Tom Cruise is known to up his stakes with each daring stunts he perform for his movies, but why do studios stand by him despite the risks?
Tom Cruise was looking at a career in wrestling when an injury pushed him into acting. Cruise was a real go-getter during his wrestling days and kept it the same way in his movies. When it came to dangerous stunts, the actor took it upon himself to deliver it with authenticity. He performs the stunts in his films himself, thanks to his athletic background.
Cruise’s stunts have become a symbolic part of his action films. However, it also results in huge production costs for the studio, which they don’t seem to mind. The Jerry Maguire actor’s fans always want to see him in action. While the actor is 62, he doesn’t stop himself from giving his full effort into a film.
Tom Cruise’s Death-Defying Stunts In Mission: Impossible Films
Earlier this year, news came out that Tom Cruise was filming another stunt for Mission: Impossible 8, intending to top his previous stunts. He was captured performing daring stunts on a flying plane in July. Daily Mail UK released photos of Cruise hanging from the side of a plane that flew upside down.
In his seventh MI film, he kickstarted the filming by performing one of the most dangerous stunts in his career. Cruise shared with ET that he decided to film it early in their schedule to not hurt the $200 million+ production if he got injured, or worse. He shared that he prepped hard for the scene and just wanted to be done with it, and have his mind somewhere else while shooting the rest of the film.
He also learned to do Speed-flying for the film, which Christopher McQuarrie called “one of the most dangerous sports in the world” (via THR). His worries about production costs may have arisen after his horrible injury in Mission: Impossible – Fallout caused the production to shut down. While jumping between high-rise buildings during a chase scene, he broke his ankle by hitting it against the side of the building (via The Graham Norton Show).
In Rogue Nation, Cruise was seen hanging off an Airbus 400 in the sky. It was a high-risk stunt scene, where the crew had to ensure that all safety measures were in place to protect him. According to cinematographer Robert Elswit, the protection measures included a full body harness that was wired to the plane and special contact lenses to cover his eyes. He shared with THR:
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. He was also wearing special contact lenses to protect his eyes.
The safety crew also kept an eye out for weather conditions and made sure that the runway was clean so that no objects flew at Cruise during the stunt. Elswit shared:
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.
Before dangling off a plane, Cruise hung off from the highest skyscraper in the world for Ghost Protocol. With only a wire supporting him, Cruise ran around, climbed, and swung from the Burj Khalifa. Stunt coordinator Gregg Smrz remembered telling director Brad Bird (via Yahoo! Entertainment):
Do you have any idea what we’re doing? We’re climbing 1,700 feet in the air, 200 feet up a building. This has never been done before, and it’ll never be done again, because they’re never going to allow it.
He also hung from the side of a cliff on just the support of a safety cable, making the director of Mission: Impossible II, John Woo, frantic with worry. In the first film’s aquarium blow-up scene, it was he who was running away from 16 gallons of water behind him.
Tom Cruise’s Other Prominent Stunts That Made Him A True Hero For Fans
Tom Cruise actually took lessons inside a fighter jet with real pilots for his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the original Top Gun. The filming of the stunts did have risks as well. During one of the scenes where Goose and Maverick are ejected from the jet and parachuted into the water, Cruise narrowly escaped a deadly fate.
Actor Barry Tubb recalled to the New York Post in 2011 that Cruise “came as close to dying as anybody on a set I’ve ever seen.” He shared that the actor nearly drowned when water began building up in his parachute. It was caught early enough to get Cruise to safety.
He once again took the G-Forces head-on when flying F/A-18 jets in Top Gun: Maverick. In The Mummy, Cruise used a plane that NASA uses to train astronauts to film his scene in a cargo plane. The plane flew up to 25,000 feet and did a free fall for 22 seconds to film Cruise in zero gravity.
He escaped two car accidents on set. For the first time, Jamie Foxx crashed his car into Cruise’s Mercedes Benz in Collateral. Cruise told Today that the car toppled and he was tossed around the car. He was also by Emily Blunt‘s side when she crashed a car into a tree in Edge of Tomorrow (via Conan).
During the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics this year, Cruise did a live stunt for the audience. In order to mark Los Angeles hosting the next games, Cruise jumped off the roof of the Stade de France and descended into France’s national stadium. He then took the Olympic flag to Los Angeles, jumping out of a plane over what appeared to be the Hollywood sign.
How Much Does Tom Cruise’s Stunts Cost The Production?
The actual cost of filming the stunt with Tom Cruise is much higher than using a stunt double. While Cruise might be as skilled as a trained professional after years of executing his stunts, he undergoes an elaborate training routine before his stunts. According to Gregg Smrz, Cruise put in 200 hours to practice his Burj Khalifa stunt on an adjustable wall they built for it.
The riskier the stunts, the higher the production cost went. While Ghost Protocol had a budget of $145 million, Rogue Nation had a budget of $150 million (via The Numbers). According to THR, Fallout‘s budget jumped to $250 million. This inflated budget pointed out a major problem in actors doing their own stunts.
The outlet reported that the actual budget of the film was around the $180 million mark. However, Cruise’s angle injury caused the production to shut down for nine weeks, thus inflating the budget by at least $70 million. However, this extra cost was covered by insurance, which brings us to the next big problem.
A report from The Wrap covered the insurance costs incurred by the films due to Cruise’s daring stunts. According to the report, the total insurance costs of any film are called the Production Package insurance. It covers cast, third-party property damage, props, sets, wardrobe, and other equipment. The premiums are usually 1% to 2.5% of the production budget.
For a film like Mission: Impossible 7, the cost would have been between $2.9 million and $4.4 million. However, Cruise’s stunts change things. It needs to be covered under a separate policy. They carry higher rates and are charged at a lower limit than the full budget.
According to The Wrap, they “can cost 5% to 20% of policy limits and require a deductible of up to 10% to cover a film’s full budget.” Moreover, they are provided only by specialty carriers which further raises the overall production cost.
Why Do Production Houses Pay Such Insane Amounts For Tom Cruise To Perform The Stunt Himself?
Tom Cruise goes to extreme lengths to get himself into dangerous stunts. Matt Damon revealed that Cruise once told him how he got rid of his safety guy who suggested that his stunt was too dangerous to perform (via Conan). The production houses allow him to be like that since the actor’s stunts have become part of the marketing strategy of the film.
It appears that the producers have found out that the more riskier a Tom Cruise stunt is, the more people will watch it in theaters. It brought about an increasing head count for each subsequent Mission: Impossible film until the last film. The stunt factor was also partially responsible for Top Gun 2 becoming the actor’s highest-grossing film.
While Barbenheimer doomed the fate of his seventh MI film last year, he hoped to gain back his loyal fans with the MI 8 stunts. Fans even separately rate the stunts of his film, ranking it according to its risk factor. A dedicated artist like Cruise will always strive to rank first every time.