#cruise is willing to die in the name of preserving cinema i'm telling you

[callmearcturus]

how real was the Burj thing, I assumed that was greenscreen

sorry for late reply, just got off work.

and oh buddy. the entire Burj sequence was 100% real. also great timing, I was just telling Punct the details of this scene last night, so!

/RUBS HANDS TOGETHER

Everyone watch this 9 minute clip. Unless you are scared of heights, then DO NOT watch this 9 minute clip.

The Burj Khalifa sequence is the start of the New Era of Mission Impossible, and it is a tremendous Fuck You to Paramount specifically.

For context: The reason Jeremy Renner is in this movie is, like with the Bourne movies, he was being set up to be the New Protagonist taking over for Cruise. Paramount didn't want Cruise anymore and the original plan for the script was for Ethan to badly break his leg in the carpark fight sequence, and he'd retire as the head of the IMF.

The Burj's entire point is going "Actually, go fuck yourself, I will prove to you that no one else can do what I fucking do," and Ghost Protocol goes on to make almost 700 million dollars, the largest take of the series to date by a lot.

SO, how was it done?

The Burj Khalifa stunt was done for real around floor 147 (higher than stated in the movie). The stunt was considered so dangerous Cruise fired the movie insurer because they refused to insure the movie with the stunt. So they were replaced, which is an event that... defies precedent and I don't know if it's ever happened before or since.

In the pre-visualization process, the plan was for the CGI team to make their own version of the scene with a digital Cruise in case the practical didn't work out, which is pretty reasonable given the stunt. When Cruise found out, though, he told them to scrap it. "There is no digital Tom, i'm doing the stunt, I'm doing all of it"

To prepare for the stunt, they made a fake Burj facade on a studio lot. It would have been relatively easy to use the facade for the actual filming and then add the real footage later buuuuut nope! Cruise practiced for weeks leading up to the practical shoot.

They even put hot lamps on the facade to ensure the metal and glass were hot so they were more similar to the real conditions he'd be dealing with.

okay that's all the pre-pro on it. the actual reality:

The crew had to renovate I think two floors of the Burj to bring them up to code, mostly by raising the ceiling height. They also had to remove about 35 windows because not only did Cruise have to go out through the actual window to start his climb, but they needed to be able to maneuver cameras and equipment outside the building.

"Redboxes" were put on the floors, literally boxes made of red tape, and anyone standing within those areas needed extra safety training and to be in a harness at all times. With so many windows open at such a height, if someone was blown out a window, they needed to be strapped in to prevent falling.

Cruise himself was in a harness too! But he was supported by a single wire that was so thin, in many of the shots they didn't even need to remove the wire because it was too thin to be picked up on camera.

Cruise's harness was a problem in of itself. The combination of the harness and how he was climbing meant the major arteries in his legs were cut off, and there was only time to do about two shots before he would lose feeling in his legs and plummet to his death.

To deal with the circulation situation, between takes, while the crew was resetting or on breaks, Cruise would run along the outside of the building. Whooping and yelling was involved.

It's all practical. It's all practical. Even the moment when Ethan runs along the building and then leaps and swings on the cable to launch himself into the window actually happened. It's practical.

Exclusively in IMAX, the film was cropped to be slightly smaller than the full breadth of the IMAX screen for the entire first act of the movie, until Ethan steps out of the window to begin the climb, then the ratio expanded to fill the screen. Sadly this edit is not maintained in any of the DVD/Blurays. In this way, Mission Impossible is like Homestuck.

Brad Bird, the director who was formerly from Pixar, said that if they tried the sequence in CGI it would not have worked for a lot of little reasons like having the animate such complicated reflections in the distance and the small details like how the glass buckles under Ethan's hands as he moves.

The shot where Ethan sees the sandstorm in the glass reflection and then the camera pulls around to show the actual sandstorm over his shoulder? Also real; as the camera spins around, they removed the glass in its way to give it the needed range of motion.

AND THAT'S THE BURJ STUNT! /dusts hands

also if you wanna know the moment i find the most stressful of the entire fucking sequence, it's this one