Watch Tom Cruise Make History Doing a “Halo Jump” From 25,000 Feet in Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Ever since we saw the first  Mission: Impossible – Fallout trailer we’ve been impatiently waiting to see Tom Cruise back in action as super agent Ethan Hunt. Then came that second, somehow even better trailer, and we were convinced this might be the best Mission: Impossible yet. By now we’ve gotten a good look at what led Cruise to get his helicopter pilot’s license (so that he could actually fly his own chopper during an insane chase through the mountains, including a stomach dropping lurch into a gorge). Now a new featurette shows just how far Cruise and the Fallout cast and crew have gone to push the envelope for the upcoming film. You’ll see Cruise toss himself out a plane at 25,000 feet, known as a Halo jump, the first actor to ever do this on camera.

By now its old hat that Cruise pushes his limits when it comes to stunts. In Rogue Nation, he boarded a plane—mid takeoff—in the craziest stunt we’d ever seen. For Fallout, Cruise trained for a year for the film’s signature stunt, the aforementioned helicopter chase that he piloted himself. Cruise’s go-to stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood, told us that the actor pushes himself so hard for the audience. “He wants to feel it himself, he wants to be scared to death himself, so that that will translate to the audience,” Eastwood said.

For Fallout‘s big jump scene, you’ll see why this kind of stunt is usually left to stunt professionals (at this point, Cruise is a stunt professional). Even getting to the point where they can film Cruise jumping out of a plane at such a high altitude took many test jumps. It’s not only Cruise who has to be at the top of his game, but the stunt and film crew (keep in mind there’s a camera man also jumping out of the plane with Cruise). They had to do the Halo jump three times in order to get enough footage.

This is old school practical effect filmmaking, and Cruise and his team have made the Mission: Impossible franchise the most reliable, and arguably the best, action series in film history. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie becomes the first director in the franchise to repeat, after delivering a nervy, passionate story with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Joining Cruise are Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, Michelle Monaghan, Alec Baldwin, Wes Bentley and Frederick Schmidt.

The plot revolves around villain Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), who breaks free in Paris after being captured at the end of Rogue Nation. Lane is the most ruthless antagonist Hunt and his team have ever faced, and he’s dead set on making Hunt pay by losing the people most precious to him. Yet Lane’s not the only ruthless adversary in Fallout—Superman himself, Henry Cavill, looks absolutely at home playing the bruising assassin August Walker, paid to make sure that Hunt doesn’t step out of line—or else.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout hits theaters on July 27, 2018.

Featured image: Tom Cruise in ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout.’ Courtesy Paramount Pictures.