Tom Cruise Plane Stunt: Actor Actually Performed Crazy 'MI' Feat

Tom Cruise really performed the plane stunt seen in the new trailer for the “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” film set to hit theaters on Friday in just the latest series of increasingly crazy feats the actor has filmed for his action flicks.

Cruise, 53, raised millions of eyebrows when the trailer was released on YouTube, featuring the actor clinging to the side of an Airbus A400 plane as it took off from the runway with his feet dangling in the air and his hair and suit jacket flapping wildly behind him. The movie’s YouTube channel released a new stunt featurette on Monday which detailed for viewers how the actor pulled off the entirely real move, according to The Huffington Post.

The featurette begins with the question, “Why do the stunts look real? Because they are real,” and it stunned audiences by showcasing unedited clips of the actor clinging for dear life to a side handle bar on the plane. During the scene, which was filmed at the Wittering airbase in Northern England, the plane soared up to 5,000 feet above the ground and hit a wind speed of 184 mph, according to the New York Post.

“[In the scene] his feet slip off the plane and he really is holding on for his life,” said Wade Eastwood, Cruise’s stunt coordinator for the film, according to CNN.

In order to protect Cruise as much as possible while he filmed the stunt, thick contact-like lenses blocked the wind and sheltered his eyes from tiny debris particles whizzing past him in the air. Cruise also wore a harness underneath his suit coat that was attached to a safety cable, which was completely erased during the footage’s editing process. Birds were also cleared form the vicinity so that they wouldn’t crash into Cruise, potentially killing him at such high speeds, according to CNN.

But this plane stunt was not Cruise’s only terrifying trick in the fifth "Mission Impossible" movie, according to the New York Post. The film also features Cruise careening on a motorcycle at 100 mph in Morocco, for which he trained intensively for six weeks.

“There is no stunt double in this movie,” Eastwood said. “The only time we used them was in rehearsal."

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