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Tom Cruise’s Most Insane Stunt Yet: the Zero Gravity Scene in The Mummy

We've written about the insane dedication Tom Cruise has put in to accomplishing the most ambitious practical stunts, rivaling some of the work of the very best stunt performers. When we interviewed stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood about Cruise's work on Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation, he talked about all the ways Cruise is consistently prepared and extremely hard working. What Cruise wants is to make the audience feel as if what they're watching is real, beacuse in many cases, it more or less is. 

His most infamous stunts are the stuff of legend now. How about the time  Cruise free-climbed the Burj Khalifa (the world’s tallest building)? Or what about when he gripped the outside of a transport plane—eight times—while it took off.   Cruise has also hung from Utah’s jagged Dead Horse Point by his fingertips,  made free-water dives of 130 ft., leaped from a Triumph Speed Triple motorcycle to tackle a co-star mid-flight, and dangled on the 800-ft. edge of Iceland’s Earl’s Peak for  Oblivion.  He's done more, we just want to get to his latest stunt. 

In Universal's upcoming  The Mummy,  Cruise got to fulfill a career-long dream—to film a scene in zero gravity. The stunt turned out to be his biggest, most demanding achievement date. To capture one of the most terrifying plane crash sequences ever put to film, Cruise, his co-stars and the crew had to film it at an altitude of 20,000 feet.  

First, behold the scene, and note that 90% of this was shot practically, as in, without the help of CGI in post production. These are real bodies tumbling around in zero gravity, smashing into stuff, under the guidance of an astronaut and using a state-of-the-art parabolic plane. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYkEa9Z0k5w                           

Universal has broken down the process for how they filmed that terrifying scene. Below, we've provided the most salient details:

Almost four miles above sea level, Cruise, co-star Annabelle Wallis and key crew—all under the eye of The Mummy director/producer Alex Kurtzman—lensed a sequence that is impossible to shoot on land.

Off the coast of France near Bordeaux—over two days and multiple flights—pilots and astronauts of Novespace Airbus (A-310) took the company 20,000 ft. high. From this altitude, they climbed rapidly to a 50-degree angle to just over 25,000 feet; there, the plane reduced thrust, and free fell from the sky.

For 22-23 seconds during the ballistic phase, the company felt weightless. As the Airbus free fell, cast and crew balanced dialogue, camerawork and choreography for a crucial plane-crash scene that will appear in the film.

For the stunt, the pilots enacted a total of 60 parabolas (repeated weightlessness sessions).  Each parabola allowed for the filming of a key sequence in the scene. At least 90% of the plane crash sequence is practical. The only visual effects will be added in post-production and blend sets together so they look the same size and scale.

PARABOLIC FLIGHTS/AIRBUS ZERO-G TECH FACTS

Under the direction of European Space Agency astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy, crew filmed with Novespace, founder of the first parabolic (Zero Gravity) flights in Europe.

The Zero-G Airbus is the only plane in the world manned by three pilots simultaneously: one controls pitch, one controls the wings and one controls thrust.

The “pull-up” phase starts at full thrust and max speed from level flight until a 50-degree incline, before the “injection” phase and beginning of weightless (actual freefall, not floating). During “pull up,” those aboard feel twice their weight on Earth.

The aircraft is briefly injected into orbit, following an elliptical trajectory above the Earth, so passengers live the true weightlessness that astronauts feel.

This, folks, is how you make a plane-crash sequence that feels real. And while many of Cruise's most terrifying stunts have been solo acts, here he shares the scene with his co-stars  and  the crew, who were on the plane with him. 

The Mummy  crashes into theaters on June 9, 2017.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bryan Abrams

Bryan Abrams is the Editor-in-chief of The Credits.  He's run the site since its launch in 2012. He lives in New York.

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Tom Cruise’s Zero-Gravity Stunt in ‘The Mummy’ Took 64 Takes

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Tom Cruise is committed.

For a plane crash sequence in “ The Mummy ,” the actor’s upcoming monster movie, Cruise did 64 takes in zero gravity. The sequence took two days to shoot and four high-altitude flights, the filmmakers said during a trailer presentation on Wednesday at CinemaCon .

“There was a lot of barfing,” said Alex Kurtzman , the film’s writer and director.

Cruise was offered the option to do the scene on a sound stage, but he insisted on filming the sequence in zero gravity, believing it was important that audiences got the most realistic experience possible.

“He did not barf,” said co-star Annabelle Wallis at the Universal Pictures presentation, who said much of the 64-person crew became sick to their stomachs. Wallis also held down her lunch, but credited Cruise with being a gentleman.

“I was happy to have Tom on hand to hold back the hair, if needed,” Wallis said.

