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How Tom Cruise Executed His 'Most Dangerous' Stunt in 'Mission: Impossible –Dead Reckoning Part One'

The death-defying moment in the franchise's seventh installment involves Cruise driving a motorbike off a cliff

Collection Christophel/Alamy

Tom Cruise  turned up the action for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning   Part One .

While the film marks the seventh installment in the highly successful franchise, Cruise, 61, made the occasion even more special by challenging himself to perform one of his most dangerous stunts yet.

The death-defying moment involved Cruise driving a motorbike off a cliff, fly off the bike, and parachute to the ground. While fans got a glimpse of the stunt through the film's action-packed trailer in May, Cruise, along with writer-director  Christopher McQuarrie , first teased the big moment in 2021 at CinemaCon.

The pair explained in a special behind-the-scenes video at the event that the stunt took 500 hours of skydiving training and 13,000 motorbike jumps to get it just right. The stunt involved Cruise being attached to a set of wires as he rides a speeding motorcycle off of a large ramp before he throws himself from the bike, backed by the safety wires attached to his back.

Speaking about its execution, McQuarrie, 54, explained in the video that it was "by far the most dangerous stunt we've ever done." The clip then ended with Cruise performing the stunt himself, with a crew member saying, " Tom Cruise  rode a motorcycle off a cliff six times today."

McQuarrie "tried to kill me," joked Cruise at the New York City premiere.

Christian Black/Paramount Pictures

The film's long-awaited release comes after multiple delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic . According to an official synopsis, it finds Cruise's Ethan Hunt as he and his team are tasked with tracking down "a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands."

During its world premiere in June , Cruise gave a speech about his passion for the franchise and filmmaking. He said in part, "It’s something that I grew up with, that made me and inspired me to dream and want to travel the world. My goal since I was little was to make movies and travel. And not just be a tourist but work in that world and understand their culture."

"Through my movies, I’ve been able to have that because everyone here has allowed me to entertain them," he continued. "It’s a privilege that I have never taken for granted."

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Mission: Impossible   - Dead Reckoning Part One is out now.

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Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands.

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• Trivia The frequent delays caused by COVID-19 ballooned the budget to $291 million, making it the most expensive Mission: Impossible film (surpassing Fallout, $178 million), the most expensive film of Tom Cruise 's career (again surpassing Fallout), and the most expensive film ever produced by Paramount (surpassing Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) , $217 million). The insurance company Chubb originally gave Paramount only £4.4 million (about $5.4 million) for the delays, arguing that the cast and crew could still fulfill their duties to the production despite being infected with COVID-19. Paramount sued Chubb in 2021, and the two companies settled in 2022. In 2023, Chubb gave Paramount a £57 million (about $71 million) payout for the COVID-caused delays, reducing the film's budget to about $220 million, which still makes it the most expensive film for Cruise, Paramount, and the franchise.
• Goofs Steam trains, especially moving at high speeds, need to be continuously provided with fuel, in this case coal. With the engineers killed and the controls opened all the way, the locomotive would have gradually slowed down and come to a halt as the pressure in the boiler dropped. That train would never have reached the bridge for that distance with no coal provided. Since the early 1900s, when firebox coal consumption exceeded the efforts of two men, the trains have used mechanical stokers. The coal would continue feeding without one missing coal shoveler.

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Eugene Kittridge : Your days of fighting for the so-called greater good are over. This is our chance to control the truth. The concepts of right and wrong for everyone for centuries to come. You're fighting to save an ideal that doesn't exist. Never did. You need to pick a side.

• Crazy credits Disclaimer as one of the last entries in the end titles scroll: "The production company would like to make it clear that at no point were vehicles driving on the Spanish Steps. These sequences were filmed at a set on a studio backlot."
• Connections Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Most Anticipated Franchises Returning in 2023 (2023)
• Soundtracks The Mission: Impossible Theme Written by Lalo Schifrin

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Watch Tom Cruise Break Down His ‘Most Dangerous’ Stunt Ever for New ‘Mission: Impossible’

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Tom Cruise is proving that no mission is too impossible.

The “Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part I” star shared a behind-the-scenes video of his stuntwork on the first installment of his farewell to character Ethan Hunt.

“So excited to share what we’ve been working on,” Cruise tweeted.

“Dead Reckoning” is the first half of the conclusion to the 1996 film franchise. Cruise has played undercover CIA agent Ethan Hunt for close to 30 years, with “Mission: Impossible 7” arriving in theaters July 14, 2023, soon followed by “Mission: Impossible 8” out June 28, 2024.

The stunt video shows Cruise training to achieve the  most dangerous stunt of his career, with him riding a motorcycle off a cliff. “This is far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted,” Cruise says in the video filmed while in Norway for production in 2020.

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“It all comes down to one thing: the audience,” Cruise adds.

The “Eyes Wide Shut” alum trained in motocross and base jumping for months leading up to the filmed stunt.

“I had about six seconds once I departed the ramp to pull the chute and I don’t want to get tangled in the bike,” Cruise previously told Empire magazine about the jaw-dropping feat. “If I do, that’s not going to end well.”

Of course, that’s not the only cutting-edge stunt Cruise masters for “Mission: Impossible.” A first look at the film during Paramount Pictures’ showcase at CinemaCon earlier this year captured Cruise holding onto a plane while flying over South Africa. Cruise also recently thanked fans for their support in a video of himself jumping out of a plane .

“The ‘MI’ series really does represent the pinnacle of filmmaking excellence,” Paramount president Brian Robbins said earlier this year at CinemaCon. “And we have no doubt that this new picture will set the bar even higher.”

Robbins continued, “After five release dates and a whole bunch of rumors where this movie would end up, we are finally ready to bring this phenomenal movie to where it always belonged, and that is your theaters.”

Director Christopher McQuarrie helms the upcoming film, which will exclusively have a theatrical release due in part to Cruise’s urging. Production for “Dead Reckoning Part I” was repeatedly halted by the COVID-19 pandemic but eventually wrapped in September 2021. The budget reportedly ballooned upwards of $290 million during production, with additional funds allocated to finish post-production on the action epic.

