8 Wildest Stunts From the ‘Mission: Impossible’ Series, Ranked

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.

Movie Listing

Mission: Impossible III

Retired from active duty and training recruits for the Impossible Mission Force, agent Ethan Hunt faces the toughest foe of his career: Owen Davian, an international broker of arms.

View Details

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.

Movie Listing

Mission: Impossible

A former Russian spy selling international intelligence on the black market...a list of the top undercover agents in the world...and one man, whose mission seems impossible.

View Details

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.

Movie Listing

Mission: Impossible II

The world's greatest spy, Ethan Hunt, partners up with the beautiful Nyah Hall to stop renegade agent Sean Ambrose from releasing a new kind of terror on an unsuspecting world.

View Details

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.

Movie Listing

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

With the IMF now disbanded and Ethan Hunt out in the cold, a new threat—called the Syndicate—soon emerges. Ethan gathers his team and joins forces with Ilsa Faust.

View Details

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.

Movie Listing

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

The best intentions often come back to haunt you. Mission: Impossible - Fallout finds Ethan Hunt and his IMF team along with some familiar allies in a race against time after a mission gone wrong.

View Details

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.

Movie Listing

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.

View Details

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 …

Movie Listing

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Ethan Hunt and the IMF team must track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity if it falls into the wrong hands. A deadly race around the globe begins.

View Details

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.

Movie Listing

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Blamed for the terrorist bombing of the Kremlin, IMF operative Ethan Hunt is disavowed along with the rest of the agency when the president initiates 'Ghost Protocol.'

View Details

Head to Box Sets to check out our collection of complete movie series.

◀ Go Back

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.

Mission: Impossible III

Synopsis

Mission: Impossible

Synopsis

Mission: Impossible II

Synopsis

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Synopsis

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Synopsis

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

Synopsis

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Synopsis

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Synopsis