. But she revealed that during one scene, his luck was tested once again. The actress said in one action sequence when she was driving and Cruise was in the passenger seat, the stunt coordinator tasked her with driving really fast down a road and then taking a sharp turn. She noted that the first take went well, but during the second, she took a turn too late and “drove us into a tree and I almost killed Tom Cruise.” Thankfully, Cruise was OK, and Blunt added that he was actually laughing afterward.

'Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol' (Scaling a Skyscraper Scene)

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol director Brad Bird said watching Cruise take on death-defying stunts is “just another day at work” for the film’s crewmembers. Specifically for the 2011 movie, the actor scaled Dubai’s 163-floor Burj Khalifa. In behind-the-scenes footage, Cruise can be seen climbing, swinging and running up and down the building, with only a wire keeping him from falling.

'Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation' (Plane Scene)

In 2015’s Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation , Cruise decided to take his intense stunts to the sky. In the film, the actor can be seen dangling on the outside of an Airbus 400 as it takes off. Robert Elswit, director of photography, told The Hollywood Reporter  at the time what went into making the stunt a reality while keeping Cruise safe.

“Tom was in a full body harness and he’s cabled and wired to the plane through [its] door. Inside the aircraft was an aluminum truss that was carefully bolted to the plane, which held the wires that went through the door, which held Tom,” the cinematographer said of the safety measures. “He was also wearing special contact lenses to protect his eyes. If anything hit him at those speeds, it could be really bad. They were very careful about cleaning the runway so there were no rocks. And we took off in certain weather conditions; there were no birds. And he’s sort of protected by the way the air moves over the wing.”

'Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation' (Underwater Breathing Scene)

In the Christopher McQuarrie-directed film, Cruise went from doing stunts in the sky to doing them underwater. For the said sequence in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation , the actor actually had to undergo training to be able to hold his breath underwater for six minutes. For comparison, professional divers hold their breath for anywhere between four and seven minutes,  according to the American Physiological Society , but even that can be very dangerous and could cause brain damage. Although Cruise scared crewmembers a few times by testing his limits underwater, in the end, he successfully completed the mission.

“It’s something I have always wanted to do,” Cruise said during an interview with USA Today at the time. “We’re underwater and we’re doing breath-holds of 6 to 6-1/2 minutes. So I was doing all my training with the other stuff (on-set). It was very taxing stuff.”

'Mission: Impossible – Fallout' (Building Jump Scene)

While filming a building jump scene in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout , Cruise actually got hurt, which shut down production for six weeks while he recovered. During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show , the actor not only detailed exactly what went wrong but shared a video of the moment he broke his ankle during the stunt.

In the scene, while attached to two safety wires, Cruise’s character is meant to jump from one high-rise to another when chasing Henry Cavill’s character. Although he was meant to miss the landing and hit the side of the wall, his foot actually slipped and bent upwards on impact. The actor noted that he “knew instantly it was broken.” Cruise also revealed that his ankle was still healing while he was on the press tour for the film.

‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One’ (Speed-Flying Scene)

In the seventh film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Tom Cruise shows that he has no plans to stop doing death-defying stunts anytime soon. For Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One , the actor learned how to do what director Christopher McQuarrie called “one of the most dangerous sports in the world.” Speed-flying, which is similar to paragliding, combines elements of parachute swooping to allow people to fly at high speeds down mountainsides while maintaining close to the slope. And Cruise did just that for one of the scenes in the latest installment of the action franchise. McQuarrie even noted that when Cruise was “flying very close to rocks,” the filming crew was in “absolute terror” behind the cameras. 

‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One’ (Motorbiking Off a Cliff Scene)

For Mission: Impossible 7 , Tom Cruise said he got to do a stunt that he had wanted to do “since I was a little kid.” And that stunt was riding a motorbike off a cliff and parachuting down to safety. Director Christopher McQuarrie explained that there were many elements needed to actually make it happen, as well as years of different types of training. Once Cruise felt like he was comfortable with each aspect of the stunt, that’s when the crew built the film’s final ramp on a cliff in Norway. A crewmember added that Cruise did a total of six takes of one of the “biggest stunts in cinema history.” 

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The Nine Wildest Mission: Impossible Stunts, Ranked By the Danger They Posed to Tom Cruise

By William Goodman

Over the last 27 years, the Mission: Impossible franchise has continued to establish itself from other movies in the spy genre by being synonymous with two things: Tom Cruise and insane stunts. With the subsequent release of each Ethan Hunt adventure comes another behind-the-scenes featurette about how far out there—read: how close to actual death—Cruise went to entertain and enthrall the audience, whether it’s learning how to hold his breath underwater for six minutes, or scaling the exterior of the world’s largest building.

