Tom Cruise is known for performing his own stunts to add authenticity to his movies. In the movie Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Cruise did the stunt where Ethan Hunt climbs the Burj Khalifa tower himself, that too without a stunt double.
The tower is the tallest building globally, which stands at 2,722 feet (829.8 meters). And for the scene, the actor dangled outside the tower at about 1,700 feet (518 meters).
However, with such a depiction, it can be frustrating for a movie studio to cast Tom Cruise, who insists on doing his own stunts. But Cruise doesn’t care. In the case of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, he even fired his insurance company to perform the Burj Khalifa stunt himself.
Skydance Production CEO David Ellison discussed the stunt during an interview at another film’s Berlin premiere. He also revealed that during the situation, his team felt like they were the “largest idiots to mankind.”
Tom Cruise’s Team Felt Like “Largest Idiots” When The Actor was Doing the Burj Khalifa Stunt
Skydance CEO David Ellison told a great story about the Burj Khalifa stunt sequence from Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol during a group interview at the Berlin premiere of Terminator Genisys (as reported by Collider):
“A hilarious but true story is it was the day we were actually rehearsing the Burj Khalifa, it was the whole stunt team, Tom on the side of the building, me, [director] Brad Bird, and [producer] Bryan Burk, and Tom was padded up, had the helmet on, and we had rehearsed for months inside these hangars and sound stages and Tom kicked off the building and, as he would describe it, spectacularly crashed into it head first, and me and Burk and Brad were like ‘this is a really bad idea’.”
He added that they felt like the “largest idiots known to mankind” for putting themselves in such a risky situation:
“In true Tom fashion, while we were all arguing amongst ourselves about how we were the largest idiots known to mankind for putting ourselves in this situation, Tom reset back to one with the stunt guys and nailed it perfectly on the second rehearsal. And we all kind of looked at each other and were like, ‘Well, that’s why he’s Tom Cruise.’ We shot it the next day. We shot it twice and it was spectacular.”
During a challenging stunt rehearsal, Tom Cruise reset with the stunt team and aced it on the second try. The team admired his professionalism and shot the scene the next day — and the outcomes were spectacular.
That’s not it. Even in the recent installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise, the 61-year-old set the bar by playing dice with death with a risky feat.
Tom Cruise Does Another Death-Defying Stunt in the Recent Mission: Impossible Installment
With his action-packed reputation, the Top: Gun Maverick star has performed hair-raising stunts for his recent movie Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. This time, the actor took it to another level by setting out to perform one of the riskiest stunts.
It was a death-defying stunt in which he rides a motorcycle off a cliff, which plunges into a deep valley, and opens his parachute after separating from the bike.
The challenging stunt in the movie took 500 hours of skydiving training, and 13,000 motorbike jumps to perfection. Cruise is attached to wires in the scene as he rides a fast-moving motorcycle off a steep ramp. It was before he threw himself from the bike, supported by safety cables attached to his back.
