Tom Cruise's escape plan for his 'Mission: Impossible' plane stunt was kind of a disaster

Tom Cruise hanging out (Paramount).

You’d have to live in a cave with a bad internet connection to NOT know about Tom Cruise’s awesome and insane Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation stunt, which featured him strapped onto the outside of an Airbus A400 … that then took off and landed … eight times.

It’s impossible to deny that even with the greatest safety precautions much could have gone very wrong. Even thrill-seeker Cruise was scared to the point of saying naughty words.

But, however meticulously the stunt was planned out, director Tom McQuarrie says there was a big flaw in the “Abort Mission” plan he made with Cruise.

Cruise had worked out a hand signal with McQuarrie in case of trouble. But in the air, this failed big time.


“The safe (gesture) was that Tom would take his palm and hit it on the top of his head. But then, of course, as soon as the wind blew the hair in his face, he had to sweep his hair out of his face. So there was no distinction between fixing his hair and emergency cut.”


The plane, a beast that needed to be tamed (Paramount).

Cruise didn’t help matters shouting to McQuarrie some last-second instructions over the engines before the stunt.


“Tom shouted above the engine, ‘Remember, if it looks like I’m panicking, I’m acting. Don’t cut,’ ” McQuarrie recalls. “I did a stunned about-face, knowing there would be no distinction between (true) panic and his performance.”

McQuarrie got on the plane and started it all up with a major Hollywood star on the wing.


“(The crew) looked at me, and said, ‘What do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘Action.’ And we hit the throttle and the plane took off. And I said, ‘I have no idea what’s going to happen next.’ “