Jake Johnson, who plays Cruise’s sidekick in the film, said the star pressured actors to do their own stunts. That led to a few scrapes and bruises.

“We jump off buildings … and Tom really does it all,” said Johnson. “My character dies. I almost died.”

It’s not Cruise’s first death-defying stunt. For the “Mission: Impossible” series, the actor has strapped himself to the side of a plane and scaled the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.

“The Mummy” opens on June 9, 2017.

Watch a featurette of the stunt.

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The Mummy director on Tom Cruise, zero-gravity stunts and Universal's Dark Universe

It's no secret that Tom Cruise does his own stunts. But you might be surprised to learn he shot The Mummy's "brutal" plane crash scene in zero-gravity, in a real aircraft that was actually hurtling towards the Earth.

And he did it 60 times.

"You're essentially in astronaut training. The free-fall you go weightless, but when gravity returns, it returns at twice your weight," director Alex Kurtzman says.

Kurtzman sat down with the ABC to talk about the "vomit comet", the history-making move to make the Mummy a woman, and what's behind the door to the new Dark Universe — think the Avengers, but evil.

Here's five things we learned . (Warning: there's a few spoilers ahead.)

A superstar had to die

Well, kind of.

Death, it turns out, is just the beginning for Cruise's adventurer Nick Morton, who revives an ancient Egyptian curse and awakens the evil Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella).

Kurtzman wanted the film to be genuinely scary. To make that happen, he says he had no choice but to kill off the hero .

"I'm the biggest Tom Cruise fan ever, so I know exactly what you expect from his movies — for him to save the day," he said.

"When you remove that, and you say 'actually he may not be able to save the day', then it becomes very unpredictable and exciting.

"For me to be scared, my lead character has to be in the kind of jeopardy that I don't believe he or she could get out of."

The intense crash scene is surprisingly real

These days we expect our action stories to be told with more than a little help from green-screens and CGI. But that wasn't the case in the plane crash scene, which Kurtzman says is 90 per cent real .

If it looks like the actors are weightless, it's because they actually were.

To pull off the stunt, the crew converted an Airbus from NoveSpace — traditionally used by NASA to train astronauts — and decked it out with custom-designed padding to make it look like the inside of a real plane.

In the skies over France, the plane climbed "literally at the speed of a rocket" to 25,000 feet. There, it reduced thrust and fell from the sky .

For 22 seconds, the cast and crew felt weightless.

As the plane plummeted towards the ground, they did their best to balance dialogue and choreography — though they were at the mercy of physics , so that was often easier said than done.

"The thing about shooting in zero-gravity is you really don't know what's going to happen when you're free-falling back towards Earth," Kurtzman said.

"The unpredictability of it is what makes it magical.

"It puts the audience in the middle of that moment. To make them feel the sheer terror, without any cuts — to me that was a way to do the scene that felt totally different."

The process was repeated 60 times over two days, leaving Cruise and co-star Annabelle Wallis battered and bruised.

"The pressure on your body is incredible," Kurtzman said.

Ever been on a vomitron ride ? It was like that, Kurtzman says, but dialled up to the extreme.

Kurtzman says some of the 40 crew members were vomiting while holding lights and rigs in place.

"They don't call it the vomit comet for nothing," he laughs.

This isn't a remake of the Brendan Fraser hit

You'd be forgiven for thinking (or even hoping) that this Mummy is a remake of the playful 1999 film of the same name.

But, Kurtzman laughs, you'd be very wrong.

His film, he says, doesn't tread over old ground — though that doesn't stop it giving a nod to the past .

Kurtzman pays quiet homage to Karl Freund's 1932 classic as he reimagines the anti-hero for the modern age.

"One of the main Mummy powers is the power to mesmerise — to get inside someone's head and make them do things they don't even realise they're doing," he said.

"In Freund's film there are some absolutely gorgeous close-ups on [actor Boris Karloff] and his mesmerising eyes, and we took inspiration from that.

"There was also a dagger prominently involved, which is a significant part of our film."

Making the Mummy a woman was 'everything'

Kurtzman initially struggled to bring something new to the familiar character.

"I'd been playing around with different stories in which the character was a man, and I wasn't able to pull out something that felt different enough — and you don't want to make the movie unless you feel like its fresh," he said.

He finally listened to the voice in his head telling him to "make it a woman". The move to flip the genders , he says, "was everything".

"I found a way to come up with a story that really felt topical," he said.

"She was promised to be the next pharaoh, and that was taken away from her because she's a woman. I love that she's so unapologetic about taking what she believes she deserves."

One of Kurtzman's favourite things about iconic monsters like the Mummy is that you recognise their deep struggle between the dark and light, and find a way to love them while you fear them .

