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Watch Tom Cruise ride a motorcycle off a cliff for dangerous Mission: Impossible stunt

The team behind the upcoming action sequel call it "the biggest stunt in cinema history."

Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.

Tom Cruise has done it again.

Shortly after jumping out of a plane while thanking fans for supporting Top Gun: Maverick this year, Cruise and the team behind his next Mission: Impossible film have released a new behind-the-scenes clip highlighting one of the action sequel's most impressive stunts. The stunt finds Cruise riding a motorcycle off of a cliff before performing a base jump.

"I've wanted to do it since I was a little kid," Cruise says in the video. "It all comes down to one thing: The audience."

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One writer/director Christopher McQuarrie adds that the stunt required coordination between different disciplines. As such, Cruise put together "a master plan" with input from a variety of specialists so he could practice both motocross and base jumping.

Cruise apparently performed more than 500 sky dives and over 13,000 motocross jumps to prepare for the stunt, and this video features footage of many of them.

Recording such an intricate stunt requires proper technology. McQuarrie says that "even two years ago, the cameras didn't exist" to capture Cruise's feat on film, but now the team has them in hand. The team also relied on computer simulations to determine the right angle to build their ramp.

"How do we involve the audience? I just want to give them that thrill," Cruise says.

"Pretty much the biggest stunt in cinema history," base jumping coach John DeVore says. "Tom Cruise just rode a motorcycle off a cliff six times today."

Watch the epic video above. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One is set to hit theaters in July 2023, with the sequel following in 2024.

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Tom Cruise just performed his most dangerous stunt yet – riding a motorcycle off a cliff and BASE jumping

By Caitlin O'Kane

December 21, 2022 / 10:00 AM EST / CBS News

Tom Cruise has performed another daring stunt for the "Mission: Impossible" film series.

He called this one the most dangerous thing he's ever attempted. Shot in Norway, the stunt required Cruise to ride a motorcycle off a cliff and BASE jump — something he said he's wanted to do since he was a kid.

Cruise, 60, is currently working on the two-part "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning" film. He's known for performing his own stunts, but this one took years to plan, he said in a video shared on Twitter.

So excited to share what we’ve been working on. #MissionImpossible pic.twitter.com/rIyiLzQdMG — Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) December 19, 2022

In the video, writer and director Christopher McQuarrie said Cruise put together a "master plan" using experts to help execute the stunt.

He had a year of sky diving training, during which he was doing 30 jumps a day – more than 500 skydives, said Wade Eastwood, the film's stunt coordinator. He also had motocross training, doing over 13,000 motocross jumps. Once he got those skills down, the production team created 3D models to try and predict how Cruise would fly through the air during the stunt so they could film it.

Then, it came time for Cruise to execute the stunt — driving a motorcycle up a long ramp, which lead to a cliff, launching off of it and BASE jumping to the bottom. Cruise first jumped out of a helicopter over the cliff to practice, before attempting the full stunt for the cameras.

"The only things you have to avoid while doing a stunt like this are serious injury or death," BASE jumping coach Miles Daisher said. "You're riding a motorcycle, which is pretty dangerous, on top of a ramp that's elevated off the ground, so if you fall off the ramp, that's pretty bad. You're falling, so if you don't get a clean exit from the bike and you get tangled up with it, or if you don't open your parachute, you're not going to make it."

The behind-the-scenes video show Cruise not only execute the stunt once, but six times in one day.

"Pretty much the biggest stunt in cinematic history," said BASE jumping coach John DeVore. Viewers can see the final product when part one of the film premieres July 2023. The "Mission: Impossible" series is from Paramount Pictures. (Paramount is also the parent company of CBS.)

Cruise has performed countless hair-raising stunts, including jumping off of scaffolding while filming "Mission: Impossible 6" in — a stunt that left him injured and limping.

Cruise has been in Europe filming the seventh and eight "Mission: Impossible" films for several years. The seventh movie was scheduled to premiere in November 2021, but the COVD-19 pandemic shut down production and was pushed to May 27, 2022, according to Variety . The date was pushed several time after that, and the film will now premier next year.

While shooting in the U.K. last year, Cruise, who was traveling by helicopter, needed a place to land, BBC News reports. He ended up landing in a family's backyard, and then let their kids go for a ride in the helicopter, making headlines.

Caitlin O'Kane is a New York City journalist who works on the CBS News social media team as a senior manager of content and production. She writes about a variety of topics and produces "The Uplift," CBS News' streaming show that focuses on good news.

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EXCLUSIVE: Watch Tom Cruise Speedfly—His Most Dangerous 'Mission: Impossible' Stunt Ever

The action star had to train for 3+ years just to pull this off—and we have the first footage of the “absolute terror.”

tom cruise in mission impossible dead reckoning part one from paramount pictures and skydance

Tom Cruise is obscenely famous for so many things, but especially for performing death-defying stunts on the silver screen, each more ludicrous than the last.