With the release of the seventh installment in the series, Dead Reckoning Part One , Hunt states to a character that their life “will always be more important to me than my own,” which feels like a declaration of Cruise’s guiding philosophy for stunt work. To wit: Matt Damon recently recalled a conversation he had with Cruise about a stunt in Ghost Protocol —which started with Cruise deadpanning that he fired the film's first safety coordinator who deemed the stunt too dangerous.

Cruise fulfills his mission statement in the latest film by driving a motorcycle off a cliff and then parachuting down a ravine—establishing a new landmark in Hollywood stunt work. As the franchise reaches this new height, we’re looking at some of the most dangerous stunts from the Mission series and ranking by degree of danger, from least to most.

Danger Level: Mild

An exploding fish tank feels like small potatoes in the larger scope of the Mission series, but Cruise has said the stunt was indeed “very crazy.” Talking to Graham Norton in 2018, Cruise recalled that he and the stunt coordinator couldn’t get on the same page about the timing of the explosion, resulting in a Who’s On First -like back and forth about whether the go was on the count of three or the count of one. Considering the sequence involved a detonation, glass, and plenty of water, the potential for danger was high, but hardly life-threatening. miscommunication is enough for someone to get seriously injured if it wasn’t timed correctly.

Danger Level: Unnecessarily High

Cruise’s wholehearted approach to dangerous stunt work began in earnest with John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 . The actor put Alex Honnold to shame with an extensive free solo climbing stunt in the film’s opening . "I was really mad that he wanted to do it, but I tried to stop him and I couldn't," Woo told Entertainment Weekly back in 2000 . "I was so scared I was sweating. I couldn't even watch the monitor when we shot it." Woo’s nervousness stemmed from the fact Cruise was insistent on not only doing the climb himself but only wearing a thin safety wire through the staggering seven different takes it took to get the shot as he climbed over the constructed cliff face. His dedication comes through in the final product and is easily the highlight of an otherwise lackluster installment in the franchise ( despite my editor’s attempts to convince me otherwise ).

Danger Level: Probable Death

By Jack King

By Kate Sloan

After Ghost Protocol —more on that later—the Mission franchise shifted into featuring a signature, outrageous stunt for each of its installments. For his first Mission , Christopher McQuarrie conjured up the idea of Cruise strapped to an A400 cargo plane—an image so memorable it became the central focus of the movie’s marketing. McQuarrie recently stated the fear around A400 stunt wasn’t so much about Cruise falling off (he was strapped into the door through a rigged vest) but external factors beyond their control, like a rock on the runway or a bird strike while the plane was taking off. With so little protection, the timing had to be perfect.

Danger Level: Technically Low, made higher by insane repetitions

While still extremely dangerous, the challenges around the HALO (high altitude, low opening) jump in Fallout were mostly logistical. McQuarrie and crew had to create a new style helmet for the sequence that not only provided oxygen for Cruise (who is the first ever actor to perform the jump typically reserved for military operations) but also had lighting in the interior so audiences could see his face. The timing of the natural lighting made it so the jump could only occur in a three-minute window, so the jump required over 100 attempts to get it right. The real risk came from ensuring Henry Cavill, Cruise, and the cameraman all hit their marks so they wouldn’t collide in midair while falling at 200 miles per hour. In any other movie, this would be the showstopper. And yet, in Fallout , it’s just the aperitif.

Danger Level: Navy Seal levels of difficulty

Much of the pre-release marketing of Mission films in the last decade typically includes Cruise discussing his training to execute on a stunt accordingly. Rogue Nation leaned into the fact he learned how to hold his breath underwater for a staggering six minutes to shoot the underwater vault heist sequence as practically as possible—and all in one long take despite the fact the finished sequence is intertwined with multiple cuts. Legend has it that safety and compliance teams on set were extraordinarily nervous about the whole thing, and it wasn’t until Cruise convinced them otherwise that it was safe and that he could handle it accordingly.

Danger Level: Low, but it’s always the one you least expect

For all the dangerous stunts in Mission movies, it’s odd that something as simple as a broken ankle is the only major injury to befall Cruise. While jumping from one building to another, Cruise sustained that injury and knew immediately he’d messed something up, as the take in which he broke it is the one McQuarrie used in the final cut. Filming on Fallout was subsequently delayed while he recovered, but Cruise seemed to take it in stride; a behind-the-scenes clip shows him shrugging it off like he forgot to grab something at the grocery store.