So excited to share what we’ve been working on. #MissionImpossible pic.twitter.com/rIyiLzQdMG — Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) December 19, 2022

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Tom Cruise did that motorcycle stunt in ‘Mission: Impossible’ on Day 1 — here’s why

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More than half a year before the release of the upcoming movie “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One,” Paramount Pictures made sure audiences got to see Tom Cruise once again risking his life.

Cruise’s mind-blowing stunts have become a signature of “ Mission: Impossible ” films, each one seemingly topping the next. The key stunt in the franchise’s seventh installment involves Cruise driving a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff, dismounting and parachuting into a Norwegian valley. With the drop of its behind-the-scenes footage in December , the studio billed it as “the biggest stunt in cinema history.”

Though the moment has already been watched on YouTube more than 13 million times, and 30 million more times in the film’s trailers, it’s among the film’s most anticipated scenes. After all, we still don’t know how the stunt fits within the plot — What could be so dire that agent Ethan Hunt must jump off a cliff?

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While answers won’t come until the movie’s theatrical release July 12, we now know that the risky stunt was the first thing Cruise did on Day 1 of filming, which began in 2020. And it was all about risk assessment.

In a recent interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” Cruise said they started with the scene, in part, to allow the cast and crew to see whether he would be able to star in the $290-million film. After all, he could either get injured or die — or both.

“Well, we know we’re either going to continue with the film or not,” Cruise said, letting out a laugh. “Let’s know Day 1, what is gonna happen: Do we all continue, or is it a major re-run?”

Cruise added that he wanted to make sure his mind was clear enough to focus solely on the stunt.

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“You have to be razor sharp for something like that; I don’t want to drop that and shoot other things and have my mind somewhere else,” Cruise said. “You don’t want to be waking up in the middle of the night, ‘It’s still, I still, I still,’ and it has that effect.”

Cruise is no stranger to aerial stunts with a high probability of death. The “Top Gun” actor said preparing for the recent stunt “was years of planning,” a culmination of all the training he’s done with motorcycles, cars and aerobatics.

In the franchise’s last film, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” (2018), Cruise jumped into a helicopter in midflight , taking the controls to chase another helicopter. In the same movie, he parachuted from a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III from 25,000 feet, close to five miles up, becoming “the first actor” to do so in a major motion picture, according to Paramount (most skydiving attempts occur at 10,000 feet).

In 2011 for “ Ghost Protocol ,” the “Jerry McGuire” actor climbed along the exposed walls of the world’s largest building, the Burj Khalifa of Dubai. And in 2015 for “Rogue Nation,” Cruise hung off the side of an Airbus A400M Atlas as it was taking off, a stunt that veteran stunt coordinator and frequent Cruise collaborator Wade Eastwood called “a stressful experience.”

The recent motorcycle stunt, which Cruise had apparently repeated six times, was no exception. Though the film’s computer-generated images make Cruise appear to be jumping off the rocky surface of the cliff, the scene required a large ramp to be built.

While Cruise is seen atop the motorcycle in the behind-the-scenes video, accelerating off the ramp, a helicopter and drone fly overhead to gather footage. The film’s crew, including director Christopher McQuarrie, are huddled in a nearby tent, faces glued to a set of monitors. After he abandons the bike and hangs in the open air, Cruise releases his parachute and the crew erupts in cheers.

“The only thing you have to avoid when doing a stunt like this are serious injury or death,” Eastwood, who has managed stunts for the last three “Mission Impossible” films, said in the BTS video. “You’re falling. If you don’t get a clean exit from the bike and you get tangled up with it, if you don’t open your parachute, you’re not gonna make it.”

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The scene wasn’t the only stressful one to shoot: Cruise said he also worried about a car chase that involved him handcuffed to a small car, steering with one hand while drifting along the cobblestone streets of Rome, with his co-star Hayley Atwell in the passenger seat.

“It’s plenty of challenges,” Cruise said with a wide grin, laughing once again.

“Dead Reckoning” had its world premiere Sunday at the Auditorium Conciliazione in Rome with Cruise and other cast members, including Atwell and Vanessa Kirby , in attendance. “Part Two” is expected to be released in June 2024. Filming wrapped in September for what has been rumored to be Cruise’s final appearance in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.

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25 years ago, Tom Cruise’s ‘Mission: Impossible’ stunts shocked and awed

The actor, now making the seventh ‘mission’ film, recalls the sweat and strain of acting out a heist from above..

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) must avoid touching anything or making a sound while breaking into a CIA vault in “Mission: Impossible.”

Paramount Pictures

Tom Cruise performed wildly impressive stunts when he introduced his superspy Ethan Hunt in 1996’s “Mission: Impossible.”

Then 33 and one of the world’s biggest movie stars, Cruise had Hunt escape a restaurant’s exploding lobster tank and battle in the high-speed train finale. 

Yet as “Mission: Impossible” turns 25 this month, the scene in director Brian De Palma’s thriller that continues to shock and awe is Cruise’s controlled aerial stunt as Hunt breaks into an impossibly secure CIA vault in Langley, Virginia. 

The 11-minute scene — with Cruise floating from lines in the ceiling as Hunt avoids sound, touch and temperature monitors — turbo-boosted the $3.6 billion “Mission” franchise and set the blueprint for action films to come.

The instantly recognizable CIA heist remains the most iconic moment in a franchise that boasts an overabundance of spectacle.

“It’s the precision, the timing and the daring,” says film historian Leonard Maltin, host of the “Maltin on Movies” podcast. “Actors doing their own stunts is a Hollywood cliché that’s not literally true. But Tom Cruise wants you to know that’s him doing the stunt, and he throws down the gauntlet to other filmmakers and audiences.”

There was no hiding who was on the wires with close shots from three cameras on the austere set. No stuntman, but Cruise in a black, short-sleeved T-shirt. The body control commands respect.

“It’s very difficult to hang straight out like that,” De Palma said in a 10th anniversary “Mission: Impossible” interview. ”It takes a tremendous amount of muscle control. Tom was able to do this and bring a kind of reality to it and really grab the audience. You see the tremendous tension he’s under.”

The tension is enhanced by De Palma’s slick direction in the scoreless scene, as he flashes over to cohort Franz Krieger (Jean Reno) silently straining to hold Hunt’s pulley system from the ceiling air duct.

The reality wasn’t far from the film version. At Pinewood Studios outside London, two set workers behind the fake CIA walls utilized weights with carefully marked cables to control Cruise’s movements, moving the actor up and down.

