After 20 years of chest-kicking and wise-cracking as an Impossible Mission Force agent, one might suspect Tom Cruise is getting a bit tired of it all. If true, none of this is visible in the new trailer for the fifth episode of the Mission Impossible series of feature films. The trailer shows Cruise as fresh and daring as ever.

In Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, Tom Cruise continues in his apparent quest to prove his manliness by hanging on to the side of an airplane. Yes, that is him throughout, drooping from a taking off and landing Airbus 400 – no stunt people. “It’s nerve-racking for everyone else,” said the actor-producer, “but pretty exciting for me.”

The uber-tough guy told USA Today that, while riding as a passenger on airplanes, he has often considered what it would be like to be outside, on the wing. “This is the (stuff) I think about,” he said not immodestly.

Simply and profoundly, director Christopher McQuarrie said that, in each successive film in the Mission Impossible franchise, “We keep pushing the envelope.” Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation is written by Drew Pearce, who also wrote Iron Man 3 and the third in the Sherlock Holmes series starring Robert Downey, Jr.

Returning in an expanded role as Benji (the MI-version of Q) is Simon Pegg, who originally connected with the series back in 2006’s Mission Impossible III. The trailer seems to show a more buddy-type or collegial relationship between Benji and Hunt, rather than the usual Cruise-led aggregation.

Tom Cruise has been described as “one of the most powerful – and richest – forces in Hollywood,” in part because he is one of the few producers widely held as a virtual guarantee not only for the success of an individual film but of a billion-dollar franchise. Indeed, the Mission Impossible films rank 16th on the list of highest grossing film series ever. Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation opens in theaters July 31.