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Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, and Jeremy Renner in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

Ethan and his team take on their most impossible mission yet when they have to eradicate an international rogue organization as highly skilled as they are and committed to destroying the IMF... Read all Ethan and his team take on their most impossible mission yet when they have to eradicate an international rogue organization as highly skilled as they are and committed to destroying the IMF. Ethan and his team take on their most impossible mission yet when they have to eradicate an international rogue organization as highly skilled as they are and committed to destroying the IMF.

  • Christopher McQuarrie
  • Bruce Geller
  • Drew Pearce
  • Rebecca Ferguson
  • Jeremy Renner
  • 620 User reviews
  • 526 Critic reviews
  • 75 Metascore
  • 6 wins & 26 nominations

Final International Trailer

  • William Brandt

Simon Pegg

  • Luther Stickell

Sean Harris

  • Prime Minister

Jens Hultén

  • Janik Vinter

Alec Baldwin

  • Alan Hunley

Mateo Rufino

  • A400 Crewman

Hermione Corfield

  • Record Shop Girl

Nigel Barber

  • All cast & crew
  • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Did you know

  • Trivia Tom Cruise performed the sequence where Ethan Hunt climbs on the outside of a flying airplane (an Airbus A400M) without the use of visual effects or a stunt double. At times, he was suspended on the aircraft five thousand feet in the air.
  • Goofs Metal detectors would only prevent infiltrators from using oxygen tanks made of metal. All they'd have to do would be manufacture some that were made of plastic. They'd only need to last a few minutes, so they would not have to contain a lot of overpressure, hence they would not need to be very strong.

Chairman : And you Mr. Brandt, how can you justify this deception?

William Brandt : I can neither confirm nor deny details of any operation without the Secretary's approval.

  • Crazy credits The opening credits highlight the major plot points from the movie.
  • Connections Featured in Annoying Orange: Trailer Trashed: Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
  • Soundtracks Popolo Di Pechino, Ai Tuoi Piedi Ci Prostriam (from Turandot) Written by Giacomo Puccini , Giuseppe Adami & Renato Simoni Performed by Vienna State Opera Orchestra (as Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera) and Chor der Wiener Staatsoper (as Vienna Philharmonica Chorus of the Vienna State Opera)

User reviews 620

  • Achyut_Prashast_Singh
  • Oct 27, 2018
  • How long is Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation? Powered by Alexa
  • July 31, 2015 (United States)
  • United States
  • United Kingdom
  • Official site
  • Official site (France)
  • Marrakech, Morocco (road scenes)
  • Paramount Pictures
  • Skydance Media
  • See more company credits at IMDbPro
  • $150,000,000 (estimated)
  • $195,042,377
  • $55,520,089
  • Aug 2, 2015
  • $682,716,636

Technical specs

  • Runtime 2 hours 11 minutes
  • Dolby Digital
  • Dolby Atmos
  • Dolby Surround 7.1
  • 12-Track Digital Sound
  • IMAX 6-Track

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The Tom Cruise -ist moment in the history of Tom Cruise films was the one in "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" where Tom Cruise's super-agent escaped a 9/11 style bombing of the Kremlin and a false arrest as the main suspect and reunited with his commanding officer and said he was pretty sure he spotted the real bomber while sneaking around the Kremlin, then grabbed a pen and in five seconds drew a sketch on his palm that looked exactly like the guy. You believed it, of course, because it was Tom Cruise doing the drawing. If American films have proved anything, it's that Tom Cruise is The Best: at pool, at flying jets, at mixing cocktails, at racing cars, at building an airtight legal case against brutal Marine colonels and southern gangsters, at whipping sexist bros into a frenzy, at representing football players in contract negotiations, at defending Earth against invasion by extra-dimensional monsters and, in the " Mission: Impossible " series, at battling heavily armed bad guys while running and jumping and fighting and driving and hacking and playing “Flight of the Bumblebee” on the violin if need be.

I'm going to call him Tom Cruise during the rest of this review of "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" because even though his character has a name, Ethan Hunt, it is really Tom Cruise who makes his entrance clambering over a hill and exhorting his lovable tech guy Benji ( Simon Pegg ) to use his hacking skill to open the door of a cargo transport plane that's about to take off with a belly full of nukes stolen by Chechen separatists or something, I don't know who they are, it doesn't matter, Tom Cruise is running, arms and legs pumping, hair flying, and holy mother of moley he's climbing onto the top of the plane and hanging to its underbelly as it takes off, with his bare hands! 

I forgot to say that Tom Cruise works for the International Monetary Fund, sorry, the Impossible Mission Force (they keep saying "IMF," it's confusing). The plot? Fine, the plot: CIA director Alec Baldwin wants to disband the IMF. He believes Tom’s people are just a bunch of mavericks, meatheads too impulsive to send to Top Gun. “Your unorthodox methods are indistinguishable from chance,” a government official tells them, “and your results, perfect or not, look suspiciously like luck.” So the IMF is disbanded, over the objections of Tom Cruise’s buddy and fellow butt-kicking super-agent William Brandt ( Jeremy Renner ), who I guess is his superior, and—I have no idea what happened in this movie. Something about Spectre, or Hydra, or The Syndicate. Yes, that’s it, the Syndicate, a group comprised of rogue agents who are sneaking all around the world blowing things up and killing heads of state and destroying major companies and taking candy away from little kids on Halloween, too! Just swooping down out of the sky, on jet packs, and stealing their candy! OK, they didn’t do that last thing. But they did everything else on the list. These are really bad people! There could not be a worse time to tell Tom Cruise, “Hey, you stink, you can’t save the world anymore.”

Tom Cruise gets knocked around in this film even more brutally than in the last one. He gets captured by some of these Syndicate people and hung by his wrists in a dank makeshift cell and beaten by a goon known as Janik “Bone Doctor” Vinter ( Jens Hultén ). He dives into a centrifuge chamber full of water to re-key a security system so that Benji can sneak into the top-secret data storage base above, and reprogram the something or other so that they can do that thing and get the thumb drive and breach the firewall, or something. Only Tom Cruise can go into the water chamber because you have to be able to hold your breath for three minutes and seriously, who can do that besides Tom Cruise?

Tom Cruise goes on high speed chases involving phalanxes of motorcycles and cars making hairpin turns and galumphing down stone steps in Istanbul, or is it Paris, or London? The filmmakers always tell you the city plus the country—like they really needed to say “Vienna, Austria,” so that you didn’t look at the Vienna State Opera house and think you were in Vienna, Virginia—but as in the James Bond and Jason Bourne films, the location is not of much importance, except insofar as it can supply landmarks for Tom Cruise and his enemies to fight in, race through and occasionally level.

This movie is written by Brent Staples and Drew Pearce and rewritten and directed by Christopher McQuarrie , screenwriter of " The Usual Suspects ", so it should come as no surprise that as the movie unreels, the main bad guy Solomon Lane ( Sean Harris ) and his goons and the members of the IMF all start to seem like variations on Keyser Soze, a man-wraith who changed faces and stories and could be anybody. Tonally, this is a different experience from the last "Mission: Impossible" movie, "Ghost Protocol," which felt like an immense machine, or contraption, with each line and shot building into a self-contained sequence: a touch of Buster Keaton . "Rogue Nation" feels like it could’ve been a movie by Keaton’s most fervent disciple, Jackie Chan , who gifted the human race with the likes of "Project A" and "Supercop." It has a loose, hurtling quality. Despite all the bone-breaking violence, its touch is light.

McQuarrie, who last worked with Cruise on the excellent " Edge of Tomorrow ," underplays his directing flourishes just as cannily as Cruise underplays his feats of strength and guile. The idea of action movies as musicals gets a workout during the opera house sequence, and the script pushes the idea of spies as performers to its logical end, hinging scenes on whether agents can lie to other agents, or pretend to be other people, or even imitate someone’s gait in order to fool an identity scanner. But these thematic touches and others aren't italicized. They're just part of the experience.

McQuarrie understands that these films are essentially tall tales with a sense of humor, skating on the edge of parody at all times while maintaining a poker face. Tom Cruise is 53 now, and even though he looks great (he’s all sinew), the fact that he’s aging out of the action hero demographic lends a poignant aspect to the escalating absurdity of this series. If you watched all of the "Mission: Impossible" films in a row, starting with 1996’s original, would they feel like a James Bond version of " Boyhood "? Maybe. The unifying, meta-fictional subject of all five is whether there is anything Tom Cruise can’t do, and if he can continue being awesome even as his face sags and his hair turns gray and young moviegoers stop caring about him. (There is a precedent: Randolph Scott. Even in his sixties, he was starring in Western adventures where he kicked 172 different kinds of butt, often while wearing the same shirt throughout.)

There’s a lot of dry humor in the movie that could be described as Howard Hawksian: character moments and story beats that are all about camaraderie and professionalism under pressure. At one point Tom Cruise realizes that in order to save the world, he and his IMF team, which includes the porkpie-hatted hacker Luther Stickell ( Ving Rhames ), will have to kidnap a head of state, and they only have a few hours to figure out how to do it. Brandt grouses for maybe 10 seconds before remembering that it’s Tom Friggin’ Cruise doing the asking, then accepts his fate.

Aficionados of the super-agent's instant-mugshot sketches will be pleased to learn that they appear in this film as well. I have no idea if these drawings are really by Tom Cruise, but if it turned out that they were, would you be surprised? When CIA agents burst into one of his hideouts and find two new sketches plus a wall of photos and documents arranged like a mixed media collage, it's as if riot police had barged into an art gallery. I almost expected somebody to offer them white wine and brie.

