Hanging Off a C-130: Michelle Khare's Attempt to Recreate Tom Cruise's Rogue Nation Plane Stunt
Michelle Khare
In Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), Tom Cruise hung from the side of a military transport plane as it took off. Michelle Khare, creator of the series Challenge Accepted, sets out to become the second person to do it. The stunt has none of the usual protection: no goggles, no helmet, no parachute. She would be secured to the outside of a $60 million aircraft, facing winds she expects to reach around 170 mph, about 2,000 feet up.
The episode follows the whole process: finding a plane, engineering the rigging, planning for emergencies, training for wind and breathing, and the flight itself. Running through it are two other threads. One is Khare's stated hope of one day doing a stunt with Tom Cruise. The other is her claim that she takes on these challenges because she is afraid, not because she isn't.
Finding a Plane When the Original Wasn't Available
Cruise's stunt was done on an Airbus A400M, so all of his team's plans were built around that aircraft. Khare's team spent weeks trying to get one. They soon learned that borrowing a roughly $100 million military aircraft would need direct approval from an entire country's military. The video shows them calling foreign militaries late at night to ask about renting an A400M. In one call, the person on the other end simply hangs up.
As a last attempt, Khare posted a tweet that she says was seen by hundreds of thousands of people. Red Bull saw it and connected the team with Sean MacCormac, a Red Bull Air Force athlete. Khare describes him as having more than 22,000 skydives and a world record in sky surfing. MacCormac agreed to help find a plane and to coach Khare through the stunt. He couldn't get an A400M, but he found a C-130 Hercules, which Khare describes as very similar.
It turned out to be the exact C-130 that Cruise jumped from during the 2024 Paris Olympics. MacCormac had met Cruise and hadn't mentioned it during their first hour together, which the crew joked about. Khare says that after many calls, including some to the Department of Defense, the team "got the plane."
The Scout: Rigging, Weight, and the Absence of a Parachute
The first visit to the aircraft was meant to answer basic questions: how to rig the lines, what the safety protocol would be, and what would happen in an emergency. Stunt coordinator Steve Brown led the rigging plan. Brown had worked with Khare before, coordinating and training her for an earlier Houdini-inspired stunt. Khare cites stunt credits on Avatar and several Marvel films, plus seven years of working together, as reasons she trusts Brown with a stunt this big. Part of the job was having engineers check weight distribution so that every attachment point could handle the load.
The plan was for Khare to be rigged to a rear side door, standing on a small perch at first. As the plane sped up and climbed, Brown explained, gravity and wind pressure would gradually tip her sideways. MacCormac estimated 10 to 15 minutes in that position from takeoff to landing.
Khare asked why she couldn't wear a parachute. MacCormac's answer was that if it opened early, the weakest point between the plane and the open canopy would be her body. It could tear her apart, or, depending on the aircraft, bring down the back of the plane. The emergency plan instead depended on someone inside opening the door, grabbing her, and pulling her in. If she wasn't fully conscious, they would give CPR or whatever first aid was needed. MacCormac described this as the point of safe planning: working out every worst case so there is a chance to respond.
Khare said afterward that she felt awful. Hearing people inside the plane talk calmly about pulling her back in unconscious was frightening. She admitted she had brought this on herself: she had posted a tweet thinking it would be fun, and now she was standing on the side of the plane picturing the ground thousands of feet below.
The Director Who Is Also Her Husband
Garrett Kennell, director and co-creator of Challenge Accepted, is also Khare's husband. Kennell said that seeing Khare lean out of the door with her feet outside was the first time the shot felt real. The hardest part of making the show, Kennell explained, is finding a balance between "artistic director Garrett" and the husband who never wants anything bad to happen to her.
Kennell gave an example. While filming ringside at Khare's boxing match, Kennell had a first-ever panic attack, and says it may be visible in the broadcast: putting the camera down, sitting, and breathing. Seeing unpredictable harm come toward Khare was enough to set it off, and Kennell said similar feelings were starting up again with this stunt.
MacCormac's description of the physical demands didn't help. He compared it to riding a motorcycle: past about 130 mph, your neck vibrates and every muscle is tense. Khare would hold that for 10 to 20 minutes, with "no off switch." The team agreed the preparation could not be rushed.
"Confident, Not Careful" and the Tom Cruise Motivation
Khare tells how she met Cruise for about five minutes at a Mission: Impossible premiere earlier that year and thanked him for inspiring Challenge Accepted. When they parted, he told her, "Be confident. Don't be careful." On camera she repeats it as "Confident, not careful," and at other points in the episode she says it as "competent, not careful," treating the preparation phase as "competent preparing."
