Watch Tom Cruise perform a 'HALO jump' for a terrifying stunt in 'Mission: Impossible - Fallout'

Tom Cruise has a history of doing his own stunts, even when he doesn’t need to. Like, just get a stuntman to do it for you, you can sit in your trailer while they do it all, then you can have you face spliced in later - it’s very easy. 

But no, Cruise is dead-set on going above and beyond in the pursuit of the perfect shot - he wants everything to look real. Never mind that everybody just assumes it’s CGI anyway, Cruise is doing this shit properly, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

And so to Mission: Impossible - Fallout (a lot of punctuation going on there), his latest film, and a big old sky-diving stunt that he’s gone and risked his life for. In the film, his character is required to do a HALO jump, which stands for “high-altitude, low-open” and, erm, “jump” - it’s essentially a good way of sneaking into enemy territory undetected.

Now, Cruise has already broken his ankle filming this movie (which you can watch here if you like seeing bones break), but if you think that’s going to stop him jumping out of a doggone plane, then you’ve got another thing coming. 

As such, he’s decided to become the first actor to ever do a HALO jump on camera - a momentous occasion that you can watch right here:

For the shot, which could only be attempted once a day (it had to be filmed as close to sundown as possible), Cruise had to inhale pure oxygen for 20 minutes on the ground prior to the dive to avoid decompression sickness, and wear a specially designed helmet that worked not only as a cool movie prop, but also a life-saving device. He did this over 100 times. 

They also built one of the world’s largest wind tunnels to practice on. Lot of money all this, no? DO IT ON THE COMPUTER, INNIT.

But hey, it looks good, doesn’t it? Maybe it was all worth it? We shall see when Mission: Impossible - Ankle Break Plane Jump hits cinemas on July 26.

(Image: YouTube)