In training for the new, upcoming Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the sixth film in the franchise, Tom Cruise spent a year learning how to fall out of a plane. There’s no official word that this is where the movie’s title is derived from, but we can only assume it’s the case. Cruise was learning the HALO jump (aka ‘high altitude – low opening’), which involves skydiving at a whopping 25,000 and opening a parachute at below 2,000 feet, and became the first actor to ever pull off the stunt on camera.
A high-velocity feat of bravery and skill, no doubt, but if you’re the more sedentary – and cautious – type, you may prefer to get your kicks from NME’s pulse-raising playlist, ‘High-octane bangers: inspired by Mission: Impossible – Fallout. The movie, which is released on July 25, follows the further misadventures of IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise), as he and his fellow adrenaline junkies (Alex Baldwin, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson and more) commandeer choppers, throw punches and look moody in a bid to salvage a mission that’s gone badly wrong.
This, then, is a movie so action-packed that it might give you whiplash. You needn’t learn to leap out of plane in order to prepare yourself for it, but you might want to limber up mentally, which is where the breakneck pace of our playlist comes in.
We’ve – of course – opened with the iconic ‘Mission Impossible Theme’, which became a byword for daring-do since the original TV series first aired in the 1960s, and Motörhead’s adrenaline-fuelled ‘Ace of Spades’. Along the way, though, we’ve thrown in curveballs such as electro-art-popper SOPHIE’s brilliantly scattershot ‘Immaterial’, Aussie dance-punks Confidence Man’s sweat-slicked ‘C.O.O.L Party’ and Soulwax’s tropical ‘Essential Four’, which begins bug-eyed and goes wild from there. Your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to crank up this playlist without losing your shit.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout is released on July 25