Watch Tom Cruise Drive a Motorcycle Off a Mountain in Ridiculous Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Stunt

In the grand tradition of Mission: Impossible movies, you really can’t kick off another entry in the series without finding a way to very plausibly kill franchise star/action junkie/prominent Scientologist Tom Cruise. And wouldn’t you know it, we now have a look at the way Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One started its shoot, with the motorcycle stunt to end all motorcycle stunts. In the featurette below, you can see the absurdly dedicated Cruise training in every aspect of skydiving and motorcycle jumping, in order to prepare himself for the following: Driving off a ramp at the top of a mountain, so he can plummet down thousands of feet into a base jump.

The footage, suffice to say, is pretty wild, and it has the intended effect of making the viewer consider the backbreaking labor, planning and training that goes into such an absurd stunt being performed by the franchise star. Cruise personally logged 500 skydives and more than 13,000 motocross jumps just in the training period leading up to the actual jump, before then repeating the stunt another half dozen times for full coverage. It’s white-knuckle just to watch director Christopher McQuarrie in the booth, wondering if each time he’s sending Cruise to his death as he falls off the mountain, waiting for the parachute to deploy. Side note: We frustratingly never get to see the motorcycle impact with the ground below, which surely the producers would know we’re craving.

Dead Reckoning Part One is the sequel to 2018’s Fallout, and brings together the usual Mission: Impossible ensemble, including Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Hayley Atwell, Shea Whigham, Pom Klementieff, Esai Morales, Rob Delaney, Henry Czerny and Cary Elwes. There’s no word on the film’s plot, but somehow we get a sense that the Impossible Missions Force might just have to embark on some sort of really, really difficult mission. Possibly.

The film hits theaters on July 14, 2023, to be followed by Dead Reckoning Part Two on June 28, 2024. Maybe in that one, Cruise will somehow drive a motorcycle back up the mountain, but for now you can simply marvel at the featurette below.