Tom Cruise gave fans an inside look at how he and his crew pulled off the “biggest stunt in movie history” for “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.”
On Wednesday, the 60-year-old actor shared a 9.5-minute featurette from the upcoming film detailing the stunt, in which Cruise rides a motorcycle off a cliff and then jumps into a ravine .
“This is by far the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted,” Cruise said at the start of the clip.
Tom Cruise gave fans an inside look at how he and his crew pulled off the “biggest stunt in movie history” for “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.” (James Devaney/Getty Images)
The “Top Gun: Maverick” star continued: “We’re going to shoot it in Norway and it’s going to be a motorbike jump off a cliff into a base jump.”
TOM CRUISE PARACHUTES OFF A MOUNTAIN WHILE FILMING ‘MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 8’
The camera panned to a massive ramp that ended at the edge of a huge cliff as Cruise said, “I’ve wanted to do that since I was a kid.”
“And it all comes down to one thing: the audience.”
Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie explained that Cruise came up with a master plan and assembled a team of experts from all the disciplines involved to pull off the feat.
Second Unit Director and Stunt Coordinator Wade Eastwood detailed the extensive preparation that Cruise and the crew went through, which included “a year of basic training, advanced skydiving training, a lot of skills of canopy, a lot of tracking.”
Base jumping coach Miles Daisher marveled at Cruise, whom he described as an “amazing individual”.
“You tell him something and he just shuts it down,” Daisher added. “His sense of spatial awareness, he’s the most aware person I’ve ever met.”
“Following with [base jumping coach] John [DeVore] and Miles in the air,” Eastwood continued. “Doing a lot of different positioning. As if they were a team of two in the air. Coming on top of each other, below each, rear tracking, front tracking. You know we drilled and drilled and drilled.”
In the clip, Cruise explained that motocross was the next part of the training.
Eastwood recalled how the team built a motocross track so the actor “could get comfortable jumping 70- to 80-foot boards.”
“I have to be so good at this that there’s no way I’m going to lose my marks,” Cruise added.
Cruise went on to say that he trained and practiced, performing more than 30 jumps a day, to perfect every aspect of the stunt. The video said he performed more than 13,000 jumps in total, and Eastwood noted that he performed more than 500 parachute jumps during his training.
McQuarrie explained that another challenge involved was positioning the cameras so that all the stunts were captured on film.
“Getting the stunt right is just one of the technical challenges,” he explained. “The other is to put a camera in place so we can see where Tom is doing it.”
He added: “Finding the right lens, the right platform, the right medium. Even two years ago, the cameras that allowed us to do what we’re trying to do today didn’t exist.”
Cruise revealed that he trained and practiced, performing more than 30 jumps a day, to perfect every aspect of the stunt. (Murray Close/Getty Images)
“How do we engage the public?” Cruise asked. “I just want to give them that thrill.”
McQuarrie noted that the camera should be in front of the actor and as close to him as possible.
The production team built a ramp over a quarry in England to replicate the jump in Norway and filled the landing area with cardboard boxes to catch the motorcycle after Cruise jumped off.
“How fast do I have to go, how far does it go?” Cruise said.
To carry out the camera work, the team built models of different ramps at different angles to calculate Cruise’s trajectory.
The actor had a GPS attached to track his movements, and was surrounded by drone cameras to capture close-ups.
“Because if we do everything, but don’t get it, what’s the point?” cruise set
“I always wear earplugs so I don’t have to hear myself scream,” she said as she flashed a smile.
Cruise explained that the key was to reach certain speeds and be consistent. The motorcycle didn’t have a speedometer, so the actor said he knew when to jump by the “sound and feel of the bike.”
“We have to be able to constantly predict where Tom will be in three-dimensional space,” McQuarrie noted.
The clip was shot in Hellesylt, Norway, on the day of filming in 2020. McQuarrie said the “Mission: Impossible” crew always starts filming with the biggest stunt in the movie.
Cruise performed the death-defying stunt six times. (Ken Ishii)
In addition to the stunt work, the filmmaker noted that the weather also had to be perfect.
Cruise explained that he started warming up with base jumps to get a feel for the weather.
“Of course, when something is done for the first time, you can’t help but worry about how it’s actually going to turn out,” Daisher said. “The only things you really need to avoid while doing a stunt like this are serious injury or death.”
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The tension created when Cruise made his first attempt to ride the motorcycle off the ramp and jump to the base of the rock. The team clapped and cheered as he successfully pulled it off.
The video revealed that Cruise did the stunt six times that day.
“This is by far the most dangerous stunt we’ve ever attempted,” McQuarrie said. “The only thing that scares me more is what we have planned for ‘Mission 8’.”
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” opens in theaters on July 13, 2023.
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Ashley Hume is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to ashley.hume@fox.com and on Twitter: @ashleyhume