She is open about her motive. She has a lifelong dream of doing a stunt with Cruise, and many of her videos over the past two years were inspired by his films. She mentions an underwater sequence with breath holds up to six and a half minutes, and a year of training in sword work, flexibility, and strength. Her reasoning is that to impress Cruise enough to work with her someday, she has to prove herself by recreating one of his biggest stunts. That starts with becoming competent.
Wind Machine Training and Scleral Lenses
Training began with a 500-horsepower gas-powered wind machine run by Jesse Noel. The team describes it as the largest of its kind in Hollywood, able to produce 100 mph winds at 20 feet. At half power, about 50 mph, Khare called it "intense." MacCormac said ordinary skydiving planes usually exit at 60 to 80 mph, so the C-130 would be much bigger and faster than what he normally jumps from. Since no setup on the ground could fully match the plane's wind, the team improvised to train for both speed and direction.
Before going faster, Khare needed a harness and scleral contact lenses. These cover the whole eye and act as a small windshield. She calls them the best protection short of goggles. Goggles were not an option because her face and reactions had to be visible on camera. Debris was a real danger: MacCormac recalled being hit by a small stone at speed while on the side of a plane. He thought it had broken his rib and was grateful it hadn't hit his face.
Khare was fitted by an optometrist who had worked on the Mission: Impossible films. The corneal measurement left her saying she "must look possessed." A lens specialist named Sean, whose job is inserting and removing lenses for actors, came to fit them. This was the same person who had fitted Cruise. Sean said they had put a hemorrhage-effect lens in one of Cruise's eyes for Vanilla Sky, and tinted lenses to turn his green eyes brown for Minority Report. Insertion was hard. Khare jokingly asked whether she was the worst talent Sean had worked with. Sean said "by far" as a joke, then added that Tom "did really well." Sean would come along on stunt day to manage the lenses.
Learning to Breathe in a Hurricane
For the full-power test, the wheels of the wind machine had to be chocked, because in earlier testing it had pushed itself backward. MacCormac coached Khare to stay streamlined, keeping her head and torso into the wind so it spilled evenly, and to stay as close to the aircraft as possible. The fan went above 90 mph, which Khare compares to a Category 1 hurricane.
That test showed her a new problem: at that speed it is nearly impossible to breathe, and going hypoxic would be "game over." She said there is so much air and yet it is still hard to breathe. MacCormac advised her to cut back on mouth breathing, which dries the mouth fast, or at least to "sip" air and stay as relaxed as possible. The safety plan was that Brown would watch a monitor during the flight. Any sign of trouble breathing, loss of consciousness, or extreme fatigue would end the stunt early, and she would be pulled inside.
The fan topped out well below the speed she expected on the day, so she also trained in an indoor skydiving wind tunnel that can exceed 175 mph. There she worked with MacCormac on body position and on using oxygen more efficiently, holding positions while the crew counted down and shouted encouragement.
A Team of Long-Time Collaborators
Khare says the project was also about showing what her whole team could do, and proving that every department of Challenge Accepted could make something on the level of a major action franchise. She stresses that many crew members have been with her since the channel began seven years ago, when she was filming Starbucks reviews on an iPhone. They gave their time, energy, and equipment because they believed in a longer-term vision.
She also points out how many firsts the shoot involved. To her knowledge, Brown had not coordinated an aerial stunt this large. Director of photography Kevin Stiller was rigging cameras to the side of a plane for the first time, and noted there seemed to be nowhere to mount them without drilling into the airframe. Kennell was directing a shoot big enough to need a chase helicopter. Producer Nick Hurt had to find a $60 million plane and pilots willing to fly it. One rigger mentioned having two young daughters who would watch this. The rigger said they were too young for something like this now, but that the hope is they will one day take on whatever challenges they choose. Khare said she wanted people around her that she trusts completely, and that her goal was to lead the team to success because more than her own success was at stake.
Prep Day: Redesigning the Hand Holds and Foot Ledge
The day before the stunt, which Khare called "Christmas Eve," was for checking whether months of schematics and engineering plans would work on the real aircraft. A major difference between the two planes came up. The A400M in the film had perforated circular panels near the door that Cruise used as hand holds, plus a small ledge for his feet. That ledge is what allowed him to move from standing to the horizontal "flying" position. The C-130 has neither.
