Tom Cruise does his own stunts, and there is almost nothing he can’t do.
He climbed the Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world – in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. He hung off a giant cliff face with one arm in Mission: Imposssible 2. He held onto the side of a plane as it was taking off in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.
Whatever Tom Cruise is on, he can keep it to himself.
Just the other day, news came that Cruise was preparing for his biggest and most impressive Mission: Impossible stunt to date. Producer David Ellision said: “What Tom is doing in this movie I believe will top anything that’s come before.”
“It is absolutely unbelievable—he’s been training for a year. It is going to be, I believe, the most impressive and unbelievable thing that Tom Cruise has done in a movie, and he has been working on it since right after Rogue Nation came out. It’s gonna be mind-blowing.”
So what kind of stunt could Tom Cruise be doing? What kind of stunt could top hanging off the side of a plane as it takes off? What kind of stunt takes a whole year to prepare for? We had a little think, and we’ve got some theories.
Tom Cruise rides a horse that’s riding a skateboard over the Grand Canyon
The movie: Mission: Impossible – Armour Homeland
The plot: Yellowstone National Park has been destroyed.
A mysterious organisation known only as ‘Shadow Hand’ has claimed responsibility and announced their next target: the Grand Canyon. A covert team lead by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is enlisted to infiltrate the organisation and stop them blowing a big hole in America’s biggest hole.
The stunt: In an epic sequence, Hunt thwarts an early attempt to destroy the Grand Canyon while out riding in Arizona. As a cruise missile enters US airspace, Hunt gallops at full speed to try and block the incoming attack. In order to gain the necessary air, he jumps the horse onto a skateboard, then pops an ollie big enough for the horse to absorb the impact, immediately killing it.
To perfect the stunt, Cruise spent 24 hours a day on the horse for eight solid months in order to learn its equestrian ways and to feel its thick mane against his bare skin. As a semi-professional skateboarder, Cruise was no stranger to popping a sweet ollie, and actually trained the horse to skateboard himself.
Tom Cruise shrinks down to a molecular level and multiplies to fight the very atoms of international evil
The movie: Mission: Impossible – Blood Oblivion
The plot: People across Europe and North Africa suddenly and uncontrollably start to bleed from their eyes.
A mysterious organisation known only as ‘La Volonté’ has claimed responsibility and announced that if the governments of each country affected don’t pay a ransom of $1bn each, the eyes of every person on Earth will bleed. A covert team led by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is enlisted to infiltrate the organisation and find a cure.
The stunt: Realising that the only way to cure the strange eye-bleeding disease is to defeat every single molecule by hand, Hunt uses his Power of Intensity to reduce himself down to the size of an atom and make a hundred million billion copies of himself to defeat the disease before it spreads to the most important country of all: Canada.
Ordinarily this kind of stunt couldn’t be performed by a human being, but Tom Cruise is no human being. He spent a full year learning the dual skills of shrinking and multiplying, noting an early success where he was able to turn himself into a competitive Under-12 football squad.
Tom Cruise single-handedly builds, and then climbs, and then demolishes the tallest skyscraper the world has ever seen
The movie: Mission: Impossible – Satellite Vortex
The plot: An unidentified satellite has appeared directly above the Pentagon.
A mysterious organisation known only as ‘Russia’ has claimed responsibility and plan to release compromising information about US intelligence. A covert team led by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is enlisted to disrupt the satellite before too many secrets are spilled.
The stunt: After detailed scientific analysis, it’s established that the satellite is pretty high up in the sky, so in order to get up there, Hunt must build, then scale, then dismantle the tallest skyscraper in the history of engineering. The task is all the more dangerous as it has to be completed at night, when the satellite is asleep.
Cruise has scaled many structures in movies before, but actually building a skyscraper was something he had only dabbled with as a hobbyist. To create a really authentic-looking skyscraper, Cruise rattled through a decade’s worth of engineering degrees and industry experience in less than half a year, then did everything again in reverse to learn how to dismantle it.
Tom Cruise holds his breath for so long that time starts going backwards
The movie: Mission: Impossible – Chaos Hour
The plot: All of the dams in the United States simultaneously burst, and experts calculate that there is only one hour before the entire country will be flooded.
A mysterious organisation known only as ‘Dolphins’ has claimed responsibility and will soon retake America from the humans to build their own watery paradise. A covert team led by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is enlisted to block all the dams before the Pacific meets the Atlantic.
The stunt: In the dying minutes, as America is nearly completely submerged, Hunt takes one last gasp of air and plunges down to the depths. Five, six, seven, eight – minutes fly past and Hunt still doesn’t breathe, until the water levels miraculously start lowering, the dams start rebuilding, and the many millions of bloated corpses start reanimating.
Cruise has already held his breath underwater for six minutes in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, but felt like he could go one better for this new movie: holding his breath for so long that the space-time continuum starts to warp and bend to his will. Some have attributed this power to his high-ranking in the Church of Scientology, but Cruise claims to simply have very large lungs.
Tom Cruise surgically replaces his feet with rocket thrusters to punch Hitler, who has come back as the Moon
The movie: Mission: Impossible – Atomic Void
The plot: There is a sudden and unexplained rise in fascist occurrences in space.
A mysterious organisation known only as ‘The Nazis’ has claimed responsibility and plans to expand its empire across the galaxy. A covert team led by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is hired to get up there and batter them.
The stunt: In the epic final action sequence, it’s revealed that the architect of all the fascist activity was Hitler all along, returning from 1945 and inhabiting the Moon. Hunt undergoes an experimental surgery to have rocket boosters fitted to the bottom of his legs. He launches himself into outer space, delivering a megapunch to knock Hitler out of the Moon and back to being dead.
As this would most likely be Cruise’s last act as a living human person, he wanted to make sure he got it completely spot on. The intensive and cutting-edge technology involved in melding man and machine took the best part of a year to research, develop and implement, with Cruise assisting during the surgery itself.
