Tom Cruise came dangerously close to tragedy in SA while filming the new Mission epic
The Mission Impossible film crew had fears that Tom Cruise was about to die after he appeared to pass out on the wing of a stunt plane over South Africa.
Cruise, 62, is known for doing his own stunts.
'Tom had pushed himself to the point that he was so physically exhausted, he couldn't get back up off the wing,' said director Christopher McQuarrie.
Tom Cruise's film crew on his latest Mission: Impossible epic feared the actor was about to die after he appeared to pass out on the wing of a stunt plane over South Africa.
The 62-year-old, who does his own stunts and was flying the biplane alone, was laid out flat on the wing after spending 22 minutes out of the cockpit - 10 more than safety guidelines allowed, his director Christopher McQuarrie told a masterclass at the Cannes film festival, where Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning premiered on Wednesday.
'When you leave the cockpit of the plane, it's like stepping onto the surface of another planet,' McQuarrie said.
'The wind is hitting you in excess of 140 miles an hour (225 kph) coming off the propeller. You're breathing, but only physically. You're not actually getting oxygen.
'Tom had pushed himself to the point that he was so physically exhausted, he couldn't get back up off the wing. He was lying on the wing, his arms hanging over the front. We could not tell if he was conscious or not,' said the American filmmaker, who has shot the four last movies of the franchise.
READ | Tom Cruise honours 'dear friend' Val Kilmer's legacy at CinemaCon with moment of silence
Cruise, a trained acrobatics pilot, had agreed a hand signal to show if he was in trouble, McQuarrie said.
'You can't do this when you're unconscious,' the director told an audience at Cannes, with Cruise sitting beside him nodding sheepishly.
To make matters worse, the plane had only six minutes of fuel left. But the star finally stirred.
'We watched Tom as he pulled himself up and stuck his head in the cockpit so that he could replenish the oxygen in his body, and then climb up into the cockpit and bring the plane safely down to land.
'No one on Earth can do that but Tom Cruise,' he said to rapturous applause.
Asked about how he dealt with the fear, Cruise pointed to the years of preparation that went into the movies, which he compared to the workings of 'a Swiss watch.'
But in the end, 'I like the feeling (of fear). It's just an emotion for me. It's something that is not paralysing.'
'I'm like, 'Oh, that's exciting'... I don't mind kind of encountering the unknown,' insisting that 'this is what I dreamed of doing as a kid.'
It was far from the only scare the pair had on the $400 million epic, the eighth in the franchise known for its dizzying set pieces and heart-stopping action scenes.
'No way to test that thing'
With fans fearing that The Final Reckoning title meant it would be the last in the series, McQuarrie said the plane scene was not the only one that could have ended everything.
One of the new movie's most dramatic moments involves Cruise's character, Ethan Hunt, diving inside a sunk Russian nuclear submarine in the Bering Sea.
McQuarrie said it took two and a half years to build the set in London.
'Remember that when you're watching Tom inside this semi-submerged rotating room inside the submarine that is housed inside a 60-foot diameter, 1000-ton, 360-degree rotating, fully submersible steel gimbal in an 8.5-million-litre tanker. And he's inside it,' he said.
'And what you're watching is us testing it. Because there is no way to test that thing.'
'We built a model, and we put a little plastic figure and a bunch of torpedoes in it and rotated it once, and they smashed the little plastic figure.'
Neither Cruise nor McQuarrie would confirm or deny if the new movie was the final Mission: Impossible, with Cruise calling it the 'culmination of three decades of work.'
The film, one of the most expensive ever made, had to struggle through Covid lockdowns and two Hollywood strikes.
But the wait appears to be worth it, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which quoted critics emerging from the first press screenings calling it 'astonishing,' 'jaw-dropping,' and 'just insane,' the 'best action movie of the summer.'
The film is being released in India, Australia, and South Korea this weekend, with audiences in Europe and the Middle East having to wait until 21 May and those in North America until 23 May.
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