Latest news with #stunts
New York Times
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How They Pulled Off That Wild ‘Mission: Impossible' Plane Stunt
Of the many storied stunts that Tom Cruise has performed over eight 'Mission Impossible' movies — scaling the world's tallest building in Dubai, riding a motorcycle off a Norwegian cliff, retrieving a stolen ledger from an underwater centrifuge — it seems unlikely that one of the most shock-and-awe set pieces in the series' nearly 30-year history would involve two old-timey biplanes that look like they should have Snoopy at the controls. And yet many viewers have emerged from the newest installment of the franchise, 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,' astonished by that scene: a 12-and-a-half-minute sequence in which Cruise's seemingly indefatigable special agent, Ethan Hunt, hitches a ride on the undercarriage of a small brightly colored aircraft, overtakes the pilot, then leaps onto another plane midair to fistfight the film's grinning villain (Esai Morales) — all while being bashed and batted by the elements like a human windsock. If it looks as if Cruise is genuinely getting blown sideways in the sky, it's because he was. The actor's well-known penchant for performing his own stunts meant that the scene was shot largely as it appears onscreen, minus the digital removal in postproduction of certain elements like safety harnesses and a secondary pilot. Most 'Mission' stunts, said Christopher McQuarrie, who has directed the last four films in the series, begin with either finding or building the right vehicle for the job. In this case it was a Boeing Stearman, primarily used to train fighter pilots during World War II. Eventually, the production bought multiples: two red, two yellow — 'because if you have just one plane and that plane breaks,' he explained, 'the whole movie shuts down.' According to the stunt coordinator and second unit director, Wade Eastwood, Cruise, 62, trained for months on the ground before the full concept took flight. 'Tom's already a very established and very proficient pilot,' Eastwood said, 'but being on the wing of a plane is not something that people do. So we tied it down and put out big fans and wind machines, and we had the prop running just to see what the effects would be on the body, and it was absolutely exhausting. I mean, you're fighting the biggest resistance band you've ever fought in your life.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Geek Tyrant
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY Will Reportedly Feature One of the MCU's Most Massive Practical Action Sequences — GeekTyrant
If you thought Spider-Man No Way Home was awesome, Spider-Man: Brand New Day might be swinging into even more ambitious territory, at least when it comes to practical stunt work. According to a new update from The Cosmic Circus' Alex Perez (via Discord), Marvel Studios is reportedly preparing "one of the MCU's biggest, if not the biggest, stunt sequences for Spider-Man: Brand New Day .' What makes this even more interesting is that it's said to be a practical action sequence, meaning real sets, real stunts, and real explosions… at least as real as it gets in the MCU. This massive scene is expected to take about a month to film and will be shot outdoors in a 'heavily populated area', so it's going to be a major street battle in New York City. The report comes after a rumor hit that Mark Ruffalo's Hulk could have co-starring role in the film, so if true, this action sequence could very well involve him. Now, While the whole thing will be rooted in practical effects, so it's safe to assume characters like the Hulk, could be layered in with motion capture after the fact. Speaking about his long arc in the MCU, Ruffalo recently said: "Kevin [Feige] was like, 'What would you like to do?' And he said, 'What would you do if you had a standalone Hulk movie?' I said, 'Well, I'd like to take him from this raging maniac to kind of this integrated character.' And he's like, 'Okay. We'll do that over the course of four movies.'" He also added: "'We'll never give you a standalone Hulk... I don't mean to burst your bubble, but that's just not going to [happen],' he said of Feige's promise to him. 'So, we'll do it over four movies, how does that sound?' As far as I know. I can talk more about it, but I've been told not to." While there's no official story details or who the villain will be, it's rumored that Mister Negative will be making his live-action debut. If true, that opens up some dark and supernaturally charged territory, especially if he has the power to bring out Hulk's savage alter egos like Joe Fixit or Maestro. With Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton behind the camera and Homecoming and No Way Home scribes Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers back on script duty, expectations are high. The cast includes returning leads Tom Holland and Zendaya, along with newcomers Sadie Sink and Liza Colón-Zayas. With Marvel keeping a tight lid on plot details, we're left to speculate, but if the rumors around this action set piece is true, Spider-Man: Brand New Day could deliver one of the most intense street-level spectacles we've ever seen in the MCU. Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters on July 31, 2026.
