We all knew Tom Cruise does his own stunts in a league of his own — including hanging off a real biplane in the climax of ‘Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.’ But what follows in the film, which many assumed relied on CGI (spoilers ahead), was also performed practically.

In the scene, Cruise’s character, Ethan Hunt, grabs a parachute from the damaged biplane and jumps. His main chute catches fire mid-air, forcing him to cut it loose and deploy his reserve parachute at the last moment.

Amazingly, this intense stunt wasn’t done with visual effects. Cruise actually leaped from a helicopter at 7,500 feet over the Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa. He wore a main parachute soaked in fuel, specially designed to ignite during freefall. He completed the dangerous jump 16 times to get the shot.

In a behind-the-scenes video, Cruise explains: “What I’m going to do is I’m going to be deploying,” Cruise explains in the video below. “[And] if this is twisted while it’s burning, I’m going to be spinning and burning. I have to kick out of the twist and then ignite. I got 10 seconds.”

This jaw-dropping sequence earned Cruise a Guinness World Record for “the most burning parachute jumps by an individual.”

“Tom is no stranger to record breaking,” said Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records. “Over his impressively long and consistent career, he’s proved himself to be the most powerful actor in Hollywood and the most bankable star, and he’s still the actor with the most consecutive $100 million movies on their resume and the most successful leading action hero at the worldwide box office.”

‘The Final Reckoning’ has received mostly positive reviews and is poised to surpass $400 million at the global box office in the coming days — on track to outperform its predecessor, ‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.’

See the behind the scenes video below:

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