The most surprising aspect is that, beneath it all, the movie is a love story of sorts. Tom Cruise meets his match in British agent Ilsa Faust (instant star Rebecca Ferguson ), a long legged, dark haired beauty who is for all intents and purposes the female Tom Cruise. Not only can she shoot and drive and fight as well as Tom Cruise, she shares his action deadpan. We are never sure if Ilsa is on his side or the Brits’ or perhaps the Syndicate’s. She keeps catching him and freeing him, beating him down and saving his life. Cruise’s mix of bafflement and curiosity as he contemplates Ilsa (yes, there is a Casablanca sequence in the movie, how could there not be?) quickly stops having anything to do with espionage. In time the film becomes a droll, bizarrely asexual screwball comedy about good-looking spies who express their unconsummatable love for each other through feats of violence, bravery and self-sacrifice. If one of the characters wasn’t female, you could call this a bromance.

The soundtrack occasionally quotes the opera that unfolded during the Vienna sequence: Puccini’s "Turandot," about a stubborn prince and princess who spend the whole story testing each other. Late in the film, Tom Cruise and his leggy doppelganger are sitting together at a café table while surrounded by killers, and the sound drops out completely, and McQuarrie’s camera goes close to their faces, and they exchange a look. It’s the same kind of look that John Woo ’s and Sergio Leone ’s characters used to exchange before drawing their guns and shooting their way out of a tight spot. It is a look of shared understanding: one superior being acknowledging another. Alec Baldwin describes Cruise, hilariously and also accurately, as “the living manifestation of destiny,” but the phrase could apply to Ilsa as well, and to this glorious film, which knows exactly what it wants to be and makes damn sure that Tom Cruise never stops running.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation movie poster

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, and brief partial nudity

131 minutes

Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt

Jeremy Renner as William Brandt

Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn

Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa

Paula Patton as Jane Carter

Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell

Alec Baldwin

Sean Harris

America Olivo

Simon McBurney

  • Christopher McQuarrie
  • Drew Pearce
  • Will Staples
  • Bruce Geller

Director of Photography

  • Robert Elswit

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Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation

2015, Action/Adventure, 2h 11m

What to know

Critics Consensus

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation continues the franchise's thrilling resurgence -- and proves that Tom Cruise remains an action star without equal. Read critic reviews

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With the IMF now disbanded and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) out in the cold, a new threat -- called the Syndicate -- soon emerges. The Syndicate is a network of highly skilled operatives who are dedicated to establishing a new world order via an escalating series of terrorist attacks. Faced with what may be the most impossible mission yet, Ethan gathers his team and joins forces with Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), a disavowed British agent who may or may not be a member of this deadly rogue nation.

Rating: PG-13 (Sequences of Action & Violence|Brief Partial Nudity)

Genre: Action, Adventure, Mystery & thriller

Original Language: English

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Producer: Tom Cruise , J.J. Abrams , Bryan Burk , David Ellison , Dana Goldberg , Don Granger

Writer: Christopher McQuarrie

Release Date (Theaters): Jul 31, 2015  wide

Release Date (Streaming): Jun 1, 2016

Runtime: 2h 11m

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Production Co: Skydance Productions, Tom Cruise, Paramount Pictures, Bad Robot

Sound Mix: Dolby Atmos

View the collection: Mission: Impossible

Cast & Crew

Jeremy Renner

William Brandt

Rebecca Ferguson

Ving Rhames

Luther Stickell

Sean Harris

Alec Baldwin

Alan Hunley

Simon McBurney

Jingchu Zhang

Jens Hultén

Janik Vinter

Hermione Corfield

Record Shop Girl

Christopher McQuarrie

Screenwriter

Executive Producer

J.J. Abrams

David Ellison

Dana Goldberg

Don Granger

Joe Kraemer

Original Music

Robert Elswit

Cinematographer

Eddie Hamilton

Film Editing

Jim Bissell

Production Design

Joanna Johnston

Costume Design

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Critic Reviews for Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation

Audience reviews for mission: impossible rogue nation.

Another energetic, pleasingly implausible through ride with Ethan hunt and company. This time he gets His best female rival/love interest since Emanuelle Beart in the original. Like in ghost protocol, the action is nearly nonstop but creatively drawn such as a hair-raising motorcycle chase and then under water infiltration that you don't feel like you're watching the same thing again and again. just throw out that my two and three and you've got one of the greatest action movie trilogies.

tom cruise mission impossible rogue nation

Pretty boring, honestly. Confusing and dumb action scenes. And it needs to be half an hour shorter. Not my type of thing at all.

I don't remember much of Ghost Protocol, the previous film in the MI franchise, but looking back at its description on this site, starts off with a very similar premise. The IMF is shut down, essentially, in both movies. So that was strange, even though in this film it's, ultimately, revealed to be part of a set-up, but it was still strange to see the film pretty much do the same thing at the beginning as the previous film in the franchise. But that's really irrelevant in the long run, because what matters is that this movie is an absolute blast to watch. When you talk about popcorn entertainment at the movies, this is the picture that I imagine in my mind. Not that it's the best popcorn movie I've ever seen, but there's no denying that the Mission Impossible franchise, ever since Christopher McQuarrie has taken over the creative helm, has seen a creative resurgence with both Ghost Protocol and this movie. Perhaps that's the wrong term to use, because it's not like these films have reinvented the espionage genre, far from it. It's not that it plays to the genres tropes and cliches, but it does what it does so well that it doesn't really need to reinvent the wheel with its story or its approach. As they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The narrative itself isn't anything to write home about. A terrorist creating havoc around the world manipulates the IMF and British Intelligence to do his doing, there's globetrotting, cool spy gadgets, exciting action sequences. And the latter is really where the movie shines. The highlights include a pretty damn cool scene at the Vienna Opera House, the car chase in Morocco, the underwater sequence where Ethan has to switch security profiles. And this all happens before the climax. So, unfortunately, because of that, the climax itself ends up feeling anticlimactic. Don't get me wrong, it's satisfying to finally see the IMF take down the man that has bested them at almost every turn, but to do so with the ease they did sort of took something away from that satisfaction. Then again, this villain was more of an 'intellectual' as opposed to someone who could hold his own in a fight, so maybe they felt that outsmarting him was the most apropos way to take him down. It still felt a little anticlimactic given everything we had seen prior to that, but I get the reasoning behind that. The film's casting is also really strong and there's great interplay between them all. Rebecca Ferguson is an absolute stunner and a more than welcome addition to the franchise. Mission Impossible is in an interesting position, it somewhat exists in its own little world. What I mean by that is that, while each installment seems to be a major success at the box office, and critically well-received as well, it doesn't seem to be a franchise that a lot of people think of when they think of major franchises. They're more likely to pick out something from Marvel or Star Wars. As far as espionage goes, I think Bond is obviously far more famous, but I think there's far more talk about the Bourne franchise. Mission Impossible is a series that comes, does its thing, shows everybody how it's done, leaves and is not seen or heard from until the next movie comes out. So that's why I feel that it hasn't reached the mainstream limelight as some of the other series I mentioned. But that's neither here nor there and it isn't really relevant to my thoughts about the film. Honestly, I don't know if this was missing something, like I wasn't really connected to the characters. They're likable and all, but there's no real emotional attachment to anyone that's not Simon Pegg. But this is a really damn good movie, it's actually pretty close to great. So I would very easily recommend this movie, I had a lot of fun watching it and it should be a great watch with friends. Really good movie here.

So after all that, I'm pretty convinced that the Mission: Impossible series just isn't for me. That being said, how many film franchises can say that their fifth instalment was also their best? Probably just this one, and, maybe Fast & Furious. There's actually a lot of parallels between those two lines of movies. Pertaining specifically to Mission: Impossible though, this one truly is the best of the bunch in my opinion. It has it's most complete female role to date, in fact, you could say that of any character. This is the first film that doesn't feel like it entirely hinges on Ethan Hunt's input. The characters surrounding him are actual people with their own personalities and ideas. And maybe it's just that I've watched him do it five times in the past three days, but honestly I even sort of bought Tom Cruise in an action role this time around. Crazy. Final rating:?? 1/2 - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn't quite work as a whole.

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Film Review: ‘Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation’

Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie delivers an unusually spry and satisfying fifth entry in the Tom Cruise-starring series.

By Justin Chang

Justin Chang

  • Film Review: ‘A Hologram for the King’ 8 years ago
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mission-impossible-rogue-nation-tom-cruise

The theme that runs like a quick-burning fuse through “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation” is the tricky relationship between inevitability and chance — or luck, rather, as signaled by the brief appearance of a rabbit’s foot in one of Tom Cruise ‘s more brutal action sequences. It’s a dynamic that applies to the film as well: If the robust commercial performance of 2011’s “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” made a follow-up inevitable, then luck turns out to be very much on the side of this unusually spry and satisfying fifth entry, which finds the surviving members of the Impossible Missions Force trying to neutralize an insidious global threat, while struggling to convince their skeptical overlords that there is such a threat to begin with. The result is an existential quandary that writer-director Christopher McQuarrie negotiates with characteristic cleverness and a sly respect for the sheer durability of genre; at once questioning and reaffirming the pleasures of cinematic espionage, this is the rare sequel that leaves its franchise feeling not exhausted but surprisingly resurgent at 19 years and counting.

Despite early reports of soft tracking, this late-summer Paramount release should meet with a solid embrace worldwide, and could demonstrate considerable B.O. resilience through the doldrums of August. It’s worth recalling that the Brad Bird-directed “Ghost Protocol” overcame a slow start to become the series’ highest-grossing entry (nearly $700 million worldwide), suggesting there was still plenty of life in “Mission: Impossible” — and in Tom Cruise’s career, whatever personal embarrassments and professional setbacks he may have suffered along the way. After a few lackluster recent vehicles (“Jack Reacher,” “Oblivion”) and one terrific, underappreciated thriller (“Edge of Tomorrow”), it’s clearer than ever that Ethan Hunt is not just one of Cruise’s signature roles, but also a commercial oasis to which he can reliably return in between riskier attempts to extend his personal brand.

