Tom Cruise said there were times when he passed out from a lack of oxygen while filming airplane stunts for “Mission: Impossible.”
“When you stick your face out [of an airplane], going over 120 to 130 miles an hour, you’re not getting oxygen,” Cruise said in an interview with 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.”
The “Mission: Impossible” films have seen Cruise climb the Burj Khalifa, jump a motorcycle off a cliff and cling to the roof of a moving train. Director Christopher McQuarrie says in the franchise’s latest installment, “Final Reckoning,” the stunts get even crazier, with one undisclosed moment making him “want to puke” from “the stress.”
“There are stunts in this movie that will melt your brain,” McQuarrie said. “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.”
While it may sound like hyperbole, McQuarrie is hardly joking. Back in January, the director recalled that during a “Final Reckoning” preview screening, an audience member said they almost had a heart attack while watching a particularly intense stunt sequence.
“We had a small screening, and someone said, ‘I was suffocating throughout the entire sequence. I almost had a heart attack,’” McQuarrie said. “And I thought, ‘I guess we did something right.”
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is set to hit theaters May 23, 2025. The film was originally slated for a 2022 release but was delayed by the pandemic and the SAG-AFTRA strike.