“That looks effortless, but that’s a really difficult stunt. If you drop him too far down, that’s not good,” Sherry Lansing, then CEO of Paramount Studios, said in an interview for the film’s 10th anniversary. “That’s one of the hardest stunts Tom’s done.”

Cruise, producing his first film from the 1970s TV series, and De Palma worked out the vault break-in details over a small model of the CIA set. These included Hunt’s inverted ceiling entrance and potential problems to amp the drama — such as a rat in the air duct that startles Reno’s Kreiger, who lets the cables loose, lurching Hunt towards the wired floor. 

But the near-drop was problematic to shoot as Cruise had trouble keeping his body balanced from the wires with the sudden stop inches from the floor.

“I kept going down to the floor and — bam! — I kept hitting my face. And the take didn’t work. And we’re running out of time,” Cruise explained in a 25th-anniversary interview from the set of the upcoming ”Mission: Impossible 7” with director Christopher McQuarrie. ”And it’s very physical, I’m straining.”

Cruise said he asked the English stunt crew for heavy pound coins which he placed in his shoes for needed equilibrium. Naturally, in Cruise’s retelling, De Palma gives his star one more chance to pull the stunt off.

“I went down to the floor, and I didn’t touch. And I remember thinking, ‘My God I didn’t touch!’ And I was holding it. And I’m sweating and sweating,” Cruise recalled, explaining the strain seen on Hunt’s face onscreen. ”[De Palma] just keeps rolling. And I was like, I’m not going to stop.”

Cruise, now 58, has worked to stay one sensational step ahead of the pack, compelled to push the stunt envelope in each successive “Mission” film.

He scaled the top of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper and soared strapped to the side of a flying A400M military aircraft in riveting consecutive “Mission: Impossible” installments. During one infamous ”Mission: Impossible — Fallout” stunt, Cruise overshot his jump from a London building and broke his ankle landing. Viral paparazzi video showed he finished the shot, limping. 

Production was delayed for three months as Cruise healed. But global fascination over the stunts went next-level in the aftermath as if proving the star was putting himself on the line. 

“The mishap became the thing everybody knew. It raised the awareness stakes.” McQuarrie said. “It reminds people that there are no small stunts.”

Read more at usatoday.com

How Tom Cruise’s Foot Injury Actually Helped Mission: Impossible Fallout

Tom Cruise is known for his desire to do his own stunts on film, but that dedication resulted in a broken ankle on the set of Mission: Impossible - Fallout . While the injury delayed production for several weeks, it turns out that it was something of a blessing in disguise. Director Christopher McQuarrie says that the forced production stop gave the movie a chance to take another look at the script and fix a few issues they might not otherwise have had the time to do. According to McQuarrie...

What the ankle did was allow us to figure out the holes in the script that we were still struggling with. And so, we didn't rewrite the script to accommodate the ankle, but we finished the script because the ankle gave us the time.

Click Here to Buy Tickets for Mission: Impossible - Fallout on Fandango !

CinemaBlend's own Sean O'Connell spoke with director Christopher McQuarrie last week in Paris as part of the World Premiere of Mission: Impossible - Fallout and asked about how the production coped with Tom Cruise being out of commission with a broken ankle . The actor was filming a leap from one rooftop to another when a bad landing resulted in the actor spending several weeks on the shelf.

However, rather than simply sit around waiting for their lead actor to be ready to get in front of a camera, Christopher McQuarrie took the forced downtime to make sure everything else with the film was working properly. As it turned out, not everything was. There were some issues with the script itself that the production had apparently not been able to deal with, but the filming delay gave McQuarrie and his team the chance they needed to go back and try to work through the issues.

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It seems that they were successful, as Mission: Impossible - Fallout has received rave reviews across the board, something that may not have happened if the script had "holes" in it before the injury took place. Currently, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes is giving Fallout a 93% positive rating, a score on par with the previous two entries in the franchise, which rank among Tom Cruise's best reviewed movies.

In that regard, it does seem like there were some positive results from what likely felt, at the time, like a minor disaster. Between the film production delay, the insurance issues that likely resulted, and, you know, the fact that a guy broke bones, there probably weren't a lot of people seeing a bright side at the time.

The rest of the world will finally get to see the results of the extra script polishing when Mission: Impossible - Fallout hits theaters next week, You can see Christopher McQuarrie talk about the situation with Sean in the video below.

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Mission Impossible 6: The exact moment Tom Cruise broke his ankle filming stunt

The accident halted production of the spy franchise's sixth instalment, article bookmarked.

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Tom Cruise broke his ankle performing a stunt on the set of new Mission: Impossible film Fallout - and here's footage of the exact moment it happened.

Earlier this year, the actor dropped into The Graham Norton Show alongside co-stars Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg and Henry Cavill to discuss the sixth instalment of the blockbuster spy franchise where he revealed in detail the accident which occurred during a rooftop chase stunt filmed in London.

“I was chasing Henry and was meant to hit the side of the wall and pull myself over but the mistake was my foot hitting the wall,” he explained. “I knew instantly my ankle was broken and I really didn’t want to do it again so just got up and carried on with the take. I said, ‘It’s broken. That’s a wrap. Take me to hospital’ and then everyone got on the phone and made their vacation arrangement.”

You can watch the precise moment the film star's ankle broke in the video below.

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the new film - which has been released to widespread acclaim - follows on from 2015's Rogue Nation .

Mission: Impossible - Fallout also stars Angela Bassett, Alec Baldwin, Vanessa Kirby and franchise stalwart Ving Rhames.

25 new films to look out for in 2018 that aren't sequels

Michelle Monaghan's character Julia Meade, who first appeared in JJ Abram's Mission: Impossible III in 2006, also returns.

The film is in cinemas now. Next up will be a sequel to 1986 classic Top Gun starring Val Kilmer, Miles Teller and Jennifer Connelly .

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Can Tom Cruise get audiences to care about Mission: Impossible 8?

The underwhelming box office of the seventh instalment has now been followed by a year-long delay for the next chapter

S ince 1996, the Mission: Impossible franchise has put Tom Cruise through the wringer. He’s scaled skyscrapers. He’s leapt out of planes. He’s broken bones. He did whatever the hell it was that Mission: Impossible II was about. And yet, despite this pathological desire to risk life and limb in the pursuit of mass entertainment, it’s starting to look like Cruise’s most difficult job yet will be to get anyone to see Mission: Impossible 8.

