It would have really been his final reckoning.
Tom Cruise almost broke his back filming a scene in “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”
In Entertainment Weekly’s preview of bonus content from the action film’s digital release, Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie watched the iconic plane fight scene between Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and Gabriel (Esai Morales) that nearly had serious real-life ramifications for Cruise.
“Oh, this almost broke my back,” Cruise, 63, said in the commentary of the scene, which featured Ethan hanging from the wing of Gabriel’s (Esai Morales) 1930s biplane.
“You’re talking about a lot pain here,” added McQuarrie, 56.
Cruise, who does his own stunts, explained that hanging from the plane was “punishing,” adding, “I need my whole body going. I have to somehow fly to him to hit him. How are we gonna do it? I don’t know.”
As the scene showed Ethan dangling from a seatbelt while the plane is upside down, Cruise admitted, “Oh God, that was brutal.”
“This separated the joints in Tom’s fingers from the force,” McQuarrie explained. “So by the time we finished this sequence, your hands were absolutely swollen. Oh my God, it was so painful to watch.”
Once the pair watched Ethan slam into the side of the plane, Cruise recalled, “Oh, that was brutal. That hit, that was a hard one.”
“And you improvised that, thank you very much. I appreciate that,” McQuarrie told the movie star. “You were like, ‘I think we’re gonna need that,’ and I was like, ‘I didn’t ask you to do that.’”
Cruise’s eighth and supposed final “Mission: Impossible” movie was released in May and made nearly $600 million at the worldwide box office.
The film follows Cruise’s Ethan and his IMF team race against the clock and across the globe to stop the Entity, a rogue AI, from destroying all of humanity.
Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Tramell Tillman and Angela Bassett also star.
In February, Cruise revealed that he passed out filming the airplane scene.
“When you stick your face out, going over 120 to 130 miles an hour, you’re not getting oxygen,” he told Empire. “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.”
Cruise, who has played Ethan Hunt since 1996’s “Mission: Impossible,” has said repeatedly that “The Final Reckoning” marks the end of the franchise.
“It’s the final,” he told The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May. “It’s not called ‘Final’ for nothing.”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land ’
