Tom Cruise and stunts go together like peanut butter and jelly, and it’s been that way for a long time. This effective combination has been shown off best in the Mission: Impossible movies, where we’ve seen the Ethan Hunt actor do things like climbing the world’s tallest building and hanging off the side of an airplane taking off (that one scares his late mother), and naturally there’s more to come in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. With just a few more week’s left to go until its arrival, a video has been released highlighting one of the 2023 new movie release’s major stunts, Cruise’s incredible “speed flying,” and hopefully those of you who watch aren’t scared of heights.
Even by Tom Cruise standards, speed flying is an especially intense thing to go through, because as writer/director Christopher McQuarrie lays out at the beginning of this featurette released by Paramount Pictures, this is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. Because while the more conventional skydiving is “fairly predictable,” speed flying is “incredibly unpredictable.” See for yourself:
Jon Devore, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One’s skydive/base/speed flying coordinator explains in the video how this speed flying stunt sees Cruise a small canopy and racing down a mountain just feet off the ground, with McQuarrie adding that “any sort of crosswind could put Tom at peril.” As for the speed, Cruise himself notes that this stunt will see him landing at over 80 kilometers an hour. In case it isn’t clear already, this isn’t something one can tackle with just a few hours of preparation; Cruise trained for years to pull off this stunt.
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But coordinating the speed flying itself in the latest Mission: Impossible movie is just part of the challenge. There’s also figuring out how to film the stunt in a way to show that it’s Tom Cruise who’s operating the speedwing, and since it wasn’t possible to get too close with a helicopter or drone, a gimbal system was developed to fly along with the actor and be operated from further back by someone on a helicopter. Throw in the unpredictability of weather, and there’s no question that the odds of something going wrong were high.
Fortunately, Tom Cruise made it out of shooting the speed flying sequence intact, and for many of us, I think it’s safe to say that we’re perfectly fine with watching him do it rather than trying it ourselves. As for why Ethan Hunt will be speed flying in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, we’ll have to wait until the movie is released to learn that information. But again, this is just one of the impressive stunts this latest installment will show off, with others including Cruise fighting on top of a train and jumping off a cliff in a motorcycle literally at the start of production.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One opens in theaters on July 12. Use your Paramount+ subscription to stream the previous six movies ahead of time, remember that Part Two is slated for June 28, 2024.
