Paramount Pictures has released a new behind-the-scenes featurette for Mission: Impossible – Fallout that dives deep into the film’s centerpiece action sequence, and it confirms that yes, Mission: Impossible 6 is attempting the most insane stunt in the franchise’s history. Indeed, last March producer David Ellison told us that Tom Cruise had been training for a particular Mission: Impossible 6 stunt for a year, and that it would top “anything that’s come before.” We’ve only gotten mere hints about this sequence from writer/director Christopher McQuarrie throughout production, but now the cat’s out of the bag: Tom Cruise flew a helicopter by himself for an entire stunt sequence.

Yes indeed, in this video it’s revealed that Cruise went to Airbus to learn how to be a helicopter pilot, racking up his 2000-hour flight time in a very short amount of time. Cruise is already a pilot of planes, so this wasn’t starting from ground zero, but when you consider that the end result of all of this was Tom Cruise piloting a helicopter with no one else in it, doing ridiculous aerial stunts all by himself, it’s pretty insane.

So yeah, from a pure danger level I’d say this tops anything that’s come before in the Mission franchise—and this is a series that knows how to push boundaries. Cruise hung off the side of the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol and hung off the side of an airplane as it took off in Rogue Nation, but here the control is entirely in Cruise’s hands. I don’t even want to know how much it cost to insure this movie.

But this is what you get with Mission: Impossible—a fantastic focus on practical stunts, not actors doing things on wires in front of greenscreens. It makes a difference, and it makes Mission stand out, and I absolutely cannot wait to see this thing when it hits theaters on July 27th.

Check out the behind-the-scenes Mission: Impossible 6 stunts featurette below.

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