Danger Level: Extremely High

There are approximately three different “holy shit” moments throughout Fallout ’s third-act helicopter setpiece: Cruise jumping onto the rope as the helicopter takes off, free-falling off the helicopter, and then piloting the chopper himself while performing a 365-degree corkscrew dive. The scariest bit of all included the drop—Rebecca Ferguson declared that she thought Cruise actually fell from the helicopter. If you remember, Cruise falls and hits the accompanying load dangling at the bottom so hard that it knocks the wind out of him each of the several times he performed it. Not to mention, the corkscrew dive was so dangerous that “most pilots wouldn’t attempt it,” per stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood .

Danger Level: Technically Very High…(but less blatantly flirtatious with death than the movies that followed?)

In other movies, a stunt involving scaling the side of the Burj Khalifa would have taken place on a set with a replica or with CGI. Not in the world of Mission . For Ghost Protocol , Cruise climbed the world’s tallest building with only a single safety rope. A single misstep and everything could go south very quickly. The stunt set the tone for everything else that’s followed, as dedicating himself to the reality of it all makes it one of the defining stunts of the Mission franchise.

Danger Level: Trolling death at this point

In comedy, there’s the concept of putting “a hat on a hat,” which means that layering one joke on top of another different joke leads to the whole thing falling flat. In less-skilled hands, the now legendary cliff bike jump in Dead Reckoning could feel like a hat on a hat. It combines elements of previous Mission stunts, notably the HALO jump and the Paris bike chase from Fallout , but it’s accomplished and shot in such a way that it feels breathtaking at every single stage. The fact that Cruise performed the stunt several different times, despite its high risk, is stunt work at its very best.

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Movie Review | 'Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol'

Falling Off Skyscrapers Sometimes Hurts a Bit

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By Manohla Dargis

• Dec. 15, 2011

What makes Tom Cruise run — run harder and run faster, leaping from one building and dangling off another, the world’s tallest — as he does to exhausting, unnerving effect in “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” his latest exercise in extreme performance? The fourth in the franchise, this “Mission” has a solid cast, including a notable new co-star in Jeremy Renner; a new director, Brad Bird; and a story that’s as nonsensical as any in the series. Mostly, though, it has Mr. Cruise hurtling through the movie as if his life depended on it, which, to judge by the hard line of his jaw, his punishingly fit body and the will etched into his every movement, may be what’s at stake.

It’s fitting that Mr. Bird, the director of the Pixar movies “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille,” has taken over the reins of the franchise for his live-action directing debut. The “Mission: Impossible” movies belong to that outlandish, sometimes cartoonish class of action adventures in which lesser, Bond-like heroes walk or race from fiery explosions in between locking and loading, kissing and killing, and killing some more. The films, spun off the 1960s television show, fondly remembered for its rubber masks and Lalo Schifrin’s brilliant, pulsating theme music, added Mr. Cruise, who in the 15 years since the first installment has tumbled from his top spot as the world’s biggest movie star to lag behind neo-action figures like Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp.

Mr. Cruise may be somewhat down (certainly his smile has dimmed), yet he’s scarcely out. That’s partly because of Mr. Bird, who has given this movie a self-aware levity that’s intended to clear away the bummer blues of the last “Mission,” five years ago. Directed by J. J. Abrams, who is also a producer of this movie, the third film skewed the series too dark with a nihilistic baddie (chilled to shivering by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a nightmarish torture scene. It also burdened Mr. Cruise’s character, Ethan Hunt, with a wife (Michelle Monaghan), an unwise move — American action heroes, latter-day fantasies of our native rugged individualism, walk alone, not down the aisle — which suggested that the soon-to-be-remarried Mr. Cruise was borrowing a chapter from his own life.

The new movie, written by Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec, both alumni of Mr. Abrams’s television show “Alias” (mostly), ditches the wife and gets back to action basics with globe-trotting, nifty gadgets, high-flying stunts and less loquacious villainy (Michael Nyqvist). (It was also partly shot in Imax, which doesn’t really enhance anything.)

Ethan, after being broken out of a Moscow prison, where he had been idling among hordes of bull-necked Ivans and Igors, sets off on another mission with an old teammate, the tech whiz Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), and the obligatory pretty lady, Agent Jane Carter (Paula Patton). The mission goes bust and boom, as does a debriefing with Ethan’s boss (Tom Wilkinson, uncredited), whose murder finds Ethan and his team blackballed (if still sleuthing) and keeping company with an intelligence analyst, William Brandt (Mr. Renner).

