M:I 6 Injury Won't Stop Tom Cruise From Doing His Own Stunts

Screen Rant

Mission: Impossible 6 Injury Won’t Stop Tom Cruise From Doing His Own Stunts

By Timothy Lammers

Published Jul 12, 2018

Director Christopher McQuarrie says Tom Cruise's injury on Mission: Impossible - Fallout won't prevent the actor from doing more of his own stunts.

Director Christopher McQuarrie says Tom Cruise's injury on Mission: Impossible - Fallout won't prevent the action star from doing more of his own stunts in the future. The sixth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise is two weeks away, which means fans will once again will be treated to the breathtaking stunt work of Cruise - who in previous installments filmed such harrowing scenes as hanging off the side of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, in 2011's Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol; and clinging to the side of a cargo plane as it took flight in 2015's Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

Not surprisingly, Cruise upped the ante for Fallout by training more than a year to execute the marquee stunt for the film, which finds him making a HALO jump out of a plane at 25,000 feet. Naturally, that's not the only time the actor puts his body on the line for the film, and in one instance, a leap from one building to another resulted in a broken ankle that halted the production. Despite the setback, Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie says the actor will "definitely" keep doing his own stunts.

In an interview with CinePOP, McQuarrie says, "There's definitely no signs of slowing, and you'll see the sequences that he does in this movie, many of them were done after he broke his foot. There's absolutely no slowing him down."

There's no arguing that Cruise is one of the most dedicated actors in the business, who has long insisted on doing his own stunts as a way to reward his audiences for paying to see his work. He's so dedicated to delivering the best possible film to moviegoers in fact, that despite the injury, the actual shot in Fallout where the stunt went awry remains in the film. That, of course, could be because the actor wants as much authenticity in the film as possible (whether we'll witness him grimace in the real pain he suffered from the injury is yet to be seen), or it could merely be because he and McQuarrie didn't want to shoot the scene again in case lightning decided to strike twice.

No matter the reason for the inclusion of the scene, it's heartening to know that Cruise is going to continue on with his adrenaline-fueled brand of entertainment and give audiences everything they paid for, something fans will no doubt see again when Top Gun: Maverick hits the big screen next summer. At age 56, Cruise appears as youthful as ever, and by doing his own stunts, his performance will no doubt remain timeless in his impressive body of work.