May 20 (UPI) — Tom Cruise is revisiting some of his iconic stunts from the Mission: Impossible franchise.
On The Tonight Show Monday, host Jimmy Fallon showcased stills of Cruise’s past feats, including hanging from a cliff in Mission: Impossible 2 and driving a motorcycle off a cliff in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning.
Cruise, 62, then detailed his latest big stunt — dangling from a plane at 8,000 feet in the air and in 140 mph winds — for his new film Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
“It was pretty intense, I gotta say,” he told Fallon. “I didn’t realize, like, that amount of force of air, I can’t breathe, so I had to figure out how you’re taking the wind…. I mean the air particles coming off that propeller are traveling at the speed of sound.”
“Look, it is the most intense weight workout you’ve ever had. Have you ever lifted a weight where you cannot — it’s impossible to lift it again? That’s what it’s like after a couple of minutes on this wing, what we were doing, because the maneuvers — you’re going from 95 to 145 miles per hour,” he added. “And then you’re pulling the Gs as we’re going along, because a lot of the stuff you’re seeing — I’ve got to get to zero G as I’m floating in between the wings and trying to maneuver up and down the things… It was crazy.”
The actor said his inspiration for the sequence came from black-and-white footage of wing walking that he viewed when he was younger.
“I just thought, ‘Wow, I’d love to do that,'” he told Fallon.
Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt in the film, which is directed by Christopher McQuarrie and arrives in theaters Friday.
The actor attended the movie’s New York premiere Sunday. The Weeknd, who recently talked about how Cruise helped his career, was also in attendance.
