Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise just did a motorcycle jump into a BASE jump on a movie set. Ok there was huge preparation, but a BASE jump is still a BASE jump. That's gone beyond stunt stuff; I know everyone here BASE jumps, but hats off to him regardless of what you think of him!

https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/new-mission-impossible-video-captures-tom-cruise-attempting-a-death-defying-stunt/

A youtube video about this was posted in Bonfire the other day.

I believe Tom Cruise first learned to skydive while he was in Florida filming Days of Thunder, which came out in 1990. In that era I knew a jumper who worked with one of the major Hollywood catering companies that feed movie crews, one that Tom like to use. Tom knew this guy was a jumper, and a few times on location he had my friend find a local dropzone that he could sneak off to to make some jumps on off days. TC also did HALO jumps for one of the other MI movies, and while he was promoting that one he jumped along with James Cordon doing a tandem (not as the TI). That was at Perris, and I don't think Dan BC would sign off on that unless he was capable. I don't know if he stays constantly current, or how many total jumps he has, but he's certainly no whuffo approaching this stunt. Plus, as you said, a lot of preparation specifically for this. So yeah, hats off to him indeed.

Tom Cruise was at Skydive Jeffrys Bay in South Africa very recently filming a promo for Mission Impossible 8. Some of his film stuntwork has been done in the UK at RAF Weston and nearby DZ's.  He allegedly has to be persuaded not to perform the more dangerous e.g. pyrotechnic type, stunts himself. Whether or not this extends to mc base jumps, I couldn't say. He is reportedly a more than competent skydiver. 

Gotta love that subterminal track. 

Thats awesome though that ramp must have taken forever to setup!

That's one very expensive marketing stunt/ego stroke. 

They could have gotten Brad Slums to do it for a sliver of the time and money, I suspect.

On 12/28/2022 at 11:19 AM, Bluhdow said:

That's one very expensive marketing stunt/ego stroke. 

They could have gotten Brad Slums to do it for a sliver of the time and money, I suspect.

  Of course it would have been more economical and faster just to subcontract a stunt crew to do the jump. but I give Hats Off to Cruise for taking the time and expense to do his own jump. It really shows he has pride in his work and believes in what he is doing. It's smart business, 100% adds quality to the product he is selling, and doing it himself, he gets the Ego stroke for a job well done .
  He demands quality for his Fan base with profit return. It really showed bigtime few years back when Cruise took all the time and money also in doing 'top gun Maverick' with all the elaborate cockpit Imax camera setup for flight effect and flight time for Imax theater release, instead of going CGI .

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On 12/28/2022 at 11:19 AM, Bluhdow said:

That's one very expensive marketing stunt/ego stroke. 

They could have gotten Brad Slums to do it for a sliver of the time and money, I suspect.

Pretty sure most of skydiving and base jumping could be described that way (especially by outsiders), minus the "marketing" part.

I am a new skydiver and I am very confused! Did he jumped with a skydiving canopy instead of a base canopy? Is that right? He has three-rings and cutaway handles! But why? 

6 hours ago, [email protected] said:

I am a new skydiver and I am very confused! Did he jumped with a skydiving canopy instead of a base canopy? Is that right? He has three-rings and cutaway handles! But why? 

I wasn't privy to their training, so I can't say for certain, but I'll hazard an educated guess. He does have a skydiving rig on, but he is certainly using a base type main canopy. Even a guy like Tom Cruise has to answer to people, and on a huge budget feature such as that there are producers, investors, studio heads and insurance underwriters. Someone may have insisted that he carry a reserve, or Tom and his crew may have had that idea themselves. And depending on how tall that cliff was and how high he was opening, with a MARD system and an appropriately packed reserve, he may well have been able to use it if necessary.

On 12/28/2022 at 1:56 PM, billvon said:

Didn't BJ do that exact stunt for Goldeneye?

