Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One features one of Tom Cruise’s craziest stunts, and it turns out he wanted to shoot it on day one of production just in case it killed him.
During an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Cruise explained why he was so keen to pull off this particular stunt.
“Well, we know, we either go ahead with the film or we don’t. Let us know on day one!” he explained. “Let us know what’s going to happen on day one: are we all moving forward or is it a major rewrite?”
The now infamous stunt sees Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle off a cliff before parachuting to safety. Empire Magazine announced that the film was shot on day one of production.
“Doing that on day one gave us all the time in the world to understand why he [Ethan] “Did what he did,” said director Christopher McQuarrie. “If we were to sit around and try to understand these films the old-fashioned way, you’d never find it, simply because it’s such a living, breathing thing.”
However, Cruise took a more practical view of things. If they shot the stunt on day one, there was no risk of the production stopping mid-shoot. If Cruise had been injured or killed during the stunt during production, it could have cost the studio time and money to fix the problem.
“I was training and I was ready,” Cruise added. “You have to be razor sharp when you do something like that. When preparing the film, it was very important that it was actually the first. I don’t want to drop that and photograph other things and have my mind elsewhere. All were prepared. Let’s just do it.”
Still, Cruise’s ‘Mission: Impossible’ co-stars also admit they’re worried about his large set pieces. In a separate interview, Simon Pegg explained why he fears Cruise’s increasingly reckless stunts will one day go awry.
“There’s always a feeling that one day something could go wrong and we could lose Tom, you know,” Pegg explained. “Anytime there’s a big stunt, we all feel, you know, scared, but he always pulls it off.”
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 14, 2023. Want to read more about Mission: Impossible? Learn how to watch the Mission: Impossible movies in order and learn more about the future of the Mission: Impossible series.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can keep following him Twitter.