"Hopefully the audience can relate to Ahmanet, understand her, empathise with her and see why she's angry — and also recognise that she's crossing a line that most of us would never cross," Kuztman said.

Algerian actress Boutella says she connected with the human inside her monster.

"Her back was put up against a wall, but she's a survivor who has been trapped for 5,000 years. Everyone wants to live," she said in a statement.

The door to a Dark Universe is now open

Universal made its name as a studio in the 1930s, '40s and '50s with monster films like Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Wolf Man and Dracula.

It's now rebooting many of those classics in a bid to rival the likes of Marvel's Cinematic Universe — which includes The Avengers and is the most lucrative film franchise of all time.

The Mummy opens the door to the Dark Universe. (Yes, that honour technically went to 2014's Dracula Untold, but Universal has quietly swept that epic flop under the carpet.)

"I love these movies, I've loved them since I was a kid. To get to bring them to a new generation is exciting, and to bring them back to a generation that grew up with them is also exciting," Kurtzman said.

Javier Bardem has signed on to play Frankenstein's Monster and Johnny Depp will be the Invisible Man.

Aside from Cruise as Morton — an entirely new character — The Mummy gives us a first look at Russell Crowe as Doctor Jekyll.

He heads up an organisation called Prodigium, which has been charged with tracking the world's monsters. He's the common thread in the shared universe — Universal's answer to Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D.

"Over time you'll see that there is a connection between Dr Jekyll and a lot of these other characters that embody 'evil'," Crowe said in a statement.

"There is a lot to find out about Jekyll, and it was a complicated journey to get where is is at this point in time."

Kurtzman is excited to work on more films in the series, which we already know will continue with Bride of Frankenstein in 2019.

But for now, he's happy enjoying the moment — and looking back on what it was like to direct Cruise and Crowe .

At times, he says, it felt more unbelievable than his movie script.

"They are very old friends — they met in Australia many years ago. It was fun — and they are two of the most experienced actors I have ever worked with," he said.

"So as a director you inherit the benefit of all that experience. And directing them in fight scenes — it was a dream come true."

The Mummy hits Australian cinemas on June 8.

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Screen Rant

The mummy: tom cruise's zero-g stunt took 64 takes.

Pushing his limits once again, Tom Cruise shoots 64 takes for his zero-gravity plane crash scene in his upcoming horror thriller, The Mummy.

The older Tom Cruise gets, the more he seems intent on pushing the boundaries of making movies to places they've never been before. In the Mission: Impossible films in particular, he's hung off the side of a tower in Dubai, and clutched onto the exterior of cargo plane upon take off. For Mission: Impossible 6 , producer David Ellison says Cruise has been training for a year for the film's marquee stunt scene .

Of course, Cruise, 54, works on other action films outside of the M:I franchise, but that doesn't mean he takes time off from his stunning stunt work. During filming for the June release of The Mummy , Cruise wasn't necessarily in danger of losing his life during the filming of a zero-gravity plane crash sequence - but apparently, he was at risk of losing his lunch.

Talking with Variety at CinemaCon Wednesday, Mummy director Alex Kurtzman says "there was a lot of barfing" during the filming of the sequence – but Cruise's co-star Annabelle Wallis says the action movie icon wasn't one of them. Wallis did add, though, that many of the 64-person crew filming the stunt sequence did toss their cookies.

Ironically, the number 64 applied to the stunt shoot in more ways than one. Cruise did 64 takes of the zero-gravity sequence, which Variety says was shot over two days and four high-altitude flights. True to Cruise form, the actor refused the option to shoot the sequence on a sound stage, but opted for the real thing to heighten the audience experience.

Cruise introduced a new trailer for The Mummy at CinemaCon Wednesday via a video appearance, promising a “ bold, romantic, epic, terrifying monster film ." The film also stars Kingsman: The Secret Service and Star Trek Beyond actress Sofia Boutella as Ahmanet – the mummy in the film's title. Boutella said during a panel that, “ Playing a monster was really interesting to me, but also the fact that the mummy was a woman. Whenever something happens, there’s always a monster within us."

While news of the extent Cruise went to the zero-gravity scene is exciting enough, fans should be particularly happy that the energetic actor is stretching his limits of his film roles even further to include a bona fide horror film. True, he played Lestat in Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles in 1994, but that horror thriller had a decidedly different tone that was more Gothic in nature.

With The Mummy , Cruise is clearly going for horror-inspired scares, and treating audiences to genuine thrills with the type of physical acting he does best. It's not often where a movie frightens an audience equally as much as the scary thoughts Cruise's stunt work evokes.

NEXT: Can Non-Superhero Cinematic Universes Work?

