John Woo Was "Really Mad" and Scared Watching Tom Cruise Do His Own Cliff Climbing Stunts in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II
I lot of people don’t care for John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II, but damn… I loved it! I just loved Woo’s directing and storytelling style, and he made one hell of a stylish and unique action spy thriller with M:I II!
I still remember watching that opening shot in theaters for the first time with my friends as we watched Tom Cruise climbing up the face of a cliff! I knew very little about that kind of stuff when I was younger so watching that was such a cool and awe-inspiring experience. I actually credit it for the love of climbing and exploring that I now have! I don’t do anything that crazy, but I do adventurous stuff in that same spirit all of the time!
Anyway, Tom Cruise did his own stunts in that movie, and he really wanted to be climbing those cliffs! Woo would have liked to do things a little safe, but Cruise was a producer on the film and he pulled the strings, and he got to do what he wanted. Woo was mad at Cruise for wanting to do it, and it terrified him, but they managed to pull it off and Tom Cruise got through it alive to survive another day. Wook shared in a past interview with EW:
"I was really mad that he wanted to do it, but I tried to stop him and I couldn't. [...] I was so scared I was sweating. I couldn't even watch the monitor when we shot it."
During the first round of shoots for the stunts, the director didn’t get the shots he was looking for, especially for one of the more harrowing shots. The camera operators just couldn't get every shot framed up and focused to Woo’s liking and this frustrated him. He said:
"We had five cameras on the cliff, including a helicopter camera, a camera on a crane, and cameramen hanging from safety cables, but we had focus problems, so we had to do it again and again. But Tom would say, 'I'm okay, John, don't worry, I want to do it one more time."'
This scared the shit out of Woo because anything could have gone wrong while trying to shoot this sequence multiple times. Cruise was having a ton of fun, though! In another interview with UK Climbing Magazine, one of the camera operators, Earl Wiggins, talked about how they pulled off the climbing shots in the movie.
"During filming, Ron would escort Tom into position and then get clear for each shot. We used winches to get Tom in and out of position. The rigging entailed cantilevered trusses on the rim to direct ropes. Tom did all of the climbing except the slip off the overhang — his main stunt double, Keith Campbell, did that stunt. Tom was on the cliff parts of five days for the filming and never complained which is rare for a big star."
As for the danger factor of shooting the scene, the cliff that Cruise was actually climbing was about 600 feet up from the nearest standing surface and around 2,000 feet to the river below. That’s pretty insane, but awesome. When talking about trying to pull off Woo’s vision, Wiggins added:
"The climbing was choreographed by the film's stunt coordinator, Brian Smrz, who is arguably the best in the business. However, the choreography was inclusive of several elements that John Woo had felt were essential. The crucifix position is, I am told, in every John Woo film. I can't say if that is actually true but it was important to John."
Cruise has gone on to do even crazier stunts, but it was stunt work like this one in Mission: Impossible II that prepared him for what he’s doing now.
Via: /Film