Or, as someone snarls in one of McQuarrie’s more amusing lines: “Hunt is the living manifestation of destiny!” And if the now 53-year-old Cruise isn’t quite limber enough to do full justice to that description, he continues to throw himself into harm’s way with energy, conviction and an astonishing disregard for life and limb. That much is clear from a set piece that has already figured heavily into Paramount’s marketing campaign, and which is wisely dispensed with in the opening scene: Bent on retrieving a cache of nerve-gas missiles from a band of Chechen separatist fighters, Ethan leaps onto a military cargo plane mid-takeoff and hangs on for dear life as terra firma recedes behind him — an astounding piece of airborne staging that Cruise, with his distaste for green-screen effects and his fondness for performing his own stunts, pulls off in typically sweat-free fashion.

The sequence is at once a tasty appetizer and a total red herring, and “Rogue Nation” swiftly gets down to business by putting Ethan and his fellow operatives out of commission. Citing the destruction of the Kremlin and other extensive property damage from “Ghost Protocol,” brash CIA boss Alan Huntley (Alec Baldwin) succeeds in dismantling the IMF and absorbing it into the Agency — a move that effectively paralyzes two of Ethan’s old pals, top analyst William Brandt ( Jeremy Renner ) and tech genius Benji Dunn ( Simon Pegg ), and proves serious enough to bring Ethan’s trustiest ally, Luther Stickell (an underused Ving Rhames), back in from the cold.

Still, those guys are doing relatively well compared with Ethan himself, who barely makes it through the opening credits before he’s accosted in London, tied up and repeatedly pummeled by a chrome-domed torture specialist called the Bone Doctor (Jens Hulten). It’s the work of a wide-ranging shadow organization known simply as the Syndicate (the “rogue nation” of the title), which has been setting off destabilizing waves of violence, civil unrest and catastrophe across the globe, some of which — far-flung industrial accidents, jetliners vanishing into thin air — have deliberately uncomfortable real-world echoes. Ethan’s mission, which he has no choice but to accept, is to take down this sinister group, which will require him to team up with the tellingly named Ilsa Faust ( Rebecca Ferguson ), a skilled but relatively untested British intelligence agent who has succeeded in infiltrating the Syndicate. (For all the film’s rampant globe-trotting, its casting choices and frequent London stopovers give it a markedly Blighty flavor.)

In classic spy-thriller fashion, it’s never entirely clear whether Ilsa is friend or femme fatale — especially after she and Ethan cross paths with a few well-positioned snipers at the Vienna State Opera, where a lavish performance of “Turandot” serves as both backdrop and modus operandi for an up-in-the-rafters assassination attempt. The curtain comes crashing violently down on that episode, but the movie’s second major action sequence is a marvel of precise execution and quietly fraught suspense, forcing Ethan to swim his way into a highly pressurized underwater cavern in order to lay hands on a weapon that could make or break the Syndicate. It’s a remarkably taut bit of business (shot on the large-format Alexa 65 6k digital camera), literally breathless in its intensity, yet executed with the sort of deftness and economy may remind you of Ethan’s early reference to the great jazz drummer Shadow Wilson and his famously “light touch.” Even when the characters are diving into giant water turbines or ripping up the streets of Morocco on motorcycles, that intricate, improvisatory lightness is a quality that McQuarrie’s film has in spades.

While the “Mission: Impossible” movies have employed a different helmer with each new installment, this is, notably, the first one to be directed and solely written by the same filmmaker — which may explain why, even at a pacey, slightly trimmable 131 minutes, “Rogue Nation” feels like the most dramatically sustained and conceptually unified picture in the series. To be sure, McQuarrie isn’t as flamboyant a stylist as his predecessors Brian De Palma and John Woo, and although it shares with “Ghost Protocol” the same superb cinematographer (Robert Elswit), the new film has an altogether darker, more workmanlike palette, with little of the previous film’s eye-tickling compositional flair. (And whereas “Ghost Protocol” boasted 27 staggering minutes of footage shot on Imax cameras, the image stays strictly widescreen in “Rogue Nation,” gaining relatively little from the giant-screen format in which it was screened for review.)

But whatever the filmmaking may lack in visual or visceral impact, McQuarrie (whose past collaborations with Cruise include directing “Jack Reacher” and scripting “Edge of Tomorrow”) more than compensates on the written front; his screenplay (based on a story conceived with Drew Pearce) achieves an admirable complexity without sacrificing coherence in the process. On the face of it, “Rogue Nation” is another patchwork of Hitchcockian tropes and James Bondian cliches, as familiar as the recurring strains of Lalo Schifrin’s classic musical theme: Carefully encrypted messages are transmitted, bank-account numbers are copied and deleted, and high-tech explosives are armed and disarmed. Behind the Syndicate lurks a calculating uber-villain (played with understated menace by the protean Sean Harris) deluded enough to confuse mass annihilation with salvation, and even after he’s defeated, the film acknowledges, there will be many others like him waiting in the wings. Everyone is wearing a mask, and not just of the latex variety: As Ethan and Ilsa’s pointed conversations remind us, these agents are professional con artists who must decide anew each day whether they owe their highest allegiance to their cause, their employers, their friends in the field, or the civilians who are always at risk of becoming collateral damage.

A “Mission: Impossible” movie will admittedly never be mistaken for John le Carre, even if this one does feature the marvelous Simon McBurney (a veteran of 2011’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”) as a high-ranking official whose connections within the British intelligence community run treacherously deep. Still, “Rogue Nation” exudes a knowing sophistication and a winking sense of fun that make it the most philosophically brooding film in the series, acknowledging the soul-crushing futility of so much intelligence work, especially for those who have been smeared and disavowed by their own agency. “I can’t see another way,” Ethan despairs as the story approaches its fatal endgame — one that, he realizes, is utterly unavoidable and perhaps even preordained. And so the characters’ sense of defeat becomes a metaphor for the essentially formulaic nature of the action-thriller, calling into question the viability of a genre of which we’ve already seen countless iterations and will certainly see countless more. Yet the unexpected pleasure of “Rogue Nation” is the way it claws its way to freedom and a sense of renewal: In writing Ethan and his colleagues out of an impossibly tight corner, McQuarrie ingeniously turns both formula and metaphor inside out.

While the most recent “Die Hard” and “Terminator” movies have playfully acknowledged that their once-strapping male stars are well past their physical prime, the “Mission: Impossible” franchise is having none of it. Whatever combination of stunt work and digital trickery was involved (very little, if reports are to be believed), Cruise remains as deft a physical performer as ever, and projects nary a shred of self-consciousness or vanity; he is, no less than Ethan Hunt himself, an incorrigible daredevil and a consummate professional. Ferguson, a Swedish actress best known for TV productions like “The Red Tent” and “The White Queen,” brings a strong, engaging if not particularly enigmatic presence to a series whose female operatives have never been its strong suit; her iffy chemistry with Cruise is kept further at bay by a story that, aside from some occupationally mandated toplessness, remains strictly within PG-13 boundaries.

Baldwin’s blustering, antagonistic CIA man lends the proceedings a welcome punch, while Pegg, previously seen in “Ghost Protocol” as a comic-relief figure with a full arsenal of malfunctioning gadgets, comes fully into his own here as an indispensable and uniquely courageous member of Ethan’s team. Renner and Rhames are rather sidelined by comparison, though they get considerably more screen time than Zhang Jinchu, whose prominently billed, blink-and-you-miss-it performance as a CIA underling feels like a sop to the film’s Asia-based investors, China Movie Channel and Alibaba Pictures Group. The perilous landscape of globalized blockbuster filmmaking is very much its own Syndicate, but at least on the evidence of “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation,” this is one series whose identity has yet to be compromised.

Reviewed at Imax, Los Angeles, July 23, 2015. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 131 MIN.

  • Production: A Paramount release, presented with Skydance, of an Odin, Bad Robot production, in association with China Movie Channel, Alibaba. Produced by J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger. Executive producer, Jake Myers.
  • Crew: Directed, written by Christopher McQuarrie. Story, McQuarrie, Drew Pearce, based on the television series created by Bruce Geller. Camera (Deluxe color, Arri Alexa digital, Panavision widescreen, Imax), Robert Elswit; editor, Eddie Hamilton; music, Joe Kraemer; production designer, James Bissell; supervising art director, Paul Inglis; art directors, Andrew Bennett, Stephen Carter, Amanda Dazely, Matt Gray, Ben Munro, Helen Xenopoulos; set decorator, John Bush; costume designer, Joanna Johnston; sound (Dolby Atmos), Chris Munro; supervising sound editor, James Mather; re-recording mixers, Mike Prestwood Smith, Gilbert Lake; special effects coordinator, Dominic Tuohy; visual effects producer, Maricel Pagulayan; visual effects supervisor, Ken Hahn; visual effects, Double Negative; stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood; associate producers, Thomas Hayslip, Helen Medrano, Pagulayan; assistant directors, Toby Hefferman, Tommy Gormley; second unit director, Gregg Smrz; second unit camera, Jonathan Taylor; underwater camera, Peter Romano; casting, Mindy Marin, Lucinda Syson.
  • With: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris, Simon McBurney, Zhang Jingchu, Tom Hollander, Jens Hulten, Alec Baldwin. (English, German dialogue)

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Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation review: Tom Cruise just won't let this franchise self-destruct

Such is Tom Cruise’s rock-hard commitment to being an action hero you have no choice but to accept this most convoluted of sequels

Y ou can shoot him, stab him, drown him, blow him up or pair him with Thandie Newton, but you can’t stop Ethan Hunt, because he’s played by Tom Cruise . Returning to make a mockery of the series title for a fifth time, Cruise ploughs through Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, a sequel that is slick with silliness, but peppered with enough wit and peril to sustain the franchise’s momentum.

