When it comes to stunts in the Mission: Impossible films, Tom Cruise refuses to settle for ‘just enough’ or ‘impressive’ — he goes straight for insane. Here are the franchise’s craziest sequences that test the limits of what’s possible.

Tom Cruise has never met a death-defying stunt he didn’t want to try himself. Over seven films (and counting), he’s turned ‘impossible’ into ‘just another Monday afternoon’. From skyscraper climbs to airborne insanity, here’s a countdown of the franchise’s wildest, most jaw-dropping moments.

8) Shanghai Skyscraper Jump (Mission: Impossible III)

Chasing the mysterious ‘Rabbit’s Foot’, Ethan Hunt launches himself off one Shanghai skyscraper and swings onto another.

Cruise wanted to perform this stunt for real, but this one got the green-screen treatment — though he still free-fell 15 m from a crane, stopping just 45 cm above the ground. Not the riskiest stunt in the series, but a solid warm-up.

7) Restaurant Fish Tank Explosion (Mission: Impossible)

Everyone remembers the cable drop in Mission: Impossible, but do you remember the fish tank blast? In Prague’s Akvárium restaurant, Ethan realises he’s surrounded by IMF agents, then uses exploding gum to shatter a massive aquarium and escape.

The crew built the restaurant set on a soundstage at Pinewood Studios, loaded it with real fish (later swapped for rubber ones), and dumped 10,000 litres of water onto a recreated Prague street. It’s small-scale compared to later insanity, but still a splashy statement of intent.

6) Cliff-Face Climb (Mission: Impossible II)

The movie opens with Ethan on vacation. Is he lounging by the pool, sipping a drink? Of course, not — he’s scaling a cliff without the help of ropes, hanging on by his bare hands. He performs a heart-stopping 4.5 m leap from one ledge to another. It’s a pulse-pounding sequence, but Cruise tore his shoulder making the big jump.

“I was really mad that he wanted to do it, but I tried to stop him, and I couldn’t,” director John Woo told Entertainment Weekly. “I was so scared, I was sweating. I couldn’t even watch the monitor when we shot it.”

The scene doesn’t move the plot forward, but as a look-what-I-can-do opener, it’s pure Cruise bravado.

5) Hanging On (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation)

Cruise, strapped to the exterior of a real Airbus A400M Atlas that’s taking off at 300 km/h.

Now, how’s that for an opening scene?

For Rogue Nation’s curtain raiser, special rigging kept Cruise alive, while debris-clearing and protective contact lenses kept him intact. The plane took off and landed eight times until they nailed the scene. Talk about starting a movie in the stratosphere.

4) HALO Jump (Mission: Impossible – Fallout)

Ethan and CIA agent August Walker (Henry Cavill) perform a HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) parachute jump over Paris. On the way down, they get caught in a storm, and August is struck by lightning. Ethan resuscitates August in time for the latter to activate his parachute before they hit the ground.

Because the stunt was so risky, Cruise forbade Cavill from performing it, so Cavill was doubled by professional skydiver Rusty Lewis. But Cruise wouldn’t settle for anything less for himself. So, after training for a year, Cruise performed the jump from a C-17 plane at a height of 7.6 km.

He did 106 jumps, filmed over 12 days, and used a specially designed oxygen helmet so his face could be seen on camera.

Yes, the filmmakers digitally swapped Abu Dhabi (where the stunt was executed) for Paris and added the storm, but the logistics — including UAE military coordination and an aerial cameraman jumping backwards with a 9 kg rig — are nonetheless impressive.

3) Biplane Duel (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning)

In the climactic action sequence of the (purportedly) final Mission: Impossible film, Ethan wing-walks at 225 km/h, 2.4 km up, while chasing Gabriel (Esai Morales) in another biplane over South Africa. At one point, he’s so exhausted he collapses onto the wing, barely conscious.

Part of the stunt used a biplane replica dangling from a helicopter to pull off a mid-air climb between planes. It was incredibly risky because of the limited oxygen and intense wind pressure at that altitude.

Cruise trained for a year and a half to wing-walk. Professionals told him not to try it. He did it anyway.

2) Motorcycle Cliff Jump (Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One)

This scene took place towards the climactic portion of Dead Reckoning Part One. To get onto a train to confront Gabriel, Ethan decides the only option is to launch himself off a cliff astride a motorcycle and then glide down onto the train. Easy peasy.

Billed as the “biggest stunt in cinema history”, this sequence involved Cruise riding a motorcycle off a ramp constructed on the 1,246-metre Helsetkopen cliff in Hellesylt, Norway, then parachuting into the valley below as the bike fell away.

Cruise’s prep? 500 hours of skydiving practice and 13,000 motocross jumps. The only thing more impressive? That director Christopher McQuarrie calls this the “most dangerous stunt we’ve ever done” … but it’s only number two on this list. Which leads us to No. 1 …

1) Burj Khalifa Climb (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol)

Cruise dangles outside the world’s tallest building — 518 m up in the air — scaling and rappelling down the glass like Spider-Man in a suit.

The crew built a replica of three floors of the Burj Khalifa on a soundstage in Prague, but of course, Cruise insisted on doing the stunt on location. He was outfitted with a harness that was anchored to strategic points in the building. The crew got special permits to drill into the floors and walls and needed to break multiple windows to make the necessary modifications.

Director Brad Bird summed up the stakes: “If anything went wrong … we were toast.”

Thankfully, nobody ended up becoming toast. The genuine nail-biter of a sequence, ingeniously choreographed and staged, remains one of the franchise’s most impressive and cinematic moments. It’s a franchise-defining scene that still makes palms sweat years later.

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