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Tom Cruise's Custom Oakleys are Least Impressive Thing About Insane M:I Motorcycle Stunt

By Rain Noe - July 13, 2023

in Object Culture

This week Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part I opens, and moviegoers will be treated to the insane stunt of Tom Cruise jumping a motorcycle off of a cliff in Norway.

I wanted to write about the special one-off Oakleys he's wearing in the scene…

…but there isn't much information out there; all we know is that the glasses were designed by Oakley specifically to fit Cruise's face, and that they've done away with stems and hinges in favor of a more simple way to hold them fast to his face.

I hoped they might say more about the glasses in the behind-the-scenes video of the stunt, below. They don't even mention them. However, it is an interesting look at the crazy amount of prep work that went into the stunt—not just literally years of planning, but Cruise building his own motocross jumps to practice on, then practicing on ramps over a quarry, then the crew helicoptering all of the building materials to the top of the cliff in Norway to build the real thing.

All told Cruise did some 13,000 practice jumps and was practicing up to 30 parachute jumps a day. And on shoot day, he shot no less than six takes of the feat:

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Dee An

a year ago

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I imagine a chief consideration was that Mr Cruise's face should remain recognisable to cinema audiences whilst wearing the goggles.

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Kyle Wolfe

a year ago

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What happens to the motorcycle? Does that mean there are 6 motorcycles crashed at the bottom of a cliff that some intern had to go and clean up? This was all super impressive though.

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Kyle Lamson

a year ago

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I'm not familiar with an Oakley version but very similar to the Smith Boogie Goggles used by special forces for eye protection with NVGs. They're very low profile to allow the optics to get as close to the eyes as possible. There are similar bungee cord strap attachment variants.
Buy Boogie SOEP starting at USD 90.00 | Smith Optics

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steve hassler

a year ago

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I wonder how much aid for Ukraine this could have bought instead? Just sayin'.

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