All through the Mission: Unimaginable saga, Tom Cruise has taken on all types of untamed stunts – however even by his personal requirements, The Closing Reckoning comprises some subsequent degree jaw-droppers. There’s your entire biplane sequence, which finds Cruise clinging to (and transferring between!) two plane within the movie’s climactic chase; and the mind-boggling underwater setpiece, with the actor caught in a swirling maelstrom of missiles. However there’s one factor that was held again from any of the advertising – the second, throughout the aerial sequence, the place Ethan Hunt careens by the air, just for his parachute to dissipate earlier than his very eyes. Gulp.
It ought to come as no shock that Cruise did it for actual: within the sky, for actual, with a burning parachute, for actual. The sequence required Cruise to first leap from a airplane together with his flaming ‘chute, then free-fall for some time, earlier than deploying a secondary parachute to offer him a (theoretically) protected touchdown. “Our touchdown zone was at 6,000 toes,” Cruise tells Empire, explaining what went into the stunt. “The air is thinner, you’re touchdown at larger speeds. Each touchdown was like a crash touchdown. By no means a uninteresting second, man.”
Cruise was even accountable for beginning his personal hearth. “He was truly lighting the factor himself,” The Closing Reckoning stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood reveals. “He was turning the digital camera on earlier than he jumped out, he was lighting the parachute, he was doing the entire shot.” Speak about ‘gentle the fuse’. Eastwood went to lengths to restrict the quantity of occasions Cruise threw himself (with an precise flaming parachute) into the fray. “I didn’t inform him, however I truly hid the final burning parachute as a result of I didn’t need him to do it anymore,” he laughs. Mission completed.
Learn extra on Mission: Unimaginable – The Closing Reckoning within the Tron: Ares problem, on sale Thursday 3 July. Pre-order a replica on-line right here. Take heed to Empire’s three-hour The Closing Reckoning spoiler interview with Christopher McQuarrie on the Empire Spoiler Particular Podcast feed. Mission: Unimaginable – The Closing Reckoning is out now in cinemas.
