Can you guess where Tom Cruise filmed some stunts in the fourth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise?
If your answer is Abu Dhabi, you’re correct!
Cruise performed a halo jump on camera, the first actor to do it, in the UAE capital, Mission: Impossible – Fallout second unit director and stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood said, as reported by Gulf News.
The halo jump is actually a military tactic done by soldiers trying to enter another country undetected.
Performing the stunt is not an easy feat. Cruise had to inhale pure oxygen for 20 minutes to avoid hypoxia or oxygen deficiency. Once the cameras started rolling, he had to jump off a plane.
“You’re talking about Tom jumping out of a plane that’s travelling at 165 miles an hour [265km/h], falling at 200 miles an hour, and he has to position himself so that he lands exactly three feet away from the camera, with 20,000 feet beneath him,” writer-director Christopher McQuarrie said.
Cruise had filmed the dangerous stunt in March in Abu Dhabi.
“We needed the UAE. Had they not stepped in, we would not have been able to accomplish the sequence,” Cruise said in an interview.
In this photo uploaded by the Abu Dhabi Film Commission, the 55-year-old actor gamely posed for the camera with a UAE Air Force plane in the background.
“Mission made possible with @tomcruise #inAbuDhabi,” the Abu Dhabi Film Commission’s caption read.
