“For me, it’s part of the challenge of making movies,” says Cruise. “You can’t take undue risks, but if you can train and perform a stunt in a way that gives the movie credibility – ‘Wow, that really is that guy doing that’ – then it makes for a more entertaining experience for the audience.
One of the centerpiece stunts in the film is a sequence on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. “These are unique moves,” says Armstrong. “At one point, the bridge is blown apart; Ethan has to jump over a fifteen foot gap – he just makes it and hangs on by his finger nails. Tom had to hit the other side hard – people know what an impact looks like when you jump that sort of distance.”
Another impressive stunt on the bridge required Cruise to escape a rocket hit on one of the vehicles; he is lifted and blown across the bridge by the force of the explosion into a parked car. “He hits it so hard he blows out the back window,” says Armstrong. “We controlled the rig – on explosion, we ratcheted him into the side of the car. And he really hit it – he went in horizontally, flying through the air. The impact dented the door on the vehicle. And then, we did the stunt two or three more times. Tom really is game – if any stuntman had that shot on their resume, they would be very, very proud of it.”
Cruise, though, takes it in stride. “It’s like being a wide receiver going over the middle – you know that you are going to get stuffed by the middle line backer as hard as he can hit you. I want it to be exciting for an audience; I hope they’ll be right with that character at that moment. It had to be real.” To prepare for the stunts in “M:i:III,” Cruise trained for many months.
“When I was releasing ‘War of the Worlds,’ I was training every day while I was traveling. I would do a warm up in the morning, then practice ‘dynamic movement,’” he notes. Often used by rock climbers, dynamic movement involves movement through momentum, rather than by becoming balanced. This type of movement is high-energy, requiring effort to keep momentum going, but by using an efficient use of a moving center-of-gravity, a person can reach further than by starting standing still. “My goal was to get everything going,” continues Cruise. “I needed that dynamic, explosive speed for what we all wanted to accomplish with the action and the story.”
Another dramatic stunt in “M:i:III” is a jump off an eighty-foot building. “He jumps – and free-falls for about fifty feet,” says Armstrong. “It was essential that Tom perform the stunt – not only do we see the jump and the fall, but Tom acting as the character falling. It wasn’t about just having the guts to shut his eyes and jump on a bungee jump; Tom not only had to jump, but act as well. It’s one of the most amazing things I have seen an actor do.”
“Tom drops, stopping eighteen inches above the concrete, and I found myself talking to someone else between takes,” says J.J. Abrams. “I realized I had become complacent about having Tom Cruise – who was entirely my responsibility – dangling from a crane, dropping at breakneck speed, stopping just above the ground. I remember thinking: ‘I have to get back to being terrified.’”
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