Tom Cruise’s Death-Defying Mission: Impossible 7 Stunt Leaks Online

You know that feeling of relief you get when you’re watching a nail-biting film sequence and you realise none of it is real and the actors were never actually in harm’s way?
Well, you’re not going to get any of that relief while watching Mission: Impossible 7, because it turns out Tom Cruise is doing his own death-defying stunts and they look absolutely terrifying.
Footage of one such stunt recently leaked online, and shows the 58-year-old actor riding a motorbike off a long ramp over the edge of a steep mountaintop, after which the motorbike goes crashing to the ground and he follows after it.Thankfully, Cruise had a parachute attached to him and so, as his motorbike careened to the ground, he parachuted to safety. But still, the moments leading up to it were unnerving to say the least.
The actor completed the stunt on Sunday, September 6, from the 1,246-metre Helsetkopen in Stranda, Norway, with the whole thing captured by Norwegian news site NRK. Prior to riding off the mountain, Cruise had travelled to the top in a helicopter before attempting the stunt a number of times.
Ole Arnstein Ringdal, who was one of the hundreds of people who gathered to watch the stunt, told NRK he saw Cruise ride off the mountain four times, adding: ‘After the third jump, he came over and talked to us from a distance of twenty metres. He loves nature here, and is very grateful for the hospitality he has experienced.’Prior to the footage being leaked online, Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie had shared a picture on Instagram, showing the long ramp on top of the mountain.
‘Action…’ he wrote, adding that it was the first day of filming for Mission: Impossible 7. The figure of a person can be see standing on the ramp in the picture, but their identity was not made clear.
Many assumed at the time that the ramp was the set of a motorcycle stunt, an assumption that was proven to be spot on with the leaked footage.Of course, Tom Cruise is known for doing all of his own stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise, so this isn’t an unusual site – especially as he doesn’t appear to be scared of heights, like, at all.
Don’t believe me? Cast your mind back to Rogue Nation, when he dangled from the side of an aeroplane as it took off. Or in Fallout, where in the film’s climactic helicopter chase he actually piloted the aircraft through various stunts such as a downward spiral. Or the rooftop chase, also in Fallout, in which Cruise literally broke his ankle.
And despite Fallout’s helicopter chase being perhaps the most ambitious and dangerous action sequence ever attempted in a Mission: Impossible film, McQuarrie has said the upcoming film will have at least three action scenes that will overshadow that scene entirely.‘We’ve figured out three obscene things that [Cruise is] doing that I’m terrified of, that make the helicopter chase look like tinker toys,’ the director told Empire.
If this stunt is anything to go by, Mission: Impossible 7 is going to be absolutely epic.