The team had to build a ledge and find new hand positions. Khare noted that the C-130's door handle sat much closer than the "cheese grate" panel Cruise held, and she worried this would look less powerful on camera. Brown's fix was a line built along the door that she could hold with her body fully stretched out. That would keep her close to the door while making her look like an active performer and not "just a passenger in the wind." Another difficulty was running the safety lines through the door without them catching on anything. In a test hang, Khare said she felt much more secure.
Bird Strikes and Facing Fear
At a final safety meeting, the team was invited to raise any concerns. Someone mentioned the one risk they couldn't control: a random bird strike. It is rare but cannot be eliminated. The group joked about it; Khare said she doesn't like birds, and someone teased that talking about it was like duck-calling them.
Khare says the laughter showed her that no matter how many precautions are in place, a small amount of uncertainty will always be out of their control, and that this kept her up every night before the stunt. She then pushed back on how people see her. She knows viewers think she is exceptionally brave. In fact, Challenge Accepted started when she wrote all her fears on a whiteboard and matched each one with a situation where she could face it. In her words, she does these things "not because I'm unafraid, but because I am." She again said she hopes to do a stunt with Cruise one day, and that she needs to show she is ready, while admitting she may never be. This stunt felt like the next step.
The night before, Kennell recorded a video message for her. In it, Kennell packs a "lucky" pair of underwear said to have been worn for every final challenge, including the boxing match and the Houdini performance. Kennell admits to being scared too, but points out how good it is that they get to do this with friends they have grown alongside.
Stunt Day
The morning started with a crew briefing and thanks to people who had been collaborating toward this for about seven years. The lenses went in with coaching on slow, focused breathing. Khare was told that if a lens came out mid-flight, it would be "no big deal" but would also be reason enough to call it off. When asked how she felt, she said she was "really anxious," and someone remarked they had never heard her say that.
After engine start, the C-130 taxied while Khare was hit with dust, then lined up at the top of the runway. Kennell called that the point of no return. On takeoff, an observer saw that she had lost her footing, then found her again. In the air, the plane made S-turns and passes by the camera helicopter while the camera crew adjusted shutter settings for banking into the sun.
MacCormac described the two kinds of turns. Right-hand banks press more of her body against the fuselage. Left-hand banks turn the side into an overhang, where she really feels herself separating from the plane. Toward the end, observers saw her legs starting to bend and said she looked tired. The plane finished its last run, and the crew asked for a slow final approach. The team hoped she could get back onto the platform for landing, and she did. She landed standing on the perch.
Closing Reflection and the Next Target
Khare looks back on the seven years since Challenge Accepted began. She says she could not have predicted the journey or the people she would get to work with. Whether you are making videos in your bedroom or trying a Cruise-level stunt, she says, going after big dreams can be scary, and she is glad she found the fun in it on the side of that plane. She ends with a message to Cruise: if he still isn't convinced, she might have one more stunt planned.
That stunt is a climb of the Burj Khalifa. Khare says she emailed contacts in Dubai with connections to the building and was told the climb is not possible. By her account, Cruise remains the only person to have climbed it, while Will Smith and MrBeast were only allowed access to the top. Her takeaway from the email is that she doesn't have enough clout yet, so for now the request remains unanswered.
So for this stunt, it's performed without goggles, without a helmet, without a parachute. This is dangerous.
In 2015, Tom Cruise shocked the world by performing one of the deadliest stunts ever captured on film. This will be the second time this stunt is ever accomplished, the first being Tom Cruise.
What Tom and the whole stunt team did was pretty amazing. This is like Tom's stunt, but this is going to be your own.
I will be working with professional stuntmen to safely rig myself to the side of a $60 million plane, world-class skydivers to help train my body to endure 170 mph winds.
Come on, Michelle. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
And utilizing cutting-edge technology to protect my body once it's 2,000 feet in the air.
I must look possessed.
It's about to get real.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Sean, hi.
You made it. It's finally happening. Look at this.
Oh my God. It's a really big plane and I'm a really small...
Fast plane. It's like a 170-mile-per-hour moving building. Crazy. This is going to be amazing.
It is. It is crazy.
Are we going now?
Yeah, let's go check this thing out.
Hello.
They transport tanks and troops of people in this thing.
I'm actually floored right now. This is crazy. So, I'm holding on here and seeing the propellers right in front of me.
Yes. Yep. This is not VFX.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is real.
The purpose of today's scout is to figure out answers to all of our questions. How are we going to rig the lines? What's the safety protocol? What's the emergency protocol? But of course, we've assembled an incredible team. We have Steve Brown. You guys might remember him from coordinating our Houdini stunt and training me for that. And with stunt credits such as Avatar and numerous Marvel films, along with having worked with each other for seven years, Steve is someone I implicitly trust to coordinate a stunt of this scale.