Source: Variety

Key Release Dates

Tom Cruise Performs Crazy Zero-Gravity Stunt In The Mummy

When it comes to doing his own stunts, Tom Cruise is an absolute madman. In Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol , he climbed up the side of the world's tallest building, and in Rogue Nation , he strapped himself onto an airplane and went at least 1,000 feet up in the air. But his superhero abilities aren't just limited to Mission: Impossible movies. According to Variety , Cruise got pretty extreme while filming The Mummy , eschewing a sound stage for a zero-gravity plane.

If you've seen the trailer , then you know there's an intense scene in The Mummy where a flock of birds brings down a massive transport plane, causing everyone on board to fly wildly around the cabin. At first, you might be tempted to think you're looking at some CGI trickery, but rest assured, it's 100 percent real. The cast and crew actually boarded a plane and took four separate flights to simulate a zero-g environment. The shoot took two days, and they needed a staggering 64 takes to do the scene properly. And needless to say, this was all Cruise's idea. In fact, the sequence was supposed to be shot safely on the ground, but the actor wanted to bring some terrifying realism to the scene. Naturally, all that floating around made quite a few people lose their lunch, but according to actress Annabelle Wallis, Cruise "did not barf."

Of course he didn't. He's Tom Cruise.

If you're interested in seeing a bit of behind-the-scenes footage of this crazy stunt, check out the featurette above. And while you're waiting for The Mummy to rise from its sarcophagus on June 9, be sure to check out some movie stunts that went horribly wrong .

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‘The Mummy’ Zero Gravity Stunt Video: Watch Tom Cruise and a Cameraman Spin Through the Air

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Tom Cruise is known for his wild stunts, and a new video from behind the scenes of “ The Mummy ” shows that he’s still risking life and limb. But perhaps most interesting is watching the fearless film crew that ends up spinning right alongside him in zero gravity.

READ MORE: ‘The Mummy’ Reboot Trailer: Tom Cruise Battles Multi-Irised Female Mummy

The upcoming summer blockbuster features a dizzying “airplane losing altitude” setpiece that the team shot while in free-fall in order to go weightless. They traveled in a unique plane used to train astronauts, and the footage looks quite frightening.

Director Alex Kurtzman spoke with Slashfilm about shooting in zero gravity.

“So you go up, basically with the G’s of a rocket going into space,” he said. “Then you even out and everything starts to go weightless, and then you free-fall for 22 seconds and everybody goes up in the air. We had grips holding lights and puking while the shot was going on. I mean, it was the craziest experience ever and ultimately worth it because I think, again, our whole thing was ‘Let’s do this without cuts. Let’s really do this so that you can actually stay in this shot and watch these guys float around and go, ‘How the hell did they do it?’’ Here’s the thing, you have to take a bag with you and you have to hold it right here, and the hope is that when you do vomit you manage to grab all of it in the bag before the chunks float off into space.”

Watch the wild video below:

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'The Mummy' Featurette Reveals The Difficulty Of Shooting In Zero Gravity

Anyone who loves Tom Cruise knows that the actor can't help but tackle some kind of crazy new stunt for his blockbuster action movies. They've become a staple of the Mission: Impossible franchise, and now he's bringing that same spectacle to The Mummy .

In the new action adventure tentpole that will mark the beginning of a Universal Monsters cinematic universe, there will be a zero gravity action sequence that takes place in a cargo plane. We've already gotten a taste of this sequence in the first trailer for The Mummy and the featurette that arrived shortly thereafter . Now a new behind the scenes video gives us a closer look at The Mummy zero gravity stunt.

It's a short featurette, but seeing how the crew dresses the plane for the scene is an interesting tidbit. Even more fascinating is seeing the rest of the crew (including the cameraman and the guy holding on to him so he doesn't float erratically) trying to do their job while Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallis fly around in front of them.

This kind of zero gravity filming is traditionally reserved for movies that are set in space, and even then instances when the plane known as the "vomit comet" is used, those sequences are few and far between, and the scenes in question are not very long. But this sequence is an extensive one, and Tom Cruise wanted to shoot as much as possible in the plane that creates zero gravity.

If you want to know more, you can find out about how the sequence came together right here .

The Mummy hits theaters on June 9 .

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This Mummy flies cargo.

Mummy wants action.

And Tom Cruise likes his stunts.

Cruise has a history of every action film he‘s  in having at least one over the top, “real” stunt.

Summer movie season is coming, Cruise’s The Mummy opens on June 9 th , so of course, there’s a major stunt to showcase. In the film, Cruise’s character, Nick Morton is on a cargo plane with the sarcophagus of Princess Ahmanet (the Mummy). Supernatual stuff abounds, and the plane is attacked by a flock of suicidal birds and loses control. As the plane is falling, we see the cast and cargo bouncing around inside, experiencing the free fall that only a plane crash can provide.

