20 Things You Didn't Know About Mission Impossible 2
13. Between A Rock And A Hard Place
By far the most memorable part of the movie is the opening scene where Ethan Hunt is scaling a huge rock, for no other reason than Tom Cruise wanted to do a death-defying stunt himself.
Filmed in Utah's Dead Horse Point State Park, Cruise climbed up the rock with no safety net beneath him if he fell but he was attached to wires, which were then digitally edited out in post production.
Perhaps the incredible part of the sequence was the 15 feet jump that Cruise makes from one ledge to another. Despite being incredibly dangerous, he insisted on performing the jump at 2000 feet in the air and in the end would do it several times in order to get the shot he wanted for the film.
He probably would have done more times, but was forced to stop after tearing his shoulder on one attempt. He's such a perfectionist that Tom.