Needless to say, legendary actor Tom Cruise has truly made the word “impossible” his signature in the Mission: Impossible series — but with Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, he raised the bar even higher. In fact, Cruise revealed that director Christopher McQuarrie challenged him to perform stunts so extreme they seemed beyond human capability. To help him understand just how extreme, McQuarrie ended up trying the stunt himself.
"And then we talked about story and [McQuarrie] was like, 'Okay, I want you to go from here to here in a couple of seconds,'" Cruise explained during a recent press conference in Tokyo. "I was like, 'I can't do that.' He's like, 'Okay, well, I want you to do this and this.' I was like, 'I really can't do that.'"
"It was the simplest thing," McQuarrie added about the particular stunt that stumped Cruise. "Anything you'd describe, [he'd] say, 'No, you actually can't do that.' And I don't hear 'can't' from him."
But for Cruise, who has spent years performing death-defying stunts across the Mission: Impossible films, his experience gave him all the insight he needed. "I said, 'Just in terms of the speed, because the force of the air, for me to move quickly on the wing was… You just can't do it,'" the actor insisted, describing how a “20-minute tutorial” helped McQuarrie grasp the reality. "You're limited by the physics of how fast the aircraft is traveling and the force of the wind — that was utterly brutal. So I just said, 'Listen, I think the best thing is if you just do it. Go out, sit in the airplane, go out on the wing, and feel it. Feel the pressure.' So, here I am, training him."McQuarrie, it turns out, loved the experience. "It was great, actually," he said. "Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I would definitely do it again." Cruise also explained during the conference that he’d been training for this stunt for years, and that much of making it work came down to selecting the right aircraft.
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning will have its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which takes place from May 13 to May 24, 2025. After that, the movie will hit theaters worldwide on May 23, 2025.
