Now, in his apparent last performance as Ethan Hunt in The Final Reckoning, Cruise notched himself a Guinness World Record for doing 16 burning parachute jumps while filming the insane plane sequence as his Ethan Hunt battles Esai Morales’ Gabriel mid-air in a pair of propeller planes. The stunt was, by definition, highly technical and inherently dangerous, requiring Cruise to make sure the parachute didn’t twist while it was burning, or it could have fried him to a crisp.
Cruise and his stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood, utilized a “snorri rig” for the stunt, a body-mounted camera that allows viewers to experience a dynamic, first-person point of view of Ethan after he’s leapt from a plane, so that we’re locked in freefall with him in a burning parachute as the world spins around him and the ground rushes up to meet him.
“The action evolves with the story — I’m not trying to invent action just to invent the next big stunt. It’s got to be emotionally engaging through action and fit the character,” Eastwood told us when we interviewed him for the last installment. It speaks to the character-driven action choreography that is at the heart of the franchise. Even though each new installment manages to top the last in terms of breathtaking stunt choreography, the reason the films will stand the test of time is that the stunts serve the story. In this instance, it earned Cruise a Guinness World Record as well.
Check out Cruise’s lunatic stunt here:
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in theaters now.
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Featured image: Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
The article was orginally published on The Credits