Not content with green-screening the whole process, Cruise wanted to go practical for the effect. To do that, he used the same approach begun by NASA in the late ‘50s – the “vomit comet.”

Let’s talk science.

The idea behind the unfortunately named flight is that if you power a plane up to a height of about 32,000 feet and let it crest over the top of a parabola, the plane and passengers will experience free fall. As a result, the plane and passengers will be falling at the same rate, and will feel weightless…or like they’re in zero gravity.

weightlessness action

What we feel as “weight” is the surface we’re on (floor, chair, couch, bed) pushing back up on us. Most often in physics, that’s called the normal force (sometimes the reaction force, because you pushing on the ground is the action – action <-> reaction…get it?). If the floor isn’t pushing up on you with a force equal to your weight – say when an elevator in a tall building starts to go down – you feel lighter. If the floor is pushing up on you with a force greater than your weight – when an elevator in a tall building starts to go up – you feel heavier.

Let’s go back to that elevator in a tall building. Cut the table. The elevator will accelerate downward with a value that’s equal to gravity. As a result, there will be no force pushing on you from the floor, and you’ll feel weightless. At least until that sudden stop – then you’d feel a lot of weight. Quickly. And then nothing. For a long time.  

It’s the same on the ISS – the station and the astronauts are constantly falling towards the earth, except, unlike the elevator, they’ve got a horizontal velocity that keeps them moving in a circle, or, as the joke goes, they’re constantly falling toward the earth, but they keep missing it…because the earth keeps curving away from them.

A quick and important physics note – even though the company, Cruise and the director all refer to this as “zero gravity,” it’s not. Look – this isn’t physics just being a buzzkill. Cruise, the cast and crew all had weight – they were just in free fall along with their surroundings. Gravity was still a pretty big deal.

Back to the stunt – the weightlessness of free fall was provided by the Zero G aircraft’s parabolic flight. Zero G is the company that NASA contracts the “weightless” training for their astronauts, and the company The Mummy used as well.

https://youtu.be/RDw_–FafxQ

For a “zero g” flight, the plane flies at a horizon of 24,000 feet, and then accelerates upward at a 45 angle. During the acceleration to the top of the parabola, the force from the floor increases (passengers are moving up more than gravity is pulling them down), and as a result, fliers experience 1.8Gs, or 1.8 times the acceleration of gravity. Basically – you feel about twice as heavy as you are – not altogether pleasant, but bearable.

Near the top of the parabola, the plane goes into free fall, although it’s still carrying its velocity from coming up the parabola. This allows it to round out the top of the parabola and begin a guided descent downward. During this time, the plane and everything inside of it is falling at the same rate, giving the feeling of weightlessness.

The flight path of Zero G’s weightless flight that provides about 30 seconds of “zero g”

As 2 nd Unit Director Wade Eastwood says in the video, the production had to build the set of the cargo plane that has the Mummy’s sarcophagus in it in Zero G’s plane. Additionally, the cameramen had to figure out how to move the cameras around in a wholly new environment. It was a challenge. 

The weightlessness on the Zero G company flights lasts between 20 – 30 seconds, which means to film a many-seconds long portion of a movie showcasing “weightlessness” – and given multiple takes and getting used to the whole idea of three dimensions of movement – there was most likely a lot of air time. As the plane is coming down from the parabola, the floor is once again pushing up harder than the passengers are pushing down, again making them feel as if they’re about twice as heavy as they are.

We know what you’re saying – “Wait – I’ve seen this kind of thing before…”  And you have. Director Ron Howard wanted realism in Apollo 13, so he filmed a portion of that movie in a similarly fitted plane during the production. Reportedly, filming of the weightless scenes took six months.

More recently, OK GO filmed the video for their song, Upside Down and Inside Out on Russia’s S7 Airlines. For the video, the group trained for three weeks at the Roscocmos State Corporation center (Russia’s version of NASA).  

Oh – “vomit comet” comes from the effects free fall tends to have on the continuous conversations between inner ears and stomachs. You can bet that The Mummy’s crew used their share of little paper bags as well.

Oh, and if you’re interested – Zero G allows for tourists to try their weightless experience as well. Tickets start at around $5,000. 

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Tom Cruise's 10 best stunts of all time, ranked

• Tom Cruise does his own stunts and it's remarkable what he's been able to pull off.
• Hanging on the side of a plane, skydiving, climbing the world's tallest building — he's done it all.
• Here's a recap of his greatest stunts.

10. For the cargo-plane crash in "The Mummy," Cruise did the stunt inside a NASA plane that trains astronauts for zero gravity.

In 2017's "The Mummy," Cruise finds himself stuck in a cargo plane as it crashes. To pull off a scene like this, actors would typically film it in a controlled setting like a sound stage surrounded by a green screen.