It's actually been done a number of times. In early base days, some guy did it off a rock quarry somewhere with only a few hundred feet. Some extreme motocrosser has done it on a sand dune jump, again fairly low. Some European (Italian?) guy has done it. And some time in the 90's (?) an early base jumper named Dave Barlia had an hour long special on NBC where he did a number of stunt jumps, one of them riding a motocross bike off a cliff in Mexico, I think. So yeah, nothing new, but it still looks cool. Actually, if they'd left that ramp up and sold tickets, they'd have had a fairly long line!

i'd be willing to buy a ticket and ride a bicycle off it!

1 hour ago, billvon said:

So you are going to see several sets of equipment in any stunt like this.

The first is the "on camera" rig which is whatever they can get.  Often you'll see rigs with no mains/handles (the three rings completely empty) because no one thought to add a canopy.  In these sorts of movies they will have enough expertise to make it look fairly good.   It is almost never the actual gear; note that in this movie he looks in the "back" of the rig at one point and finds another canopy, and thanks Benji for giving him an extra one.

The second is the stunt rig itself, and it's generally appropriate for whatever the stunt is.  Sometimes it's concealed (i.e. the "no parachute jumps" you see sometimes) and in this case it's just a BASE rig/canopy.  Sometimes the rig "switches" halfway through the stunt; the BASE canopy shown after the cliff jump somehow becomes an elliptical for the landing sequence because they were filmed after different jumps.

I would also note that most BASE rigs have three rings and cutaway handles for commonality / functionality (you can still get dragged after landing with a BASE canopy, and people still have to swap out canopies.)  There have also been at least two BASE rigs on the market I can think of with main and reserve canopies.

To qualify my answer, I have not seen the movie, so I don't know what they used for the 'acting' sequences. I'm going by the youtube video showing the preparation and the actual jumps (posted above). In the actual jumps, he was using a rig with main and reserve containers.

On 1/3/2024 at 5:04 AM, dudeman17 said:

It's actually been done a number of times. In early base days, some guy did it off a rock quarry somewhere with only a few hundred feet. Some extreme motocrosser has done it on a sand dune jump, again fairly low. Some European (Italian?) guy has done it. And some time in the 90's (?) an early base jumper named Dave Barlia had an hour long special on NBC where he did a number of stunt jumps, one of them riding a motocross bike off a cliff in Mexico, I think. So yeah, nothing new, but it still looks cool. Actually, if they'd left that ramp up and sold tickets, they'd have had a fairly long line!

I think I recall Edgar Kraus (BFL#107) was a German guy who, 20+ years ago, did a lot of super-low, rocket-assisted-deployment, motocross jumps.  But my memory is hazy, someone correct me if that wasn't him.

The notion of multiple different rigs reminds me of an old “Rambo” … the second or third. Rambo was jumping out of a business jet into a SE Asia jungle. He was wearing a sport-sized Vector 3 … waaaaay smaller than the tandem-sized containers worn by military freefall, special forces guys who like to jump with rucksack, rifle and snowshoes.

At one of the PIA Symposia Bill bough shared an amusing side-story. While that Vector 3 was goi grown the production line of the ladies sniffed it and said: “Ah! This led pad will lay against Silvester Stallone’s thigh!”

Hah! Hah!

Just an update/confirmation on this:

On 1/2/2024 at 6:47 PM, [email protected] said:

Did he jumped with a skydiving [rig]? Is that right? He has three-rings and cutaway handles!

On 1/3/2024 at 1:42 AM, dudeman17 said:

Someone may have insisted that he carry a reserve, or Tom and his crew may have had that idea themselves. And depending on how tall that cliff was and how high he was opening, with a MARD system and an appropriately packed reserve, he may well have been able to use it if necessary.

In the current issue of Parachutist the Profile is of Miles Daisher, who was one of Cruise's base coaches on this stunt. In the article he mentions making test jumps on the MARD system. So, yeah.

Tom Cruise jumped an Infinity rig with the Infinity MARD.

By design, the Infinity MARD cannot disconnect mid-activation (unlike other MARDs).