While making the Mission: Impossible movies for the last 29 years, Tom Cruise has developed a taste for performing some of the films’ most dangerous stunts himself. Cruise even broke one of his ankles while filming a stunt during Mission: Impossible – Fallout. But while making what may be his last movie in the series, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Cruise says he passed out a few times while filming a scene from the teaser trailer below in which his character, Ethan Hunt, is seen dangling from the wing of a plane that’s nearly 100 years old.
That sequence was shot at altitude of 10,000 feet, which would have made it difficult to breathe even if Cruise wasn’t trying to sell the illusion that his life was in danger.
“When you stick your face out, going over 120 to 130 miles an hour, you’re not getting oxygen,” Cruise told Empire Magazine. “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.”
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If we had to guess why Ethan is using a plane from the 1930s in the first place, it’s probably because it’s one of the few aircraft that can’t be hacked by his current nemesis — the A.I. known as The Entity. And since this movie is reportedly going to be the last film in the franchise to feature Cruise’s main character, he doesn’t necessarily have to take the same risks now that he’s 62. But who are we kidding? If Cruise wants to keep performing his own stunts, there’s no one who is going to say “no” to him.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will hit theaters on May 23.