Mission: Impossible – Fallout Stunt Featurette Shows Off Incredible HALO Jump

Is there anything Tom Cruise won't do to entertain the movie-loving masses?

After hanging off the tallest building in the world for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Cruise did a wild little something called a HALO jump for the upcoming Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Studio Paramount Pictures recently rolled out an exclusive featurette detailing what Cruise, who reprises his role as Ethan Hunt in Fallout, and the minds behind the film had to do to perfect the stunt and capture the shot. 

As the featurette explains, the HALO jump is a "high-altitude, low-open" skydive from 25,000 feet where the jumper opens their parachute below 2,000 feet and sneaks into a territory without being detected. Cruise and Mission: Impossible – Fallout writer-director Christopher McQuarrie had been talking about the HALO jump for "a number of years," and by completing it for Fallout, Cruise became the very first actor to perform the jump on camera. 

Of course, the act was no easy feat, and it required intense preparation. Cruise had to wear a special helmet — partially a prop, partially a life-saving device — and did multiple rounds of rehearsal in "one of the world's largest wind tunnels."

Even with all that prep work, Cruise couldn't simply jump on the plane, fling himself out of it at 165 miles an hour, and fall to Earth exactly three feet away from the camera with more than 20,000 feet beneath him. The actor had to stay on the ground and inhale pure oxygen for 20 minutes in efforts to avoid decompression sickness before stepping foot on the aircraft. 

"There's always a ticking clock in filming a movie, but it's not usually the Earth flying up towards you," one of the Mission: Impossible – Fallout filmmakers quipped in the video.  

Check it out above. 

Also starring Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Michelle Monaghan, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Henry Cavill, and Angela Bassett, Mission: Impossible – Fallout will be released on July 27.