Cruise is – obviously – the definitive modern movie star. A bizarre and indefatigable charismatic force that can make the bad watchable and the average – like Rogue Nation – actually quite fun. It’s all here: the gee-shucks boyishness, the pointy-hand sprinting, the toplessness – conscripted into the service of a secret agent yarn that’s hustled into shape by his Jack Reacher cohort, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie.

Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Following the plot is a mission in itself. Hunt’s team, the Impossible Mission Force, has been demonised by the new CIA chief (Alec Baldwin), who has successfully campaigned for it to be disbanded after the IMF were implicated in an attack on the Kremlin. Hunt’s on the run, and his unit – right-hand-man Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and tech whizz Benji (Simon Pegg) – has been co-opted by the CIA. Meanwhile, the Syndicate, a multinational group of ex-operatives, has started to wreak havoc across the globe, because that’s what the world needs to recover from recession, or over-population, or the X-Factor, or something. Hunt will have to re-assemble his unit and tackle whatever-it-is without government say-so. As ever, there are lists to be stolen, discs to be forged and accomplices that may or may not be building up to a Scooby Doo ending . One of them is MI6 agent Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), who has got close to the Syndicate’s boss (Sean Harris). Maybe, just maybe, too close.

If writer-director McQuarrie was daunted by the prospect of following Ghost Protocol, Brad Bird’s franchise reviver, it’s not showing. Rogue Nation carries the scorch marks of Bird’s work and Brian de Palma’s original, but its key influences are the campy spy cinema of Roger Moore-era James Bond and Sydney Newman’s 1960s TV series, The Avengers.

The light-hearted tone is mostly due to an expanded role for Pegg, who again proves himself proficient at looking astonished and/or peeved at the cool stuff Tom Cruise is doing. It allows for plenty of implausibility, but sometimes McQuarrie stretches his licence to the limit. The spies – left to blow in the breeze by agency and country – are stunned that their state would betray them. Benji, who claims to be a field agent, is terrified when he’s not mystified. Elsewhere, there are story details that need to be snuck past the audience. Hunt’s first encounter with the Syndicate’s kingpin occurs in an IMF field office disguised as a record store, complete with listening booths. The hideout at the fax machine factory was booked maybe?

Occasionally, this goofiness plays in Rogue Nation’s favour. Alec Baldwin, who looks to be ticking along sedately in the role of chief suited spook, suddenly vaults for immortality with an extraordinary delivery of one line (“Huuuuunt is the living manifestation of destiny!!!”) that could win him an Oscar and a Razzie simultaneously.

Nothing much changes, but it at least feels like everything is up for renewal. Shockingly, the theme music is – after an initial blast – sabotaged. Instead the film’s most exciting sequence – a tussle between Hunt and three assassins sent to murder the Austrian chancellor at the Vienna State Opera – is soundtracked by the on-stage performance of Nessun Dorma. The assassins’ fatal shot is due at the end of the line: “The silence that makes you mine!”. It’s not Rififi, but it’s still a beautifully managed action sequence. Unconventional and quite brave for a mainstream franchise picture.

Also unusual is Ferguson’s role, which threatens to match Cruise’s in terms of screen-time. Her character is given agency and motivation. She’s neither love interest nor foil. Sometimes you wonder, as with Mad Max: Fury Road earlier this year, if the star is the star at all.

There’s the odd clumsy swing at satire (Renner’s character is fond of a Rumsfeld-esque “I can neither confirm nor deny” under questioning), but, unlike Bond or Bourne, this series exists outside of time. Cruise is key to that. His charm and determination (as well as his macho commitment to doing most of his own stunts ) will always win out. Pegg will forever be marvelling at the improbability of working with Tom Cruise; Jeremy Renner will wait patiently in the wings for his turn to be the action hero. It seems these roles are immutable and the dynamic will never change. And why should it? Based on Rogue Nation, there seems little need for a shake-up.

  • Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
  • First look review
  • Jeremy Renner
  • Action and adventure films
  • Rebecca Ferguson

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Review: ‘Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation’ With Tom Cruise and Plenty of Stunts

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tom cruise mission impossible rogue nation

By Manohla Dargis

  • July 30, 2015

Watching Tom Cruise hurtle through the latest “Mission: Impossible,” taking one blow after another, you can’t help worrying that he won’t be able to keep this action stuff up. It looks so hard! But here he is, the 53-year-old Tom Terrific, holding onto a plane as it takes off, defying sense and gravity, and making you wonder (not for the first time) if he would actually die for our pleasure. By the time he’s flailing underwater without an oxygen tank, struggling against violent surges as breath and time run out, you can almost feel the life leaving his body.

The first “Mission: Impossible” movie, a spinoff from the 1960s television show, was released 19 years ago and was, though it’s almost hard to believe it now, something of an auteurist event, having been directed by Brian De Palma. Mr. Cruise was an established action star by 1996, but he also helped produce the first film, which strengthened his status as an international brand. As a star-auteur, he has always been the most important feature and effect of the series, although it’s telling that Mr. De Palma oversaw the set-piece that gave the movies their foundational image: Mr. Cruise’s operative, Ethan Hunt, hovering like a spider (or a puppet) above a luminous white floor while suspended by a very thin rope.

Anatomy of a Scene | Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation’

Christopher mcquarrie narrates a sequence from “mission: impossible — rogue nation,” starring tom cruise..

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As the clock tick-tocks, and Ethan struggles to keep his cool — a single drop of sweat splashed on the floor would blow the operation — the visual gloss and high-tech gobbledygook, Mr. Cruise’s graceful athleticism and Mr. De Palma’s New Hollywood suspense chops flow together, turning the scene into the emblematic “Mission: Impossible” showstopper. It’s the kind of pure cine-spectacle that jolts you before sweeping you up. There’s never been a scene in the series as memorable as that one, even if the exploding fish tank, the film’s other eye-popper, comes close. These sequences set a high bar both for directors who followed in Mr. De Palma’s wake and for Mr. Cruise’s physical performance, which in the later installments has largely involved progressively scarier stunts.

The writer and director of the latest movie — its goofy full title is “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation” — is Christopher McQuarrie, who’s been tethered to Mr. Cruise for the past decade. They worked together on Mr. McQuarrie’s adaptation of “Jack Reacher,” a grim genre bummer that was a bad fit for Mr. Cruise, who can rarely go tough and dark with conviction. Mr. McQuarrie also had a hand in writing “ Edge of Tomorrow ,” Doug Liman’s underloved science-fiction romp that dovetailed with Mr. Cruise’s strengths, including a too infrequently tapped gift for light comedy. Mr. McQuarrie, who made his name with his rebuslike script for “The Usual Suspects,” tends to work the more lugubrious end of the entertainment spectrum, so it’s a nice surprise that “Rogue Nation” isn’t just another clenched-jaw blowout.

Sleek and bloated, specific and generic, “Rogue Nation” is pretty much like most of the “Impossible” movies in that it’s an immense machine that Mr. McQuarrie, after tinkering and oiling, has cranked up again and set humming with twists and turns, global trotting and gadgets, a crack supporting cast and a hard-working star. Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg (with his valuable comic timing) are all back, joined by the series newcomer Rebecca Ferguson. She plays a super-vixen, the amusingly named Ilsa Faust, who enters with the camera peeking up her skirt and rises like a half-shell Venus, à la the original Bond Girl, Ursula Andress . Even so, Ms. Ferguson has more going for her than man-throttling thighs (and an ace stunt double, Lucy Cork ); she holds her own both on the ground and in midair.

Movie Review: ‘Mission: Impossible’

The times critic manohla dargis reviews “mission: impossible — rogue nation.”.

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Mr. Cruise looks comfortable with Ms. Ferguson, another plus. For most of his action-movie career, he has come across as a less romantically nimble, less self-amused version of Douglas Fairbanks , the swashbuckler who leaped through the silent era. Like Mr. Cruise, Fairbanks performed many of his own white-knuckle stunts , as when he climbs up the chain of a closing drawbridge in “Robin Hood.” (Fairbanks helped start United Artists, which Mr. Cruise owned a piece of for a while.) All too often, Mr. Cruise’s insistence on doing frightening stunts in the “Mission: Impossible” series has become its most distinguishing quality. In this movie, though, when he goes airborne like a barnstormer, the scene’s self-conscious sense of the absurd suggests he’s trying to let his inner Harold Lloyd out to play.

That helps speed up “Rogue Nation,” which slows down when the plot tangles or some ceremonial manly peacocking ensues, usually from Mr. Renner and Mr. Cruise. Clearly Mr. McQuarrie and his star feel the need to stamp the series with seriousness, something that Mr. De Palma knew better than to do. And throughout “Rogue Nation,” you can sense the filmmakers comfortably, at times awkwardly, playing tug of war with the mood, which grows sinister with the excellent Sean Harris as the regulation evil genius and almost frisky with Alec Baldwin as an intelligence blowhard and Tom Hollander as a political boob. Mr. Pegg’s second-banana flair is especially crucial here because it helps show that Mr. Cruise, whose smile at times seems awfully strained these days, can still take a ribbing as well as a licking.

“Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Kids, don’t try this at home.

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How Tom Cruise Did That Insane Plane Stunt For Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

tom cruise mission impossible rogue nation

The first full trailer for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation ends with quite a bang, and a stunt that easily rivals the Burj Khalifa sequence in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol . The sight of Ethan Hunt hanging on to the side of taking-off airplane is an unbelievable one to behold - and it's only made more impressive when you remember that Tom Cruise actually performed the real stunt himself. But how did this stunt actually get done? The star and director Christopher McQuarrie have revealed all in a recent interview.