Not Cruise, though.

The star shot the scene in a plane that NASA uses to train astronauts .

The scene was filmed in the plane which had to go up to 25,000 feet to get the look that Cruise was in zero gravity. The plane then did a free fall for 22 seconds.

Cruise did the flight four times to pull off the scene.

9. Cruise flew a helicopter in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

For the thrilling helicopter-chase scene in the finale of "Fallout," Cruise spent 16 hours a day training to get to the required 2,000 hours to fly a helicopter on his own.

But Cruise didn't just fly the helicopter. He also pulled off a 360-degree corkscrew dive in it, which would challenge even the most veteran pilot.

8. Cruise is really in a F/A-18 jet for the flight scenes in "Top Gun" Maverick" and had to deal with the G-forces.

When you see Cruise and the cast looking like they are battling G-forces in the jets, complete with distorted faces, it's because they really were.

Cruise and the cast went through training so their dogfight scenes could look as realistic as possible — which meant sitting in the F/A-18 jets as they were spun around and took dramatic dives.

7. Cruise climbed a 2,000-foot cliff in "Mission: Impossible 2."

In the opening scene of 2000's "M: I 2," Cruise is seen climbing a cliff. And yes, that's really him.

Cruise scaled the cliff in Utah with nothing but a safety rope . He also did a 15-foot jump from one cliff to another.

6. Cruise held his breath for six minutes for an underwater stunt in "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation."

In one scene, Cruise's Ethan Hunt has to dive into an underwater safe to retrieve the computer chip that will lead him closer to the villain.

Along with having to hold his breath the whole time , he must keep away from a large crane that's circling around the safe.

For the scene, Cruise first jumped off a 120-foot ledge. Then, in a 20-foot deep-water tank, Cruise held his breath for six minutes.

5. Cruise broke his ankle jumping between buildings while making "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

Tom Cruise loves to run in his movies; it's become his trademark. But his ability to continue running came into question after a stunt went wrong on the set of "Fallout."

While jumping from one one building to another, Cruise hit the wall of the building the wrong way and broke his ankle.

The accident halted production for months and doctors told Cruise his running days might be over. But, six weeks later, Cruise was back on set doing sprints .

4. Cruise climbed the tallest building in the world for "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol."

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world, and Cruise climbed it.

For "Ghost Protocol," the actor's climb got him up to 1,700 feet in the air .

He also fell four stories down by rappelling on the surface of the building.

3. Cruise did 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps for the thrilling motorcycle stunt in "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part 1."

For the latest "M:I" movie, Cruise once again pushed himself.

And one stunt in particular is definitely up there as one of his craziest ideas yet: driving a motorcycle off a cliff.

The star did 500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps to prepare for the stunt. And that wasn't just so Cruise had the skill and comfort to pull off the stunt; the training also made it possible for director Christopher McQuarrie and his crew to map out camera angles to capture it. 

The stunt was then done on the first day of principal photography.

"We know either we will continue with the film or we're not. Let's know day one!" Cruise told "Entertainment Tonight" on why it was done on the first day.

Cruise ended up doing the stunt six times on the day of shooting.

2. Cruise hung on the side of a plane as it took off for "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation."

Cruise clung to the side of a massive Airbus A400M plane as it took off and went up to 1,000 feet dealing with speeds of 100 knots.

To protect the actor, he was secured with a wire attached to the plane. He also had special contacts on to protect his eyes from debris.

Cruise did this stunt eight times.

1. Cruise did 106 skydives with a broken ankle to pull off the HALO jump in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout."

While Cruise was healing the broken ankle he sustained earlier in the "Fallout" production, he went and pulled off the most amazing stunt he's done in his career so far.

In the movie, Cruise's character and CIA tagalong August Walker (Henry Cavill) decide to do a HALO jump — a high-altitude, low-open skydive, in which you open your parachute at a low altitude after free-falling for a period of time — out of a giant C-17 plane to get into Paris undetected.

Cruise did this for real by executing the jump 106 times over two weeks , many of them done during golden hour, a very brief period of perfect lighting that occurs just before sunset.

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This Is the One Tom Cruise Stunt That Failed to Impress

This zero-gravity sequence would have been better without the CGI.

The Big Picture

• The Mummy 's use of CGI in the plane crash sequence undermines the sense of danger and inconsistency of stakes, despite the impressive real stunts performed by the actors.
• Other blockbusters like Mission: Impossible use a combination of practical set pieces and CGI to create a more genuine sense of scale and threat.
• The reliance on CGI effects in The Mummy 's zero-gravity sequence makes it feel safe and fails to capture the same effect as Tom Cruise's stunts in the Mission: Impossible films.

