LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Tom Cruise has time and again proven that the laws of physics do not apply to him. Whenever it comes to action movies, the 60-year-old actor is known for performing gravity-defying, fist-clenching, edge-of-the-seat stunts. The ‘Mission: Impossible’ veteran’s latest release, ‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One’, will not be an exception. And director Christopher McQuarrie has just confirmed the same.
In the latest video before the film’s release, McQuarrie narrated how Cruise learned to do stunts, which the director called “one of the most dangerous sports in the world.” McQuarrie praised Cruise’s dedication and said, since “there are no limits” with the actor “we become a little bit more adventurous every time.”
Referring to one of the stunts as a “sport very few people on this planet do,” McQuarrie said, "While it may look similar, speed-flying is not skydiving. Skydiving is fairly predictable. Speed-flying is incredibly unpredictable.” While the adventure sport is quite similar to paragliding, it allows the person to fly at a high speed while coming down from the mountains, while being close to the slope.
‘One-of-a-kind adventure’
The video also shows behind-the-scene footage of Cruise, who was seen saying of the stunt, “We’re gonna do spirals, and we’re landing at an incredibly high speed, over 80 kilometers an hour.” Quarrie said while it “looks quite beautiful” when “flying very close to rocks,” the crew members were afraid for the actor’s wellbeing. He said they were in “absolute terror”. The crew were more frightened because of a few recurring technical glitches. Overcoming the glitches was not the only impossible challenge for them as they also had the mission to capture the most captivating shot.
He also performed another soul-stirring stunt on the very first day of the shoot where he jumped off a motorbike from a cliff and got parachuted away. Cruise told Entertainment Tonight about this choice. “Well we know either we will continue with the film or we’re not. Let’s know day one! Let us know day one what is going to happen: Do we all continue or is it a major rewrite?” McQuarrie added about this in an interview to Empire, “Doing that on Day One gave us all the time in the world to understand why he [Ethan] was doing what he was doing. If we sat around and tried to figure out these movies the old-fashioned way, you’d never find it, simply because it’s such a living, breathing thing.”
'He had no fear'
It's not just the audiences who are awed by Cruise's stunts in ‘Dead Reckoning’, his co-star in the film, Vanessa Kirby, who plays the role of White Widow, was also left awestruck when she witnessed Cruise performing a death-defying stunt. In one such scene, the ‘Mission: Impossible’ star parachuted from a motorcycle after the vehicle dropped off a cliff. While we are petrified just at the thought of it, Kirby narrated, “He did it many times in one day.” Referring to her larger-than-life co-star, Kirby recalled to Variety, “He did it consecutively … and repeatedly so he could capture all the different angles and sides of it.”
Cruise didn’t even show any sign of fear as Kirby said, “He was just so calm,” before adding, “He had no fear. He just found it exhilarating. That kind of belief in cinema and what one could achieve and his passion for it is so inspiring. He kind of believes he can do the impossible and then he does…I love being a part of the franchise. I’m really excited to come back.”