So today is about us inspecting and finding what we're allowed and not allowed to do. Getting engineers to look at certain weight distributions so that we can make sure that everything that we're planning on doing has weight capacity and is properly set up and done.
So here we have our model C-130. Where will I be?
So there's this back door right here that you're going to be rigged to.
You're going to be on a little perch. So you'll be able to stand here, and then as the plane takes off and it starts to ascend, and as it gets faster and faster, gravity and wind pressure and everything is just going to get you pitched sideways.
So Steve's goal is to figure out how to safely secure me onto the side of the plane during the entirety of the flight. However, there is one major problem we need to solve.
In Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Tom is hanging off an A400M, meaning that all the plans that Tom's team created were for that particular plane, a plane that is different from the one that we are using. We spent weeks hunting for an A400M. But we quickly learned that borrowing a $100 million military aircraft would require direct approval from an entire country's military.
Good morning.
Hello. Good morning. We're calling from a film production in the United States and wanted to inquire about a potential rental of one of the A400M.
Okay.
We stayed up so late to...
They hung up on me.
And after many calls to foreign militaries...
Adios.
We tried one last Hail Mary.
Hey.
Hey, y'all.
Hey, welcome back.
Thank you. Our tweet was seen by hundreds of thousands of people, one of them being our friends at Red Bull, who have a history of helping us acquire fast and insanely expensive vehicles.
I'm just excited for us all to get on. Obviously, this is Sean, the myth, the legend, Red Bull Air Force.
Red Bull put us in contact with Sean MacCormac, a legendary Red Bull athlete with over 22,000 skydives and a world record in skysurfing. Sean has not only agreed to help us find a plane, but to also coach me to pull off the stunt. And though Sean told us he couldn't secure an A400M, he revealed he might have the next best thing.
We have located the aircraft, the C-130.
We were able to get it available.
This C-130, called the Hercules, named after the most popular god of Greek mythology, famous for his incredible power, versatility, and achieving the difficult. Through his contacts at the Red Bull Air Force, Sean was able to secure a C-130 Hercules, which is not only very similar to the A400M, but it's the same type of plane Tom Cruise jumped out of during the 2024 Paris Olympics.
But it wasn't just any C-130, it was this very C-130.
So Tom Cruise has already performed a stunt on this exact...
He's blessed the plane. Boo. Wait, you've met Tom?
Oh yeah.
What the hell? We've been here for an hour and he didn't even say that.
That's how cool he is. I tried to tell you. Nobody wants to listen to me.
You make me blush.
Nobody thought we could do this. Nobody thought we could get our hands on a military aircraft. And after many calls, including some to the Department of Defense, we got the plane.
How long from takeoff to landing are we talking being in this hot seat?
I would plan on 10 to 15 minutes. Probably 10 to 15 minutes for a full evolution.
Yeah. From takeoff to landing.
Okay. So, for this stunt, it's performed without goggles, without a helmet, without a parachute. Why are we not wearing a parachute?
You can't have a parachute because if you have a premature deployment, then essentially the softest spot between the plane and that parachute section is you. It basically rips you in half or you take the whole back of the aircraft down, depending on what the aircraft is.
So I will not be wearing a parachute during the stunt.
No.
This is my security that if something goes wrong, I want to be able to open the door. My goal is that I will grab you, secure you, and at least bring you in. And if, God forbid, you're not fully conscious, try to do CPR or whatever first aid that we may need to do. But this is the whole point of planning safely, is planning for every worst-case scenario and having a chance to respond.
Feeling awful. Going to start there. It's just really bizarre to be inside the plane and talk about if there's a medical emergency or if we think things are going wrong, we're going to open the door and reach out the plane and pull you back inside, and if you're unconscious, this is the protocol. That is all really scary to hear. Obviously, I have done this to myself, but it definitely feels like one of those: I put up a tweet and thought it would be a fun idea, and now that we're here, and I'm actually standing on the side of the plane, imagining looking down and seeing the ground thousands of feet below me is absolutely terrifying.
I mean, I knew what the shot's going to look like, but just seeing Michelle go from this to this with her feet out was the first time I really visualized what this is going to look like with Michelle almost out of the plane. My name is Garrett. I am the director and co-creator of Challenge Accepted. And I am also Michelle's husband.
