A biplane is gliding in the frame on a sunny day in South Africa’s Blyde River Canyon, with a man sitting on top of the wings rather than in the cockpit. Tom Cruise is the man.
Apparently from the set of his upcoming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, a video of the Hollywood action star Tom Cruise discussing the value of the theatre experience while filming a midair sequence for the eighth instalment of the beloved franchise has surfaced on social media.
The video was initially shown prior to the premiere of the Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One trailer at this year’s CinemaCon in April, which also featured the first viewing of Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, according to Collider.
In the video, Cruise is seen flying in a biplane while speaking to the camera as he repeats the magic of the theatre experience for theatre owners who were present at CinemaCon. With a wider view of the valley as the camera pans out, one can truly see the risky stunt Cruise is pulling off.
Christopher McQuarrie, the director of Mission Impossible, is seated in another aircraft that appears in the scene. The director cuts off Cruise’s message and requests that he finish because the team is “losing the light” and “low on fuel,” respectively. Cruise is now perched atop the wings of the aircraft. The plane tilts to the left and zooms out as he salutes and says, “See you at the movies.”
Aerobatic pilot Tom Cruise is renowned for performing dangerous, elaborate movie stunts on his own. His most recent film, Top Gun: Maverick, broke box office records and even outperformed Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War in terms of receipts.
In his earlier movies, Cruise was pictured scaling the Burj Al Khalifa, the tallest structure in the world, and being fastened to the side of an aircraft as it took off. In the first Dead Reckoning Part One trailer, Cruise can be seen seemingly riding a motorcycle off a cliff.