2 days ago
Tom Cruise gets into Guinness for doing thing only Tom Cruise would want to do
Let's be clear, from the jump: The publishers of the Guinness World Records have made it fairly obvious, over the years, that they're pretty comfortable accommodating movie studios who want to tout a broken record when promoting a film. Do something impressive from a technical point of view—like the pyrotechnics surrounding some of the Bond films, to pick an example that got the nod in recent years—and the record book makers will be perfectly happy to say, 'Yup, that's a record.' So, on the one hand, is it a little silly for Paramount to make a big deal out of the fact that Tom Cruise broke the world record for most times jumping out of a plane and setting his own parachute on fire while making Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning? Sure. But also: Man did jump out of a plane with a burning parachute an (apparently) record 16 times.
You can watch and count 'em yourself, if so inclined: The promotional team for the movie released a video of the stunt to YouTube today, showing Cruise talking through it with his team as they carefully douse his parachute in fuel for the 16 different attempts. Cruise's 'I do my own stunts' thing is easy to laugh off, given what a self-mythologizing detail of his whole persona it can be. But it's hard to watch the guy get flipped around in the air, god knows how high up, with nothing but a burnt-to-cinders parachute holding him up, and not think, 'Okay, that's probably worthy of a couple of lines in a book somewhere.'
Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning is currently in theaters; spoilers for the above video, but Cruise did not in fact burn up, hit the ground, and then die while in the process of making it.
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