The shot of Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle off the side of a mountain has already become an iconic part of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. Rather than make fans wait for the movie to see Cruise’s latest death-defying stunt, the shot was a big part of the film’s promotion. While the stunt was clearly dangerous for Cruise, the amount of things that could have gone wrong is quite extensive, and it turns out one of them almost did.
The very first scene scene for the new Mission: Impossible movie featured Tom Cruise's climactic motorcycle jump. It was said, mostly joking, that the reason the scene was shot first was so that if Cruise died as a result, nobody would waste their time making the rest of the movie. But that may have been closer to the truth than we knew. Talking to Capitol FM Cruise discussed the stunt at length. He talked about the amount of prep that was done to make sure it could be done safely, which Cruise says he actually really enjoys. He explained…
The amount of knowledge that goes into something like that is very exciting. I enjoy learning and I enjoy pushing cinema in that way.
Watching the scene, we see a guy who primarily needs to avoid crashing into a mountain either before or after he pulls his parachute. And while that is certainly an issue, there was also a lot more that Cruise needed to do to keep himself safe. The process of filming the scene added more complications, since there was a helicopter that he was attached to and a drone that was doing the actual filming. And of course, Cruise still has to do the stunt in a way that is going to work on camera, because, oh yeah, they’re also trying to film a movie through all this. Cruise continued…
But even just as I’m going over [the ramp], the helicopter that’s kind of, you know, I had to be in sync with that helicopter pilot, because if he’s in the wrong position, he’s gonna blow me off the ramp. I had a drone that’s following me. I could do these things, but if we don’t get the shot, we don’t get the shot.
But even with all that preparation, there were still things that could, and nearly did, go wrong. Cruise says that during one take, the wind currents blew him off course and sent him into the side of a mountain. Luckily, he was able to adjust and prevent anything catastrophic from happening. Cruise said…
You could see in the electronic press kit that I’m jumping out of a helicopter right before I do it because I have to test the wind currents in the bowl; they change very quickly. You can see that when I opened [my parachute] I was a little off because I had a crosswind, and my shoulder was just a little up. The parachute opened and the second it opened it was pulling me into the side of the mountain. Once you pull, you have to quickly be ready to adjust.
Luckily, despite doing some pretty insane stunts the worst injury Tom Cruise has sustained is a broken ankle. There likely wasn’t a way to get off that easy if something bad had happened in this stunt. Luckily, all that preparation was worth it and he was able to handle it went things started to go sideways.
