Tom Cruise promotes Top Gun: Maverick with Mission Impossible sky diving

The riddle: Which comes first? Tom Cruise’s movie or Tom Cruise’s stunt?

Actor Tom Cruise’s 60 year old son, actor and comedian opens his eyes to a video behind the scenes. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning by saying he’s wanted to do what they’re about to show off “since I was a little kid.” Namely, the film’s biggest, most dangerous stunt — a motorcycle jump off a Norwegian cliff, which then launches into a BASE jump.

Cruise is amazed at the scope of the stunt after blinking for as long as necessary to see tiny Tommy Cruise making death-defying jumps for entertainment. The Dead Reckoning Chris McQuarrie (the writer) and his elaborate stunt team describe the extensive prep work involved in the stunt. “Prep work” in this context requires a truly surprising number of skydives on Cruise’s part — including a few jumps he does “just to warm up” when it’s finally time to film the big stunt.

Tom Cruise is the ultimate movie star. He approaches film promotion with clinical efficiency. His megawatt smile shines and he talks about how wonderful it is to entertain you, the audience, and why movies are The Best. He’s about as good at this as he is at not talking about Scientology (which is to say: extremely) but 21st Century Tom is also a reserved Tom, here to do a job and do it well.

Tom Cruise has it all: So much entertainmentPreparing for the stunt and appearing as though ThisThis is what he really wants to do in his life. He doesn’t want to make movies. Instead, he dreams up insane stunts and uses his power and influence to allow him to spend several months performing them. In exchange, he’ll give the money people a movie, I guess (His director gets to have mild panic attacks every time he jumps out of an airplane).

Jumping out of airplanes is so completely Tom Cruise’s love language that it’s how he chose to thank fans for their support of Maverick is the Top Gun casually exiting an aircraft thousands of feet above South Africa while giddily addressing the camera about how entertaining us all is “the honor of a lifetime.”

Tom Cruise will be a god if there’s a God.