10 Reasons Mission: Impossible - Fallout Is The Best Ever
8. That Plane Jump
Just because Fallout doesn't open on a gonzo stunt doesn't mean it doesn't have them. Quite the opposite, Fallout's stuntwork is unbelievably impressive, to the point that it is often hard to believe one's eyes when watching.
The first great example of this in the film is the HALO jump sequence.
Embarking on their mission, Ethan and Walker have to jump out of a plane at 25,000 feet to parachute down to the building below. When some storm clouds roll in, Ethan gets skeptical and suggests they need to find a safer way, but Walker refuses and goes charging out the back of the plane.
What ensues next is a single, unbroken take of Tom Cruise and a cameraman jumping out of the back of a plane and freefalling. The footage is flat-out jaw-dropping, with the only CG work being the flourishes added to the sequence, such as the lightning storm itself.
But mixing these with the entirely practical stuntwork of Ethan jumping, seeing Walker get knocked unconscious by the storm, and then Ethan switching out his oxygen tank mid-freefall to save Walker's life results in a sequence that not only takes the franchise to the next level, it takes action filmmaking as a whole to the next level.
If McQuarrie and Crusie were looking to throw down the gauntlet in terms of action filmmaking, they more than succeeded.