In the first official trailer for “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning," Tom Cruise hangs from an upside-down airplane, narrowly flees exploding bombs and leaps from a fighter jet.
These extreme stunts have become synonymous with the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.
Throughout the seven previous “Mission: Impossible” films and Cruise’s other projects, the actor has maintained that he performs all his own stunts.
The latest installment, “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning," concludes with Cruise jumping off a cliff on a motorcycle, a stunt he pulled at 60.
“I feel that (when) acting you’re bringing everything, you know, physically and emotionally, to a character in a story,” Cruise said during a 2023 appearance on “The Graham Norton Show,” per The Hollywood Reporter.
He continued, “And I’m able to do (stunts), and I’ve trained for 30 years doing things like this that it allows us to put cameras in places where you normally are not able to.”
But at 62-years-old, is Cruise still performing his own stunts?
Yes — Cruise performed his own stunts in “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning."
“There are stunts in this movie that will melt your brain,” director Christopher McQuarrie told Empire Magazine. “There would be a day in Africa — any day in Africa — where Tom would go out and do something that topped anything he had ever done before.”
To pull off the scene where his character dangles from the wing of a 1930s Boeing Stearman biplane — which is previewed in the trailer — Cruise had to learn to keep himself from passing out under the extreme circumstances.
“When you stick your face out, going over 120 to 130 miles an hour, you’re not getting oxygen,” Cruise told Empire. “So I had to train myself how to breathe. There were times I would pass out physically; I was unable to get back into the cockpit.”
“It is, I hope, the satisfying conclusion to a 30-year story arc,” Cruise added. “I’m pretty confident that people are going to feel that the title was appropriate.”
When does ‘Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning’ come out?
“Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning" comes out in theaters on Friday, May 23, 2025. It is the eighth and final film in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.