You can always count upon Tom Cruise to risk life and limb for our entertainment, and the actor definitely isn't playing it safe in the upcoming Mission: Impossible 7; in fact, Tom Cruise told Empire that the film features his most dangerous stunt yet as he drives a motorcycle off a cliff.
Over the course of the six previous Mission: Impossible movies, we've seen Tom Cruise climb the Burj Khalifa, cling to the side of an Airbus A400M as it took off, perform a HALO jump at over 25,000 feet, and much more, so simply driving a motorcycle off a cliff might not seem quite in the same league (it's still super impressive), but Cruise explained why this particular stunt was so dangerous.
If the wind was too strong, it would blow me off the ramp. The helicopter [filming the stunt] was a problem, because I didn’t want to be hammering down that ramp at top speed and get hit by a stone. Or if I departed in a weird way, we didn’t know what was going to happen with the bike. I had about six seconds once I departed the ramp to pull the chute and I don’t want to get tangled in the bike. If I do, that’s not going to end well.
We saw leaked clips of this stunt in action last year, and it's certainly not something you'd catch me doing. Empire also released a new photo from the film featuring Tom Cruise looking stylish at the front of locomotive.
Mission: Impossible 7 has experienced its fair share of COVID-related delays, but the film is currently slated to hit theaters on May 27, 2022, and will be followed by Mission: Impossible 8 on July 7, 2023.