Mr. Renner, who played the main bomb specialist in “The Hurt Locker,” eases effortlessly into the blockbuster register, where star charisma and presence like Mr. Cruise’s matter more than emotionally selling a scene. Mr. Renner has to do some actual acting because of the role (surprise: there’s more to Brandt than a suit), and his low-key performance is a dividend in a movie in which almost all human interactions take exaggerated form, with more throttling than talking, or so it seems. Mr. Renner isn’t an obvious action type — he’s good-looking rather than roguish or boyishly pretty — but as soon as he rolls up his sleeves and picks up a gun, it’s obvious that he’s qualified for the job.

For his part, Mr. Cruise seems comfortable resuming his franchise duties, though there’s a palpable difference in his affect, even from the last movie. He still radiates intensity bordering on mania, but without the familiar “what, me worry?” air of invincibility. Maybe it’s age: he turns 50 next year, or perhaps Mr. Bird’s approach doesn’t sit well with him, even if it also fits. The wolfish Cruise smile seems tighter, at times reluctant, despite Mr. Bird’s efforts to lighten the mood with banter (much of it supplied by a chattering Mr. Pegg). Over the years Mr. Cruise, a divinely superficial presence in pop fodder like “Top Gun,” has grown progressively heavier, weighted down by stardom, ambition and the misstep of turning his personal life into a public drama. At times he can feel leaden.

Unexpectedly, though, his age and inescapable gravitas work for “Ghost Protocol,” partly because they invest the outrageous stunts with a real sense of risk. Mr. Cruise’s primary job in the “Mission” series is to embody a not-quite-ordinary man whose powers are at once extraordinary and completely believable, a no-sweat feat in the first few films.

Here, however, when Ethan ziplines off a building onto a truck and then rolls hard onto the street, Mr. Bird — while borrowing more than a little from the “Roadrunner” cartoons — also makes you aware of the fragility of the body ricocheting on screen, absorbing every blow for your entertainment. And when Mr. Cruise hangs off the even taller building , what you see isn’t just a man doing a crazy stunt but also one poignantly denying his own mortality.

“Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Largely bloodless, if at times extreme, violence, including gunplay and a fatal push from a skyscraper. Those with acrophobia beware.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE

Ghost Protocol

Opens on Friday at Imax theaters nationwide.

Directed by Brad Bird; written by Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec, based on the television series created by Bruce Geller; director of photography, Robert Elswit; edited by Paul Hirsch; music by Michael Giacchino, “Mission: Impossible” theme composed by Lalo Schifrin; production design by Jim Bissell; costumes by Michael Kaplan; produced by Tom Cruise, J. J. Abrams and Bryan Burk; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 13 minutes.

WITH: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Jeremy Renner (Brandt), Simon Pegg (Benji), Paula Patton (Jane), Michael Nyqvist (Hendricks), Vladimir Mashkov (Sidorov), Josh Holloway (Hanaway), Anil Kapoor (Brij Nath), Léa Seydoux (Sabine Moreau) and Tom Wilkinson (I.M.F. Secretary).

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Tom Cruise's Wildest Stunts in His Movies, from 'Top Gun: Maverick' to 'Mission: Impossible'

Stunt double, who? Tom Cruise has become synonymous with the dangerous stunts seen in his action-packed movies because he performs all of them himself. Between running down the world's tallest building in Mission: Impossible  to flying a jet in Top Gun: Maverick , here's a roundup of the adrenaline junky's most intense scenes

Tom Cruise's Cliff Jump in Mission: Impossible II

There's nothing that amps Tom Cruise up more than doing his own dangerous stunts , which he has done numerous times throughout the Mission: Impossible franchise.

In the second installment, one memorable and nail-biting scene involved a 2,000-foot cliff in Moab, Utah.

Not only did Cruise scale the cliff with his bare hands, but he jumped a 15-foot gap from one side of the cliff to another with nothing but a thin rope holding him for safety. (Oh, he also hung onto the cliff's side by only his fingertips before pulling himself up.)

"I was really mad that he wanted to do [the stunt], but I tried to stop him and I couldn't," director John Woo told Entertainment Weekly . "I was so scared I was sweating. I couldn't even watch the monitor when we shot it."

Tom Cruise's Knife to the Eye in Mission: Impossible II

Cliff climbs and frightening jumps weren't the only hard-to-watch stunts in the second installment of Mission: Impossible . While our eyes were nearly shut watching this next stunt, Cruise insisted his be wide open.

The infamous "knife-to-eye" scene involved a real knife being propelled full force at his eye, stopping precisely one quarter-inch away from his eyeball, as opposed to somewhere vaguely near his eye like director Woo had suggested, per the Mission: Impossible II Blu-Ray behind-the-scenes clip.