The most recent Mission: Impossible film, this summer’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , did not exactly proceed as anticipated. The movie was initially slated for release in 2021, only for Covid to shut down production twice. And then, when it did eventually make it to screen, people stayed away in bafflingly large numbers. Despite being a critically acclaimed orgy of giddy set pieces, the film struggled at the box office. As things stand, Dead Reckoning Part One is the second lowest-grossing entry in the franchise after 2006’s Mission: Impossible III, earning almost $50m less than 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout. All in all, Paramount looks set to lose about $100m on the film .

And now, to make matters worse, the next one is going to be delayed as well . Although the plan was to release it one year after Part One, the effects of the Sag-Aftra strike have caused Paramount to shunt the film back. It will now be released on 23 May 2025. That is unless anything else goes wrong before that, which at this rate almost certainly will.

The task now facing Mission: Impossible 8 is, well, extremely difficult. Dead Reckoning Part Two isn’t just a normal M:I film, but a direct sequel that was made in the retrospectively wrongheaded belief that everyone would go bananas over its predecessor. And even the few people who did see that film will have waited so long for its sequel that they will have probably forgotten what actually happened in it. Not to be a downer, but at this rate you shouldn’t be surprised if Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two ends up making even less money than Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One .

So now the question is what Mission: Impossible can do to reverse its fading fortunes? Obviously, my suggestion would be to do nothing at all. For those who saw it, Dead Reckoning Part One was likely to be one of the most intense cinematic experiences of their lives. It’s a relentless pounding of a film that exists purely to give a modern action audience what it wants in greater quantities than it can possibly handle. It is a magnificent film – one of the best in the series, even – and I would argue that its failure is more a symptom of the death of theatrical cinema than a rebuke against the quality of the film itself. My advice would always be for the franchise to keep doing exactly what it’s been doing, in the knowledge that its long-term legacy will outweigh contemporary gripes.

But I said that when it came out, and everyone stayed at home anyway, so it just goes to show what I know. So maybe Mission: Impossible does need to course-correct a little to remind audiences what they’re missing. We could, of course, start with the obvious. Saying (and typing) “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is an almighty pain in the bum, and the title hints at the sort of bloat that is bound to affect an almost 30-year-old franchise. Maybe for the next one, just give it a one-word subtitle. Mission: Impossible – Pow, maybe, or Mission: Impossible – Oi.

Also, as much as that video of Tom Cruise jumping off a motorbike on a mountain cheered us all up in the depths of Covid, there might also be a lesson to learn here. Why on earth would any film choose to lead with repeated shots of the film’s biggest stunt being executed? By the time the actual film came out, everyone assumed that they’d already seen the best bit for free on YouTube. Next time, Mission: Impossible should try saving some excitement for the actual film.

Next we should probably look at the films that actually did make money this summer. M:I was far from alone in underperforming, with fellow presumed dead certs like Indiana Jones and The Flash also tanking. The two big shining lights of the summer were Barbie and Oppenheimer. Were they perfect films? No. But they got audiences hyped up beyond all recognition anyway. The day that Barbie came out, for instance, my local cinema was decked out in bright pink, with many of the staff coming to work dressed in Barbie costumes. Is that something that Mission: Impossible could attempt? Would the promise of being shown to your seats by someone dressed as Simon Pegg be enough to turn things around? Actually, probably not.

In the end, Hollywood is an industry ruled by the bottom line. And if the Mission: Impossible films are going to make money again, this can only mean one thing: they need to become a lot cheaper, and fast. There are ways to scrape away at the edges of the budget, of course. They could make the next one in fewer locations, and pare down the cast to its bare bones. But the big money-suck on the Mission: Impossible films are the stunts. I hate to say it, but these might need to be trimmed back. This isn’t the end of the world, though. I firmly believe that you could centre a very good Mission: Impossible movie around a sequence where Tom Cruise gets pushed down a concrete staircase in a shopping trolley. If anyone needs me to write it, I’m right here.

• Mission: Impossible
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
• Action and adventure films

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15 Times Tom Cruise Got Hurt (or Almost Died) Doing His Own Stunts

These are the most harrowing stunts Tom Cruise has done so far throughout his career.

Tom Cruise is most well known for his role as Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Throughout his lengthy career —he has played over 40 roles — Cruise has made a name for himself as an action star. He is also known for doing many of his own stunts , sometimes at great risk to himself. Indeed, there have been stunts in which the actor has significantly damaged himself and even placed his life in danger. The presence of skilled stunt coordinators does not guarantee that the stunts he is performing are completely safe.

With six Mission: Impossible films to his credit, as well as the Jack Reacher films, Oblivion , Edge of Tomorrow , The Last Samurai , and Top Gun , Cruise doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. He has scaled the outside of the world's tallest skyscraper, dangled from the side of an aircraft in mid-flight, and fallen multiple feet from a soaring chopper. The actor is well into his 50s, yet the daring thrill-seeker still craves the intensity of being in action. Remarkably, none of Cruise's injuries were fatal.

Update July 24, 2023: This article has been updated following the release of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One .

To celebrate his latest, jumping off a precipice in a motorcycle to parachute down into a moving train for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , below are a few Tom Cruise stunts that could have gone tragically wrong and resulted in disaster.

15 Knife to the Eye - Mission: Impossible II

Close to death? Close to being hurt? How about just "close"? John Woo's Mission Impossible II is the weakest of the bunch. It's got a dull storyline, not the best stunts, and Cruise sporting a look that makes him apt for shooting a shampoo commercial. However, one of its scenes will make you squirm because it involves eyes.

As Ethan Hunt fights one of the bad guys, a knife is drawn, and Hunt begins to lose the fight. When he falls, the other guy tries to stab him and directs the knife toward Hunt's right eye. Painfully, dangerously, and unbelievably close. The stunt was shot using a device that made everything safe, but think, would you get your eyes so close to the tip of a knife?

