When Tom Cruise was four years old, he jumped off the roof of his parents’ house with a homemade parachute. Back then, between the house roof and the ground, seems to have been the last time that Cruise was genuinely afraid for his life. Half a century later, he’s kneeling on a flying airplane and speaking a rhyme for the camera for the first screening of Top Gun: Maverick.
When the actor has said what he wanted to say, he straightens up, says goodbye and leans back on the wings in a relaxed manner as the plane banks 90 degrees and flies out of the frame. (See the video here) For Tom Cruise, it’s just one more PR campaign with which he actively puts his life in danger. For the stunned audience, it’s further proof: the Mission Impossible star would rather die for a stunt than have himself tinkered into a dangerous situation via computer.
Whether Top Gun, Mission Impossible or The Mummy: Tom Cruise is the most authentic superhero in Hollywood
For the Mission Impossible parts, Tom Cruise climbed the tallest skyscraper in the world, had to hold his breath for several minutes, jumped out of a plane from over 8,000 meters, let himself almost got a knife in the eye and drove motorcycle chases without the Hollywood-typical seat belt. While filming the failed reboot of The Mummy, Cruise and his acting partner Annabelle Wallis shot the same 64 times Airplane crash in free fall.
When Tom Cruise expected the same self-abandonment from his co-stars for Top Gun 2, and they put through a rigorous training program, which repeatedly reached their limits. Almost everyone had to vomit, one even thought he was drowning.
In this video, the cast talks about the hard work of shooting Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun: Maverick – Featurette Preparing To Fly
Others play superheroes, Tom Cruise seems comfortable with the public perception of being one. Robert Elswit, Mission: Impossible 5 – Rogue Nation’s director of photography, at least seems convinced there’s something about the actor that others don’t seem to have. He told the Hollywood Reporter legendary Mission Impossible stuntin which Cruise clings to an Airbus taking off:
If Tom couldn’t have been attached to the plane himself, he wouldn’t have wanted the scene in the film. What is there in him that makes it possible for him to do something like this – and not piss his shirt off with fear?
Perhaps his childhood leap from the roof of the family home was Tom Cruise’s superhero Origin moment. Some chemical composition in his body has been activated and makes him fearless. There is no other way to explain that he has been laughing more and more brazenly in the face of death for years, while the audience almost pees their pants in their comfortable cinema seats. And isn’t that exactly what a good action star needs?
Tom Cruise is the ultimate action hero because even in the age of Marvel and CGI overkill, we can still fear for him
Paramount recently released a video from the shooting of Mission: Impossible 7 – Dead Reckoning Part One. Tom Cruise is shooting the one here “biggest stunt in movie history”: He rides a motorcycle over a cliff, then jumps off said bike and falls before deploying a parachute just in time. “It’s a childhood dream of mine”says Tom Cruise in the video. When he races towards the abyss shortly afterwards, the crew in front of the screens seems close to a heart attack.
Mission Impossible 7: Dead Reckoning – Featurette Biggest Stunt in Cinema History (German subtitles) HD
Simon Pegg, Cruise’s longtime Mission Impossible co-star, described the prevailing fear on set when speaking to US show legend Conan O’Brien:
If we watch him do it, we have no idea if he will survive. Tom Cruise is terrifying. What Tom does has nothing to do with adrenaline. It must be some other hormone that you release just before you die.
In other films, for other stars, stunt people shoot the life-threatening scenes – and get far too little public applause for it. What makes Tom Cruise’s involvement so “terrifying” is that the movie magic seems minimal here. No body doubles, no computer cliffs.
The 60-year-old delivers one of the last film-induced adrenaline experiencesthat still feels real. Which doesn’t play almost exclusively in front of a green screen. Shooting takes place in studios, where the actors are sometimes not even in the same room and the film around them is created later on the computer.
Tom Cruise is the sweating, bleeding, laughing antithesis to the CGI blockbusters our time. Or to say it with a Moviepilot colleague: Tom Cruise is the only true Iron Man.
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Which Tom Cruise stunt impressed you the most?