If “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” ends up being Tom Cruise’s last chance to save the world as Ethan Hunt, he’s leaving it all on the court.
In a recent interview with Empire, Cruise and “The Final Reckoning” director Christopher McQuarrie detailed a previously secret death-defying stunt that Cruise performed in a movie that is filled with them. At one point in “The Final Reckoning,” there is an underwater sequence that required Cruise to be submerged in an 8.5 million liter water tank for ten minutes at a time — forcing the crew to closely monitor his time underwater to ensure he didn’t suffer from hypoxia, a condition that arises from a lack of oxygen in body tissue.
“I’m breathing in my own carbon dioxide,” Cruise said. “It builds up in the body and affects the muscles. You have to overcome all of that while you’re doing it, and be present.”
McQuarrie praised his frequent collaborator for enduring the “really physically punishing” stunt.
“He’s in a rotating structure filled with debris, and you had to find a way to make that environment look as chaotic and unhinged as humanly possible,” McQuarrie said. “But in a way that you could repeat, and that Tom could navigate, and survive.”
From scaling the Burj Khalifa to riding a motorcycle off a cliff, the “Mission: Impossible” franchise has seen Cruise put his body on the line to perform some of the most memorable stunts in film history. When asked about his passion for stunt work at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Cruise told an audience that he sees stunts as an essential component of the action genre.
“You know, no one asks Gene Kelly, why do you dance?” he said. “If I do a musical I want to sing, I want to dance. And I want to see how I can do it. You got to figure out it’s not just doing it. It’s how is it part of the story? How do we invest the audience in that? It’s always better to go for it, it’s always better to try than to tend to not do it. It’s always better to ask the question, and don’t be afraid.”
