If there’s one thing we all know about Hollywood, it’s that Tom Cruise does all his own stunts. He’s climbed buildings and ridden motorcycles off cliffs, and he’s fired insurance companies who wouldn’t let him do all his own stunts. And yet, Free Solo’s Alex Honnold just low-key called out the Mission: Impossible star for a stunt he maybe didn’t do.
Honnold, who recently followed in Cruise's footsteps by climbing a building on Netflix, recently appeared on the podcast Hassan Manaj Doesn’t Know, where the topic of another famous free climb was discussed: the intro scene in Mission: Impossible II. Manaj asked how it felt that Cruise could do the same thing he did, and Honnold indicated Cruise didn’t actually do that stunt, saying:
Well, so I know the guy that did the stunts for this, and he is actually kind of better than me. He is really, really good. This guy, Ron Kauk, from Yosemite.
Needless to say, this is mind-boggling information that potentially changes everything I thought I knew about the world. The idea that Tom Cruise does all his own stunts is well understood by the public at this point. Lots of actors do some, or even most of their own stunts, but are open that they don’t do them all. Even Hasan Manaj is shook by this revelation.
To be fair, Alex Honnold isn’t claiming that the free climb section in the intro of Mission: Impossible II isn’t Tom Cruise at all, but he does believe there are at least moments when the shot is not him. In the clip above, he mentions at least one section that he thinks was another climber:
Well, I’m pretty sure Tom Cruise didn’t actually climb that part.
A quick check of the credits on Mission: Impossible II does confirm Ron Kauk credited for “stunts” in the film, while it’s not specifically mentioned which stunts, he is a well-known rock climber, so it’s not difficult to put these pieces together. At least some of the climbing isn’t Tom Cruise, and Alex Honnold suggests that may be the case more often than we realize, saying:
Well, I don’t think he does all of them. But I mean, this is so cool.
It should be said that the discussion of Tom Cruise doing all his own stunts is a relatively recent phenomenon, and Mission: Impossible II is a 26-year-old film. It’s entirely possible, even likely, that Cruise does all his own stunts now, but wasn’t doing that back then. Tom Cruise has almost always been a movie star, but that doesn’t mean he’s always been in a position to demand everything he’s always wanted on set.
Whoever’s doing the free climbing, it’s still pretty awesome.
