The Mission Impossible movies, and their lead actor, Tom Cruise, are exalted for pulling off unfathomable action sequences with each new addition to the franchise. Those fans who now bank on being blown away with practical stunts won’t be disappointed by the climax of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. In fact, the three-hour cinematic tour de force contains what’s being called the biggest stunt in film history.
The major stunt of Dead Reckoning Part One sees Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt on a motorbike attempting to catch up with a train that’s outpacing him. Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn suggests a new route that’ll allow Hunt to catch up with the speeding locomotive.
Naturally, there’s a catch: He’ll have to jump his motorbike off a mountain face, leap off it in midair, transition into a BASE jump, chase down the train, and parachute onto one of the cars. Luckily, Hunt has packed a parachute as part of his escape plan, so he’s got all the tools for the job. The only question is, does Hunt have the audacity to attempt the impossible? Of course he does.
“I’ve had this kind of stunt in my mind for a long time,” Cruise tells Men’s Journal. “This was in the works for years, and training was immense. I had to get so good on the bike. There was no chance I was going to miss my mark. So you train and drill every little aspect, over and over again. The key was hitting the right speed up the ramp. There’s no speedometer on the bike, so I do it all by the sound and feel. Then, as I launch off the bike, I create separation by cupping my arms and chest to give me that lift into the jump.”
Not only did Cruise have to focus on performing the stunt perfectly, but there was another critical component: looking good for the cameras.
“For months, we worked on the calculations so we could have the cameras and drones exactly where they needed to be to capture the jump from the right angle,” he says. “If we don’t capture it right, what’s the point? Rule number one was don’t hit me with the drone.”
Cruise had to be sure he wasn’t letting any of his true emotions show during the stunts. “I had to make sure I wasn’t smiling,” he adds.
Before mounting his modified Honda motocross bike in the Norwegian mountains, where the feat was filmed, Cruise spent months preparing with longtime Mission Impossible stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood. Being a motorcycle racer and Formula 3 driver, the veteran stuntman isn’t afraid of going fast or pushing boundaries, which has made him the perfect collaborator for Cruise.
Mens Journal spoke with Eastwood about how they pulled off the largest stunt in cinema history.
Men’s Journal: Do you think any other actor or film crew could pull off something of this magnitude?
Wade Eastwood: Getting to be able to pull something like this off is all thanks to Tom and our director Christopher McQuarrie pushing the studio to allow us to go to these places through their own initiative. I can’t think of any other movies where you’re seeing so much of the world, while seeing so much practical action taking place with the actual actors.
How early into the filmmaking process did you start strategizing this stunt?
As far as the strategic planning and training, we’re talking years. Getting the right shot while executing what is a very dangerous stunt is incredibly challenging. But, as always, Tom is very willing to do whatever work is necessary before we arrive on set to make sure he’s more than capable when it comes to the stunt in question. The first step was just an incredible amount of training on the motorbike. Tom already had a lot of experience riding motorbikes and doing jumps, as well as being a competent skydiver. But for this stunt, and what we wanted to capture, he definitely needed to get to a whole other level.
Walk us through the training process for a bike jump this daring? Where do you even begin?
We built a track out in the country in England. There he did hundreds and hundreds of laps. We developed these 80-foot dirt table tops he was jumping on a regular basis. Every day we worked on the track, putting him in different body positions while on the bike so he would feel comfortable with any result of the jump. He needed to know exactly where his body had to be for every single jump. That was a daily routine. We trained that hard for months. That was required because if he was hit with a little turbulent air or the ground failed him in some way while he was on the motorbike, we needed to know he could roll with it. We probably had him do somewhere around 13,000 jumps throughout the process.
Cruise is known to be doggedly hard working? What’s his attitude toward training in the gym and doing stunts in his 60s?
Tom’s a machine. Tom never questions how long we’re going to be there. That’s just how he is. He shows up early and leaves late, always. He always shows up in shape. His training routine is constantly changing and adapting to what he needs. He’s not someone who gets stuck doing the same thing, ever. As far as these stunts, they aren’t to be taken lightly, and he knows that. So by the time we’re done with the work, the goal is for Tom to be the best person in the world to pull off that stunt. And that’s where he gets every time—dialed in to the point where there isn’t anyone else I’d put in his place.
Obviously this is an incredibly complex and dicey stunt. What were the biggest risks involved?
If anything went off with his jump, there were a lot of things that could go wrong. There was the chance he wouldn’t get the proper separation from the motorcycle and get tangled up, or he might not track cleanly away from the mountain face. If the canopy gets just one line twisted when he’s that close, he could be flung straight into the mountain face. That’s why getting the right jump was so critical and why we drilled it so much. It’s all about getting that separation from the mountain, and at the very least giving him time to make adjustments should something go wrong with the canopy. He did over 500 practice skydives leading up to the stunt.
Beyond doing the physical stunt, Tom’s doing it while playing the character of Ethan Hunt. Normally, when a stunt person is riding up a mountain to jump a bike off a cliff, they aren’t trying to make jokes with Simon Pegg beforehand. There are base jumpers who can ride motorbikes, and there are motorcyclists who can BASE jump. But to do both of those things while playing the lead in a massive movie? Doing both of those things while trying to express Ethan’s motivation for jumping off the cliff? That’s unique.
Why was Norway selected as the location for the stunt?
Norway has been a place we’ve loved filming in throughout the franchise. There wasn’t a better setting for the jump and our train sequence. There’s this imposing beauty that the Norwegian mountains have, and the vistas are massive and stunning. This is a proper cinematic large-scale production, so we needed all of that for what we wanted to capture. The ramp we used for the jump into the mountain bowl was a masterpiece of engineering. In proper Mission Impossible fashion, the biggest stunt ever just so happened to be the first scene that we shot.
What was the bike we actually see in the sequence?
We used a custom build from Kieran Clarke based on a Honda motocross bike.
Being the stunt coordinator, where are you when ‘Action!’ is called?
I’m up there on the mountain with Tom the entire time. I was the one who walked the ramp before to make sure it was secure, and the one who made the call when it was time for him to go. I was making sure where the clouds were. I was checking how the bowl of the mountain range was. I was constantly checking the crosswind, because if the wind picked up and blew him off direction, it could have ended very badly.
Once we were confident the conditions were going to be good, Tom would be down in the valley. If things looked alright I would give him a warning and the helicopter would drop down next to the ramp. That’s when he would step onto the bike. From that point, all he was doing was looking at me. Nobody was talking to him. No distractions were around him. We needed to make sure he was in that dedicated mindset. Once I felt the time was right, I would give him the signal, then off he went.
Can you describe what you felt as you watched him go airborne?
There was so much emotion I felt when I called the shot and he went. Even with all the ability and competence in the world, there are always unknowns, especially in an environment like that. There’s no way to describe what it was like being on that mountain top with him, watching him gun the engine, drive off the jump, then disappear. There was nothing but silence after. The whole crew was quiet. Everyone had their hearts in their throats. When we saw the parachute pull and clear the mountain everybody breathed in relief. On the ground, we all had huge smiles on our faces, including Tom. It was a perfect flight. Then did Tom did six more takes.
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One is now playing in theaters.