14 Wind and Skyscraper — Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

In the fourth installment, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol , Cruise's Ethan Hunt must ascend to the 130th story of a building. From the outside. Hunt uses a single suction glove to achieve the ascent. Cruise was attached to the structure by a cord, the equivalent of a piano wire. The action sequence was staged in Dubai at the world's highest tower, the Burj Khalifa. In addition, Cruise had to rappel back down from the structure after finishing the scene.

Related: 10 Motorcycles Tom Cruise Has Ridden in Movies, Explained

Reporters at the Dubai Film Festival questioned Cruise on what went through his head when he initially ventured out of the windows and into the fierce windy conditions that smashed him into the side of the skyscraper on the first day of filming the sequence. His words were: "I hope I don't fall."

13 Falling From a Helicopter — Mission: Impossible - Fallout

While filming Mission: Impossible - Fallout , Cruise completed one of the riskiest feats in the whole espionage franchise. At the conclusion of the film, Ethan Hunt hangs from a flying helicopter. He loses his grasp and falls several feet, but he manages to seize a netting freight load being hanging from the helicopter. Cruise had to reshoot the scene 5 times even though each impact knocked the wind out of him.

12 Driving Scene — Edge of Tomorrow

Emily Blunt, who co-starred with Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow , told Conan O'Brien on his talk show that she caused a stunt accident on set. The actress recalled during the shooting of a driving scene, "I hear him [Cruise] under his breath as I approach the right-hand turn, going 'Brake, brake, brake. Brake. Brake, brake, brake... Oh, God. Brake, brake, brake. Brake it hard! Brake hard!' I left it too late, and so drove us into a tree… I almost killed Tom Cruise". Blunt also admits she was foolish to ignore what she thought was merely unpleasant advice at the time, but she is delighted she and her co-star were able to laugh about it later.

11 Sword Fight — The Last Samurai

Cruise's eight months of rigorous samurai training proved insufficient to adequately prepare him for a battle sequence that almost resulted in his decapitation when filming his 2003 action epic The Last Samurai . Cruise and Japanese martial arts star Hiroyuki Sanada were riding robotic horses gearing up to face off during one of the film's combat sequences.

Sanada's horse had a mechanical failure and did not halt precisely where it was meant to. "We were filming one day, and I was on a mechanical horse, and Hiro was on one as well," Cruise recounted. "He was approaching me when his horse suddenly struck me, and his sword was exactly here (points an inch from his neck)."

10 Climbing - Mission Impossible II

As the Mission: Impossible movies got released, the stunts became more related to the story. In the beginning, they didn't necessarily represent something crucial. In Mission: Impossible II , this would be proven as the film's introduction shows us Ethan Hunt solo climbing for a reason that's completely irrelevant to the plot, if there was actually a reason. In any case, it showed Cruise doing his thing at the very top of a rocky mountain.

No wires are visible, but tricks were already good enough to hide the only things that made Hollywood's greatest asset safe from certain death. If you don't consider this being close to dying, you're probably one of those climbers that defies death constantly.

9 Car Crash — Days of Thunder

In Tony Scott 's 1990 action thriller Days of Thunder , Cruise played hotshot racer Cole Trickle. The actor discovered the hard way that stock vehicles are expressly engineered to turn left. Hut Sticklin, a real life NASCAR racer, joined the team as an advisor and cautioned Cruise about the hazards of going right, per USA Today. "He didn't really know what I was talking about," Stricklin stated.

When Cruise climbed into one of the stock cars and drove out on the track at Volusia County Speedway outside of Daytona Beach, FL, he attempted to emulate what he had seen racers do on television. It could have ended in catastrophe. "He turned to the left, the car turned left. But when he goes back to the right..." Stricklin continued. Cruise swerved around and hit the wall. The sole casualty was a $100,000 new camera that did not survive the brief collision.

8 Underwater Scene — Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Cruise underwent intense training for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation to be able to hold his breath underwater for a longer period of time. Ethan Hunt jumps into the tank from a 120-foot cliff in the action-packed underwater sequence.

Wade Eastwood, the film's stunt coordinator, verified that the whole sequence was shot without the use of a stunt double, stating that, "The difference between Tom and a stuntman is he acts the character after hearing ‘action.’ A stunt person just does the stunt to double the character." Eastwood said that Cruise had multiple blackouts during training, but they finally found that he was able to hold his breath for approximately six and a half minutes. The scene turned out to be memorable, and among the best of the franchise.

7 Another Driving Scene — Collateral

Cruise went against type as a salt-and-pepper hitman in Michael Mann's 2004 neo-noir Collateral . In the film, Cruise plays Vincent, a contract assassin who kidnaps a Los Angeles taxi driver (Jamie Foxx) to help him complete a hit. Foxx admitted that he feared he murdered Cruise when a car accident stunt went wrong. "I hit the gas, the cab goes straight head-on into [Cruise's] Mercedes, and the Mercedes lifts off the ground and goes off the set," Foxx said. Fortunately, everyone was OK, and Cruise went on to continue a career full of stunts.

6 Trying to Save Goose - Top Gun

Cruise portrayed reckless jet pilot Lieutenant Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Tony Scott's Top Gun . Nobody can forget the heartbreaking scene in which Maverick's co-pilot and best buddy Goose (Anthony Edwards) is killed after ejecting from the plane and slams his head into the canopy. Maverick jumps into the water and drags Goose's lifeless body. One of the actors, Barry Tubb (Wolfman), told the New York Post in 2011, "They were refilling the camera or something, and luckily one of the frogmen in the chopper saw Cruise's chute ballooning out. He jumped in and cut Cruise loose right before he sank. They would have never found him. He would have been found at the bottom of the ocean." he went on to say.

5 Flying Stones — Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Another one in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation . Cruise hangs onto a flying jet during takeoff and no straps can be seen. There is no professional stuntman in the daredevil action sequence, nor is there a single frame of CGI. And he performed eight different takes of the crazy scene.

Related: Tom Cruise's Best Running Scenes in Movies, Ranked

If anything (even the smallest stone) had hit Cruise when he was flying high in the air, it might have caused significant harm or perhaps death. One stone was on its way to become a fatal weapon."I remember I got hit by a stone that was so tiny, you cannot believe," Cruise told Forbes. "I thought it broke my rib. Luckily it went to my vest and not my hands or my face - it would have penetrated me and gone right through."

