Tom Cruise Said No To One MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE Stunt and Then Made The Director Get on the Wing of a Flying Plane

In a franchise built on outdoing itself with each death-defying stunt, Tom Cruise has finally admitted there’s one Mission: Impossible stunt that crossed the line, from possible to actually impossible.

During a press conference in Tokyo for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Cruise revealed a stunt idea from director Christopher McQuarrie that he flat-out turned down.

McQuarrie’s idea involved a plane sequence that had Cruise shaking his head. Cruise said:

“And then we talked about 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.’”

Even McQuarrie, who’s worked with Cruise for over a decade, was surprised. McQuarrie said:

“It was the simplest thing. Anything you'd describe, [he'd] say, ‘No, you actually can't do that.’ And I don't hear 'can't' from him.”

So what made this particular stunt so different? Cruise explained it came down to brutal physics.

“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.’

“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.’”

I loved that Cruise turned the tables and made McQuarrie take a turn on the wing. And the director didn’t just go along with it, he kind of loved it. The director said:

“It was great, actually. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I would definitely do it again.”

The Final Reckoning picks up with Hunt and his IMF team in a full-throttle race to stop The Entity once and for all. Stakes are higher, explosions are bigger, and if this biplane stunt is anything to go by, Cruise is going out swinging—literally.

The movie stars Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman and Angela Bassett, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, with Rolf Saxon, and Lucy Tulugarjuk.

This is shaping up to be the most intense Mission yet. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning hits theaters and IMAX on May 23!