Tom Cruise's Impossible Stunts

There was sixteen tons of water in all of the tanks, and there was a concern that when they detonated, a lot of glass would fly around. Brian De Palma tried the sequence with a stuntman, but it did not look convincing and he asked Cruise to do it, despite the possibility that Cruise could have drowned.

Cruise actually performed free-scaling over Utah's Dead jagged Horse Point cliffs, hundreds of feet above the rocks below. He was wearing a safety harness which was later digitally removed, but there was no safety net underneath him.

In the Morocco cliffside motorcycle chase sequence, when Cruise turns a corner and sees Ilsa standing in the road, it forces him to brake and lose control of his motorcycle.

Cruise actually strapped onto the side of an A400 plane while 5000 feet in the air above the English countryside. He did this four times over two days to get it right. There were high risks of collisions with air particles and birds.

When training for the underwater scene, Tom Cruise was able to hold his breath underwater for six minutes, even though the scene required him to do so for three minutes.

Cruise actually scaled the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at 2,722 feet above ground, by himself. He trained for months, but didn’t anticipate the heavy crosswinds that he endured at that height. He ended up smashing into the building several times.

Tom Cruise broke his kle when jumping from one building to another, but he managed to get up and keep running until he was off camera. It took him seven weeks to recover.

The crew filmed four takes of Cruise making the 180-degree turn while driving the BMW M5 down a half-dozen steps on the streets of Paris. Three of the takes were perfect. In the last 10 degrees of the turn, he had to "turn the steering wheel, step on the clutch, and put the car into first gear in the air." Stunt drivers train their entire lives to do something like that.

The HALO skydiving sequence (distance of 7 km / 25000 feet, traveling speed of 265 - 320 km/h) required a full year of planning out. The crew only had a time window of three minutes a day during sunset to film a jump. It took Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, the skydiving camera operator Craig O'Brien (who had to keep three feet from Cruise while filming) and others involved a total of 106 jumps to get three possible takes. To rehearse, the crew built a custom oxygen helmet with RAF assistance that can be lit up to see a face, and then also built one of the world's largest wind tunnels for practice. Cruise and the other persons involved did five skydives a day with one in morning, three in afternoon, and one at dusk.

The climactic battle and further scene when Cruise is hanging from a cliff, were shot at Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock) in Norway. It was a difficult place to film due to the extreme weather shifts. The wind was so strong that the crew had to crawl once to avoid being blown over the edge.

The zero gravity scene took sixty-four takes and was shot for two days in a falling plane. Reportedly, a lot of the crew got nauseous during the scene and vomited, except for the main star.

The "long-line" stunt, where Cruise climbs up a rope dangling from a helicopter at 2000 ft from the ground and then free-falls 40 ft onto its payload. The crew had to keep Cruise in a safety harness, but also make sure that he wouldn't get tangled in the line. Cruise surprised the crew by continuing the action once he had climbed up to the helicopter skids.

Wind machines blew gusts of up to 140 miles (245 km) per hour into Tom Cruise's and Jon Voight's faces on top of the train.

During the bike joust, Tom and Dougray drove directly towards each other at speed of 50 miles per hour.

Tom Cruise rode the motorcycle through the fire without the use of flame protection gear or gel.

Cruise performed the futuristic hoverpack chase sequence, which required the crew to build an 80 foot rig with 1.3 miles of cable that he was dangled from. Eighteen crew members manned the cables as Cruise jumped and fell numerous times.

Cruise performed all of the driving in the car chase sequence, from the speed, to reckless turns, to smashing into the giant stack of barrels. The part when Tom’s car stalls was not scripted. He was able to fire the car back up himself and speed off.

Cruise had to use tremendous muscle control to make this look effortless. He stopped parallel to the floor 36 inches from the ground.

During the fast paced motorcycle chase scene, Cruise actually flips Cameron Diaz around on the bike to shoot their enemy pursuers. This chase sequence also involved them actually riding the motorcycle through a herd of stampeding bulls.

In the sword fight scene, Cruise narrowly escaped potentially fatal injuries after a sword was swung within one inch of his neck. Co-star Hiroyuki Sanada swung a sword at Cruise who was on an off-camera mechanical horse at the time. But the machine reportedly malfunctioned and failed to duck at the right moment. Sanada stopped the blade just one inch from his neck.

For the "knife-in-the-eye" scene, Tom Cruise insisted that a real knife be used, and that it stop exactly one quarter-inch from his eyeball, instead of somewhere vaguely near his eye, as director John Woo suggested. The knife was connected to a cable that was measured carefully in order to achieve the effect, and Cruise insisted that Dougray Scott use all of his strength in the ensuing struggle.

This bridge scene involves a drone that shoots a missile just a few feet away from Cruise with a blast radius that completely lifts him off the ground, tossing him toward the exterior of a white Dodge.

JJ Abrams wouldn’t let Cruise jump off of an actual skyscraper in Shanghai, so they recreated it in a studio to minimize potential risk. Cruise ended up throwing himself recklessly off big drops on the set while just wearing a safety harness.