5 Most Wicked Mission: Impossible Stunts by Tom Cruise, Ranked by Death Probability
Tom Cruise has performed numerous insane on-screen stunts fueled by his adrenaline addiction, but these five are the deadliest feats any actor has ever pulled off.
5. The Underwater Heist
In this scene in Rogue Nation, Cruise dives into an underwater chamber to replace a hard drive, but it’s a lengthy process, and he has no oxygen tanks…
For this stunt, the actor learned to keep his breath for three whole minutes. While an impressive feat on its own, it was relatively risky since Cruise could’ve started drowning.
4. The Burj Khalifa Climb
Ghost Protocol saw Tom Cruise climb the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa tower, up to the very top. This skyscraper is 2,716 feet tall! The only reason this insanely impressive stunt is not higher up on the list is that, like with the underwater heist, it was not as deadly as it seemed: the actor had a safety wire.
3. The Aircraft Leech
If we could only name one stunt to explain the scale of Tom Cruise’s insanity to someone who doesn’t know him, it would be this one. In Rogue Nation, the actor literally hangs on to the side of a plane that’s taking off — and then walks around on top of it! If not for all the precautions, this stunt would’ve made the first spot for sure.
2. The Train Fight
“Come on, guys, this one’s a classic,” you may argue, but… Cruise and his co-stars took on an intense fight on top of a moving train with a chopper flying backward right next to them, and then the train was crashing — which they had to survive! Also, the Dead Reckoning Part I team only had one train, so they had to make it in one take.
1. The Motorcycle Cliff Jump
This Dead Reckoning Part I stunt may not sound as impressive as the previous two, but here, Cruise had literally no one to rely upon but himself… And the wind. After yeeting himself off a cliff on a motorcycle, the actor sticks to it for a while, then lets go of it, and after flying for some time, uses the parachute.
The cliff jump is ultimately the biggest stunt in the history of cinema, and definitely the deadliest one Tom Cruise had ever done. The wind changing mid-air, the bike not flying away from the actor, the rope malfunctioning, or virtually anything else that could easily go wrong would’ve meant a guaranteed death to the actor.