The hardest thing about making this show for me is constantly trying to figure out how to meet in the middle between artistic director Garrett and husband Garrett, who loves Michelle deeply and wants nothing bad ever to happen to her. For example, I was filming ringside during Michelle's big boxing fight. I had my first ever panic attack, and I think you can actually see me in the broadcast in the background sit down, put my camera down, and just breathe for a moment. Just seeing harm come towards Michelle in a way that's very unpredictable was enough to give me that panic attack. And so the feelings that I had during the boxing matches, certainly the feelings that I'm starting to feel now for this stunt.
This is dangerous. You're going to be going around 170 mph. I don't know if you've ever ridden a motorcycle. Once you start cresting up to 130 and beyond, your neck is vibrating and it's moving. Your arms, every muscle in your body is going to be tense. You're going to be doing that for 10 to 20 minutes straight.
Yeah.
And there's no off switch.
We have a lot of work to do before we actually do it. And I feel like we can't skip that.
Competent, not careful. So, this is competent preparing.
Hello, Tom. It's such a privilege to meet you. Nice to...
Meet you.
Earlier this year, I had the rare opportunity to meet Tom Cruise for five minutes at the Mission: Impossible premiere and got to tell him how much his work has inspired Challenge Accepted over the years.
That is intense.
Thank you, sir.
And at the end of the interaction, he gave me one lasting piece of advice.
Be competent. Don't be careful.
Yes, sir. Confident, not careful.
Competent.
Competent. Yes, sir. But the reason I met Tom in the first place is because it's a lifelong dream of mine to one day do a stunt with Tom Cruise. And that's why over the past two years, many of our videos have been in some way inspired by Tom's films.
We were shooting the underwater sequence. We were doing up to six-and-a-half-minute breath holds. Spent a year training, learning sword work, and increasing flexibility, strength, and just everything.
So, if I want to someday impress Tom enough to convince him to do a stunt with me, I'm going to have to prove myself by recreating one of his biggest. And that starts with becoming competent.
We got—how fast was that, Jesse?
You ended up getting about half power on that one.
Okay.
Yeah. 50 mph. How'd that feel?
That was intense. Oh my gosh. Free Brazilian blowout. My gosh.
Yeah.
Your toy is pretty awesome.
Thank you. This is a 500-horsepower gas-powered wind machine. It is the largest gas-powered wind machine in Hollywood. And it could produce winds at 100 miles an hour at 20 feet.
So this is what it feels like every time you step out the plane, except times seven, right?
No, not times seven, but usually the exit speed of the average skydiving plane is 60 to 80 mph.
Okay.
So basically, you're in a much bigger, faster aircraft than what he typically jumps out of.
Because it's nearly impossible to recreate the same wind conditions I'll feel on the plane, we have to get a little creative in order to train for the speed and directionality of the wind.
This is going to be 10 minutes.
Yeah.
And we're going to be triple what you just felt right there. Right, because we still haven't gone to full power yet.
Okay. So, in our initial test, I just experienced up to 65 mph. However, before we go any faster, I need to get into a safety harness, and I also need to put in protective scleral contact lenses. They cover the entire eyeball and are the best protective measure you can take without actually using full goggles. Since I will be facing wind speeds of up to 170 mph, any debris blown in my direction can be extremely dangerous for my eyes.
No, seriously. I got hit by a little stone about that big, and we were going so fast. Luckily, it hit my rib. I thought it broke my rib when I was on the side. I was just thinking, "Thank God it didn't hit my face."
And because the performance element of this stunt requires my face and reactions to be visible to camera, instead of using goggles, I actually got to go to an amazing optometrist who has worked on the Mission: Impossible movie and got fitted and everything.
This is horrifying. So, this is what's in my eye to measure my eye.
Yeah, because they're different sizes. Look at me. Open your mind. Big eyes.
So, this is measuring my cornea. That's terrifying. I must look possessed.
Today, I'll be putting them in and actually testing them in the wind.
Hey, Sean. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
Thank you for being here today.
You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
And who better to fit me into these lenses than the man who put them on Tom himself.
You scleraled Tom.
Yes. We had to put a hemorrhage lens in one of his eyes for Vanilla Sky. And then on Minority Report, we needed to make his green eyes brown, so it was just a tinted lens.
Cool. Scleral contact lenses are not your average contact lens. Instead of just covering the iris of the eye, they cover your entire eye to act as a little windshield. Now, the insertion and removal of these contacts is far more intense than regular contacts. Sean's entire job is to insert and remove contact lens eyewear for actors. So, he's going to be coming along the way to help make sure that I can get these in and out of my eyes.
