Mission: Imposstble - Rogue Nation (2015) Behind-The-Scenes Cruising Altitude

We knew we needed some sort of a spectacle. It's become a rite of passage for a mission impossible. We had a big legacy to live up to. Jim Bissell, the production designer, came to me with this model of this plane and said, what would you do with this? And I turned to Tom and I said, half joking, what if you were on the outside of that thing when it took off? You know, you think about stuff like that as a kid. What would it be like out on that wing? And when McHugh said, look, what about hanging off the side of an A400? I said, all right, yeah, let's do it. Let's do this. The biggest challenge was once you dream it up, somebody had to actually say, yes, you could do it. All the health and safety aspects that come into play, you know, you can't hang a multimillion dollar star on the outside of an airplane and fly around it. It became this question of how do you not just get the insurance, which I still don't know how he does that, but how much do you want to really risk the life of this person? Because it's very easy for all of us, you know, who are wearing sweaters to say, OK, Tom Cruise is going to go hold on to the side of an airplane when it takes off. It's nothing to be the person who's doing it. Tom really wanted to be on the outside of that plane flying at altitude and hanging on. He really did. Airbus did not know for certain that the plane could structurally deal with what we were considering. We basically looked at it like it were crazy, to be honest. So we had to convince them. So from my side, it was a lot of drawings and engineering and a lot of talks and letting them trust me. You know, once we had their trust, that was so helpful. It was brilliant. I remember I couldn't sleep the night before. And I was thinking, OK, kind of just going through my mind, did we check everything out? We wanted that shot where as it's on its climb, you see the Earth move away from you at a very high speed. So his angle of attack had to be very steep. There was an incredibly precise margin of error in the throttle. The plane had to be going fast enough to stay airborne, but it couldn't be going so fast that Tom simply would be torn off regardless of what safety measures we had. We had scleral lenses fitted for my eyes. I tested those because we were also worried, as the wind is blowing, if it could fold the lens over on itself, which would have been very uncomfortable and not so safe. The risk of any debris that was on the airfield. Any particle that could hit me, even a small little rock. If it was sucked into the propeller and hit Tom, it would be travelling at the speed of a bullet. If that goes into my eye, it's going to go through my eye. And there was nothing to protect his face. It was going to be shot in the wintertime. It was incredibly cold where we were. And Tom was going to be wearing a suit, under which he could not be wearing any sort of real substantial thermal protection. Then we're also concerned about bird strikes. As he came in, he hit an owl. It hit it so hard, you can actually see the feathers. We simply could not control the variable of birds flying in the path of that airplane. And if a bird hit Tom at that speed, on any part of his body, that would have been the end. If I see a bird, I'm going to press up against the side of the airplane. And I never mention it to anyone, but I'm a pilot, so I knew what the exhaust was going to be like. You know, everyone's looking at all these kind of problems, and I thought, this also could be a problem, in terms of the extended amount of time back there could be poisonous. I felt very confident with the team, with the pilot, and I feel very confident with Wade and everything. And that was a very ballsy thing for Tom to do, you know, to take off and rely on our rigging to hold a little bit of wire that said it should be rated for X amount. If we start taking off, we're taxiing. You guys can leave me my smartphone. Like any stunt, anything could go wrong. I had one chord here say, that breaks. You know, those are the things you think about. If something went wrong, they can't pull me into the airplane. That's it. And then came the day. I was like, okay, this is, you know, this is really going to happen. When you're doing any kind of thing, we have different levels of joking with one another to keep things calm and focused. When we're going through something like that, I just keep thinking about an audience, and I think about the shots, the storytelling. And you also want to focus in on performance. The engine started. The plane was on the runway, and I was looking at Tom through the camera, and I realized there was something I wanted him to do. I had to get out of the plane to go direct Tom. In order to do that, I had to walk behind the engines. It was very cold, and suddenly it became intensely hot. It's just the fuel was just this absolutely stifling wave of exhaust. You couldn't inhale. It was so foul. And then you walk between the engines, and it was freezing cold again. Then walk behind the next engine, and it was hot again. And pass through that heat barrier, and there was Tom. And he's clinging to the side of this metal plane with his bare hands. He had hearing protection in. I couldn't see when I had the lenses in. They protected my eyes, but it cost me my eyesight. I was basically directing through pantomime. I finished giving him some direction, and he said to me... Don't worry about me. I said, if I look terrified... If it looks like I'm panicking... Just, it's performance. I'm just acting. I'm acting. Don't break the shot, you know. I'll tell you when to break the shot. Just keep going. Because I also know everyone kind of... You know, they have their own quiet panic about it. And I want to calm people down. I said, okay. And I walked back behind the engines, and back in front of the engines. And got on the plane, and sat down and realized... We have no idea what's really going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen next. And with that, the plane took off. I give it the thumbs up to camera. They're inside the airplane, and I'm telling, you know... Let's go, let's go, let's go. And he's pushing that throttle forward. And we are hammering down that runway. And I'm like, holy ----. The force of it. I mean, I was just trying to keep my feet on the ground. Because I always had in my mind the image of when the airplane took off. My feet are going to come off. I'm hanging on the side of this. And the force of that wind. I mean, it's... You see, I'm trying desperately to keep my feet on the flooring there. And that feeling, man. It just... The airplane left the ground. And I couldn't hold my feet on the side of that airplane anymore. And suddenly I do feel that force of my body going up against the side of that fuselage. I'm thinking timing. Because how high are we above the ground? Now do I say my line? You know, they want the line at a particular time. Where the lighting's good. Am I in shadow? So all of these other things are really occupying my mind. I'm just on board for a ride and a look around. Tom's just hanging off for shits and giggles. It's an extraordinary shot to see him out there on the outside of that airplane. And he was having fun too. I'm scared shitless. We landed. It was like, good, I got that out of my system. You know, it's always the first one. It's like, alright, everyone feels a little calmer. You know, everything's fine. It was kind of, is he still alive? Was what I was thinking. And I kind of thought that was a one take. And he was going to do it once and then walk away. I just said to the camera, I went like this. And I said, let's go again, let's go again, I'm ready. He did it eight times. Every time it was like, holy ----. Seems like he enjoyed it. Every time they were like, let's stop. But I wanted to make sure that we had that shot. It was kind of mind blowing and ridiculous. I don't know what he's going to do next. Go into space probably. It's a combination of elation that we've actually achieved it. And relief that nothing went wrong. I can still taste the fuel. It was a great sequence and it went absolutely flawlessly. There was a point where we didn't believe that any of this was feasibly possible. That was really amazing watching him do that. And watching him smile while he was doing it. He was just having a time of his life.