Mission Impossible: How Tom Cruise Pulled Off Ghost Protocol’s Burj Khalifa Stunt

This is how Tom Cruise climbed the Burj Khalifa in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Among his long list of extremely dangerous stunts throughout the years, Tom Cruise’s feat of courage on the exterior of the world’s tallest building in the fourth installment of Mission Impossible is perhaps his most famous one. Since then, he has continued to defy death in multiple movies with stunts like Mission Impossible: Fallout‘s HALO jump. Still, Ethan Hunt holding on to dear life to the windows of a skyscraper with only a pair of suction gloves has become a landmark in the history of cinema.

Ghost Protocol takes Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt to Dubai in search of some nuclear launch codes after Kurt Hendricks, a.k.a. Cobalt (Michael Nyquist), a Russian nuclear strategist, steals a devastating weapon in order to start a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. As Mission Impossible fans already know, neither the franchise nor its star tend to take the easy route. So, Ethan Hunt must reach the 130th floor of the 2,722-foot skyscraper and ditch the elevator in favor of a pair of special suction gloves (one of which quickly malfunctions). Of course, he gets a headstart of no less than 123 floors, but that only makes the start of his climb even more spine-chilling. As if that weren’t enough, he then rappels down the building and makes a jump of faith toward the same window he came out from, barely missing it and hanging from one of his feet with the help of William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and Jane Carter (Paula Patton).

To shoot the sequence, Tom Cruise had to be equipped with a harness that was carefully fixed to strategic points in the building, which required the studio to get special permits to drill on the floors and walls and break around 26 windows. Director Brad Bird — in his live-action directorial debut after The Incredibles and Ratatouille — consulted with multiple professionals from different areas like engineers, pro climbers, and stuntmen to ensure the safety of the shoot. He even considered using a dedicated stuntman, but Tom Cruise chose to do his own stunts — as he’s done for the majority of his career.

What Tom Cruise didn’t expect was that the tight harness would cut off his circulation, so the shoot had to be completed as efficiently and quickly as possible. Otherwise, his lower body would start feeling numb and would make it harder for him to get to safety quickly. On top of that, the sequence was shot in IMAX, which meant that the cameras would run out of film extremely fast. The footage then had to be flown all the way back to Los Angeles, and Brad Bird couldn’t check if everything was ok until it was developed a few days later. The helicopters that were shooting some of the shots also had a flight limit of 30 minutes at a time, so the crew had to make every take count.

The training for the Mission Impossible stunt was also extremely thorough and calculated. The crew built a wall of glass to simulate the exterior of the real building and had Tom Cruise climb up and down several times to get him familiarized with the discomfort of the harness and the physical toll of the climb. They went so far as to heat up the wall with artificial lights to simulate the temperature of the windows of the Burj Khalifa. It seems all of that preparation served its purpose, as Cruise pulled off the stunt like it was any other sequence.

The iconic Burj Khalifa sequence in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is the best proof of Tom Cruise’s dedication to his craft not only as a fearless stuntman but as an actor. For him, it’s not just another set piece. He truly is living the stunt, both as Ethan Hunt and as himself.

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