JJ Abrams and Tom Cruise’s Love of Stunt Work: “Here’s the thing. I had seen years earlier the ‘MI2’ behind the scenes stuff, including the unbelievably funny Ben Stiller sequence. I remember watching John Woo talk about how scared he was during some of the mountain climbing stunts, and I had no idea it was a cautionary tale for me. I had no idea it would apply to my life in any way. Suddenly I found myself feeling literally exactly the same stuff that John Woo was alluding to in that interview.
The truth is when we were writing it knowing that Tom was sort of a daredevil, I would literally write things and say to Alex [Kurtzman] and Bob [Orci] who wrote the script with me, I’d say, ‘You know, we shouldn’t write this because Tom’s going to want to do it. But it’s too good, we have to throw it in there and see what happens.’ Invariably he would and he did.
What’s incredible is this: he’s obviously in incredible shape, trains like a professional athlete, and has the passion to do stunt work and does it really well. But a stunt man can train and prep over the course of weeks for a single stunt or two maybe in a movie. Do it, and then ice up all day or like come down from it. But Tom would do these stunts day after day after day after day and then have to do, often the same day, scenes where he would come in totally prepared and know it. So it wasn’t like... it’s like I don’t mean to be precious about it. I don’t feel like the need to build Tom Cruise up anymore (laughing) but I can’t say enough about his unbelievable commitment, his remarkable dedication in every way, in terms of story, in terms of understanding how a subtle reference in that scene will have these unbelievable and undeniable ripple effects down the line. How set up and payoffs work and why they’re important. But also how he’ll say, ‘Put me in that harness and drop me 200 feet.’ I’m like, ‘All that stuff in one person?’ And every day for 100 days in different countries, in different cities, this guy was unstoppable and determined as if it were his first movie - and it certainly was not his - to make this movie the best movie possible. He did an extraordinary job.”
