Legendary actor Tom Cruise has truly redefined the term "impossible" with the Mission: Impossible franchise, but he's taken it to new heights with the eighth installment, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. In a recent press conference in Tokyo, Cruise shared that director Christopher McQuarrie had him facing some genuinely impossible stunts. To drive home the difficulty, McQuarrie even tried the stunt himself.
Cruise recounted, "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.' 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.'"
McQuarrie, reflecting on the stunt, noted, "It was the simplest thing. Anything you'd describe, [he'd] say, 'No, you actually can't do that.' And I don't hear 'can't' from him."
For Cruise, who has performed a multitude of death-defying stunts in the M:I series, the challenge was clear. "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,'" he explained. He even provided McQuarrie with a "20-minute tutorial" to illustrate the physics at play. "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 embraced the experience, stating, "It was great, actually. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I would definitely do it again." Cruise also mentioned that he had been training for this stunt for years, emphasizing that selecting the right aircraft was crucial to executing it successfully.
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival from May 13 to May 24, 2025, before hitting theaters worldwide on May 23, 2025.