And this is what the lens looks like.
So big.
Going to have you do for this is we're going to have you look. Stay focused on the very tip of your nose. Okay. Doing great. Take a breath. Relax. You're doing good. And look all the way up for me. Almost there. Relax. Look up one more time. Almost there. It is a very large lens. I'm almost in there. You're doing great.
Is it in?
Right in there.
Am I the worst talent you've ever worked with?
By far. No. You're doing great.
I bet Tom just takes it like a champ. Whatever.
Tom did really well.
Makes sense.
Focus down toward your nose. Sorry. Bandage lens is really thin. Very well done. Your makeup was a little messed up. It probably needs a touch-up, but you're doing...
Bless you.
You're welcome.
Okay. So, go back toward the end of this line. Okay. So, when we go full speed, we'll go for a minute straight. We'll settle from there.
Okay.
Okay.
Great.
Yeah. On this one, I had to chock the wheels because when we were testing this before, it pushed the whole thing backwards. So...
Oh my God.
Okay. You're going to try and get yourself as streamlined as possible so that your head and torso are into the wind, spilling it evenly. You're going to try and create as little space between you and the aircraft as possible. You're going to want to try and be close to it.
Let's get this fired up.
Well, just to confirm, we're going all in on this one.
All in.
I just heard that they were going to turn the fan up to 90-plus miles an hour, which is a Category 1 hurricane.
Heat.
Heat.
Being hit with 90 mph winds quickly illuminated to me an entirely new obstacle. It is almost impossible to breathe, and going hypoxic would be game over. During the stunt, Steve will be watching a monitor, and if they see any signs of inability to breathe, loss of consciousness, immense fatigue, they will make a call to terminate the stunt early and pull me inside.
How did you feel with that last go?
I was definitely having to remind myself, breathe. It's hard to breathe when the wind—there's so much air and it's still hard to breathe out there.
Two things is we're going to try and pull back on the mouth breathing.
Okay.
Because what it'll do is it's going to dry out your mouth super fast. Or, I mean, if you are going to breathe through your mouth, sip it.
Okay.
Trying to make it relaxed as much as possible.
But the problem with the fan is that it only goes up to a fraction of the speed of wind that I will experience on the day. So I'll also be training in an indoor skydiving facility where, in the wind tunnel, they can crank up the wind speed to over 175 mph, which is much closer to what I'll experience on the side of the plane. While in the wind tunnel, I'll be working with Sean on body positioning.
Keep it up. Keep it up. Keep it up. Nice. Come on, Michelle. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
I'm also going to be training my body to be more efficient in its use of oxygen because, as you know, it's very hard to breathe up.
Every second counts. Let's go, Michelle. Come on.
Go.
Come on, Michelle. Come on. Come on. Come on. Three, two, one.
You okay?
However, it's not just about me being able to prove that I can pull off the physical component of the stunt, but I also want to show what our team is capable of. That holistically every department who's a part of Challenge Accepted can rise to the occasion and create something equally as incredible as one of the greatest action franchises of all time.
This is such a real, real privilege to work with all of you here. This is the best group of people to make it happen. This is a group of people who, when I started my YouTube channel and I was
Filming Starbucks reviews on my iPhone, were willing to connect with me, donate their time and their energy, their equipment because they believed in the larger long-term vision. And something I love about our team is that when you look at the call sheets and the list of people who are coming to set, many of those people are the same people who have been here since day one on my channel seven years ago.
Just got to the hangar. Are we rolling? Restricted area. Authorized personnel only. I think I'm authorized.
How you doing?
How am I feeling? I'm excited.
Good. Yeah. Six. Yeah, it's going amazing. Everyone's amazing.
You're welcome. How are you?
This looks incredible.
I know. It's all coming together.
I'm doing all the suffering so that you can suffer less on the...
Oh my God. Today is the prep day, aka Christmas Eve before tomorrow, which is the big stunt. For the past several months, all of these different departments have been working together off of schematics and engineers' plans to try and make this happen. And now today, we're here to see if all of the things we have planned virtually will work physically in the actual space.
So, a big difference between the picture aircraft that they used in Mission: Impossible versus our C-130 is that on the side of the A400M, it has these really cool perforated circles that Tom used as handholds. In addition, it also had a small ledge for his feet, motivating why Tom goes from a standing position to a flying position. There isn't a step that allows me to do that. So, we're going to be fabricating a ledge and also trying to figure out a new place for me to hold my hands.
