Of the many storied stunts that Tom Cruise has performed over eight Mission: Impossible movies – scaling the world’s tallest building in Dubai, riding a motorcycle off a Norwegian cliff, retrieving a stolen ledger from an underwater centrifuge – it seems unlikely that one of the most shock-and-awe set pieces in the series’ nearly 30-year history would involve two old-timey biplanes that look like they should have Snoopy at the controls.

And yet many viewers have emerged from the latest instalment of the franchise, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, astonished by that scene: a 12½-minute sequence in which Cruise, as indefatigable special agent Ethan Hunt, hitches a ride on the undercarriage of a small brightly coloured aircraft, overtakes the pilot, then leaps onto another plane midair to fight the film’s grinning villain (Esai Morales) – all while being bashed and batted by the elements like a human windsock.