Summary
Tom Cruise is arguably the king of Hollywood actor/stuntmen. ThroughMission: Impossible’s 30-year run, audiences have seen Cruise scale buildings, leap from cliffs, andinjure himself on-camera while continuing to perform. It’s an incredible feat that he’s even still doing his own running stunts, let alone hanging from a flying aircraft. Speaking of which, Paramount Pictures released a promo forMission: Impossible-TheFinal Reckoning’s set piece that sees him doing just that.
WithThe Final Reckoningshaping up to be the series' swan song, fans expect an enormous climax to outdo every stunt that’s come before it. Unfortunately, Cruise’s latest isn’t just familiar, it’s one we’ve seen him do multiple times before.Mission: Impossible’s final assignment is Cruise’s most daunting yet, but only because of what it needs to be, and not what it currently is.
Imax’s The Final Reckoning Stunt Promo
In the promo, Cruise lists all the challenges you likely guessed would be associated with trying to free-hand climb a plane eight thousand feet above ground. He says"The wind distorts your vision"and"it’s almost impossible to breathe.“It’s almost as if the mission itself is… impossible.
Well, fans know by now that if an impossible mission needs an agent, you get Tom Cruise to complete it — especially if that mission is scaling an aircraft while it’s flying. This stunt marks the third time we’ve seen him perform a feat that fits the same description and, as astounding as it is that he’s able to do it at 62 years old, it’s been done — and seen — before.
How Does The Final Reckoning’s Stunt Compare To Past Stunts?
Tom Cruise is famous for being an incredible actor who does his own stunts. The level of dedication required to do what he does is unprecedented, including the six-month, eight-hours-per-day helicopter pilot training he went through in order to film one of his most famous sky-high stunts in 2018’sMission: Impossible - Fallout. The film contained a classic airborne Tom Cruise stunt that saw him climbing a free-hanging rope up to a flying helicopter.
As seen in the above behind-the-scenes video, there was an instance during filming where Cruise fell from the rope in unscripted fashion and disappeared out of view, prompting the production crew to radio in concern that they may have just lost Tom for good. Thankfully, he survived to stowaway another day.
Three years earlier, Tom Cruise performed a stunt that would officially set the precedent for airborne stunt requirements in all successiveMission: Impossiblefilms. That mandate is understandable, consideringhow difficult it must be to repeatedly attempt to top this outstandingscene. Again, Cruise explains the forces against him while trying to accomplish his real-world mission to complete a scene in which he exclaims:
“I’m not in the plane, I’m ON the plane!”
“The force of that wind, you see I’m trying desperately,“Cruise said in the behind-the-scenes video. We did, in fact, see he was trying desperately to scale that moving cargo plane. It’s impossible to forget, because it’s plain to see the action happening on screen is really happening as it’s depicted. It’s why fans continue to flock to see him do the improbable again and again.
In this stunt, Cruise hangs on for dear life as the massive aircraft takes off from the ground into the sky, which the audience watches all the way through. Not only was the stunt a phenomenal display of determination and athletic ability, it was also the first scene of the film, which later sees Cruise hold his breath for six minutes underwater andperform a HALO jump from 25,000 feet.
As discussed regardingMission: Impossible - Rogue Nation,the stunt featured in Imax’s promo forThe Final Reckoningcould be one of many stunts from the upcoming film. This is only speculation, though, as multiple hyper-extreme stunts aren’t exactly a given, as was cemented inMission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning.
In that film, Cruise famously rides a motorcycle off a cliff. While the scene is amazing, it was promoted to bits before the movie actually premiered. By the time fans were able to see it, the only thing new about the experience was the size of the screen they were viewing it on.
Moreover, the motorcycle jump stunt from all the previews and promotional material was the only real show-stopping feat inDead Reckoning, and it took a good amount of time before it even happened in the movie, unlikeRogue Nation’s airborne tricks. There were plenty of fights and shootouts inDead Reckoning, butthat’s not what people line up for with these films, and Paramount Pictures knows it. It’s the reasonFinal Reckoning’s promo sees Cruise hanging off a plane and not pointing a gun at the camera.
Audiences hoped there would be more tricks up Cruise’s sleeve inDead Reckoning, but they were wrong. 62-year-old Cruise’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to evolve his plane stunt in-film and prove he still has what it takes to shock an audience. We’ve already seen Cruise hang off an airplane before holding his breath underwater for more than six minutes in the sameMission: Impossiblefilm. Fans have held their collective breath for more than six years to see him faithfully reckon with that criterion.
