Tom Cruise admits he was terrified during airplane stunt in new Mission: Impossible film

By Rick Marshall April 22, 2015

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation - Fate

Tom Cruise has his detractors, but one thing you can’t fault the actor for is his willingness to risk life and limb to add another level of realism to a cinematic stunt.

Case in point: When a scene in the upcoming Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation called for Cruise’s secret-agent character Ethan Hunt to cling to the side of an airplane as it takes off, the veteran actor soon found himself hanging from an Airbus A400M aircraft 5,000 feet in the air. It was a feat he pulled off not once but eight times for the dramatic, death-defying sequence.

Recommended Videos

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” laughed Cruise during a presentation of behind-the-scenes footage from Rogue Nation at the recent CinemaCon film convention (as reported by Variety). “I want to keep audiences on the edge of their seats.”

In order to make it happen, Cruise had to wear special contact lenses that would allow him to keep his eyes open amid all of the wind, and the crew had to find ways to prevent birds from colliding with the actor and avoid bathing him in fumes from the jet fuel.

“I’m actually scared shitless,” said Cruise while narrating footage of him prepping for the sequence.

In the past, Cruise’s willingness — and desire — to perform many of his own stunts has resulted in him hanging from the dizzying heights of Dead Horse Point, Utah (in Mission: Impossible 2), and running along the outside of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol).

“He’s actually out there doing these things,” said Paramount Pictures Vice-Chairman Rob Moore, during the presentation.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation hits theaters July 31, 2015.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…

Entertainment

Why the first Mission: Impossible movie is still the best one

A man looks out from the shadows in Mission: Impossible.

Everyone loves the Mission: Impossible movies. There are a variety of reasons why: they offer old-fashioned cinematic thrills; they are a form of escapism akin to the James Bond movies, but tougher and more American; they feature one of the last truly great movie stars, Tom Cruise. Ever since the fourth installment, Ghost Protocol, resurrected the genre from pop culture oblivion, the conventional wisdom is that the modern M: I films just keep getting better and better, and are the series' best entries.

Well, nuts to that. I'm not going to defend the much-maligned M: I 2, which doesn't really deserve reconsideration (seriously, what's with all those doves?), but the original Mission: Impossible, in my eyes, is perfection, and hasn't been topped by any other M: I film ... or any action movie, for that matter. The peak of '90s Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking, Mission: Impossible delivers two cinematic giants, Cruise and director Brian De Palma, at the height of their powers, and is perhaps the most fun mainstream movie Hollywood ever produced. Here are just a few reasons why the original M: I still holds up today.
The opening titles
Mission: Impossible (1996) Opening Title Sequence

Entertainment

The best action scenes in the Mission: Impossible movies, ranked

mission impossible movies best action heist scenes ranked fallout halo sequence

Since it first arrived on the big screen in 1996, the Mission: Impossible film franchise has thrilled audiences with increasingly ambitious practical stunts. Star and producer Tom Cruise won’t be satisfied until he’s shown gravity who’s boss once and for all, diving off of increasingly high platforms at increasingly deadly speeds. The daredevil feats have become such essential parts of the Mission: Impossible films and their marketing that one could almost forget the stories that these stunts are meant to service.
In most M: I movies, at least one of those miraculous action set pieces is attached to some sort of heist or caper. Ethan Hunt is a spy, after all, and his quests typically require that he infiltrate a highly secure location and intercept an important item, person, or piece of information. With respect to the remarkable craft put into each of the daredevil actions, how often is the payoff equal to the setup? Is there a correlation between the magnitude of the danger to Tom Cruise and the stakes to Ethan Hunt? On the occasion of Dead Reckoning Part One’s theatrical release, we’re ranking the action scenes in the Mission: Impossible series and our preferences might surprise you.

7. Stealing the Rabbit’s Foot (Mission: Impossible III)
Mission: Impossible III: Daring Leap (HD CLIP)
Mission: Impossible III gets a bit of a bad rap for its efforts to ground the series in something approaching reality, and it can definitely be argued that director J.J. Abrams’ more TV-style aesthetic was an overcorrection from John Woo’s unrestrained bombast. We’ll stand behind M:I-3’s more human and emotional characterization of Ethan Hunt, the romance subplot, and of course, the outstanding performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, but we do have to admit that the choice to essentially skip this movie’s main heist sequence is pretty disappointing.
In the second act of M:I-3, Ethan’s wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) has been kidnapped by terrorist Owen Davian (Hoffman), who promises to kill her unless Hunt retrieves the mysterious “Rabbit’s Foot” weapon from a secure facility in Shanghai. Hunt goes rogue and, with the help of his team, plans a daring swing between two skyscrapers, using a third, taller building as a fulcrum.
However, while we see Ethan’s leap and his tricky landing on the roof of the facility, we don’t follow him inside for the rest of the heist. Instead, we remain with his teammates Zhen (Maggie Q) and Gorley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) as they wait to hear whether or not he’s acquired the Rabbits Foot. We only catch up with Ethan once the mission has gone sideways, and Zhen, Gorley, and trusty tech wizard Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) participate in a wild, shaky-cam car chase away from the building’s facility. It’s a cute subversion of the franchise’s usual structure and it allows the plot to continue at an even clip, but for the purposes of this list, we can’t put it anywhere but dead last.

Entertainment

Is Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 streaming?

Tom Cruise looks and stares in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

It's been five years since the release of Mission: Impossible - Fallout, but the latest film in the series has finally arrived. Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie have reunited for the new sequel, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, and this is a story that has finally given Ethan Hunt (Cruise) a foe that he can't easily dispatch. The Entity is something that Ethan has never had to contend with before, and it will push him and his team to their limits.

Mission: Impossible regulars Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson are all back as Luther Stickell, Benji Dunn, and Ilsa Faust, respectively. Vanessa Kirby also reprises her role from Fallout as the White Widow, Alanna Mitsopolis. And for the first time since the original Mission: Impossible film in 1996, Henry Czerny has returned as IMF director Eugene Kittridge.