Tom Cruise doing Tom Cruise things has become a staple of the actor’s filmography, and each time the A-lister agrees to star in a big-budget blockbuster, you can guarantee he’s going to do some crazy sh*t. That’s probably part of the reason why we’re closing in on fifteen years since he last appeared in anything approaching a character-driven drama because the man simply cannot be contained.
The Mission: Impossible franchise has largely been defined over the last decade by whatever Cruise decides upon to be the latest installment’s marquee set piece. In Ghost Protocol he was found in, on, and around the world’s tallest building, strapped himself to a plane during takeoff in Rogue Nation‘s very first scene, and then learned how to pilot a helicopter for Fallout, but obviously ended up dangling outside of it at high altitude and even higher speed because he’s Tom Cruise.
Mission: Impossible 7 is still filming nineteen months after Christopher McQuarrie first called action, and new set photos show the leading man jumping out of a helicopter and flying to safety. While that’s something the majority of us wouldn’t even contemplate trying, it’s tame by Cruise’s standards.
After all, he already trained for a year so he could parachute to safety, and that was after riding a motorcycle off a cliff, so a simple jump should be a cakewalk for Mission: Impossible’s main man.