Mission: Impossible 7 was one of the first major movies to shut down its production due to the pandemic. The movie was all set to begin filming in Venice when Italy was hit hard by the virus. Now the movie has begun filming once again, and that can only mean one thing, Tom Cruise is trying to figure out what utterly insane stunt he hasn't tried yet. We can now scratch "driving a motorcycle off a cliff and parachuting to the ground," off that list.
A new video and a collection of images posted to Instagram from Cinema Magic, show Tom Cruise driving a motorcycle off a massive ramp that has been constructed for the stunt. He's got a drone in front of him and a helicopter behind him shooting the jump. It looks crazy and exactly the sort of thing we've come to expect from Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible movies. Check it out.
It's a great-looking stunt. Even the video footage here looks great because from the first angle we just see Tom Cruise go off the edge with no visible means of support, and you just think "Well, he's dead." Cruise doesn't pull the shoot until after he's out of the frame, and since we can't tell from here just how high up he actually is., it all feels incredibly dangerous. Luckily, in the next angle, we see the parachute come out and we can be sure Tom Cruise will live another day to do something else ridiculous.
At this point, one even wonders if Tom Cruise really enjoys the part of his job that involves acting or if he really just keeps doing this in order to do all these wild stunts on film. Honestly, the way he has raised the stakes in the last couple of films, jumping off a mountain, even on a motorcycle, doesn't feel like it's even up to Cruise's usual standards. You have to figure there's at least one stunt planned that is set to rival the HALO jump from the last movie.
Hopefully, they got everything they needed in one take because they're going to go through a lot of motorcycles if they have to keep doing this stunt. We get one still image of the bike falling but, honestly, I would have loved to have seen it crash to earth and smash into a million pieces. That would have been awesome.
Production on Mission: Impossible 7 is currently in Norway where its been reported Tom Cruise actually personally rented a large ship so that the cast and crew could remain isolated in their own bubble, as a way to hopefully prevent any issues with the pandemic, which would delay the production of the film even more. After seeing The Batman have to shut down for a second time, that is an even more real concern.
