The Way They Executed That Crazy “Mission: Impossible” Airplane Stunt
Months of perseverance, G-force training, and a touch of hypothermia were necessary to produce the crucial moment for Tom Cruise in “The Final Reckoning.”
Out of the numerous legendary feats that Tom Cruise has carried out throughout the eight “Mission Impossible” films — including climbing the highest skyscraper in the world in Dubai, riding a motorcycle off a Norwegian cliff, and recovering a stolen ledger from an underwater centrifuge — it seems improbable that one of the most jaw-dropping set pieces in the series’ nearly 30-year history would involve two vintage biplanes that seem like they ought to have Snoopy at the controls.
Despite all of this, many viewers have come away from the most recent installment of the franchise, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” in awe of that sequence: a 12-and-a-half-minute scene in which Cruise’s seemingly indefatigable special agent, Ethan Hunt, hitches a ride on the undercarriage of a small brightly colored aircraft, overtakes the pilot, and then leaps onto another plane midair to fistfight the film’s grinning villain (Esai Morales) — all while being bashed and batted by the elements like a human windsock.
The reason it seems like Cruise is really being blown sideways in the sky is because he was. The scene was filmed mostly as it appears on screen, with the exception of the digital removal of some features in post-production, such as safety harnesses and a secondary pilot, due to the actor’s well-known propensity for carrying out his own stunts.
Christopher McQuarrie, who has helmed the previous four movies in the franchise, stated that the majority of “Mission” stunts start with either discovering or constructing the ideal car for the task. The Boeing Stearman, which was mostly employed in World War II to train fighter pilots, was used in this instance. Eventually, the production purchased many: two red, two yellow—”because if you have just one plane and that plane breaks, the entire movie shuts down,” he said.
Cruise, 62, spent months on the ground preparing for the entire idea to take off, according to Wade Eastwood, the stunt coordinator and second unit director. “Being on the wing of a plane is not something that people do, but Tom is already a very established and very competent pilot,” Eastwood stated. We then secured it, set up large fans and wind machines, and ran the prop solely to observe the impact on the human body, which was utterly exhausting. After all, you’re battling the largest resistance group you’ve ever encountered in your life.
Additionally, a number of isolated locations throughout South Africa had to be carefully evaluated in terms of both practical circumstances and safety. “You couldn’t perform aerobatics if the sky was too clear,” McQuarrie said. “The plane doesn’t appear to be moving in three-dimensional space without clouds. For the lift you required, the temperature had to be within a few degrees. The air gets thinner as the temperature rises, which reduces the plane’s maneuverability. The colder it becomes, the more quickly Tom gets hypothermia while flying.
In order to get all the necessary angles, over 60 camera locations were used, and the planes were flown with the least amount of fuel possible in order to increase their maneuverability. The threats were exacerbated by other logistical challenges, such as the “extremely remote” possibility that Cruise would fall off, as McQuarrie put it. “The more realistic danger was debris from the airfield hitting him on takeoff. A rock would strike Tom like a bullet if it were chosen. Moreover, at that speed, a bird strike would be lethal in the air. As a result, we were always on the lookout for birds, plane fragments, camera equipment, bolts, and other such items.
In addition, according to Eastwood, the G-force “alternately drains the blood in your body and makes you much heavier than you are.” Therefore, the G-force is what pulls Tom in when he is slammed to the wing. He then floats when he reaches the top, where there is no gravity. He is, to a certain extent, playing, but he is also battling the wind and attempting to remain on that wing, thus it seems like he is.
At around 10,000 feet above sea level, while holding on to the outside of a plane traveling at 170 mph, how precisely did Cruise breathe without an oxygen mask? “The answer is he’s not,” McQuarrie responded, adding, “The molecules are so dispersed at that point.” I’ve been on the plane’s wing and seen it for myself; you’re breathing, but your body isn’t. The oxygen supply is now just ten percent of what it would typically be, and you are being beaten.
The presence of wind and engine noise added another layer of difficulty. “We sort of created our own sign language,” McQuarrie stated. “You simply want to continue communicating so that Tom may save his energy.” A head pat indicated that Cruise was merely taking a break (rather than really being unconscious); another motion suggested danger. “Basically, you developed a hand signal for something if you had to talk about it more than once,” said Cruise.
McQuarrie claimed that the experience gained from working on the series for over a decade has also produced a unique form of filmmaking vocabulary. “We could probably do it now in a third of the time. However, who in their right mind would ever film another sequence like that?
