Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning is scheduled to hit the screens this week and people can’t stop talking about the stunts Tom Cruise pulled.
Fueling the hype even more, Paramount Pictures just shared a behind-the-scenes video, breaking down one of the most mind-blowing scenes in the movie: the train scene.
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Tom Cruise himself explained the idea behind the scene in a recent interview with Complex.
“As a kid, I always played with trains, and I’ve always wanted to throw a train off a cliff,” he said.
“We had to build the train for that.”
Cruise said the whole scene was designed by famous director Christopher McQuarrie.
Building the train from scratch was tricky, because it had to be Hollywood-friendly, so to speak, but it also had to function on a railroad track.
But building the train wasn’t the hardest part.
In the scene, Ethan Hunt and Grace (Hayley Atwell) are on the train when they’re confronted by ‘baddies’ Alanna (Vanessa Kirby) and Gabriel (Esai Morales).
Hunt and Gabriel end up fighting on the roof before the train crashes into a gully as Ethan Hunt and Grace narrowly escape death.
The crash was real, as was the explosion, which is why it was crucial that every piece of the puzzle fell into place because there would be no second take.
“[The scene] involved multiplying factors of difficulty,” McQuarrie said.
“Every single camera had exactly one shot at getting it right.”
Hollywood’s ‘last real movie star’?
Tom Cruise is famously shunning streaming services, instead demanding his movies be released exclusively in theaters.
He also does most of his own stunts.
That’s why fans and critics alike sometimes refer to him as Hollywood’s ‘Last Real Movie Star’.
The train scene is just the latest in a long list of crazy stunts performed by the actor.
For Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning he also jumped off a cliff while riding a motorcycle.
And then there’s the plane scene from the 2015 Rogue Nation.
The scene shows Cruise literally hanging off the side of the plane as it goes into the air.
Unseen behind-the-scenes footage revealed Tom Cruise did that for real, it wasn’t CGI.
Production obviously took all necessary safety measures, and some visual effects were added, but other than that, Cruise really did cling onto the plane as it was taking off.
Also, friendly reminder, this guy just turned 61 on July 3.