Timed with the release of the new trailer, Yahoo! UK has posted an extended interview they did with both Cruise and McQuarrie, in which the two men discuss the details behind what looks to be Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation 's biggest spectacle sequence. Apparently the idea of riding on the side of a plane is something that the actor has been thinking about doing for a while, and he describes it as "undoubtedly the most dangerous thing [he's] ever done." He and his Mission: Impossible 5 director knew that they needed to top what Ghost Protocol brought to the table, and it was McQuarrie who ultimately brought the idea to the table for the blockbuster. The filmmaker explained,

While searching for different locations, the production designer James Bissell bought me a model of this Airbus airplane and presented it as something we could use in the movie. I suggested to Tom, ‘What if you were on the outside of this thing when it took off?' I meant it as sort of a half joke, but he said back to me, ‘Yeah I could do that!’

From there it was all about figuring out a way to attach a camera to the side of the airplane that would A) get an appropriate angle on the shot, and B) not detach during take-off and smash into Tom Cruise. The actor met with not just a test pilot, but the guys who created the A400m Airbus, and made sure that everything was doable and safe.

You can watch the incredible stunt performed at the end of the trailer embedded below:

So what was the biggest fear in this situation? While many of you might guess that it would be Cruise losing his grip and falling, apparently that wasn't the case. Instead, the larger concern during shooting was bird strikes and random debris flying through the air. As Cruise told the site,

I remember one time we were going down the runway and there was just a little particle that just hit me, it was smaller than a finger nail. I was thankful it didn’t hit my hands or face, if it did I’d have a problem because those parts were exposed, but it still could have broken my ribs!

Perhaps the most impressive part of all this is that the airplane ride won't be Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation 's only breathtaking sequence. In the interview, Christopher McQuarrie teases that this death-defying stunt is actually one of two "incredibly physically punishing things" that he had Tom Cruise do for the movie, and that the other one is merely teased in the above trailer. I'm sure when we see the finished film it will stand out from the pack and we'll recognize exactly which stunt the director is being alluded to (I'm personally hoping it's the dive into the sand vortex).

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation will be in theaters on July 31st.

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Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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Tom Cruise held his breath for 6 minutes in this crazy underwater stunt in the new 'Mission: Impossible'

Since Tom Cruise started the "Mission: Impossible" movie franchise 19 years ago, his reputation as an actor who wants to do his own stunts has become legendary. Each new film for "M:I" seems to bring new spectacular stunts, with Cruise himself doing the heavy lifting.

You probably thought Cruise couldn’t top climbing the tallest building in the world in "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol" in 2011, but you’d be wrong.

"Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation" doesn't hit theaters until Friday, but you've probably already caught a glimpse of Cruise's latest stunt in which he hangs on the side of a massive airplane as it takes off.

And yes, that’s really the actor — not a stunt double.

But according to the film’s stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood , that wasn’t the stunt he was most concerned about Cruise taking on himself.

At a key moment in the movie, Cruise, playing IMF agent Ethan Hunt, has to dive into an underwater safe to retrieve the computer chip that will lead him closer to the film’s 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.

The stunt first required Cruise to jump off a 120-foot ledge (the bottom was all CGI, but he really did the jump).

Then, in an underwater set that was filled 20 feet high with water, Cruise had to hold his breath as he acted out the scene.

“It’s all Tom,” Eastwood told Business Insider. “There’s no time you don’t see Ethan in the film and it’s not Tom.”

Eastwood (no relation to Clint) had worked previously with Cruise on “ Edge of Tomorrow, ” so he was aware of Cruise’s obsession with authenticity when it comes to stunt work. But he still marvels over Cruise’s physical ability.

“It’s been said in other interviews, if he wasn’t an actor he would have been a great stunt man,” said Eastwood. “The difference between Tom and a stunt man is he acts the character after hearing ‘action.’ A stunt person just does the stunt to double the character.”

And that is the aspect that made Eastwood’s job to pull off the underwater scene the most challenging.

Though they had cameras all over the set monitoring the star as he was underwater, and stunt crews at the ready to jump into action if anything went wrong, Eastwood said Cruise still had to act in the scene. This meant it needed to look like he was losing breath and becoming unconscious.

“On two or three occasions I brought him up because I felt he was down for too long,” said Eastwood. “He was like, ‘What are you doing? I was right in the moment. I’m acting.’ And I was like, ‘I know, it was just too real for me and I wasn’t comfortable.’”

Eastwood said the longest Cruise was underwater for a take was over six minutes.

Eastwood recalls Cruise telling him one time after having the actor come up for air, “I got plenty of breath, trust me. I don’t want to die.”

The scene took two weeks to shoot, according to Eastwood. But training for it started two months before production began.

To prepare Cruise for an underwater scene in which he’d be holding his breath for over six minutes, Eastwood brought in a freediving record holder to teach the actor breathing exercises. Basically, as Eastwood explains, teaching your mind “that you don’t have to take a breath.”

Eastwood said Cruise blacked out a few times during the training.

“That’s how you learn your limits,” Eastwood said.

That was another concern of Eastwood’s — what if Cruise got too into character?

“It’s a very calming and surreal state being underwater, especially when you’re holding your breath for that long,” he said. “You’ve gone through training to let your mind to that place where you can control it. It’s dangerous because you get carried away in the acting and you get in such a euphoric and relaxed state being in character that you forget what you’re doing. That was my worry.”

Thankfully, Cruise kept his head together and pulled off a scene that’s agonizingly claustrophobic yet remarkable to watch.

And that’s after seeing him hang from a moving plane.

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Watch: This 'Mission Impossible' behind-the-scenes footage of a 53-year-old Tom Cruise hanging off a plane is terrifying

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The Truth Behind Tom's 'Rogue Nation' Stunts

tom cruise mission impossible rogue nation

The trailer for the fifth installment in the Mission Impossible series, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, is insanely action-packed and features Tom Cruise appearing to risk his life more times than I can count. The actor is widely known for performing his own stunts, but there's no way anyone in their right mind would perform the stunts for real that are featured in this new movie. But the actor has never been known for doing what's conventional — so, did Tom Cruise do his own stunts in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation ?

Of course he did. As he's proven numerous times, Tom Cruise is more than willing to put his life on the line for the benefit of thrilling a movie audience, and he really ratcheted it up for his newest film. The 53-year-old actor performed several stunts for Rogue Nation that rank among the most impressive he's ever done. The most high-profile stunt involves him hanging off the side of an airplane as it takes off. For real, he hangs off in actual airplane in the air . In another stunt for the film, Cruise had the idea to shoot an underwater scene without cuts. In the scene, he ends up holding his breath underwater for over six minutes. In yet another crazy stunt for the movie, Cruise zips around a dangerous mountain pass on a motorcycle at high speeds while fighting off pursuers — all without wearing a helmet. Insane!

But Rogue Nation isn't the first time Cruise has forgone using a stunt double in his portrayal of Ethan Hunt. Here are Cruise's best Mission Impossible stunts from the first four films in the series.

Mission Impossible — The Fish Tank

Before this movie came out in 1996, Cruise was better known as a dramatic actor than an action star. This movie changed that. In this scene, Cruise actually jumps through a plate glass window while 16 tons of water gush after him. If the water caught up to him, he could have drowned.

Mission Impossible II — Free Climbing

The opening scene of this 2000 movie features Cruise scaling some dangerous cliffs , and although he was wearing a harness that was digitally removed in post production, that's still him in most shots leaping from rock to rock... with no safety net. He actually approached the scene so intensely that he tore a muscle in his shoulder during filming.

Mission Impossible II — Knife Fight

Cruise not only demanded that a real knife be used for this fight scene, but he wanted it to stop as close to his eye as possible. The knife was attached to a measured cable for the scene, and stopped just a quarter-inch from Cruise's eyeball .

Mission Impossible III — Run Over

In this 2006 film, Cruise falls onto a street to have a semi-truck roll over him. As you can see in this behind-the-scenes clip, that's not a CGI truck, and that's not a stunt double. Cruise was run over by a truck IRL, which came just inches from crushing him.

Mission Impossible III — Thrown From Explosion

Cruise was violently yanked by a cable to simulate being thrown from an explosion, and the impact of his body into the car is painful to watch. As usual with Cruise's craziest stunts, it was all his idea.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol — Burj Khalifa

Cruise just gets wilder with age, it seems. His most death-defying stunt prior to his newest film came in this 2011 thriller, when a then 48-year-old Cruise swung around and ran down the side of the world's tallest building without the aid of a stunt double . This making-of-the-scene featurette is bonkers and I get dizzy just watching it.

Crazy cool, or just crazy? Either way, there's no question that Cruise's fearlessness makes his movies all the more entertaining.

Images: Getty Images

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12 of tom cruise’s most jaw-dropping stunts.

From scaling a skyscraper to hanging on to the outside of an airplane as it takes off, here are some of the actor's most death-defying stunts.

By Carly Thomas

Carly Thomas

Associate Editor

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Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.

Tom Cruise has never steered away from challenging himself in his roles for projects. Especially since 1986’s  Top Gun , he has continued to push the limits of his body and acting, taking on his own stunts in most of his top films, including Mission: Impossible ,  The Last Samurai  and  Jack Reacher .

Most recently, Cruise took on several death-defying stunts in  Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , including speed-flying down a mountainside as well as driving a motorcycle off a cliff and parachuting to safety.

The actor has previously said during an appearance on  The Graham Norton Show  that he has been “doing different stunts” since he was a child and that once he got into acting, he wanted to keep doing it to help with the “storytelling.”

