Tom Cruise Explains Doing Most Dangerous Stunt of His Career in Mission: Impossible 7

Tom Cruise is well-known for doing his own stunts on the Mission: Impossible films, many of those stunts not only breathtaking to watch on the big screen but death-defying in their execution in the real world as well. That continues with the upcoming Mission: Impossible 7, but the eagerly-awaited action film which is set to hit theaters on May 27, 2022, will feature the most dangerous stunt Cruise has ever done. According to Cruise, the stunt, which sees him ride off a cliff on his motorcycle, had a lot of technical variables, any of which could have resulted in things not ending well.

“If the wind was too strong, it would blow me off the ramp,” Cruise told Empire of the technical considerations. “The helicopter [filming the stunt] was a problem, because I didn’t want to be hammering down that ramp at top speed and get hit by a stone. Or if I departed in a weird way, we didn’t know what was going to happen with the bike. I had about six seconds once I departed the ramp to pull the chute and I don’t want to get tangled in the bike. If I do, that’s not going to end well.”

While Cruise seems to take a very carefully thought-out approach to his stunts, that doesn’t make them any less terrifying for those who have to watch him perform. Longtime franchise actor Simon Pegg previously told Conan O’Brien that watching Cruise do his stunts had a genuine sense of peril.

“When you watch the movie and you see him do those stunts, and it’s nail-biting and there’s a real sense of genuine kind of peril because you know that it’s him,” Pegg said. “But you know he survived because he was on Good Morning America that morning and he did some press. When we watch him do it, we have no idea if he’s going to survive. So, he rides a bike off a cliff, and everybody’s just waiting for, ‘Good canopy, good canopy, anybody? It’s terrifying.”

After numerous pauses and production delays, Mission: Impossible 7 will open in theaters on May 27, 2022. Cruise is joined by returning cast members Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Angela Bassett, Rebecca Ferguson, and even Henry Czerny of the first Mission: Impossible film.

Are you excited to see Mission: Impossible 7 next year when it opens in theaters? What has been your favorite Mission: Impossible stunt thus far? Let us know in the comments!