Tom Cruise's Skyscraper Run in Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol

One of Cruise's most famous stunts took place in Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol when he scaled down the side of a building. But not just any building! He scaled the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa, located in Dubai.

To complete this daunting task, Cruise's character Tom Hunt sported special suction gloves in order to reach the 130th floor of the 2,722-foot skyscraper before rappelling down and concluding with a giant leap of faith.

"One night, after one of the earliest shooting days, I bolted up in bed realizing that we had our star dangling about a mile up in the air on a thin wire and my brain was screaming, 'What the hell are we doing?' " director Brad Bird told the New York Daily News .

Tom Cruise's Exoskeleton Armor in Edge of Tomorrow

While the stunts in Edge of Tomorrow were nonetheless next-level, it was the costume that posed even more of a challenge ! Cruise sported metal exoskeleton armor, a detail that's typically added via CGI in post production.

But naturally, the daredevil actor opted to wear the heavy suit — with one version weighing roughly 85 pounds, costume designer Pierre Bohanna told Entertainment Weekly .

"They're brash, quickly-made pieces of equipment. So you've got to see the guys struggling in them," Bohanna said. "But it's a massive worry when you take something like this and put someone like Tom in there. It's a massive ask for anyone to put up with, let alone somebody that important."

Tom Cruise's Plane Hang in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation

The Top Gun alumnus is no stranger to action-packed air travel, but his stunt in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation is incomparable to say the least.

While Top Gun had Cruise daringly fly and pilot fighter planes, Rogue Nation saw the actor cling onto one from the outside!

Using only his fingertips, he dangled 1,000 feet in the air from the side of an Airbus A400M at a speed of 100 knots for six to eight minutes, the film's photography director, Robert Elswit, told The Hollywood Reporter .

In order to safely accomplish the stunt, Cruise was attached via a wire that was later erased in post production. He also wore protective contacts to shield his eyes from flying debris and intense gusts of wind, per CNN.

Tom Cruise's Zero-Gravity Stunt in The Mummy

Ever wonder how actors recreate a cargo plane plummeting to the ground? Ask Cruise, who did just that during the infamous plane crash sequence in The Mummy .

In true Cruise fashion, the actor opted for 64 takes in zero gravity, as opposed to the suggested sound stage alternative, per Variety .

Tom Cruise's Helicopter Hang in Mission: Impossible Fall Out

Cruise was offered to shoot this daunting Mission: Impossible Fall Out scene on a backlot with a green screen, but that's just so out of character.

To complete the stunt, the actor endured 16 hours of intensive helicopter training every day for more than a month in order to pull off the scene's difficult maneuvers and climactic downward spiral, per the Los Angeles Times .

"It's all Tom flying, 100 percent of it. There's a lot of jeopardy," the film's stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood, told the outlet.

As for the crash sequence, "It's kind of like being in a theme park ride but really dangerous because your limbs are flying everywhere and all you need to do is catch your wrist in the wrong place and that's a permanent injury," costar Henry Cavill added.

Tom Cruise's Building Jump in Mission: Impossible Fall Out

Did you really think hanging off the side of a helicopter, plummeting 40 feet to the ground , and doing a downward spiral were the only missions accomplished by Cruise i n Fall Out ? In the film, he also had to leap from one building's rooftop to another.

To film the chase scene, Cruise was attached to two safety harnesses as he sprinted off one building, leaped off, and crashed against the side of the other before hoisting himself up (only to then keep running again).

Unfortunately for Cruise, the "easy" stunt did go wrong, resulting in a broken ankle for the actor, he told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show .

Tom Cruise's Cockpit Scene in Top Gun: Maverick

In the blockbuster sequel to Cruise's 1986 Top Gun , the cockpit scene in Top Gun: Maverick was — you guessed it — extremely dangerous.

All of the actors were professionally trained to pilot their individual fighter planes themselves.

"We worked with the Navy and the Top Gun School to formulate how to shoot it practically because if we're going to do it, we're going to fly in the F-18s," said Cruise in a behind-the-scenes Paramount Pictures video clip.

Tom Cruise's Motorcycle Jump in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning

The seventh installment of the Mission: Impossibl e franchise, Dead Reckoning Part One , which is set to release in 2023, will see Cruise take on one of his most daring duties to date .

In the film, he rides a motorcycle off a massive ramp, flies into the sky, and parachutes his way down to safety — all while cameras are rolling and helicopters are following him to get the shot, per Today .

