Tom Cruise climbs between two planes in the new 'Mission: Impossible.' Here are his best stunts, ranked.

Business Insider

24-05-2025

He started to do a lot of his own stunts when appearing in action blockbusters like " Top Gun," "Mission: Impossible," and "Minority Report." Now, stunts have become Cruise's calling card.
His ambitiousness also bled into real life at the 2024 Paris Olympics ' closing ceremony when he jumped off the roof of the Stade de France.
Now, the actor has added another stunning aerial sequence to his list of feats, in his latest movie: "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning."
Here are the best stunts of Cruise's career, ranked.
When you see Cruise and the cast looking like they are battling G-forces in the jets, complete with distorted faces, it's because they really were.Cruise and the cast went through training so their dogfight scenes could look as realistic as possible — which meant sitting in the F/A-18 jets as they were spun around and took dramatic dives.
8. Cruise climbed a 2,000-foot cliff in "Mission: Impossible 2." In the opening scene of 2000's "M: I 2," Cruise is seen climbing a cliff. And yes, that's really him.Cruise scaled the cliff in Utah with nothing but a safety rope. He also did a 15-foot jump from one cliff to another.
Tom Cruise loves to run in his movies; it's become his trademark. But his ability to continue running came into question after a stunt went wrong on the set of "Fallout."While jumping from one one building to another, Cruise hit the wall of the building the wrong way and broke his ankle.The accident halted production for months and doctors told Cruise his running days might be over. But, six weeks later, Cruise was back on set doing sprints.
5. Cruise climbed the tallest building in the world for "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol." The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world, and Cruise climbed it.For "Ghost Protocol," the actor's climb got him up to 1,700 feet in the air.He also fell four stories down by rappelling on the surface of the building.
Rebounding from the so-so performance of "Jack Reacher," McQuarrie jumps on the "Mission: Impossible" franchise and ups the action stakes. Yep, this is the one where Cruise hangs from the side of a giant plane taking off. The movie also got an extra jolt with the inclusion of Rebecca Ferguson in the supporting cast.
2. Cruise navigated between two flying planes in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning." In the climax of "The Final Reckoning," Hunt holds on to a biplane during takeoff, before eventually punching its pilot, throwing him out of the vehicle, and climbing into another plane being flown by the villain, Gabriel (Esai Morales).The ambitious nature of the scene is what we've come to expect from Cruise, but seeing him cling on for dear life above the valleys of South Africa is nothing short of astounding.Yes, he was strapped to the two different vehicles during multiple takes to achieve the sequence, but watching it unfold on the big screen is still breathtaking.
While Cruise was healing the broken ankle he sustained earlier in the "Fallout" production, he went and pulled off the most amazing stunt he's done in his career so far.In the movie, Cruise's character and CIA tagalong August Walker (Henry Cavill) decide to do a HALO jump — a high-altitude, low-open skydive, in which you open your parachute at a low altitude after free-falling for a period of time — out of a giant C-17 plane to get into Paris undetected.Cruise did this for real by executing the jump 106 times over two weeks, many of them done during golden hour, a very brief period of perfect lighting that occurs just before sunset.