By Gavin Boyle
While at CinemaCon, Tom Cruise took that stage to share some stunts from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING while also honoring its director, and his longtime collaborator, Christopher McQuarrie.
“This man forged through it all and was able to create epic adventures,” Cruise said, commemorating McQuarrie’s efforts through the pandemic and dual strikes. “You are an artist for all time. You are our modern-day Thalberg.”
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — THE FINAL RECKONING will likely be Cruise’s final foray into the franchise as the marketing hints at it being the final MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie, along with Cruise aging. Despite the franchise boasting some of the craziest stunts Hollywood has ever seen, the upcoming movie might just top everything before it.
While at CinemaCon, Paramount Pictures debuted a clip of Cruise’s Ethan Hunt clinging to the wing of an airborne biplane flying upside down, Variety said.
As promotion for the movie has begun, McQuarrie touted one scene in particular, which required Cruise to hold his breath for six minutes straight as he performed underwater. Having worked on multiple underwater scenes with Cruise in the past, the director believes prior experience allowed them to create a scene that will leave audiences stunned.
Related: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 8 Might Be the Most Intense Entry Yet
“Tom and I are constantly reevaluating our own work and asking ourselves how we could have done it better,” McQuarrie told Collider in the summer of 2023. “We’ve done underwater sequences previously. We worked underwater in EDGE OF TOMORROW, and we worked underwater in ROGUE NATION, and we left very dissatisfied with those sequences.”
“And we analyze why we were dissatisfied,” he continued. “What were all the factors working against us? The biggest being, not having real knowledge in that area. Everything you’re looking at in [FINAL RECKONING] is the application of knowledge from previous sequences.”
The scene for THE FINAL RECKONING, however, appears to have finally hit the mark, as during an early screening, they received the feedback from the audience they craved.
“We had a small screening and someone said, ‘I was suffocating throughout the entire sequence. I almost had a heart attack” McQuarrie told GamesRadar. “And I thought, ‘I guess we did something right.”
THE FINAL RECKONING will follow up immediately after the previous movie, DEAD RECKONING, and was originally slated to release in 2022. However the pandemic and the dual strikes delayed the movie until this year. After so long a wait, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 8 is almost in the hands of the general audience and will hit theaters on May 23.
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