On a crisp September morning in Norway, Tom Cruise walked up to a Honda CRF 450, mounted, and rode a ramp off a cliff.
When it comes to making a bike look good, world-renowned actor Tom Cruise has the cat in the proverbial bag. His stunts are a thing of legend – and one of his most impressive stunts to date will be featured in the action film “Mission: Impossible 7”.
In the film, Tom Cruise times a cliff jump without crunching into helicopter, drone, bike, or cliff walls on the descent. Cruise explains the technical details to EmpireOnline, stressing the difficulty of execution.
And who can blame him? If I had to ride a gorgeous bike off a ramp and time my parachute like that, you’d be scraping me off the floor with a spatula.
“If the wind was too strong, it would blow me off the ramp. 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.”
For Cruise, the stunt itself took about six seconds – but the actual training took months to pull off properly, and lockdown/phase mandates didn’t help the film’s production.
Unprecedented times caused the actor and crew to find alternative filming routes, and the push to produce paid off.
He recalls the relief at being able to carry forward with production, stating, “I was thinking about the people I work with and my industry. And for the whole crew to know that we’d started rolling on a movie was just a huge relief. It was very emotional, I gotta tell you.”
Keep a beady eye on the box office mates – this film promises to be an eye-opener.
*edit – thanks for the heads-up on the incorrect motorcycle brand/model everyone! The BMW is rectified to a Honda..may it rest in peace.*