‘Mission: Impossible’ Stunts, Ranked By the Danger They Posed To the Health and Safety of Tom Cruise
For all the dangerous stunts Cruise has pulled off in the Mission movies, it’s odd that something as simple as a broken ankle is the only major injury he’s suffered in the line of duty. While jumping from one building to another, Cruise landed and knew immediately he’d messed something up; the bone-break take is the one McQuarrie used in the final cut. Filming on Fallout was subsequently delayed while he recovered, but Cruise seemed to take it in stride; a behind-the-scenes clip shows him shrugging it off like he forgot to grab something at the grocery store.
5. Tom Pilots and Falls Out of a Helicopter (Mission: Impossible — Fallout, 2015)
Danger Level: Extremely high.
There are three major “holy shit” moments in Fallout’s third-act helicopter set piece: Cruise jumping onto the rope as the helicopter takes off, Cruise free-falling off the helicopter, and then Cruise piloting the chopper himself while performing a 365-degree corkscrew dive. The scariest bit of all is probably the drop, when Cruise’s Ethan tries and fails to get a grip on the helicopter’s landing skid and plummets straight down, catching the rope at the last second. In real life, each time he performed the stunt—which was several times—Cruise collided with the load at the bottom of the rope and got the wind knocked out of him. The corkscrew dive was no joke, either—per stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood, it was so dangerous that “most pilots wouldn’t attempt it.”
4. Tom Films The Final Reckoning’s Underwater Sequence (Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, 2025)
Danger Level: Blindingly high.
I’m still unsure how Cruise and McQuarrie filmed the big underwater sequence for The Final Reckoning, which sees Hunt descend to the bottom of the ocean and infiltrate the sunken Sevastopol submarine. A behind-the-scenes feature reveals that most of it was shot in a few different environments, including a giant pool and an Inception-like rotating rig that was partially submerged. At first, it doesn’t seem that more complicated than the Rogue Nation underwater sequence—until you learn that Cruise was wearing a suit that increased his body weight by 125 pounds and breathing his own carbon dioxide, something you are very much not supposed to do. Oh, and on top of that, per a Tonight Show interview, Cruise did it practically blind, due to the reflection of the lights.
3. Tom Climbs the Burj Khalifa (Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, 2011)
Danger Level: Technically very high, if less blatantly death-flirtatious than other, later M:I stunts.