4 Jumping Buildings — Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Cruise did not emerge unharmed from the 2018 blockbuster action thriller Mission: Impossible - Fallout . According to People, he injured his ankle while jumping from one building to another.“I was chasing Henry [Cavill] and was meant to hit the side of the wall and pull myself over, but the mistake was my foot hitting the wall,” he explained. “I knew instantly my ankle was broken, and I really didn’t want to do it again so I just got up and carried on with the take. I said, ‘It’s broken. That’s a wrap. Take me to hospital’ and then everyone got on the phone and made their vacation arrangements.” Luckily, the injury healed well with intensive rehab, and he was back filming a few months later.

3 Busting - Jack Reacher

A funny one. Sort of. When filming Jack Reacher , Cruise had to fight the bad guys as usual. Only this time, he didn't have so many resources at hand. In one scene, he's required to kick someone's privates. Repeatedly. Cruise revealed in a talk show soon after the release of the film that he got injured when shooting the scene. He had to do it so many times his ankle was swollen. Now, did anyone think about the other guy actually receiving the kicks?

2 A Motorcycle Crash - Oblivion

In Oblivion , Cruise's Jack Harper rides a futuristic motorcycle through the wasteland. Anyone could say there was no chance an accident could happen. Unfortunately, it did happen, and Cruise was unharmed due to sheer luck. As much as he likes to ride bikes in his movies, it doesn't mean he can't make mistakes and that they can't malfunction, being that usually they're custom-made for the film. Add to that the fact that he's not wearing a helmet for the scene.

1 Exploding Fish Tank — Mission: Impossible

The Mission: Impossible film franchise began with the 1996 movie aptly titled Mission: Impossible . There is an outstanding action scene in the film that sees Ethan Hunt blowing up a massive aquarium in order to make a hasty getaway. The action takes place at a restaurant with glass walls. Huge amounts of water and pieces of broken glass are discharged as the fish tank bursts. There was absolutely no way the stunt crew could have predicted where each pointy shard of glass might land. Furthermore, with millions of gallons of flowing water, the actor may easily have been carried away and perished. Fortunately enough, Cruise walked away with only a bruised ankle.

Screen Rant

Tom cruise & paramount boss feuded over mission impossible 7 & 8: "we had to hit pause".

Paramount CEO Brian Robbins recalls the feud that occurred with Tom Cruise over Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 regarding one issue in particular.

• Paramount CEO Brian Robbins reveals disagreement between Tom Cruise and the studio over budget and creative decisions in Mission: Impossible 7.
• Pandemic-related shutdowns and budget strains led to a challenging production for Mission: Impossible 7.
• Cruise and McQuarrie decided late in the game to add a submarine sequence that was originally planned for Dead Reckoning Part Two, which caused friction.

Brian Robbins, the CEO of Paramount, recalls a major disagreement between the studio and Tom Cruise over aspects of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two . The seventh installment in the long-running action franchise sees Cruise return as superspy Ethan Hunt to face off against a dangerous AI threat. The film, which is again directed by Christopher McQuarrie, was hit hard by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused its budget to grow from what had originally been planned to an estimated $290 million.

Now, in a recent interview with Variety , Robbins addresses the impasse that occurred between Paramount and Cruise regarding Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. In addition to that film's growing ever-increasing budget, a particular sticking point was Cruise and McQuarrie's insistence late in the game on adding in a submarine sequence that had previously been planned to feature in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two . Check out Robbins' comment on the feud below:

“Let’s just say that the studio and the production and Tom were in a disagreement over direction, and there was a stalemate going on. We had to hit the pause button. They were stuck on how they were going to move forward with 'Dead Reckoning Part Two' while finishing 'Part One.' It was a production issue, and it was about the scope of what was being asked for. And the question we needed to ask was do we need this and why? And then how big is it going to be, and how long is that going to take?”

Mission: Impossible 7's Troubled Production Explained

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was in production in Italy when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, forcing everything to shut down. In all, the film was shutdown a total of seven times since February of 2020, which put an enormous strain on the film's budget. The cast and crew remained employed through each and every shutdown, with Cruise himself even footing an estimated $700,000 bill to charter two cruise ships to house everyone involved in the production.

The Mission: Impossible 7 production was evidently a stressful time for everyone involved, with audio infamously leaking of Cruise having an angry outburst on set at crew members who weren't following COVID safety protocols. The trouble that the pandemic caused for the production was compounded by the fact that Cruise and McQuarrie tend to approach each Mission: Impossible movie with a looser idea of what the film will look like rather than a cut and dry blueprint.

This approach of being open to follow various creative avenues while shaping aspects of the film as they're going led to Cruise and McQuarrie deciding that a submarine sequence was key to establishing Mission: Impossible 7 's AI villain. Before Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was even released, work on the next film in the franchise had already begun. Filming on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two seemingly also can't catch a break, however, with the planned resuming of production in the fall likely to be affected by the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.

Source: Variety

Key Release Dates

Mission: impossible - dead reckoning part two.

Is Tom Cruise Exiting ‘Mission: Impossible’ After ‘Dead Reckoning’? Director Says Don’t Believe Every Report

By Zack Sharf

Digital News Director

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Will Tom Cruise be leaving the “ Mission: Impossible ” franchise following the release of the upcoming “Dead Reckoning” entries? Sources have said that the seventh and eighth “Mission: Impossible” movies (being released as “Dead Reckoning – Part 1” and “Dead Reckoning – Part  2”) are designed as “a sendoff for Cruise’s Ethan Hunt character,” but director Christopher McQuarrie said on the “Light the Fuse” podcast that you can’t believe everything you read. However, the director wouldn’t confirm or deny the speculation.

Asked if the “Dead Reckoning” movies will be the end of Cruise’s tenure with the action franchise, McQuarrie responded, “Let me tell you, I’ve been working with Tom Cruise for 15 years and I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been standing next to the man, witnessed an event and then read about it in the trades the next day and none of what they describe is actually true.”

McQuarrie launched into an example: “We were in Birmingham shooting a scene between Tom and Haley [Atwell]. The next day I read an article in the paper that said Tom and four other guests went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant. I read that Tom insisted on sitting at a table not in a private room but in the main restaurant with the other diners and that Tom ordered three orders of chicken masala because he liked it so much.”