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Tom Cruise's 10 best stunts of all time, ranked

• Tom Cruise does his own stunts and it's remarkable what he's been able to pull off.
• Hanging on the side of a plane, skydiving, climbing the world's tallest building — he's done it all.
• Here's a recap of his greatest stunts.

10. For the cargo-plane crash in "The Mummy," Cruise did the stunt inside a NASA plane that trains astronauts for zero gravity.

In 2017's "The Mummy," Cruise finds himself stuck in a cargo plane as it crashes. To pull off a scene like this, actors would typically film it in a controlled setting like a sound stage surrounded by a green screen.

Not Cruise, though.

The star shot the scene in a plane that NASA uses to train astronauts .

The scene was filmed in the plane which had to go up to 25,000 feet to get the look that Cruise was in zero gravity. The plane then did a free fall for 22 seconds.

Cruise did the flight four times to pull off the scene.

9. Cruise flew a helicopter in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

For the thrilling helicopter-chase scene in the finale of "Fallout," Cruise spent 16 hours a day training to get to the required 2,000 hours to fly a helicopter on his own.

But Cruise didn't just fly the helicopter. He also pulled off a 360-degree corkscrew dive in it, which would challenge even the most veteran pilot.

8. Cruise is really in a F/A-18 jet for the flight scenes in "Top Gun" Maverick" and had to deal with the G-forces.

When you see Cruise and the cast looking like they are battling G-forces in the jets, complete with distorted faces, it's because they really were.

Cruise and the cast went through training so their dogfight scenes could look as realistic as possible — which meant sitting in the F/A-18 jets as they were spun around and took dramatic dives.

7. Cruise climbed a 2,000-foot cliff in "Mission: Impossible 2."

In the opening scene of 2000's "M: I 2," Cruise is seen climbing a cliff. And yes, that's really him.

Cruise scaled the cliff in Utah with nothing but a safety rope . He also did a 15-foot jump from one cliff to another.

6. Cruise held his breath for six minutes for an underwater stunt in "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation."

In one scene, Cruise's Ethan Hunt has to dive into an underwater safe to retrieve the computer chip that will lead him closer to the villain.

Along with having to hold his breath the whole time , he must keep away from a large crane that's circling around the safe.

For the scene, Cruise first jumped off a 120-foot ledge. Then, in a 20-foot deep-water tank, Cruise held his breath for six minutes.

5. Cruise broke his ankle jumping between buildings while making "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

Tom Cruise loves to run in his movies; it's become his trademark. But his ability to continue running came into question after a stunt went wrong on the set of "Fallout."

While jumping from one one building to another, Cruise hit the wall of the building the wrong way and broke his ankle.

The accident halted production for months and doctors told Cruise his running days might be over. But, six weeks later, Cruise was back on set doing sprints .

4. Cruise climbed the tallest building in the world for "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol."

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world, and Cruise climbed it.

For "Ghost Protocol," the actor's climb got him up to 1,700 feet in the air .

He also fell four stories down by rappelling on the surface of the building.

3. Cruise did 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps for the thrilling motorcycle stunt in "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part 1."

For the latest "M:I" movie, Cruise once again pushed himself.

And one stunt in particular is definitely up there as one of his craziest ideas yet: driving a motorcycle off a cliff.

The star did 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps to prepare for the stunt. And that wasn't just so Cruise had the skill and comfort to pull off the stunt; the training also made it possible for director Christopher McQuarrie and his crew to map out camera angles to capture it. 

The stunt was then done on the first day of principal photography.

"We know either we will continue with the film or we're not. Let's know day one!" Cruise told "Entertainment Tonight" on why it was done on the first day.

Cruise ended up doing the stunt six times on the day of shooting.

2. Cruise hung on the side of a plane as it took off for "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation."

Cruise clung to the side of a massive Airbus A400M plane as it took off and went up to 1,000 feet dealing with speeds of 100 knots.

To protect the actor, he was secured with a wire attached to the plane. He also had special contacts on to protect his eyes from debris.

Cruise did this stunt eight times.

1. Cruise did 106 skydives with a broken ankle to pull off the HALO jump in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

While Cruise was healing the broken ankle he sustained earlier in the "Fallout" production, he went and pulled off the most amazing stunt he's done in his career so far.

In the movie, Cruise's character and CIA tagalong August Walker (Henry Cavill) decide to do a HALO jump — a high-altitude, low-open skydive, in which you open your parachute at a low altitude after free-falling for a period of time — out of a giant C-17 plane to get into Paris undetected.

