Watch Tom Cruise Perform the “Biggest Stunt in Cinema History”

Tom Cruise is taking practical stunt work to the extreme...again. 

Some of the biggest movies of 2023, like Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning — Part One, are gearing up to be released in July. To keep audiences excited during this seven-month wait, these massive films released their first looks at their respective projects over the weekend. 

While the pure camp of Barbie and the amazing performance from Cillian Murphy Oppenheimer has us excited for the story and performances, Paramount Pictures and Tom Cruise know what the fans of the Mission: Impossible franchise want—big and risky stunts. 

Paramount Pictures has released an extended behind-the-scenes featurette that gave audiences their first glimpse at Tom Cruise's upcoming seventh film in the Mission: Impossible franchise. In the clip, Cruise is at work with his production team as they prep for the first day of principal photography where they will film the “biggest stunt in cinema history,” according to Cruise. 

“This is far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted,” writer/director Christopher McQuarrie says at the beginning of the clip. 

The stunt involves Cruise jumping a motorcycle off a massive cliff into a base jump. 

“We’ve been working on this for years,” Cruise says about the stunt. “We’re going to shoot it in Norway, and it’s going to be a motorcycle jump off a cliff into a base jump. I’ve wanted to do it since I was a little kid. It all comes down to one thing—the audience.” 

The behind-the-scenes clip shows Cruise's intense year of preparation to execute the scene, which included over 500 sky-dives and 13,000 motocross jumps. Many of the jumps were done so that the production team could track where Cruise would be each time he jumped so the cameras could be adequately prepped to capture the shot. 

Dead Reckoning is the seventh film in the franchise, and the spectacle of big and dangerous stunts is getting bigger and more dangerous. The motorcycle jump is honestly terrifying to watch, but Cruise is a top-tier actor who will hit his mark every single time. 

If the crew didn’t get the shot the first time, then Cruise has no problem resetting and doing it again in the name of fantastic entertainment. 

Let us know what you think of the stunt in the comments below!