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“I called Tom the next day and said, ‘There’s something weird about this article. It’s 100% factually correct!'” McQuarrie continued. “That’s the first time I’ve read an article in which everything happened exactly as written.”

“I read that ‘Mission’ was going to be shot concurrently and then we decided not to do that,” the director added. “When you read articles in the trades, just put the imaginary word in front of the headline: ‘The Agenda Is…’ When you read ‘anonymous sources’ or ‘sources close to the production say,’ that’s somebody putting it out there for a specific reason. That’s someone wanting others to think that for a specific reason, and you can never know for sure what those reasons are. You learn to ignore it and laugh at it. In today’s world, you wait 17 minutes and another news cycle will sweep it away.”

All of that when asked if Tom Cruise will exit the “Mission: Impossible” franchise as reported hints that we might be seeing more Ethan Hunt after “Dead Reckoning.” McQuarrie directed both installments of the two-part movie. Even if Cruise decides to leave “Mission: Impossible,” he will continue to work with McQuarrie. The director confirmed he’s already cooking up a new movie for Cruise that he describes as even “gnarlier” than the “Mission: Impossible” movies.

“It’s kind of under wraps,” McQuarrie said. “It has neither a fuse nor a fuselage. Oh that’s not true… It does have some fuselages. It’s something we’ve talked about for a really long time. It’s way outside of what you’re used to seeing Tom do. It’s the kind of stuff I really love. It’s a little bit more in my wheelhouse. And yet it takes everything we’ve learned on this journey, which is making movies more and more about emotion and real emotional experiences.”

Paramount is set to open “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1” in theaters on July 14, 2023 and “Dead Reckoning 2” in theaters on June 28, 2024.

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Tom Cruise's Health May Be The Reason 'Mission: Impossible 8' Has Been Delayed

• The highly-anticipated next Mission: Impossible film has been delayed, possibly due to Tom Cruise's health and history of on-set injuries.
• Tom Cruise is known for performing his own stunts, including one that led to him fracturing his ankle during filming.
• There are speculations that Tom's personal life, including his reported distancing from the Church of Scientology, may also be contributing to the delay and potentially creating conflicts within his family.

Mission: Impossible fans were disappointed earlier this year when it was revealed the next film in the famous franchise has been delayed and likely won’t release until 2025. Now, more details are emerging about why the highly-anticipated flick has been pushed back, and it appears that Tom Cruise’s health may be a big factor.

It was originally reported that the SAG-AFTRA strike had brought production to a standstill, compelling the studio to reschedule the release date from June 28, 2024, to May 23, 2025.

RELATED: What Are Tom Cruise And Nicole Kidman's Adopted Kids Doing Today?

Tom Cruise’s Health Has Delayed Filming Before

But given Cruise’s history of on-set injuries, there may be more to why the next Mission: Impossible film is delayed. The actor is known for performing his own stunts, which has threatened his health numerous times before .

For example, while filming Mission: Impossible – Fallout in 2019 , production was abruptly halted when Tom fractured his ankle while executing a stunt that required him to leap between buildings. Remarkably, he still managed to capture the shot and resumed filming shortly after, despite not having fully recovered.

The film’s director Christopher McQuarrie revealed to Empire in 2017 that the stunt never entailed Tom Cruise successfully completing the jump. But the actor insisted on getting as good a shot as possible, even if it risked his well-being as well as the final release date of the film.

RELATED: Suri Cruise Is 17: Everything We Know About Tom And Katie's Daughter

"He was always supposed to slam into the side of the building. That’s what gives the stunt its energy," McQuarrie said at the time. "On the fourth try, he hit the building at a slightly different angle, and he broke his ankle."

Tom has opened up about the controversial stunt that risked his health and the movie. Speaking on The Graham Norton Show, Cruise explained the reason he continued filming the scene even after injuring himself was because he didn’t want to have to re-do the shoot later on.

Tom’s Personal Life Is Being Questioned As Filming Is Delayed

For now, Cruise hasn’t confirmed if his health had any bearing on the new release date for the upcoming Mission: Impossible film. The ongoing protest has been given as the only reason for the delay. But Tom reportedly has a lot going on in his personal life at the moment, as the actor is reportedly distancing himself from the Church of Scientology .

Despite spending a lot of time in the U.K. in recent years, a report by The Mirror reveals that Tom hasn’t been seen at Scientology headquarters in recent times. Moreover, these claims come after a 2021 report suggested the actor was having a religious crisis after losing faith in Scientology.

If Tom is leaving the church, it could put a rift between him and his oldest children, Isabella and Connor Cruise, whom he shares with his ex-wife Nicole Kidman. Both of their kid are reportedly active members of the Church of Scientology. Isabella event revealed in 2019 that she’d been promoted to the status of an auditor. For now, the Cruise family hasn’t commented on the recent speculation that Tom is leaving the mysterious religion.

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Tom Cruise appears injured after performing "Mission: Impossible 6" stunt

By Andrea Park

Updated on: August 14, 2017 / 9:27 PM EDT / CBS News

Tom Cruise appeared to be hurt after a stunt went wrong on the set of "Mission: Impossible 6" in London.

The actor was seen limping after he jumped off of scaffolding and hit the side of a building. 

TMZ posted a video that shows Cruise trying to jump onto the roof of a building, but the actor falls short and hits the edge with his torso. Within the clip, Cruise attempts to run across the rooftop before he falls to the ground. At one point, he gets up and limps back towards the scaffolding where he is pulled by his harness. 

It's unclear as to what the extent of the injury is, or if he was hospitalized. 

Cruise, 55, is known for performing many of his own stunts.

"Mission: Impossible 6" is set for release in July 2018. Cruise announced in June that the long-awaited "Top Gun" sequel will be called "Top Gun: Maverick."

Andrea is an entertainment producer at CBSNews.com

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'Mission: Impossible' Should’ve Never Killed This Character — and Tom Cruise Tried to Bring Them Back

This Mission: Impossible character deserved more than a single appearance.

The Big Picture

• Emilio Estevez's character Jack Harmon in Mission: Impossible was killed off early, leaving fans wanting more.
• Tom Cruise regrets killing off Jack Harmon and considered bringing him back for future movies.
• The Mission: Impossible series has a history of forgetting about its IMF characters, leaving fan-favorite roles behind.

