Ethan Hunt rides hard
The latest installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise launches today, July 27, 2018, in the US. The series has become famous for some pretty iconic action scenes, but also some pretty kick ass and physics-defying motorcycle stunts. Because Tom Cruise himself has a bit of a love story with bikes and we do too, we decided to have a look at the Mission: Impossible bikes that suffered at the hands of the international spy.
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Mission: Impossible II - Triumph Speed Triple and Daytona 955i
This is probably the best-known chase of the franchise and the most unrealistic of the lot. With time, producers found out that a well-filmed action scene without special effects was even better than one that made no sense. Man, these guys are good at wheelies! The two bikes are a reminder that before they switched over to Beemers, the M:I team was all in on Triumph.
The movie was released in the year 2000, back when the Daytona was in the midst of its ten-year run on the market. The Speed Triple name still appears on the Triumph menu and has retained the same naked sports look and bug-eyed headlights.
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Mission: Impossible III - Triumph Bonneville
Mission: Impossible III isn't as motorcycle chase rich as some of the other movies from the franchise, but that's not to say that Ethan Hunt shouldn't get some sitting time on a bike. In this installment, he rolls in on a swanky 2005 Triumph Bonneville, the most iconic model from the British range.
One of the two Bonneville Scrambler used in the movie was actually auctioned off by Bonhams and sold for close to $30k. The bike had been customized for the movie by Triumph itself.
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Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation - BMW S1000RR
The fifth movie of the franchise upped the ante action-wise. You may remember that famous scene where Hunt is dangling from a moving plane, but there is also a pretty epic, and much more realistic, motorcycle chase scene. Rogue Nation marked the beginning of a new partnership with BMW, and the team received the green light to destroy a perfectly good BMW M3. After rolling the Beemer on its top, Tom Cruise jumped on one of the bad guy's blacked out BMW S1000RR to continue the chase in the middle of the Moroccan desert.
Despite sounding like it has a never-ending power band with an acceleration that will keep going on forever, the chase puts an entire fleet of those 199-hp monsters on the road for a pretty breathtaking scene.
Mission: Impossible Fallout - BMW R nineT
We couldn't talk about the M:I motorcycles without mentioning the new Fallout bike chase in the middle of Paris. In this scene, BMW takes the center stage once more with its R nineT Scrambler. Though it looks better in matte silver with a tan saddle, the black color scheme fits the scene better. The entire scene was filmed with the help of a chase bike with a camera and to answer the question, Tom Cruise actually knitted between the vehicles. See? Told you a well filmed realistic chase scene could be as spectacular if not more than one with a special effects extravaganza.
So there you have it, some great stunts and killer bikes from the Mission: Impossible franchise. We can't imaging M:I Fallout not making a gazillion dollars like its predecessors, so it's almost guaranteed that there will be yet another sequel. When that happens we'll be there with the popcorn ready for some new hot bike action.