Tom Cruise has risked life and limb to entertain us for decades. He has scrambled up the side of the Burj Khalifa, driven a motorcycle off a cliff, and flown fighter jets. However, the upcoming Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning sounds like it will feature stunts that even put Cruise to the test.
One of the stunts in The Final Reckoning finds Cruise clinging to the wing of a biplane as it zips through the air at 10,000 feet, and the actor told Empire that it actually caused him to pass out on several occasions. “When you stick your face out, going over 120 to 130 miles an hour, you’re not getting oxygen,” Cruise said. “So I had to train myself how to breathe. There were times I would pass out physically; I was unable to get back into the cockpit.” That sounds terrifying.
Director Christopher McQuarrie added, “There are stunts in this movie that will melt your brain.” I don’t doubt it. Filming these sequences with your leading man in very real danger must be extremely stressful, and McQuarrie teased an even more intense stunt sequence, which “truly [made him] want to puke thinking about the stress. It was intense.“
We still don’t know a whole lot about The Final Reckoning, only that it will follow the story set up in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, in which Ethan and his team were tasked with stopping the Entity, a rogue AI capable of controlling global defence intelligence and financial networks. The film was originally titled Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two, but after the first movie was perceived to be a box-office disappointment, Paramount rethought its approach. When production on the new movie was forced to shut down due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, the studio pushed the release date and announced that it would receive a new title.
In addition to Tom Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, The Final Reckoning features several returning cast members, including Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Vanessa Kirby, Mariela Garriga, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, and Frederick Schmidt. New additions include Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Katy O’Brian, and Tramell Tillman. There have also been rumours that The Final Reckoning will include a sequence with a young Ethan Hunt. The previous film did include a few nods to Hunt’s backstory, so it’s possible this might be explored further in the new movie.
The Final Reckoning will hit theaters on May 23rd.
