Tom Cruise prefers to do as many of his stunts for real as possible, providing the marketing teams of studios financing his movies an angle to approach promotions from. We’re seeing this marketing strategy play out in action yet again as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One continues to be sold heavily on Cruise’s daredevilry. Paramount Pictures has now released yet another behind the scenes featurette that showcases Tom Cruise performing a sport known as Speedflying, one that sees him glide all the way down from a cliff, except it looks a lot more complicated and dangerous than the more simplistic paragliding. Have a look.
The featurette is remarkably well-produced and does a great conveying the dangers of the stunt. Cruise had to fly at eerily low altitudes, often close to ground-level and cliff surfaces, while avoiding contact. But that’s only half the challenge. The other half is capturing the action in a way that audiences can make sense of, by grabbing some point-of-view shots to get them feel what Cruise does. To that end, the production crew came up with a gimbal system that allows dual-cameras to be mounted on the sides of the glides, with the camera operator trailing close to Cruise and staying above him to get clear shots. Unpredictable weather and accurate landing were some other challenges that faced the crew when executing this stunt sequence.
Here’s McQuarrie talking about the difficulty of shooting the sequence in a quote from the featurette.
With Tom there are no limits. So we become a little bit more adventurous every time. Coming up with the stunt is only one of the technical challenges. The other is putting the camera in a place that you can see where Tom is operating the speedwing.
Based on the location and Cruise’s outfit, I’d reckon this sequence follows Cruise’s bike-jumping-off-a-cliff stunt that itself has been heavily features in theaters. That in turn should most likely follow the train wreck that director Christopher McQuarrie has dreamed of doing for a while. This possibly makes it a long, exhilarating chase sequence that would see Ethan Hunt chase Gabriel (Esai Morales) over a train, before rushing to catch up with him by riding a bike off a cliff and then speedflying over the road. If all these pieces connect seamlessly, this should make for a pretty entertaining sequence.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 12, 2023. Check out the other featurette on the Rome car chase sequence here.
