Which film was shot on Preikestolen?
How the kit got up there
By air, repeatedly, because helicopters cannot land on the plateau itself. Ten helicopters flew something in the order of 800 flights to move roughly 120 tonnes of equipment and about 140 crew onto a rock the size of a tennis court with no flat ground around it. That logistics problem is the most Preikestolen thing about the whole production: the reason the place looks the way it does on film is the same reason nothing can be parked on it.
The dates matter
Filming was moved from late September to 2 to 9 November 2017, and the actual shooting took just over two days inside that eight-day window, with the trail restricted while it happened. November on this cliff is dark, wet and cold, which is a strange month to choose for a sequence set in the Himalaya, and it tells you how much of the eight days was spent waiting for weather. Anyone who has tried to plan a day here will recognise the arithmetic: weather and rain.
What Cruise actually did
The last metres of the hang. Not the whole sequence, and there is no version of this in which a production risks its lead actor on an unroped cliff, but the final part of the hang over the drop is him. I have no interest in adjudicating how brave that is. What I notice is that he was hanging off the same lip that people sit on for photographs every summer afternoon, with the same 604 metres underneath: the height page.
Watching it before you come
It is a reasonable idea, with one warning. The film shows the plateau and the wall beneath it, and it shows none of the four to five hours of forest path, stone stairs, boulder field and boardwalk that get you there. That gap between the image and the walk is the single biggest cause of disappointment on this mountain, which is why I keep pointing at the trail page and how hard it is.
If you came here looking for wizards rather than stunts, the answer is on the Harry Potter page, and it is a qualified yes about somewhere else entirely.
The exposed wall the sequence uses is below and to the side of the plateau, so you cannot stand where the camera stood. What you can do is look over the edge at the face itself and work out where the rope must have been.
What there is to book
Not the trail. Nobody sells a ticket to Preikestolen and nobody can, so anything you pay for is something else: the ride out of Stavanger, the guide who walks it with you, or the boat that shows you the cliff from the water. Which of the three you actually need is set out on the bookings page and in the comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Was Mission: Impossible really filmed on Preikestolen?
Yes. The climbing climax was shot on the plateau between 2 and 9 November 2017, with the trail restricted during filming.
Did Tom Cruise really hang off the cliff?
He did the last metres of the hang himself, 604 metres above the fjord.
Where is the scene set in the story?
Kashmir. The location is Rogaland, in Norway.