I want to think critically about the door on this C-130. The handle is much tighter than the cheese-grate wind protectant that Tom used. So, I think we should think critically about how we can get that wider look because it's a bit more powerful.
Well, it's not about just wider. It's fabricating a line by the door. She can hold on to that. We can get her fully outstretched, and then that way I can keep her tighter to the door and her body length will look more dynamic versus just a passenger in the wind.
From view, that is better to me. So as long as we can do that, I don't know what needs to happen to make it happen.
Don't worry about it now. It's because it's going to happen. Great.
All right, Steve. We're good to have her hang.
Yeah. Feels cool.
More complex thing is just trying to figure out how to get the lines through the door.
Yeah, without getting caught up on anything.
These guys have saved me and so many other guys multiple times. The amount of horsepower these boys can generate.
Pretty impressive.
What he's trying to say is we eat a lot.
Flag me and then go ahead and bang me against the aircraft.
Yeah, I feel much more secure.
To my knowledge, Steve has not yet coordinated an aerial stunt of this magnitude. We're all coming up on a lot of firsts as a group. It will be the first time that Kevin has rigged cameras to the side of the plane.
It didn't sound like there was anywhere we can put the camera without literally drilling into the side of the airplane.
And this will be the first time Garrett has directed a shoot so big it requires a chase helicopter to film. And this is the first time Nick has had to produce a shoot that required finding a $60 million plane and finding pilots willing to fly. What was your reaction when you heard what this job was?
It's unreal. We all bring a certain specialty. We work together as a team. We win and lose as a team.
Yeah.
I have two young daughters.
No way.
Be looking up to you in this. This is pretty nice.
Would you let your daughters do this, though?
I am going to encourage them to go out and conquer whatever challenges they want to do. So right now they're at an age where I would not, but one day I would love for them to be able to take on whatever it is that they want to do. And so hopefully them getting to see this will be...
And their dad.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
For something like this, there's an aspect of family. I want my family on set to be there. People I would just implicitly trust with anything. We have grown and learned together so much. My objective is to lead the team to success because it's not just my success that is on the line.
Tomorrow is the big day. I think I can say without a doubt, tomorrow will be the craziest day of my life. We're here today to just vocalize any areas of concern in a safe environment.
I think that the only thing that's not in our control on this thing, you get the random bird strike, right? I think that they're rare. It's a risk that we can't eliminate.
Anybody who's close to me knows I don't like birds.
I don't like it when it looks at me.
I don't like birds.
The more you talk about it, the more likely they're going to be like, "Oh, you're duck calling them right now."
The birds are plotting right now.
Get out of here. Go.
They're conspiring.
That's the first time that they've been here. Living in a Hitchcock movie.
Yeah, we were laughing about bird strikes, but in that moment, it illuminated to me that no matter how many safety precautions you have in place, there will always be a very small degree of unknown that is completely out of our control. And that is what keeps me up at night every night leading up to this.
I think that there's a perception through Challenge Accepted that I'm a person that is exceptionally brave. But in reality, Challenge Accepted started because I wrote all of my fears on a whiteboard and then attached each with a situation or circumstance where I could confront that fear head-on. I do these things not because I'm unafraid, but because I am.
I wanted to do this because it's a dream of mine to one day do a stunt with Tom Cruise. And I can't even believe I'm saying that out loud. But I know that to earn that opportunity, I need to show that I'm ready. And maybe I never will be, but this felt like the next step to showing that possibility.
[Music]
All right, here we go.
[Music]
Hi, Michelle. I am recording this video as proof because I know you're scared right now about the plane stunt, but fear not because, drum roll, I'm packing for set right now. Drum roll. I am going to be bringing and wearing my lucky underwear. You don't know this, but I actually wear this exact pair of underwear on all of the final challenges. I wore it the night of the boxing fight. I wore it the night of your Houdini performance, a bunch of others, and I will also be wearing it for the plane stunt final challenge. So, I'm gonna just pack that here. And now you don't got to worry.
But Michelle, I know you're a little freaked out about this. So am I. But at the end of the day, how cool is it that we got to do this with our friends and that we've grown together? I got you. The crew's got you. And now my underwear, my underwear's got you. So here's proof that this works. And I freaking love you so much. And I will see you when you touch down. See you soon.
[Music]
I know that you're here tonight. I see you when I close my eyes.
[Music]
With these days, I really cry.
[Music]
Okay, everybody. All right. Good morning. Good morning.
Folks, today is the big day, but we are all perfectly equipped for it. We've got the best group available to us to do this. I'm really excited to see it.
