Tom Cruise Forces Director to Prove Stunt on Plane Wing in Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning

Legendary actor Tom Cruise has truly redefined the meaning of "impossible" with the Mission: Impossible franchise, and he's taken it to new heights with the eighth installment, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. Cruise has disclosed that the director of M:I 8, Christopher McQuarrie, challenged him with some genuinely impossible stunts for the upcoming film. To demonstrate the difficulty, McQuarrie himself attempted the stunt.

During a recent press conference in Tokyo for the film, Cruise recounted his conversation with McQuarrie: "And then we talked about the 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 described the stunt that stumped Cruise as "the simplest thing." He added, "Anything you'd describe, [he'd] say, 'No, you actually can't do that.' And I don't hear 'can't' from him."

With a history of performing death-defying stunts in the M:I series, Cruise's experience was crucial in understanding the challenge. "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,'" Cruise explained, detailing how a "20-minute tutorial" helped McQuarrie grasp the situation. "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 found the experience exhilarating, stating, "It was great, actually. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I would definitely do it again." Cruise also shared during the conference that he had been preparing for this stunt for years, emphasizing that selecting the right aircraft was key 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, and will be released in theaters worldwide on May 23, 2025.