2017’s The Mummy is a mess for a number of reasons. For starters, the supernatural action reboot was supposed to launch the Dark Universe, a interconnected Universal monster movie franchise akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But after the film’s abysmal box office performance, the Dark Universe immediately ended , putting to bed Russell Crowe ’s Jekyll and Hyde, Johnny Depp ’s Invisible Man, Javier Bardem ’s Frankenstein’s Monster, and Angelina Jolie ’s Bride of Frankenstein. The Mummy itself starred Tom Cruise , Annabelle Wallis , and Sofia Boutella as the titular mummy. Directed by Alex Kurtzman , The Mummy sought to infuse the monster movie with Cruise’s signature action stunts from the Mission Impossible movies. However, just from the very first trailer, the film didn’t necessarily look like a modern update from what came before. The preview largely featured the film’s zero gravity sequence, which culminates in Tom Cruise screaming, almost hyperventilating, as an airplane crashes into the ground . While the cast and crew are to be commended for performing the stunt as real as possible, the sequence in the film itself isn’t as daring nor threatening as it is supposed to be.

The CGI Plane in 'The Mummy' Just Isn’t Convincing

While Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, and the rest of the filmmaking crew actually went up in a plane that simulated a zero gravity nosedive , the shots of the crashing plane in the movie are completely CGI. So while the real stunts are happening inside the cabin, the threat of a crash landing is undermined by the less convincing cuts to the plane’s exterior. Overall, the constant cutting back and forth between the real actors going through the struggle of getting a parachute and the plastic-looking CGI plane makes for an inconsistent sense of stakes. But crashing a real plane would be too much of a hassle, right?

What makes other blockbusters have a more genuine sense of scale and threat is the use of technically practical set pieces. For instance, when Tom Cruise performed the HALO jump in Mission: Impossible - Fallout , he was on an actual plane from which he jumped off alongside the crew who filmed the entire sequence. While there is some CGI involved, specifically the thunderstorm that takes place in the middle of Ethan Hunt’s free fall, the sequence doesn’t cut back and forth between the practical stunt and the CGI that accents the scene. There is a seamless continuity that blends both the real-life danger and the added visual effect.

Another example comes from yet another Cruise stunt in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation , during which Cruise actually hung onto the side of a plane as it was lifting off the ground and into the air. The difference between these Mission Impossible stunts and the zero-gravity sequence in The Mummy is that the former engages the real-life environment for its sense of danger while the latter minimizes the stakes through a computer-generated environment. Yes, Cruise and Wallis’ real stunt work inside the plane is impressive, but without a more convincing scene of the plane nosediving, they might as well be in a bounce house or an indoor skydiving attraction.

RELATED: Sorry Tom Cruise, This Is Still the Greatest Stunt in Movie History

'The Mummy's Zero-G Sequence Ultimately Felt Safe

The best action sequences are the ones that convince audiences about the imminent danger for both the actors and their characters. That has been the driving philosophy behind many of Tom Cruise’s stunts in the Mission Impossible films. However, combining those action movie stunts with the supernatural threat of a centuries-old mummy and her magic cruses just doesn’t capture the same effect, especially when the dependence on CGI effects outweighs the practical. For another example, there is something to be said about Christopher Nolan ’s choice to recreate the Trinity test and other explosions in Oppenheimer without any CGI. Nolan told Collider , “I think computer graphics, they’re very versatile, they can do all kinds of things, but they tend to feel a bit safe.” While the zero-gravity stunt in The Mummy might have been dangerous in real life, the CGI plane and its crashing debris ultimately made it feel safe.

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Tom Cruise’s Zero-Gravity Stunt in ‘The Mummy’ Took 64 Takes

Tom Cruise is committed.

For a plane crash sequence in “ The Mummy ,” the actor’s upcoming monster movie, Cruise did 64 takes in zero gravity. The sequence took two days to shoot and four high-altitude flights, the filmmakers said during a trailer presentation on Wednesday at CinemaCon .

“There was a lot of barfing,” said Alex Kurtzman , the film’s writer and director.

Cruise was offered the option to do the scene on a sound stage, but he insisted on filming the sequence in zero gravity, believing it was important that audiences got the most realistic experience possible.

“He did not barf,” said co-star Annabelle Wallis at the Universal Pictures presentation, who said much of the 64-person crew became sick to their stomachs. Wallis also held down her lunch, but credited Cruise with being a gentleman.

“I was happy to have Tom on hand to hold back the hair, if needed,” Wallis said.

Jake Johnson, who plays Cruise’s sidekick in the film, said the star pressured actors to do their own stunts. That led to a few scrapes and bruises.

“We jump off buildings … and Tom really does it all,” said Johnson. “My character dies. I almost died.”