I just want to say thank you again. Some of the people here, we've been collaborating for seven years to work towards this thing. We really, really thank everybody here for coming from their world to collaborate together. And thank you so much to our amazing stunt team. Want to see you guys awesome.
Hey folks, let's have a wonderful day. I'll see you out there.
Hey, this Cheryl, just so you know, we have a picture from you. Copy.
[Music]
Running out of time.
It's supposed to be hard to breathe, right?
Well, it's always a little harder when you're nervous.
Slow breathing.
Stay focused.
Just like that. Take a breath. You're doing great, Michelle. Pause.
Take a breath. And then look up.
Get better at this every time.
[Music]
If during the flight those come out, it's no big deal. But that's enough of a reason...
Oh.
For you to say, "All right, I'm good."
Yeah.
Okay.
[Music]
So, we're going to start connecting her.
Yep.
All right. It's about to get real.
All right, folks. Please start making your way to village. We are very close over here.
[Music]
Cara, how are you feeling?
I am feeling really anxious, but...
Whoa.
Yes.
I've never heard you say...
I think once it... I don't know. Yeah, this is a weird one. This is a weird...
[Music]
Okay. C-130, you are clear for engine start. Copy.
C-130 is clear to go.
When she turns this corner, you get dusted out. There's a bunch of dirt.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
They're going from the taxiway as they kind of line up at the top of the runway on the runway markers. It's just undeniably real. She's in the clear space. She sees the runway out in front of her. This definitely feels like the point of no return.
[Music]
Clear to go. Fire up.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
[Music]
Oh, she's lost her foot. There she is. Oh my God.
You can extend your upwind just a moment and I'll call in position.
Be on standby for me to potentially tell you to shutter down when we start banking into the sun directly. I'll let you know. We'll drop to a 90-degree shutter on both cameras on my cue.
Okay, Tango Mike, you are clear to turn toward helicopter.
Getting their S-turns and their helicopter flybys. So, there's two versions of the bank. When they do their right-hand turns, you're kind of giving a lot more surface area for you to purchase with your body on the fuselage.
Holy...
That was beautiful. I'm going to continue down.
It's quickly followed up by a left-hand turn, which obviously turns that into an overhang surface where you're really kind of feeling that separation from the plane.
[Music]
She looks like she is getting a little fatigued. You can just see the legs getting a little bent.
[Music]
Okay, so they're setting up on their downwind now. They'll do one more run and then it should be two 90s to come back in to land. She is on the home stretch.
She's loving it.
Of course she is.
Friendly reminder for a slow final, please.
All right, the C-130 is turning onto final. Hopefully, we'll be able to get her back onto the platform for the landing. That would be ideal.
God, dude. There he is.
All right. Come on, Michelle. There you go. Good job. So, she's going back onto the platform for the landing. Amazing.
[Music]
You know I'm a dreamer, but my heart's of gold. I had to run away high so I wouldn't come home low. Take me to your heart. Feel me in your bones. Just one more night and I'm coming off this long and winding road.
[Applause]
I'm on my way. I'm on my way. Home sweet home. Tonight, tonight, I'm on my way. Home sweet...
[Music]
When we started Challenge Accepted seven years ago, I could have never predicted the journey that lay ahead. Not just the videos we'd make, but the incredibly talented people I'd get to make them with. Whether it's making videos in your bedroom or attempting a Tom Cruise-level stunt, going after big dreams can be scary. And I'm really glad that somewhere up there on the side of that plane, I was able to find the fun in it all.
[Music]
Sweet home.
And Tom, if you're still not convinced, I might have one more stunt up my sleeve.
If you want to see even more of how this episode came together, we actually made a full behind-the-scenes breakdown of our entire storytelling process. That's live right now on the Adobe Video and Motion YouTube channel. It's the first time we've ever documented our post-production process from storyboarding to choosing between dozens of camera angles to using some of the brand-new features in the Adobe Creative Suite. And you can even see my genuine reaction to seeing the first cut of this very episode.
We've made all 60-plus episodes of Challenge Accepted with the Adobe Creative Suite, and we are so thankful to Adobe for sponsoring this episode and making storytelling like this on YouTube possible.
I emailed a bunch of various contacts in Dubai who have connections to the Burj Khalifa, and they said this specific stunt is not possible to carry out. Tom Cruise remains the only person to have climbed it. Will Smith and MrBeast were only granted access to the top, not a full climb. So, what I'm garnering from this email is we don't have enough clout yet. So, please be sure to subscribe so we can convince them to let us do this one.
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