Tom Cruise Shares The Intense Details and Footage Of How They Pulled off the Impossible Halo Jump Stunt in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT

Everyone told Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie that it was impossible. Tom Cruise wanted to do a Halo jump stunt for Mission: Impossible - Fallout. This means he wanted to jump out of a plane at 25,000 to 35,000 feet and then pull his shute at the closest he possibly could to the ground without being killed. Halo stands for high altitude low open. It was previously explained:

"Just one shot left. At 25,000 feet. At 200 mph. At dusk. Three minutes of available light. Two minutes of action. One chance per day. Just one."

But there was so much more to it than that! During the presentation at CinemaCon, the actor and director broke down everything that they needed to accomplish with this stunt. And it was incredible, it's crazy that they actually pulled it off!

Tom Cruise had to do some crazy shit. He had to act through the whole thing and also in the process save Henry Cavil's character, who by the way, jumped out of the plane with Cruise!

The three-minute scene takes place above Paris at sunset. Hunt and CIA agent August Walker (Henry Cavill) skydive at 25,000 feet into a freakin' lightning storm and are struck by lightning while in free fall and that leaves Walker unconscious, requiring Hunt to somehow catch Walker and revive Walker before they hit the ground.

This had to all be done for real, while they were falling! One of the main challenges they needed to figure out was how to show audiences that Cruise was the one actually jumping out of the plane and falling. The director said, “How much is physically possible without killing Tom?” 

They showed off an early animatic of how they wanted the sequence to play out and from that, they needed to figure out how to do it for real. The whole thing resulting in over 106 jumps to get only 3 usable takes, which we saw some raw footage of at the presentation, and let me tell you... it was extremely intense!

To get the shot exactly right, after cruise jumps out of the plane, he had to position himself exactly three feet away from the camera in mid-air while falling 200 mph. If he was just a bit off of three feet he would be out of focus. It had to be exact.

The cameraman had a custom camera rig attached to his head who followed cruise around while he was on the plane and then had to jump out of it backwards right before Cruise jumped out. Oh yeah, and since the camera operator had no idea what the camera was seeing, he had to “focus manually by instinct alone”. Here's a previously released photo. You can see the cameraman crouching down facing Tom Cruise. The cameraman had to crouch the whole time while walking on the plane to make sure the camera was in line with Tom's face.

After jumping out of the plane, after being struck by lightning, Cruise had to then find Cavill as he was falling lifelessly, race over to him, unlatch the breathing tube and oxygen to his helmet, for real, while falling, and then attach it to Cavill's Helmet, which everyone said would be impossible, but they pulled it off. They did it! Cruise then pulled Cavill's ripcord and his chute deployed.

However, if one thing went wrong, there could have been a complete disaster. There are so many elements to this and so many moving parts. The fact that they were actually able to pull it off was absolutely incredible. 

The raw footage that we were shown of this scene was so freakin' amazing and crazy intense! It's got to be one of the greatest movie stunts ever performed and Tom Cruise was actually the one who pulled it off! 

I love the Mission: Impossible franchise and Fallout looks like it's going to be the most insane one yet. I don't know how they are going to top it if they do another one! The stunts in this movie are just over-the-top incredible! 

The best intentions often come back to haunt you. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT finds Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team (Alec Baldwin, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames) along with some familiar allies (Rebecca Ferguson, Michelle Monaghan) in a race against time after a mission gone wrong. Henry Cavill, Angela Bassett, and Vanessa Kirby also join the dynamic cast with filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie returning to the helm.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout lights the fuse on July 27th.