The chopper crash

If jumping out of a plane and speeding through Paris on a motorcycle was not enough, Cruise also learned to pilot a helicopter for an aerial chase against Walker that was set amid canyons and glaciers in Kashmir, before the choppers crash. The two later fight on a rock ledge (the scenes were actually filmed in multiple locations: New Zealand, Norway, and on stages and a backlot).



Filming the helicopter stunts.

“The helicopter needed to go into a roll. ‘Hagrid’s Hill,’ which is on the backlot at Leavesden [Studios, England], is a place that gives you 150 feet of travel. They covered that in snow and then rolled Tom Cruise inside a helicopter down the hill. That was linked to the motion-control rig so the camera would always be in sync with the SFX rig.” —Jody Johnson, Production VFX Supervisor

For the helicopter chase, Johnson joined in on early discussions about how scenes could be filmed at different locations and then brought together to appear as one setting. One solution was to acquire significant reference imagery from a separate helicopter equipped with a six-camera array, with the footage then able to be used to stitch together environments where necessary.

The crash involved Hunt’s helicopter smashing into Walker’s – a CG shot. For scenes of the aircraft then careening through the air, a Neil Corbould-designed SFX rig was utilized, made up of a chopper body on a wire between two cranes. “Ethan’s helicopter was suspended from that wire, and traveled along the wire for 100 feet in the air before crashing into the earth. We filmed that with a big motion-control rig on rails that could keep up with the speed and the movement of the helicopter.”

“Then,” adds Johnson, “the helicopter needed to go into a roll. ‘Hagrid’s Hill,’ which is on the backlot at Leavesden [Studios, England], is a place that gives you 150 feet of travel. They covered that in snow and then rolled Tom Cruise inside a helicopter down the hill. That was linked to the motion-control rig so the camera would always be in sync with the SFX rig.”