Have you seen the TV ads for the new “Mission: Impossible” movie, the ones showing Tom Cruise improbably hanging on for dear life on the outside of a military transport plane as it blasts into the sky? Hollywood CGI is getting pretty good, I recall thinking. Well, that was no CGI. Cruise actually strapped onto the outside of the fuselage of an Airbus A400M and went for the ride of a lifetime to get the shot.
The actor with decades of movie hits to his credit and more money in the bank than any mortal could ever need decided to eschew green screens and the magic of computer graphics to perform the stunt himself.
Was he scared? Oh, yes. Cruise, a pilot, confides he couldn’t sleep the night before the shoot and that he feared for his life as the A400M accelerated on the runway and lifted off into the clear blue sky. The jumbo, four-engine turboprop then circled around to land with Cruise still holding on.
What’s even more remarkable is that the Hollywood star didn’t do it once — he performed the stunt eight times for the scene that appears in “Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation,” opening in theaters at the end of this month.
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