Jordan Karlesson
Of course, Tom Cruise jumped at the chance to jump out of an airplane to celebrate his massive year at multiplexes. Would you expect anything different?
Videos by Rare
The 90-second clip features the ageless actor — wearing that big Tom Cruise smile, of course — about to leap out of a plane over South Africa.
“I didn’t want the year to end without thanking you all for coming out to the theater and thank you for supporting Top Gun: Maverick,” Cruise says.
The next minute of the clip captures Tom Cruise’s skydive.
Tom Cruise’s latest headline-generating move was apt for two reasons. First, as 2022 comes to a close, his Top Gun sequel (Top Gun: Maverick) is almost guaranteed to be the year’s biggest hit. That is, barring a surprise coup by the recently released Avatar: The Way of Water.
Second, Tom Cruise continues to blow away Hollywood not only with his bankability — even after the bizarre couch-jumping episode, yada yada — but because he continues to perform many of his own stunts. That’s at age 60, when most people have trouble getting out of bed.
Tom Cruise’s ‘Biggest Stunt in Cinema History’
But it’s not the only new clip of an airborne Tom Cruise that hit YouTube today.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the makers of Mission: Impossible — the franchise in which Cruise performs most of his talked-about stunts — posted a clip of their own on Monday. It’s self-explanatorily titled Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One | The Biggest Stunt in Cinema History. And, wouldn’t you know it, that clip also features Cruise jumping out of a plane.
Due July 14, a week before Christopher Nolan’s hugely anticipated biopic Oppenheimer, Dead Reckoning Part One is the sequel to its 2018 predecessor, Mission: Impossible — Fallout. And the sequel to Dead Reckoning Part One — follow along here — will be followed on June 28, 2024, by Dead Reckoning Part Two.
The 2024 installment in the wildly successful Mission: Impossible franchise will be the last to feature Cruise. And, given that he takes his acting and stunt work very, very seriously, expect him to go out with a bang worthy of his success.
