Tom Cruise is prepared to give his blood, sweat, tears, and frankly, his entire life for cinema. The man has been doing his own impossible stunt work for years, and Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One is no exception. In fact, one might describe the newest film as a prime example of Cruise’s dedication, as the very first thing he shot for M:I7 was a motorcycle stunt director Christopher McQuarrie described as “far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted.”
Speaking with Entertainment Tonight, Cruise was pretty casual about beginning production by risking life and limb. “Well we know, either we’re gonna continue with the film, or we’re not,” he laughed. “Let’s know day one: What is gonna happen? Do we all continue? Or is it a major rewrite, you know?”
“A major rewrite” is a shockingly understated Hollywood euphemism for the star possibly being killed or otherwise incapacitated! But actually, there are practical reasons for starting filming with the most difficult stunt. Preparing for it takes “years,” Cruise explained, even on top of his extensive stunt experience. “But to figure out the kind of thing to do something like that, we’re creating knowledge. We’re creating—it’s our understanding of story, our understanding of camera, how to do something like that, and it all kind of came to that moment.”
A pretty incredible behind-the-scenes featurette for the shot, which involved Cruise riding a motorcycle off a cliff, demonstrates exactly what he was talking about with ET. As McQuarrie explains in the video, the camera technology for this kind of stunt didn’t exist two years ago, so it required a lot of camera configuration on top of Cruise’s physical preparation. And the physical preparation was no joke: Cruise apparently did 30 jumps out of a plane per day, for a total of over 500 skydives, as well as more than 13,000 motocross jumps, all in service of his and McQuarrie’s mantra: “Don’t be careful, be competent.”
“I was training, I was ready, you have to be razor sharp when you do something like that,” the actor told ET. “So it was very important as we were prepping the film that that actually was the first thing, because you don’t—I don’t wanna drop that, and then go shoot other things, and then have my mind somewhere else. Everyone was prepped, let’s just get it done.”
And get it done they did. The tension is palpable behind the monitors as McQuarrie and crew observe Cruise pull off the stunt for the first time in the featurette, but all the hard work paid off—and he ended up doing the jump six times total. “It all comes down to one thing: the audience,” Cruise proclaims in the clip. Another mission made all the more possible.