It’s not Cruise’s first death-defying stunt. For the “Mission: Impossible” series, the actor has strapped himself to the side of a plane and scaled the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.

“The Mummy” opens on June 9, 2017.

Watch a featurette of the stunt.

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Tom Cruise's Jaw-Dropping Stunt Spectacular!

Posted: April 3, 2024 | Last updated: April 3, 2024

Hold onto your seats as we witness Tom Cruise's mind-blowing and daring stunts that defy gravity and logic. From scaling skyscrapers to hanging from helicopters, join us as we marvel at the insanity and bravery of one of Hollywood's most fearless action stars.

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Tom Cruise Has Been Telling the Same Stunt Story for 20 Years

The man does his own stunts, and it's crazy!

He defies logic, besting his most insane accomplishments over and over again, one-upping himself in a series of increasingly daring capers, soaring ever closer to the sun, apparently unconcerned with scorching his wings. It’s been close to two decades now, and Tom Cruise is still somehow scoring flurries of fawning headlines for telling the same basic story about doing his own stunts on set.

This week has brought two new entries into the genre, each following the same basic structure: People told him not to do an insane thing (often involving a plane), he did it anyway, and then co-stars and directors marveled at it. First up: Cruise and co-star Annabelle Wallis told British talk show host Graham Norton on Friday night that while making The Mummy , he insisted on performing a zero-gravity stunt in a plane 25,000 feet up in the air.

“I had to convince the studio to let me do it, and Annabelle and I had to do the scene 64 times!” Cruise exclaimed . “It took us two days, and the crew was flying around and vomiting in between takes. Normally stunts take months of prepping, but we just did it. It was wild, and I can’t believe the studio actually let me do it!”

Wallis then played the dutiful part of mesmerized co-star.

“If you get any job you are excited, but doing a stunt with him that he has never done before is just incredible,” she said.

Then, on Monday, director Doug Liman gushed about a stunt Cruise did on a plane during the production of their upcoming film American Made . Cruise flew in a real plane and threw a bunch of cocaine out the window mid-flight, which really knocked Liman’s socks off. He called the stunt “hair-raising,” emphasizing that this stunt was even crazier than most.

“It’s one thing to have Tom Cruise alone in the airplane flying it — that’s already outrageous — now he’s alone and he’s not even in the cockpit so he’s gone beyond,” Liman said. “It was already a stunt before he left the cockpit, it was already a serious stunt.”

Both those stories have bounced around the internet the last few days, which is no surprise; there’s seemingly no limit to the number of “crazy Tom Cruise stunt” stories that can be repackaged during his press tours. And Cruise himself doesn’t even have to be the one telling the story. In March, producer David Ellison boasted that the actor had been prepping for a stunt on Mission: Impossible 6 for over a year, and that it would be “the most impressive and unbelievable thing that Tom Cruise has done in a movie.”

Where have you heard that before? Oh, just in the run-up to every other Mission: Impossible movie. In the lead-up to the last installment, Rogue Nation , people marveled at his willingness to hang off the side of a plane, and his cinematographer, Robert Elswit, testified to his greatness. “I’m always stunned,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015. “What inside of him makes it possible for anybody to do that kind of shit — and not be scared shitless? He loves it.”

He also held his breath for six minutes in Rogue Nation , which earned plenty of its own headlines. And before that, in 2011’s Ghost Protocol , Cruise won blanket coverage for hanging off the side of a 1700-foot building in Dubai.

“We were in meetings, and they said, ‘Tom’s not going to climb that building. The studio will never allow that,’” stunt coordinator Gregg Smrz told the Los Angeles Times . “I said, ‘Tom’s going to climb the building, I guarantee it.’ When you’re on top and you look out, people are going to think it’s CG, and it’s not. You have to see it to believe it.”

The list goes on and on, with a heavy load of car and motorcycle chases. He raced around tracks himself on Knight and Day (he thought up the stunt himself!), Edge of Tomorrow , and Jack Reacher , where he was compared to top stunt drivers. And he totally got injured during fights in The Last Samurai and Minority Report .

The formula reaches back to the year 2000, at least, when Mission: Impossible II director John Woo told Entertainment Weekly about the death-defying work done by his star.

“I was really mad that he wanted to do it, but I tried to stop him and I couldn’t,” Woo said of Cruise’s decision to scale a cliff himself. “I was so scared I was sweating. I couldn’t even watch the monitor when we shot it.”

This trend — which is really more of a tradition now — does not figure to end any time soon. Now that Cruise is 54 years old, he’s reaching the point where people can marvel at how he did his own stunts at his advanced age, adding at least another decade or so of the same story being recycled over and over again. But hey, at least it’s not a story about pulling a prank on set.