“I feel that [when] acting you’re bringing everything, you know, physically and emotionally, to a character in a story,” he explained at the time. “And I’m able to do it [stunts], and I’ve trained for 30 years doing things like this that it allows us to put cameras in places where you normally are not able to.”

More recently, during a  conversation at Cannes  in 2022, Cruise reiterated that he enjoys performing his own stunts despite the danger, only this time he referenced one of the best athletes of Hollywood’s golden era.

“No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance?’” the actor said. “Why do you do your own dancing?’”

Below, The Hollywood Reporter has compiled a list of some of Cruise’s wildest stunts, some downright death-defying, throughout his decades-long career.

'Mission: Impossible' (Aquarium Scene)

Tom Cruise in 'Mission: Impossible'

In the first installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise in 1996, Cruise reportedly never swapped out for a stuntman in one particular scene involving an aquarium. In the sequence, Ethan Hunt, who would become one of Cruise’s most well-known characters, intentionally blows up a giant aquarium that stretches the length from the floor to the ceiling to help get away quickly. The explosive was so powerful that another person was sent flying through a glass panel, while Cruise went running with 16 gallons of water following right behind him.

'Mission: Impossible II' (Rock Climbing Scene)

'Mission- Impossible II'

In 2000’s Mission: Impossible II , Cruise showed no signs of plans to stop testing his limits. In the opening scene of the John Woo-directed film, the actor can be seen climbing and hanging off giant rocks on the side of a cliff. During filming, Cruise reportedly had only a safety cable to help soften any impact, which led to Woo actively sweating throughout the entire sequence because of how dangerous it was.

'Top Gun' (Parachute Scene)

'Top Gun'

In 1986’s  Top Gun , Cruise began seeking the thrill of doing his own stunts. But the scene when Maverick (Cruise) and Goose (Anthony Edwards) are ejected from the jet and parachute into the water (leading to his co-pilot’s death) nearly didn’t go as planned. Top Gun ‘s Barry Tubb told the  New York Post  on the film’s 25th anniversary that “Cruise came as close to dying as anybody on a set I’ve ever seen.” During filming, when Cruise was lifting up Goose’s body from the ocean, Cruise actually began to sink due to water building up in his parachute. According to Tubb, Cruise would have drowned if it was not caught early enough to get him out.

At the time of filming Top Gun , it was also reported that a veteran fighter pilot  died while shooting aerial footage for the movie.

'The Last Samurai' (Samurai Sword Scene)

'The Last Samurai'

In 2003’s  The Last Samurai , Cruise once again nearly avoided a tragic accident while doing his own stunts. While filming a fight sequence between Nathan Algren (Cruise) and Ujio (Hiroyuki Sanada), the two were riding on what were actually mechanical horses, in which one was supposed to stop moving before Sanada takes a swing at Cruise with a real samurai sword. But the horse didn’t stop, and Cruise reportedly came within an inch of the sword before Sanada was able to pull back, avoiding contact with Cruise.

“Tom’s neck was right in front of me, and I tried to stop swinging my sword, but it was hard to control with one hand,” Sanada previously told the  Daily Mail .  “The film crew watching from the side all screamed because they thought Tom’s head would fly off.”

'Collateral' (Car Crash Scene)

'Collateral'

At this point, on-set accidents are nothing new to Cruise, and the same goes for an incident while filming an action scene with Jamie Foxx for 2004’s  Collateral . During an interview at the time , Foxx thought he nearly killed his co-star when he smashed into Cruise’s Mercedes-Benz during a chase sequence. “I hit the gas, the cab goes straight head on into [Cruise’s] Mercedes, and the Mercedes lifts off the ground and goes off the set,” he explained. Cruise added that although he was OK, he was tossed around the car. “I was hitting the roof,” he said. “I was down on the ground.”

'Edge of Tomorrow' (Another Car Crash Scene)

While filming 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow , Emily Blunt confirmed to Conan O’Brien on  Conan at the time that Cruise “really does everything and wants to do everything” when it comes to doing stunts. But she revealed that during one scene, his luck was tested once again. The actress said in one action sequence when she was driving and Cruise was in the passenger seat, the stunt coordinator tasked her with driving really fast down a road and then taking a sharp turn. She noted that the first take went well, but during the second, she took a turn too late and “drove us into a tree and I almost killed Tom Cruise.” Thankfully, Cruise was OK, and Blunt added that he was actually laughing afterward.

'Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol' (Scaling a Skyscraper Scene)

'Mission- Impossible — Ghost Protocol'

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol director Brad Bird said watching Cruise take on death-defying stunts is “just another day at work” for the film’s crewmembers. Specifically for the 2011 movie, the actor scaled Dubai’s 163-floor Burj Khalifa. In behind-the-scenes footage, Cruise can be seen climbing, swinging and running up and down the building, with only a wire keeping him from falling.

'Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation' (Plane Scene)

'Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation'

In 2015’s Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation , Cruise decided to take his intense stunts to the sky. In the film, the actor can be seen dangling on the outside of an Airbus 400 as it takes off. Robert Elswit, director of photography, told The Hollywood Reporter  at the time what went into making the stunt a reality while keeping Cruise safe.

“Tom was in a full body harness and he’s cabled and wired to the plane through [its] door. Inside the aircraft was an aluminum truss that was carefully bolted to the plane, which held the wires that went through the door, which held Tom,” the cinematographer said of the safety measures. “He was also wearing special contact lenses to protect his eyes. If anything hit him at those speeds, it could be really bad. They were very careful about cleaning the runway so there were no rocks. And we took off in certain weather conditions; there were no birds. And he’s sort of protected by the way the air moves over the wing.”

'Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation' (Underwater Breathing Scene)

In the Christopher McQuarrie-directed film, Cruise went from doing stunts in the sky to doing them underwater. For the said sequence in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation , the actor actually had to undergo training to be able to hold his breath underwater for six minutes. For comparison, professional divers hold their breath for anywhere between four and seven minutes,  according to the American Physiological Society , but even that can be very dangerous and could cause brain damage. Although Cruise scared crewmembers a few times by testing his limits underwater, in the end, he successfully completed the mission.

“It’s something I have always wanted to do,” Cruise said during an interview with USA Today at the time. “We’re underwater and we’re doing breath-holds of 6 to 6-1/2 minutes. So I was doing all my training with the other stuff (on-set). It was very taxing stuff.”

'Mission: Impossible – Fallout' (Building Jump Scene)

'Mission: Impossible – Fallout'

While filming a building jump scene in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout , Cruise actually got hurt, which shut down production for six weeks while he recovered. During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show , the actor not only detailed exactly what went wrong but shared a video of the moment he broke his ankle during the stunt.

In the scene, while attached to two safety wires, Cruise’s character is meant to jump from one high-rise to another when chasing Henry Cavill’s character. Although he was meant to miss the landing and hit the side of the wall, his foot actually slipped and bent upwards on impact. The actor noted that he “knew instantly it was broken.” Cruise also revealed that his ankle was still healing while he was on the press tour for the film.

‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One’ (Speed-Flying Scene)

In the seventh film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Tom Cruise shows that he has no plans to stop doing death-defying stunts anytime soon. For Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One , the actor learned how to do what director Christopher McQuarrie called “one of the most dangerous sports in the world.” Speed-flying, which is similar to paragliding, combines elements of parachute swooping to allow people to fly at high speeds down mountainsides while maintaining close to the slope. And Cruise did just that for one of the scenes in the latest installment of the action franchise. McQuarrie even noted that when Cruise was “flying very close to rocks,” the filming crew was in “absolute terror” behind the cameras. 

‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One’ (Motorbiking Off a Cliff Scene)

For Mission: Impossible 7 , Tom Cruise said he got to do a stunt that he had wanted to do “since I was a little kid.” And that stunt was riding a motorbike off a cliff and parachuting down to safety. Director Christopher McQuarrie explained that there were many elements needed to actually make it happen, as well as years of different types of training. Once Cruise felt like he was comfortable with each aspect of the stunt, that’s when the crew built the film’s final ramp on a cliff in Norway. A crewmember added that Cruise did a total of six takes of one of the “biggest stunts in cinema history.” 

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'Mission: Impossible' Should’ve Never Killed This Character — and Tom Cruise Tried to Bring Them Back

This Mission: Impossible character deserved more than a single appearance.

The Big Picture

  • Emilio Estevez's character Jack Harmon in Mission: Impossible was killed off early, leaving fans wanting more.
  • Tom Cruise regrets killing off Jack Harmon and considered bringing him back for future movies.
  • The Mission: Impossible series has a history of forgetting about its IMF characters, leaving fan-favorite roles behind.

For nearly thirty years now, Tom Cruise has been wowing audiences everywhere with death-defacing stunts as Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible series of action films. Based on the original television series from the 1960s, Mission: Impossible was relaunched as a film series in 1996, and we've been thrilled ever since. But every once in a while, a character appears in the Cruise-led series that never returns. Sometimes they're written off, and sometimes they are killed, and in the case of Emilio Estevez 's Jack Harmon, we've never quite forgiven the franchise for killing him off in the very first movie.

Mission: Impossible

An American agent, under false suspicion of disloyalty, must discover and expose the real spy without the help of his organization.

Emilio Estevez Played a Break-out Character in the First 'Mission: Impossible'

When the first Mission: Impossible starts , Ethan Hunt (Cruise) works as an agent directed by his friend and mentor Jim Phelps (played by Jon Voight , who takes over the role from Peter Graves in the original series) with the Impossible Mission Force (IMF). But when Ethan's team is suddenly killed all around him, our favorite IMF agent is forced to clear his name and uncover the web of conspiracy that threatens to trap him. But one member of Ethan's original team stands out above the rest, one who died way too soon. Estevez's Jack Harmon is the team's resident tech guru and controls the elevators during their fateful mission in Prague . Sadly, it's the only field action the character ever gets.

