So we all knew Tom Cruise hung off a biplane for real in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, which is highly impressive on its own.
But you probably assumed that what happened next in the film involved some CG trickery (spoilers follow).
Cruise’s Ethan Hunt grabs a parachute from the damaged biplane and leaps out. But his main chute catches on fire. So Hunt cuts away his main chute and then deploys his reserve chute at the last second.
But this stunt was, also, done practically — with Cruise leaping from a helicopter at 7,500 feet in Drakensberg, South Africa with a fuel-soaked main parachute that was rigged to be set ablaze. He performed the highly dangerous stunt 16 times.
“What I’m going to do is I’m going to be deploying,” Cruise explains in the video below. “[And] if this is twisted while it’s burning, I’m going to be spinning and burning. I have to kick out of the twist and then ignite. I got 10 seconds.”
The Guinness Book of World Records declared that Cruise set a record for “the most burning parachute jumps by an individual.”
“Tom is no stranger to record breaking,” added Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records. “Over his impressively long and consistent career, he’s proved himself to be the most powerful actor in Hollywood and the most bankable star, and he’s still the actor with the most consecutive $100 million movies on their resume and the most successful leading action hero at the worldwide box office.
The Final Reckoning has largely drawn positive critical reviews and should clear the $400 million mark at the box office in the coming days and is expected to do more business than the last installment, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.
Here’s a look at Cruise’s stunt behind the scenes.