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Nothing gets in the way when Tom Cruise is making movies – not a global pandemic, not gravity and certainly not pigeons.
Tom (61) was a key figure in establishing filming protocols as the world eased out of the pandemic lockdown for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and he has a reputation for conceiving and performing some of the most dangerous stunts on film.
So a few thousand pigeons in London's Trafalgar Square were no match for Tom who's in the city shooting the eighth instalment of the Mission: Impossible series.
London is home to about three million pigeons and Tom brought in a squad of hawks and their handlers to keep the feathered onlookers at bay as an action sequence was shot in the square.
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“It was a clever move and meant the scenes were filmed without a hitch,” a source told The Sun.
Tom has been an action junkie since he was a boy, even making his own makeshift parachute to jump out of a tree.
“I remember taking sheets off my bed, tying a rope and climbing up to the roof, then jumping off the roof.”
He prefers doing his own stunts, he says, because “I feel that when you’re acting, you’re bringing everything to a character in a story – physically and emotionally.
“I’m able to do stunts. I’ve trained for 30 years doing things like this so that it allows [filmmakers] to put cameras in places where you’re normally not able to.”
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We take a look at some of his memorable stunts.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II
In the film’s opening sequence, Tom is seen free climbing and at one point, dangling precariously off the side of a cliff.
The scene was shot over five days at Utah's famous Dead Horse Point and while Tom wore a safety harness and did a lot of the climbing, he did have a little help from stunt climber Ron Kauk who escorted him into position for each shot and cameraman and climber Earl Wiggins who filmed him.
Tom's safety harness was digitally erased and, said Earl, Tom himself performed the five-metre leap from one side of the mountain to the other, multiple times, to ensure the perfect shot.
Director John Woo said he had sweat running down his face because of how dangerous the stunt was.
TOP GUN
In the film, Maverick (Tom) and Goose (Anthony Edwards), are forced to eject from their jet during a training exercise over the ocean and Goose is killed.
The filming of the scene turned out to be dangerous for Tom and deadly for one of the aerial pilots filming it.
“Cruise came as close to dying as anybody on a set I’ve ever seen,” said Barry Tubb, who played the pilot Wolfman, referring to the scene in the ocean where Maverick cradles Goose’s body, waiting for the rescue helicopter.
While shooting the scene, Tom didn't realise his parachute was filling with water.
“They were reloading the camera or something and luckily one of the frogmen in the chopper saw his chute ballooning out,” Barry told Entertainment Weekly.
“[The diver] jumped in and cut Cruise loose right before he sank. They would have never found him. He would have been at the bottom of the ocean.”
Veteran pilot and aerial cameraman Art Scholl was not as fortunate.
Near the end of filming, he was to fly a maneuver called an inverted flat spin, to shoot the rapidly twirling sight of water and land that Maverick would have seen before he and Goose ejected.
As he began the spin, Art radioed the production and said, “I’ve got a problem.”
As he descended, he said, “I’ve got a big problem.”
Those were his last words. Pilots trailing him in another plane watched him plunge into the Pacific Ocean but neither he nor his plane were found.
COLLATERAL
In this film, there was a scene where Tom, as the villainous assassin Vincent, is driving a car which collides with one driven by taxi driver Max, played by Jamie Foxx.
“I hit the gas, the cab goes straight head-on into [Tom's] Mercedes and the Mercedes lifts off the ground and goes off the set,” Jamie said on the Graham Norton Show.
Moments later, said Jamie, he and the crew thought he'd killed Tom.
“They were so worried that I had killed my man,” he said. “Can you imagine all that money bouncing around in the back seat?”
Both actors were unharmed and Jamie earned an Oscar nomination for playing Max.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — GHOST PROTOCOL
One of Tom's most memorably dangerous Mission: Impossible stunts is when he scales the 500-metre tall Burj Khalifa building in Dubai.
While Tom's character, Ethan Hunt, made it look like a tough job, it was close to an impossible mission for the filmmakers to rig the stunt.
Tom had to wear a safety harness that was attached to several points in the building and the filmmakers brought in multiple professionals including engineers, professional climbers, and stunt performers to ensure the safety of the shoot.
Tom performed the stunt by climbing a specially built glass wall replicating the building's exterior. The wall was heated with artificial lights to simulate the temperature of the windows of the Burj Khalifa.
The harness Tom wore was so tight it would cut off his circulation and the helicopters which were filming the scene could only be up in the air for 30 minutes at a time. This meant everything had to be perfectly executed with each take.
It all paid off and for the filmmakers, “It’s just another day at work seeing Tom take on death-defying stunts,” said director Brad Bird.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — FALLOUT
The climax of this movie saw Ethan Hunt in a helicopter battling it out with rogue agent August Walker (Henry Cavill).
Tom, who is a licensed pilot, actually flew the helicopter for the shoot in New Zealand, at high altitude and extremely low temperatures.
This included getting dangerously close to the mountains and another helicopter.
Cameras were mounted in the helicopter to show Tom was "100%" flying solo.
Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie said Tom wore a safety harness for the sequence where Ethan falls out of the helicopter in flight and lands on a cargo crate attached to it.
Tom shot the scene five times and Christopher said it had to be carefully planned and rehearsed. If Tom hit the crate headfirst he would break his neck but fortunately he was able to land safely on his back.
SOURCES: DAILYMAIL.CO.UK, REUTERS.COM, HOLLYWOODREPORTER.COM, PARADE.COM, BUSINESSINSIDER.COM