We don't get to see too much of Estevez in Mission: Impossible . His character is killed in the very first act and the actor isn't even credited on-screen (either in the opening or in the end credits) for his part in the film. While Estevez doesn't get any billing for his work here, Jack's companionship with his IMF team, and Ethan in particular, helps establish the tight-knit bond between the largest IMF unit we've ever seen in the film series . The way the actors play it, these guys are a sort of make-shift family, and it's arguably the happiest we ever see Ethan Hunt until he meets Julia Meade ( Michelle Monaghan ) a few movies later. While Simon Pegg 's Benji Dunn took over the role of "the tech guy" in future installments, Estevez's Jack was the first man behind the computer screen. He and Ethan are clearly close, and Jack's sudden and brutal elevator death affects the IMF agent deeply.

Along with Jack, agents Sarah Davies ( Kristin Scott Thomas ) and Hannah Williams ( Ingeborga Dapkunaite ) are killed on the same Prague mission. As it turns out, their team leader, Jim Phelps, and his wife Claire ( Emmanuelle Béart ), are the ones behind the betrayal, and though Ethan survived to take the fall, he too was eventually supposed to die. Thankfully, with the help of Luther Stickell ( Ving Rhames ), Ethan clears his name and the rest is history, but his team is still dead, and that means no sequel for Jack Harmon. Sadly, Emilio Esteves never returned to Mission: Impossible , which is a tragedy since the actor was pretty popular at the time, with movie series like The Mighty Ducks and Young Guns ––the latter of which ironically killed Tom Cruise in a brief cameo role.

Tom Cruise Regrets Killing Jack Harmon in the First 'Mission: Impossible'

According to Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise personally asked him to take on the role of Jack Harmon in the first Mission: Impossible . "The way Tom had explained it, he said, “Look, I’d love for you to come and join the cast. The whole opening number where everybody gets wiped out, it’s going to be a lot of well-known people and all of them are going to go uncredited and it’s really going to set up the level of peril for Ethan," the actor told Uproxx in 2023. He also noted that he didn't even think twice about joining the cast, and jumped aboard as soon as possible. Estevez and Cruise had become friends years earlier while filming The Outsiders , though the two haven't appeared on-screen together since the 1996 Mission: Impossible .

Estevez later recounted a conversation he had with Cruise a year after Mission: Impossible came out. "'Man, we made such a mistake killing you off,'" Cruise reportedly told him, a sentiment we can't help but agree with ourselves. " He and [ Mission: Impossible 2 director] John Woo were trying to figure out a way to bring me back for part two, but it just didn’t make sense ," Estevez explained. "I thought you could have because with all the masks, right?" Now all we can think about is how fun it would've been to watch Estevez play Cruise's Ethan Hunt in Jack Harmon makeup––assuming the identity of a dead man would definitely be a smart move, Ethan––but sadly we never got that. Though, Cruise does get to play a disguised Sean Ambrose ( Dougray Scott ) in the sequel, pretending to be Ethan Hunt to frame the IMF agent.

With the advent of the artificial intelligence known as the Entity as Ethan's latest opponent, it seems like the odds of Estevez returning to the franchise may be less impossible than before. Henry Czerny already returned as Eugene Kittridge, who hadn't been seen since the 1996 film, in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning , and it seems like other familiar faces aren't out of the picture quite yet. Since A.I. can use deep fakes and make Ethan see things that aren't there , perhaps using images of his dead teammates against him would be a powerful motivator for Ethan Hunt's latest adventure. But, speculating aside, Estevez's Jack is a character who has been missed since his untimely death , and before the death of Ilsa Faust ( Rebecca Ferguson ) in Dead Reckoning , he was no doubt the biggest IMF fatality.

'Mission: Impossible' Has a Problem With Forgetting About Its IMF Characters

Throughout the Mission: Impossible franchise, we've seen plenty of cast members come and go . Sure, Benji Dunn and Luther Stickell keep coming back for more (and we love them for it), but aside from Ethan's most trusted allies, the only other members of Ethan's IMF team to return for seconds are Ilsa Faust and William Brandt ( Jeremy Renner ), who hasn't been seen since Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation . Thandiwe Newton 's Nyah Nordoff-Hall from Mission: Impossible 2 , Maggie Q 's Zhen Le and Jonathan Rhys Meyers ' Declan Gormle from Mission: Impossible III , and Paula Patton 's June Carter from Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol have all been forgotten about by subsequent sequels. And they're not the only ones, Anthony Hopkins and Lawrence Fishburne have yet to return as government higher-ups and IMF directors of years past themselves.

The IMF must have a high turnover rate or something, because Estevez's Jack Harmon clearly isn't the only agent to refuse a future mission. While Estevez has an excuse (being killed off will do that), the other surviving characters haven't found their way back to Ethan Hunt's core team for some reason, which is a crying shame. But since Tom Cruise shows no signs of slowing down, it's always possible that some of these seemingly forgotten IMF stars will make their way back into the world of international espionage . In fact, we hope they all choose to accept a final mission sometime down the line.

Mission: Impossible is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.

Watch on Paramount+

TheWrap

'Mission Impossible' Director Christopher McQuarrie Lets Go of Longtime Rep Team

I n an unexpected development, filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie has parted ways with his entire team of representatives, including his agents at CAA, manager Ken Kamins and attorney David Fox.

McQuarrie, known for helming the "Mission: Impossible" films starring Tom Cruise, is now represented by attorney Matt Galsor, who also represents Cruise.

The shakeup comes on the heels of this summer's "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One," which despite grossing a respectable $568.8 million worldwide fell short of sky-high expectations, especially following the massive success of "Top Gun: Maverick," which McQuarrie produced and co-wrote. "Dead Reckoning" also faced intense competition, opening just a week before "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer."

Christopher McQuarrie currently has the "Dead Reckoning" sequel still in development, as well as a highly-anticipated Untitled film with Universal, NASA and Space X to be shot in space co-starring Cruise and directed by Doug Liman.

Cruise and McQuarrie have developed a close collaborative relationship over the past decade. After McQuarrie did uncredited work on the script for 2011's "Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol," he took up both writing and directing duties for subsequent Cruise vehicles including "Jack Reacher," "Edge of Tomorrow," "Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation," and "Mission: Impossible – Fallout." He also wrote "Top Gun: Maverick," produced alongside Cruise and others, and will produce the forthcoming "Top Gun" sequel, should it go forward.

Deadline first reported the news on McQuarrie's rep team.

The post 'Mission Impossible' Director Christopher McQuarrie Lets Go of Longtime Rep Team appeared first on TheWrap .

Christopher McQuarrie

Tom Cruise’s 10 wildest stunts from the Mission: Impossible franchise

From scaling a skyscraper, free climbing a cliff and hanging to the side of an airplane in flight, Tom Cruise has faced countless death-defying moments in the Mission: Impossible franchise. His commitment to daredevil stunts have left him suffering from broken ribs, torn shoulders and a broken ankle yet he remains insistent on doing his own stunts, without the help of a double, no matter how jaw-dropping.

It seems, with each new edition to the franchise, the actor pushes himself to the limit. At the age of 61 he has conducted some of the most extreme stunts, his last one being in the seventh installment of the franchise, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, where he drove off a cliff while on a motorbike then effortlessly parachuted to the ground.

But it might be considered tame compared to some of his earlier stunts in the franchise. Let’s take a look back at the craziest stunts from the series.

10. Train chase – Mission: Impossible

This sequence from Mission: Impossible was, unsurprisingly, filmed using green screen, although Cruise had the brainwave of introducing incredibly powerful wind machines reaching 140mph to add realism. The equipment is normally used to train skydivers and there’s palpable force being exerted on him throughout. Cruise performed the stunt himself and the scene is just another example of the actor putting himself at the heart of the action in order to capture great footage.

9. Lobster tank explosion – Mission: Impossible

It isn’t the most spectacular sequence in the series but the water tank scene from the first Mission: Impossible proved one of the most problematic. Cruise badly injured his ankle running through the debris in the scene, which sees him use exploding gum to blow up a huge lobster tank containing 16 tons of water. Director Brian De Palma initially planned to use a stunt man, but later asked Cruise to film it himself to add realism. Despite injuring himself in the process, Cruise stepped up to the plate and set the president for realistic stunts throughout the franchise.

8. Skyscraper swing – Mission: Impossible III

Shanghai is the setting for one of the biggest, dumbest moments in Mission: Impossible III, which sees Cruise hurl himself from one skyscraper to another for reasons too implausible to mention. It’s great fun though and the moment Ving Rhames’ character Luther Stickell brilliantly delivers the line, “I knew he’d make it,” showed the franchise didn’t always take itself too seriously either.

7. Deep water – Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt is forced to hold his breath for six minutes in this gripping underwater sequence from Ghost Protocol. After jumping over 120 feet, Hunt is hit by machinery before ultimately losing consciousness and being saved by Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust. While the stunt was mostly filmed using CGI, the end result was one of the film’s most memorable sequences.

6. Langley break-in – Mission: Impossible

The first Mission: Impossible, while packed with action and Scooby Doo-esque mask reveals, remains the most understated instalment of the series. The sequence involving Cruise and Jean Reno’s Krieger infiltrating the CIA headquarters in Langley isn’t the most high-octane stunt in the franchise, but it’s certainly one of the most memorable. The set-piece, which sees Cruise come within inches of triggering the alarm, is arguably the most perfectly orchestrated in all the Mission: Impossible movies.

