Tom Cruise is known more than anything today for being willing to do things in films that other Hollywood stars simply aren’t willing to do. He rarely uses stuntmen, as Cruise prefers to do all of his stunts himself. When it came to Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise’s big set piece stunt saw him ride a motorcycle off a cliff, but it turns out that was far from the first time he pulled off such a stunt, only the scale was different.
In a new video posted to the Mission: Impossible Instagram, Cruise talks about trying to jump over trash cans on his bike as a kid. While that version of the stunt was perhaps significantly less dangerous, it apparently resulted in more injuries. Cruise didn’t actually kill himself making the movie, which would have happened if he'd ended up with a similarly failed stunt. He left his bike stunt with significant bumps and bruises as he didn’t successfully clear the cans, at least on his first try. Check out his full comments below.
Really, jumping off a cliff on a motorcycle is just an extension of jumping over trash cans on a bike., Really Tom Cruise has been preparing for this his entire career. It’s maybe not that much of a shock. I’m not sure that anybody with Cruise’s dedication to stunt work comes through some sort of random chance. You’re either born with that desire or not.
This isn’t even the first story from Cruise's childhood that he has told that involves him risking life and limb at a young age, so the actor was clearly born to do this. Luckily, the worst injury he has actually received while doing any of this is a broken ankle that occurred during the last Mission: Impossible movie’s production.
While it isn’t strictly necessary that Tom Cruise do all his own stunts, the fact that he does has become a major draw for any of his action films, and the Mission: Impossible franchise specifically. Dead Reckoning Part One contained multiple exciting sequences that we know Cruise was directly involved in, and the expectations for Dead Reckoning Part Two have only gone up from there.
We’ve seen that Cruise will hang from an airplane in the next movie, but considering that’s actually done that before, and in this franchise, one has to wonder if there’s an even bigger stunt on the horizon, perhaps one that we don’t know ab]out and is being kept intentionally under wraps. Whatever happens in the movie, set to release next year, we can be sure Tom Cruise will put everything into it, and he won’t let anybody else take the risk.