For nearly thirty years now, Tom Cruise has been wowing audiences everywhere with death-defacing stunts as Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible series of action films. Based on the original television series from the 1960s, Mission: Impossible was relaunched as a film series in 1996, and we've been thrilled ever since. But every once in a while, a character appears in the Cruise-led series that never returns. Sometimes they're written off, and sometimes they are killed, and in the case of Emilio Estevez 's Jack Harmon, we've never quite forgiven the franchise for killing him off in the very first movie.

Mission: Impossible

An American agent, under false suspicion of disloyalty, must discover and expose the real spy without the help of his organization.

Emilio Estevez Played a Break-out Character in the First 'Mission: Impossible'

When the first Mission: Impossible starts , Ethan Hunt (Cruise) works as an agent directed by his friend and mentor Jim Phelps (played by Jon Voight , who takes over the role from Peter Graves in the original series) with the Impossible Mission Force (IMF). But when Ethan's team is suddenly killed all around him, our favorite IMF agent is forced to clear his name and uncover the web of conspiracy that threatens to trap him. But one member of Ethan's original team stands out above the rest, one who died way too soon. Estevez's Jack Harmon is the team's resident tech guru and controls the elevators during their fateful mission in Prague . Sadly, it's the only field action the character ever gets.

We don't get to see too much of Estevez in Mission: Impossible . His character is killed in the very first act and the actor isn't even credited on-screen (either in the opening or in the end credits) for his part in the film. While Estevez doesn't get any billing for his work here, Jack's companionship with his IMF team, and Ethan in particular, helps establish the tight-knit bond between the largest IMF unit we've ever seen in the film series . The way the actors play it, these guys are a sort of make-shift family, and it's arguably the happiest we ever see Ethan Hunt until he meets Julia Meade ( Michelle Monaghan ) a few movies later. While Simon Pegg 's Benji Dunn took over the role of "the tech guy" in future installments, Estevez's Jack was the first man behind the computer screen. He and Ethan are clearly close, and Jack's sudden and brutal elevator death affects the IMF agent deeply.

Along with Jack, agents Sarah Davies ( Kristin Scott Thomas ) and Hannah Williams ( Ingeborga Dapkunaite ) are killed on the same Prague mission. As it turns out, their team leader, Jim Phelps, and his wife Claire ( Emmanuelle Béart ), are the ones behind the betrayal, and though Ethan survived to take the fall, he too was eventually supposed to die. Thankfully, with the help of Luther Stickell ( Ving Rhames ), Ethan clears his name and the rest is history, but his team is still dead, and that means no sequel for Jack Harmon. Sadly, Emilio Esteves never returned to Mission: Impossible , which is a tragedy since the actor was pretty popular at the time, with movie series like The Mighty Ducks and Young Guns ––the latter of which ironically killed Tom Cruise in a brief cameo role.

Tom Cruise Regrets Killing Jack Harmon in the First 'Mission: Impossible'

According to Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise personally asked him to take on the role of Jack Harmon in the first Mission: Impossible . "The way Tom had explained it, he said, “Look, I’d love for you to come and join the cast. The whole opening number where everybody gets wiped out, it’s going to be a lot of well-known people and all of them are going to go uncredited and it’s really going to set up the level of peril for Ethan," the actor told Uproxx in 2023. He also noted that he didn't even think twice about joining the cast, and jumped aboard as soon as possible. Estevez and Cruise had become friends years earlier while filming The Outsiders , though the two haven't appeared on-screen together since the 1996 Mission: Impossible .

Estevez later recounted a conversation he had with Cruise a year after Mission: Impossible came out. "'Man, we made such a mistake killing you off,'" Cruise reportedly told him, a sentiment we can't help but agree with ourselves. " He and [ Mission: Impossible 2 director] John Woo were trying to figure out a way to bring me back for part two, but it just didn’t make sense ," Estevez explained. "I thought you could have because with all the masks, right?" Now all we can think about is how fun it would've been to watch Estevez play Cruise's Ethan Hunt in Jack Harmon makeup––assuming the identity of a dead man would definitely be a smart move, Ethan––but sadly we never got that. Though, Cruise does get to play a disguised Sean Ambrose ( Dougray Scott ) in the sequel, pretending to be Ethan Hunt to frame the IMF agent.

With the advent of the artificial intelligence known as the Entity as Ethan's latest opponent, it seems like the odds of Estevez returning to the franchise may be less impossible than before. Henry Czerny already returned as Eugene Kittridge, who hadn't been seen since the 1996 film, in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning , and it seems like other familiar faces aren't out of the picture quite yet. Since A.I. can use deep fakes and make Ethan see things that aren't there , perhaps using images of his dead teammates against him would be a powerful motivator for Ethan Hunt's latest adventure. But, speculating aside, Estevez's Jack is a character who has been missed since his untimely death , and before the death of Ilsa Faust ( Rebecca Ferguson ) in Dead Reckoning , he was no doubt the biggest IMF fatality.

'Mission: Impossible' Has a Problem With Forgetting About Its IMF Characters

Throughout the Mission: Impossible franchise, we've seen plenty of cast members come and go . Sure, Benji Dunn and Luther Stickell keep coming back for more (and we love them for it), but aside from Ethan's most trusted allies, the only other members of Ethan's IMF team to return for seconds are Ilsa Faust and William Brandt ( Jeremy Renner ), who hasn't been seen since Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation . Thandiwe Newton 's Nyah Nordoff-Hall from Mission: Impossible 2 , Maggie Q 's Zhen Le and Jonathan Rhys Meyers ' Declan Gormle from Mission: Impossible III , and Paula Patton 's June Carter from Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol have all been forgotten about by subsequent sequels. And they're not the only ones, Anthony Hopkins and Lawrence Fishburne have yet to return as government higher-ups and IMF directors of years past themselves.

The IMF must have a high turnover rate or something, because Estevez's Jack Harmon clearly isn't the only agent to refuse a future mission. While Estevez has an excuse (being killed off will do that), the other surviving characters haven't found their way back to Ethan Hunt's core team for some reason, which is a crying shame. But since Tom Cruise shows no signs of slowing down, it's always possible that some of these seemingly forgotten IMF stars will make their way back into the world of international espionage . In fact, we hope they all choose to accept a final mission sometime down the line.

Mission: Impossible is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.

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