Cruise did this for real by executing the jump 106 times over two weeks , many of them done during golden hour, a very brief period of perfect lighting that occurs just before sunset.

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Mission: Impossible's Motorcycle Stunt Rig is Something You Have to See

That's one way to film your actors..

T he Mission: Impossible series is one of my favorite movie franchises, not because the plots are particularly good—though the writing of the last few have been incredibly solid—but because the stuntwork is just plain astounding . Those stunts are often helmed by none other than the film's star, Tom Cruise, who has a penchant for the dramatic and zero fear of, well, anything. 

And because of this, we get close-ups of the movie star in all sorts of death-defying action, including riding BMW's S1000RR along a desert mountain road in 2015's  Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation . But not everyone is Tom Cruise. So how do you get your other actors to look the part and make the audience believe they're just as nuts as he is?

That was definitely a question the production had and the stunt crew came up with a need-to-see solution with some incredibly awesome engineering. In particular, how they got Rebecca Ferguson's character to be the BMW rabbit to Cruise's BMW fox.

Check out this behind-the-scenes footage recently uploaded to Instagram from the film's stunt folks. 

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The sequence, when Ferguson's character is running from Cruise's, required the actors to ride motorcycles at high rates of speed through a canyon road. Cruise, a long-time and talented motorcyclist, had no trouble riding for camera. But Ferguson, to make the scene believable, needed some movie magic and a heavily modified "Biscuit rig."

Biscuit rigs have been around for ages for both cars and motorcycles, but they're always quite static with the vehicle just stationary on a platform. It looks pretty fake and the audience can tell the production is cheating. But the Rogue Nation folks came up with one that allowed Ferguson to actually lean her BMW S1000RR over, so it made her look like she could go toe-to-toe with Cruise.

As such, the footage we get from Jem FX's Elia Popov is wild, the poster of the video and person who built it, but I'd love to see more of how this whole rig works.

Popov in the post says, "Today we were looking back at some of the #jemfxbuilt motorcycle rigs we have created over the years and this one has to be the top dog of insanity! 90mph in the Atlas Mountains and chased by @fred_north and @rpnagle at the helm of the biscuit rig always tryin to “do better”. 

Stunt work is something I love to watch occur and get nerdy with, and this most definitely scratched that itch. Maybe we'll see the MI stunt folks get on with Corridor Digital's Stuntmen React series. Likewise, hopefully we get more motorcycle chases in the next installment of Mission: Impossible, though that last jump was pretty nuts. 

Mission: Possible

• Tom Cruise Spotted On A Different BMW GS While Filming M:I 7
• Tom Cruise Rekindles Kawi Flame in Top Gun Sequel

'Mission: Impossible 8': Release Date, Cast, Filming, and Everything We Know So Far

Ethan Hunt's next mission is currently on hold.

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Does 'mission: impossible 8' have a release date, will 'mission: impossible 8' be in theaters, who is returning for 'mission: impossible 8', who are the new cast members in 'mission: impossible 8', what will 'mission: impossible 8' be about, who is making 'mission: impossible 8', when and where did 'mission: impossible 8' film.

Editor's Note: The following contains full spoilers for 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning' Fans of the Mission: Impossible franchise have been eagerly awaiting the next chapter in Ethan Hunt's story in Mission: Impossible 8 .

It's honestly amazing that the Mission: Impossible series has been able to up the ante with every installment since the original 1996 film. Each installment somehow ends up being more exciting than the last and adds its own flavor of action spectacle to keep the franchise fresh and exciting. With a solid foundation formed by Mission: Impossible 1996, we got high-speed motorcycle chases in Mission: Impossible II , a terrifying villain in Mission: Impossible III , a Burj Khalifa-scaling triumph in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol , a stealthy espionage treat in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation , and a gripping nuclear prevention tale in Mission: Impossible - Fallout .

Ethan Hunt's latest mission, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning , might be the best installment in the long-running series yet. In a surprisingly topical tale about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence, Ethan and his team are tasked with finding and destroying a rogue AI known only as The Entity. The resulting globe-trotting journey leads to some incredible action setpieces and more than a few shocking twists and turns.

While the second half of the epic search for The Entity undoubtedly makes Mission: Impossible 8 one of the most anticipated projects of 2025, although moviegoers will have to wait a bit longer than expected for Ethan Hunt's next mission. To learn more about the second part's cast, release date, production status, and more, here is everything we know so far about Mission: Impossible 8 (queue fuse-lighting sequence).

Editor's Note: This piece was updated on April 24, 2024.