To list all of Cruise’s formidable feats in the Mission: Impossible franchise feels like reciting from a fabricated resumé during a job interview for the position of World’s Most Badass Action Star: As indestructible spy Ethan Hunt, Cruise has leapt between buildings, hijacked a helicopter, hung from an Airbus A400M during takeoff, jumped out of a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III from 25,000 feet in the air, and scaled the friggin’ Burj Khalifa, among other perilous pursuits. References available upon request.

No surprise, then, that Cruise is upping the ante for the seventh Mission: Impossible installment, Dead Reckoning Part One , which hits theaters on July 12. “With Tom, there are no limits,” says director Christopher McQuarrie. “So we’ve become a little more adventurous every time.”

In Dead Reckoning , Cruise pulls off an especially complicated “speedflying” stunt, a sport in which you launch by foot with a small, wing-like canopy and glide down mountainsides. Very few people in the world even attempt speedflying, which is a bit like paragliding, only—duh—considerably more dangerous.

“One of the things that is particularly dangerous about speedflying is the close proximity to the ground that you’re flying,” says McQuarrie. “And the other is the risk that the canopy can collapse. It’s very unpredictable.”

Cruise says he wanted to give the audience the feeling of flight, so he trained for over three years in several countries, mastering different techniques, terrains, and weather conditions that could potentially stymie the stunt. The final stunt sees Cruise land at a blistering speed of over 80 kilometers per hour.

But devising the stunt was only one technical challenge, McQuarrie says. The other was developing new tech to actually show Cruise performing it: a gimbal rig with cameras hanging from both sides, operated from a helicopter chasing the hero while in flight. While the result is stunning, the process was stressful, to say the least.

“Flying very close to rocks looks quite beautiful,” says McQuarrie. “Behind the scenes, we were all in absolute terror.”

To see just how Cruise, McQuarrie, and co. perfected the thrilling speedflying stunt, check out this revealing behind-the-scenes feature, which Popular Mechanics is proud to exclusively premiere right here:

🎥 Exclusive: Behind the Scenes of Tom Cruise’s Dangerous Speedflying Stunt

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Watch Tom Cruise Break Down His ‘Most Dangerous’ Stunt Ever for New ‘Mission: Impossible’

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Tom Cruise is proving that no mission is too impossible.

The “Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part I” star shared a behind-the-scenes video of his stuntwork on the first installment of his farewell to character Ethan Hunt.

“So excited to share what we’ve been working on,” Cruise tweeted.

“Dead Reckoning” is the first half of the conclusion to the 1996 film franchise. Cruise has played undercover CIA agent Ethan Hunt for close to 30 years, with “Mission: Impossible 7” arriving in theaters July 14, 2023, soon followed by “Mission: Impossible 8” out June 28, 2024.

The stunt video shows Cruise training to achieve the most dangerous stunt of his career, with him riding a motorcycle off a cliff. “This is far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted,” Cruise says in the video filmed while in Norway for production in 2020.

“It all comes down to one thing: the audience,” Cruise adds.

Related Stories Lewis Hamilton Regretted Turning Down a Role in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’: ‘It Could’ve Been Me!’ Jerry Bruckheimer Offers ‘Top Gun 3’ Update: Joseph Kosinski Is Developing a ‘Wonderful’ Story Idea for Tom Cruise

The “Eyes Wide Shut” alum trained in motocross and base jumping for months leading up to the filmed stunt.

“I had about six seconds once I departed the ramp to pull the chute and I don’t want to get tangled in the bike,” Cruise previously told Empire magazine about the jaw-dropping feat. “If I do, that’s not going to end well.”

Of course, that’s not the only cutting-edge stunt Cruise masters for “Mission: Impossible.” A first look at the film during Paramount Pictures’ showcase at CinemaCon earlier this year captured Cruise holding onto a plane while flying over South Africa. Cruise also recently thanked fans for their support in a video of himself jumping out of a plane .

“The ‘MI’ series really does represent the pinnacle of filmmaking excellence,” Paramount president Brian Robbins said earlier this year at CinemaCon. “And we have no doubt that this new picture will set the bar even higher.”

Robbins continued, “After five release dates and a whole bunch of rumors where this movie would end up, we are finally ready to bring this phenomenal movie to where it always belonged, and that is your theaters.”

Director Christopher McQuarrie helms the upcoming film, which will exclusively have a theatrical release due in part to Cruise’s urging. Production for “Dead Reckoning Part I” was repeatedly halted by the COVID-19 pandemic but eventually wrapped in September 2021. The budget reportedly ballooned upwards of $290 million during production, with additional funds allocated to finish post-production on the action epic.