Paramount Pictures has released a new “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning: Part One” featurette that covers lead star Tom Cruise attempting to do the biggest (and most possibly dangerous) stunt in cinematic history. And you know you never get in between a death-defying stunt and Tom Cruise. Not even an injury could stop that man. So you think the deep gorge in Hellesylt, Norway would scare him? Nope.
The featurette opens with a slow camera pan revealing just how scary the stunt is. “We’ve been working on this for years,” Cruise said, as we see just how technical and sophisticated it is to bring these “Mission: Impossible” stunts to life. In the ten-minute featurette, we overhear the actor talking about the plan to ride on a motorcycle, go over a cliff, and then transition into a base jump. And for Cruise, he does all of this for the audience, who are constantly in a state of disbelief every time the actor does these stunts.
Shots of Cruise taking practice runs on an off-course site shows how determined he was to make sure it looked as real as possible. According to director Christopher McQuarrie, the actor worked with those across different stunt disciplines to make it happen. “Don’t be careful,” Cruise says. “Be confident.” Well, I’ll have to remember that the next time I take a literal leap of faith.
The featurette also tells us that it took a year of base training to accomplish the stunt. Luckily, Cruise has a great understanding of spatial awareness and an ability to understand the mechanics of it by doing countless drills. Not only that, they also built a motocross track so that he could jump 70-80 ft table tops.
While practicing for the jumps is one thing, finding the right camera placement, lens, and medium is another. To think that none of this would be possible years ago. Now that technology has improved, we are able to get these impossible shots.
Now we don’t know much about the plot itself, but considering the subheading, and some of the dialogue from the previous trailers, the “days of fighting for the so-called greater good are over.”
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning: Part I also stars Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Cary Elwes, Indira Varma, Shea Whigham, Esai Morales, Rob Delaney, Frederick Schmidt, Charles Parnell, and Mark Gatiss. It opens in theaters on July 14, 2023.