5. Bridge attack – Mission: Impossible III

Cruise cracked two ribs filming this scene from Mission: Impossible III, which saw him flung into the side of a car. Cruise runs from an explosion in the clip, before clambering from one side of the impacted bridge to another in a bid to stop Philip Seymour Hoffman’s arms dealer Owen Davian escaping. The scene formed one of the most enduring scenes in the third movie, which helped to steer the films back on course after the misguided second instalment.

4. Helicopter chase – Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Cruise took an intensive helicopter pilot course in order to conduct this thrilling sequence from Mission: Impossible – Fallout himself, showing an incredible commitment to authenticity. The shoot involved a total of 13 helicopters moving in close proximity, with Cruise flying, acting and operating cameras all at the same time. He performs corkscrew turns and incredible, death-defying turns through the mountainside that an experienced pilot would have been proud of, making this one of the most impressive sequences to date.

3. Climbing the Burj Khalifa – Mission: Impossible – The Ghost Protocol

There’s no green screen in play here – Cruise really did climb up the world’s tallest building for 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. The scene sees Ethan Hunt scale Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, dangling precariously from the building, combatting technical issues and an incoming sandstorm. Cruise was strapped to the building throughout the shoot and his insistence on doing it for real makes the scene all the more impressive. It’s certainly one of the most high-profile movie stunts conducted in recent years.

2. Rock Climbing – Mission: Impossible II

John Woo’s preposterous, overblown action movie Mission: Impossible II starts, suitably, with truly staggering footage of Cruise dangling from a cliff face, 2,000 feet above ground. Although Cruise wore a harness during filming, he shot the entire sequence without a safety net. The stunning footage came at a cost though — Cruise injured himself while jumping from one ledge to another, ripping his shoulder in the process.

1. Prepare for takeoff – Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Only Tom Cruise would have the bottle to pull of a stunt as crazy as this incredible scene from Rogue Nation. The actor hangs off the side of an Airbus A400 travelling at 160mph in this incredible sequence, which marks the most high-profile stunt ever performed in the Mission Impossible movies. “I’m feeling the force of the wind hit me. I’m actually scared s***less,” he said while describing the scene in a video featurette – no wonder. The truly staggering thing is Cruise did eight takes of the heart-stopping scene, proving his status as one of the most committed actors in Hollywood.

IMAGES

  1. Mission Impossible Rogue Nation Tom Cruise Wallpapers

    tom cruise mission impossible rogue nation

  2. 2160x3840 Tom Cruise As Ethan Hunt In Mission Impossible Fallout Movie

    tom cruise mission impossible rogue nation

  3. VIDEO REVIEW: Is "Rogue Nation" Tom Cruise's Last 'Mission: Impossible

    tom cruise mission impossible rogue nation

  4. Mission Impossible Rogue Nation Tom Cruise Film iPad Air Wallpapers

    tom cruise mission impossible rogue nation

  5. Mission Impossible Wallpapers

    tom cruise mission impossible rogue nation

  6. 'Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation' Review: Better Than Bourne, Better

    tom cruise mission impossible rogue nation

VIDEO

  1. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE ROGUE NATION Behind The Scenes

  2. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE ROGUE NATION Behind The Scenes

  3. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE ROGUE NATION Behind The Scenes

  4. Mission Impossible

  5. Stunts Tom Cruise Did For The Sake of Cinema

COMMENTS

  1. Mission: Impossible

    Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation: Directed by Christopher McQuarrie. With Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson. Ethan and his team take on their most impossible mission yet when they have to eradicate an international rogue organization as highly skilled as they are and committed to destroying the IMF.

  2. Mission: Impossible

    Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is a 2015 American action spy film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie from a story by McQuarrie and Drew Pearce.It is the sequel to Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) and the fifth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series.It stars Tom Cruise in the main role, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean ...

  3. Mission: Impossible

    Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation Matt Zoller Seitz July 27, 2015. Tweet. MI: Rogue Nation. Now streaming on: Powered by JustWatch. The Tom Cruise-ist moment in the history of Tom Cruise films was the one in "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" where Tom Cruise's super-agent escaped a 9/11 style bombing of the Kremlin and a false arrest as the ...

  4. Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation

    With the IMF now disbanded and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) out in the cold, a new threat -- called the Syndicate -- soon emerges. ... Watch Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation with a subscription on ...

  5. Watch Mission: Impossible

    Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. With his organization shut down, agent Ethan Hunt and his team race against time to stop a dangerous network of rogue operatives turned traitors. To defeat them, he must join forces with an elusive agent as he faces his most impossible mission yet. 30,378 IMDb 7.4 2 h 11 min 2015. X-Ray HDR UHD PG-13.

  6. Film Review: 'Mission: Impossible

    Film Review: 'Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation' Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie delivers an unusually spry and satisfying fifth entry in the Tom Cruise-starring series.

  7. Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation Trailer

    The Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation trailer starring Tom Cruise. Get advance tickets: http://bit.ly/MIRogueNationTix

  8. Mission: Impossible

    Returning to make a mockery of the series title for a fifth time, Cruise ploughs through Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, a sequel that is slick with silliness, but peppered with enough wit ...

  9. Mission: Impossible

    Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6hSubscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUnLike us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73Follow us on TWITTER: http:/...

  10. Review: 'Mission: Impossible

    For the fifth "Mission: Impossible" movie, Mr. Cruise is joined by, among others, Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson.

  11. Mission: Impossible Movies in Order

    Tom Cruise has been the face of the Mission: Impossible franchise for 25 years, playing the daring and intelligent Ethan Hunt. ... Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is the fifth film in the ...

  12. Mission Impossible: How Tom Cruise's Record Breaking Underwater Heist

    Tom Cruise's underwater stunt in the fifth Mission: Impossible movie, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, was one of the hardest to shoot and remains one of the craziest stunts in a franchise full of them. The memorable sequence involving Cruise's super-spy Ethan Hunt even tops the Burj Khalifa stunt in Ghost Protocol.During the heist, Cruise's character has to access a secure vault in order ...

  13. Mission Impossible: How Tom Cruise Pulled Off Rogue Nation's Plane Stunt

    After Tom Cruise landed safe and sound for the eighth time, the only remaining thing director Christopher McQuarrie had to do was to edit out the wires and the additional cameras that were attached to the plane. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation kept the franchise's tradition of upping the ante from the get-go. However, few other franchises keep ...

  14. How Tom Cruise Did That Insane Plane Stunt For Mission: Impossible

    The first full trailer for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation ends with quite a bang, and a stunt that easily rivals the Burj Khalifa sequence in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.The sight of ...

  15. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation: Behind the Scenes of the Tom Cruise

    New behind the scenes footage from the upcoming 'Rogue Nation' film shows Tom Cruise hanging from the side of a plane in-flight. "If something went wrong, I ...

  16. How Tom Cruise Fixed M:I Rogue Nation's Ending With One Decision

    Tom Cruise played an important role in how audiences saw the ending of Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.The Mission: Impossible series has become Cruise's most bankable franchise after four decades of being a box-office superstar. Though the original Mission: Impossible film, based on the popular 1960s TV series, was a major release in 1996, the M:I franchise struggled to establish consistency ...

  17. This Is Tom Cruise's Wildest Stunt in the Mission: Impossible Franchise

    The underwater heist sequence in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is considered one of the franchise's best stunts due to its unique and original nature. Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson ...

  18. Tom Cruise Underwater Stunt for Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation

    "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation" doesn't hit theaters until Friday, but you've probably already caught a glimpse of Cruise's latest stunt in which he hangs on the side of a massive airplane ...

  19. Where was Mission: Impossible

    The 2015 installment of the action spy film series Mission Impossible, was the fifth from the globetrotter franchise and is widely considered one of the best in the saga. It's been almost 20 years since the first movie of the series starring Tom Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt was released in 1996. On this occasion, Rogue Nation was filmed in Morocco, Austria, and the United Kingdom.

  20. Did Tom Cruise Do His Own Stunts In 'Mission: Impossible

    The trailer for the fifth installment in the Mission Impossible series, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, is insanely action-packed and features Tom Cruise appearing to risk his life more times ...

  21. 12 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts

    In 2015's Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Cruise decided to take his intense stunts to the sky. In the film, the actor can be seen dangling on the outside of an Airbus 400 as it takes off.

  22. Tom Cruise Tried to Bring Back This Dead 'Mission: Impossible' Character

    For nearly thirty years now, Tom Cruise has been wowing audiences everywhere with death-defacing stunts as Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible series of action films. Based on the original ...

  23. Mission Impossible 8: Release Date, Cast, Plot, More

    No one does action movies like Tom Cruise, so Mission: Impossible fans were simultaneously excited and sad to learn that the franchise's latest entry, ... Rogue Nation and Fallout, ...

  24. 'Mission: Impossible

    Tom Cruise's insatiable appetite for daredevil stunts seems to just keep on growing. He made his mark as a respectable stuntman in his own right when he blew away audiences by scaling Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, for Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol; later, he dropped jaws with news of another crazy-dangerous stunt, hanging out of an A400 airplane as it takes off for ...

  25. Mission: Impossible

    Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6hSubscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUnLike us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73Follow us on TWITTER: http:/...

  26. 'Mission Impossible' Director Christopher McQuarrie Lets Go of ...

    McQuarrie, known for helming the "Mission: Impossible" films starring Tom Cruise, is now represented by attorney Matt Galsor, who also represents Cruise. ... Rogue Nation," and "Mission ...

  27. Tom Cruise's 10 wildest stunts from the Mission: Impossible franchise

    Prepare for takeoff - Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. Only Tom Cruise would have the bottle to pull of a stunt as crazy as this incredible scene from Rogue Nation.

  28. Mission: Impossible: Skydiver wins award for Tom Cruise stunt work

    "It was surreal", says skydiver about Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One stunt.