Tom Cruise Revisits Mission: Impossible 2’s Epic Rock Climbing Stunt

For decades now, Tom Cruise has been taking audiences to giddy heights in his pursuit of blockbuster excellence – often literally. And while later Mission: Impossible films saw him scale the Burf Khalifa, cling to planes mid-flight, and HALO jump through the night sky, his love affair with dangerous dangling goes all the way back to the John Woo-helmed Mission: Impossible 2. The 2000 sequel begins with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt hanging loose in a dizzying Utah free-climb, a jaw-dropping stunt that quickly became the film’s most iconic scene.

In the new issue of Empire, Cruise talks us through an iconic moment from every Mission movie so far, packed with stories on his greatest feats – from the Langley dangle in the Brian de Palma original, to the Rogue Nation aircraft hanger, to the Fiat 500 chase in Dead Reckoning. Here’s an exclusive extract, with Cruise looking back on that legendary Mission: Impossible 2 opener.

TOM CRUISE: “I wanted to do a climbing sequence. Throughout filming in Australia, there were weather challenges. It rained for 40 days. I felt like Noah. And the studio was like, ‘Listen, because of the rain, and [because] the schedule is over, let’s find another opening to the movie.’ Every day people were coming in with different pitches. I was like, ‘I don’t know how else to open the movie.’ So, now we’re into the winter months in Moab, I’ve flown all the way from Australia, and there are gale force winds. So we can’t even have my crew up on the mountain. I have pushed the studio for the opening of this movie, and you can’t even get there to set up the camera. I am so exhausted from jet lag, and I don’t know how to call the studio, and I’m not shooting, and you feel the pressure of shooting something, and for six months they’ve been wanting me to change the opening sequence. And what happened is, I remember waking up the next day, and I was just like, ‘You have to confront this.’ And the sun was coming up, and the wind was gone, and the temperatures had come up. So I was like, ‘Let’s get to the top of the mountain and just start shooting it now.’

“This is back in the days where you didn’t have radios, and I’m free climbing as I’m going up to where I need to be for that opening shot. I had to pace myself, because I had to climb down afterwards, and if I fall, there’s a cable that’s going to get me, but I’m going to be slamming up against the mountain. And the rock is very soft rock. At certain times you’re going, ‘Jesus, I’m sliding, it’s breaking away.’ As I’m doing the Iron Cross (a move where he is suspended between two pieces of rock), I’m actually hanging there, but it isn’t quite right, and you can see it. I was like, ‘Just tell me this is the shot, because I can’t do it again.’”

“What people don’t know is that there’s a section where I’m jumping high to low, but my foot was broken. And I never mentioned it to anyone. Some of these injuries, what’s the point? You just keep going. So I’m jumping, and my foot wasn’t right. John Woo was like, ‘We’ve got the shot.’ I was like, ‘No, we want it in one shot, I gotta keep doing it.’ And that’s the shot that’s in the movie. But it was so much fun working with John, doing that sequence, because I knew it was our [marketing] campaign.”

Read the full Tom Cruise interview, talking through every Mission movie so far, in the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning issue, on sale now. Order a copy online here. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning comes to UK cinemas from 21 May.