Ranking all the stunts from the Mission: Impossible franchise

#5 Running from Sixteen Tons of Water

Most people shrug this sequence off because Tom Cruise makes the entire scene look so easy. However, the execution of this stunt was anything but a normal day for Top Gun himself. This entire stunt required Cruise to outrun 16 tons of water, which meant that if he did not have his timing just right, he would have possibly had a hospital visit that afternoon. With the sequence being brought down to slow motion in the final cut it does not look at all dangerous or like Cruise himself had any trouble. But this is easily one of the riskiest stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise.

#4 Extreme Rock Climbing

This is the point of the list where Tom Cruise really shows how far his willingness to do all of his own stunts will go. At the start of Mission: Impossible 2, Ethan Hunt is spending his leisure time being a complete psycho by climbing 2,000 feet in the air without any safety gear. The scene ends with him almost falling but then hanging off the rock backwards with a ludicrous grin on his face. Tom Cruise actually performed this entire stunt himself against the wishes of director John Woo. He had a safety rope to keep him alive-which was removed digitally– but the actual act of performing this stunt is still dangerously scary. Mission: Impossible 2 might be the weakest film in the franchise but this scene remains one of the best to come from the series to date.

#3 Holding Breath for 6 Minutes

Because Tom Cruise likes to push himself to absurd limits when doing these stunts, he decided to take his death-defying antics underwater. In Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Ethan Hunt has to go deep diving in a water-based security tech to bypass a computer program but gets hindered by unexpected circumstances forcing him to run out of oxygen. Cruise practiced with a special operations program that was specifically created for the military to survive extreme conditions in water. The actor managed to execute the scene holding his breath for six whole minutes while performing for the camera. The craziest part is this is not even the deadliest stunt he’s ever attempted. Which brings me to…

#2 Hanging Off the Side of a Flying Plane

Continuing with the discussion of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Tom Cruise raised the bar higher at the start of the film–and I mean that quite literally. The beginning of the film had the actor strapped outside of a plane while taking off and it was all him every step of the way. This is one of the few stunts where Cruise actually got injured saying, “I was hit by a tiny particle from the runway and I literally thought it broke my ribs.” It’s one of the most daring sequences of the entire franchise and makes you wonder how far the actor will actually go to entertain his audience.

#1 Climbing the Massive Burj Khalifa

Of all the stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise, this is the one that always leaves me awestruck. When seeing this film back in 2011, the entire theater was completely shook with gasps and pitch quietness because they were so enthralled. Standing at 163 stories, the Burj Khalifa is one of the biggest skyscrapers in the world– if not the biggest. Tom Cruise hung outside this magnificent beast of a building doing take after take. What’s even crazier is the sequence was filmed on IMAX so you could feel every bit of the heights while watching the scene unfold. Going through the history of Mission: Impossible, I’m amazed by what Tom Cruise will put himself through to make his fans happy. But this scene was executed with so much magic that it really puts the impossible in the film’s title.

Next: Box office: A weekend of movie sequels

What do you think? What is your favorite stunt in the Mission Impossible franchise?  Sound off the comments below!

Mission: Impossible – Fallout hits theaters on July 27.