Tom Cruise has done some absolutely incredible stunts over the years. He’s climbed the tallest building in the world and he’s driven motorcycles off of cliffs. The way that Cruise presents himself, it’s as if it’s all in a day's work. However, Simon Pegg says that the movie star does get nervous, at least sometimes, as he once did before the major set piece of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.
Simon Pegg has been on hand for most of the Mission: Impossible movies and thus has had a front row seat to Tom Cruise’s wild stunts. Pegg tells People Cruise was smiling the entire time he was hanging off the Burj Khalifa for Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. However, that wasn’t the case when Cruise had to hang off the outside of a cargo plane for Rogue Nation. Pegg said…
That was the first time I'd seen him nervous. There were a lot of variables involved in that stunt ... a lot of things that could have gone wrong. Everything is managed to the micro detail. You know, the stunt team is amazing. Tom is obviously incredibly dedicated to making sure he's ready.
Hanging off a cargo jet as Cruise does in Rogue Nation is the sort of stunt where lots can do wrong. There’s, of course, there's wind that’s pushing against him the entire time, but hanging off a plane also opens Cruise up to flying debris of all sorts. It’s the kind of thing that can’t really be controlled for in the moment, and could have led to serious injury had anything actually hit him. The stunt
Certainly, every precaution is taken to ensure safety on these stunts. Everybody is well aware of what the worst-case scenario is. But one can imagine that hanging off the side of an airplane in mid-air, there’s only so much that can be done. It feels like whatever harness is designed to keep somebody from falling off a building would feel safer than whatever harness was designed to keep somebody from falling off an airplane. The Cruise didn't only make the actor nervous. Cruise admits it also terrified his mother.
Of course, one then has to wonder how one of the major stunts for Mission: Impossible -The Final Reckoning compares to the others, considering it was also a stunt that involved Cruise hanging from an airplane. Rather than being a massive cargo jet, Cruise is seen hanging off the wing of a small plane in the Final Reckoning trailers. Maybe the fact that the plane was smaller actually made it less scary.
Honestly, it’s nice to know that Tom Cruise even gets nervous pulling off some of these stunts. He’s always looking so confident so much of the time that it humanizes him to know that he is capable of fear.
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