Tom Cruise famously prefers to perform his own stunts, occasionally to his detriment, such as when the 55-year-old action star broke his ankle on the set of Mission: Impossible — Fallout. However, the leap from scaffolding onto a London rooftop was only a warmup, as Cruise also performed a HALO jump from 25,000 feet, a stunt immortalized not only in the upcoming film but also in a new behind-the-scenes video.
Released by Paramount Pictures, the video details the novelty of the scene — Cruise is the only actor to have performed a HALO jump onscreen — as well as the risks, including hypoxia. But the sequence was also incredibly time-consuming, and expensive, requiring the construction of one of the world’s largest wind tunnels for rehearsals, and then more than 100 jumps.
However, it was a nighttime sequence, meaning that the film’s crew only had three minutes of light each day as the sun set to capture the shots needed.
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“Falling at 200 miles per hour, and he’s to position himself so he lands exactly three feet away from the camera, with 20,000 feet beneath him,” explains director Christopher McQuarrie. “The risk of a midair collision, we were really concerned about.”
Arriving in theaters July 27, Mission: Impossible — Fallout stars Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Michelle Monaghan, Henry Cavill, Angela Bassett and Vanessa Kirby.