Mission: Impossible 8

Mission: Impossible 8 is set to release on Friday, May 25, 2025 . The film has gone through numerous delays, having previously been scheduled for release on August 5, 2022, November 4, 2022, July 7, 2023, and June 28, 2024.

While the initial two delays were because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused both Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning to constantly be delayed as well, the latest setback was because filming had been halted by the SAG-AFTRA strike .

There's a reason why Tom Cruise's catchphrase of "See you at the movies" has become so prevalent. With Top Gun: Maverick and the Mission: Impossible franchise being such massive box office hits, you better believe that Mission: Impossible 8 will be premiering exclusively in a movie theater near you. After the previous movie lost its IMAX screens after one week due to Oppenheimer , Mission: Impossible 8 will be receiving a three-week IMAX exclusive releas e.

After the film's theatrical run concludes, Mission: Impossible 8 will more than likely be joining the rest of the franchise entries on Paramount+ for a streaming release.

If, by chance, you still haven't seen Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning , you can stream the movie on Paramount+.

Watch on Paramount+

Unsurprisingly, global action superstar Tom Cruise will once again be reprising his role as IMF Agent Ethan Hunt. The actor's world-famous tenacity for doing his own stunts has made him one of modern cinema's most famous figures. Also set to return to assist Ethan in his quest for The Entity are Captain America: The First Avenger standout Hayley Atwell as Grace, Hot Fuzz star Simon Pegg as Benji, and Pulp Fiction icon Ving Rhames as Luther. Also on the cast list is Doctor Sleep star Rebecca Ferguson as the fan favorite Ilsa Faust, but given how her character's story goes in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning , that may not be the case (unless there is a flashback sequence or Ilsa's death was a fakeout).

Other characters expected to return are the antagonists of the film, such as Essai Morales ( La Bamba ) as Gabriel, Vanessa Kirby ( Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw ) as The White Queen, and Pom Klementieff ( Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ) as Paris , the latter of whom may return as a redeemed ally after barely surviving her wounds in Part 1 . Also likely returning are Part 1 's deuteragonists, including Shea Whigham 's ( Kong: Skull Island ) CIA agent Jasper Briggs, Greg Tarzan Davis ( Top Gun: Maverick ) as CIA agent Degas, Charles Parnell ( Top Gun: Maverick ) as NRO, and Henry Czerny ( Clear and Present Danger ), reprising the character of Kittridge, who debuted all the way back in the first Mission: Impossible . Kittridge isn't the only familiar face from a past film returning this time either, as Rolf Saxon ( Tomorrow Never Dies ) is reprising his role as William Donloe - another character who hasn't been seen since the first film. Also likely returning in flashbacks is Mariela Garriga ( NCIS ) as Marie - the mysterious woman from Ethan's past who Gabriel killed.

The returning cast is already massive, but even more new faces are joining the second chapter. This includes Emmy Award-Winner Nick Offerman ( The Last of Us ) as Sydney, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Holt McCallany (Mindhunter) as Bernstein, the Secretary of Defense. Also joining the cast in undisclosed roles are Emmy-Award Winner Hannah Waddingham ( Ted Lasso ), Academy Award nominee Janet McTeer ( The Menu ), Lucy Tulugarjuk , Katy O'Brian ( Love Lies Bleeding ), and Tramell Tillman ( Severance ).

While an official plot synopsis has not yet been released, Mission: Impossible 8 will almost certainly be continuing Ethan Hunt's search for The Entity, even though the world's governments and other third parties are trying to stop him. Ethan is also likely seeking retribution against Gabriel, who has now murdered two people very close to him. It's an epic conclusion that will likely see Ethan bring along old friends and potentially meet new enemies.

The film was initially set to be titled Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two , but this is now subject to change. Only time will tell if Paramount decides to remove the "Part One" from the seventh installment.

Much of the behind-the-camera crew from Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning will be returning for Mission: Impossible 8 . This includes writer/director Christopher McQuarrie , who has become a franchise veteran after directing Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation and Mission: Impossible - Fallout prior to the Dead Reckoning films. McQuarrie also shares screenwriting credit with Band of Brothers scribe Erik Jendresen .

Also attached to return are composer Lorne Balfe ( Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves ), cinematographer Fraser Taggart ( Robot Overlords ), editor Eddie Hamilton ( Top Gun: Maverick ), and production designer Gary Freeman ( The Witches ).

In an interview with Collider, McQuarrie revealed that most of Part 2 has already been completed , but there are still some major set pieces that have not been filmed yet. However, production was not able to be completed before the initiation of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Filming has since picked back up, and photos from the set made their way online in late March 2024 .