Geek Tyrant
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Tom Cruise Was So Exhausted After His MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE Plane Stunt, He Had to Be Carried Off the Wing — GeekTyrant
Tom Cruise has spent three decades redefining the action genre by throwing himself off cliffs, scaling skyscrapers, and hanging onto planes mid-flight, and with these kinds of stunts come absolute exhaustion. According to Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning stunt coordinator and second-unit director Wade Eastwood, Cruise pushed himself to the limit for the franchise's epic aerial sequence. In an interview with The Times, Eastwood shared just how brutal the shoot was for the actor: 'It beat the hell out of him. The wind hitting him, and the blast of the propeller, particles hitting him. It was the hardest workout you could ever do, it was very dangerous and very exhausting for him. Many times we were carrying him off the wing because he was so tired. And he was flying all day.' Cruise was just so physically drained. The man was literally clinging to a moving biplane in mid-air, day after day. To communicate during these sky-high shoots, Cruise used simple hand signals. A tap to the mouth meant he needed a break, at which point he'd lay down on the wing (still in the air!) for 10 to 15 minutes before getting back to the stunt. Despite the grueling conditions, Cruise never let the pressure show. Eastwood added: 'Tom doesn't show fear, Tom shows competence. He had fun during all his stunts, even when it was exhausting. He's always positive, he'll always put on a smile, and he genuinely enjoys it.' This marks the possible final chapter in the Mission: Impossible saga, and Cruise went out swinging. But don't expect the 61-year-old actor to stay grounded for long. His next project pairs him with The Revenant director Alejandro González Iñárritu for a sci-fi drama where Cruise plays a man who almost destroys the world… and is now out to prove he's the one who can save it. Eastwood doesn't think we've seen the last of his death-defying antics: 'No, no chance. He's a machine. He acts like a 20-year-old. And there's no magic there, it's just hard work and discipline with his food, nutrition, and training.' So yeah, Cruise may have had to be carried off a plane this time, but something tells us he'll be right back in the cockpit soon enough.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tom Cruise Doing His Own Stunts Gets A Lot Of Opinions, But I Didn't Expect Sam Rockwell's Bad Guys 2 To Join The Conversation In Such A Fun Way
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Let's say that you only know two things about Tom Cruise besides his name. One would almost certainly be that he's the face of the Mission: Impossible movies, and the other, well, that would be that the Ethan Hunt actor always does all of his own stunts. The 2025 movie schedule has now brought us Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, which has, of course, gone to entirely new heights of action and danger when it comes to those stunts. Cruise's propensity for doing things like extreme wing-walking stunts has always gotten lots of opinions, but I can honestly say that I never thought that Sam Rockwell's The Bad Guys 2 would enter the convo in such a cool way. A lot of actors are fond of doing their own stunts for movies, but few are as committed and (some might say) intense about it as Tom Cruise. The Oscar nominee has pretty much always been one to go the extra mile in that category (which will finally receive Academy Award recognition at the 2028 ceremony), but for nearly three decades he's devoted himself to learning completely new skill sets just so he can do things like eventually perform an actual space walk. In a few months, it turns out that we will see yet another stunt-filled spectacular hit the big screen, and these stars got the jump on Cruise by beating him to the punch with that space action. Take a look! Wowwwwww. OK, I gotta say, I both see and love what The Bad Guys 2 (which had a funny presentation at 2025 CinemaCon) did here! This special look 'behind the scenes' of the DreamWorks Animation sequel 'confirms' that Sam Rockwell's Mr. Wolf and his band of reformed merry men (and one Ms. Tarantula, voiced by Awkwafina) took it upon themselves to perform a super-dangerous stunt that involved the crew getting a bit chilly in the void of space before their eventual terrestrial return. Obviously, Rockwell, Awkwafina and their voice castmates (Marc Maron, Craig Robinson and Anthony Ramos) weren't involved in any stunts for the making of this animated epic, but no one can deny that this is a great, hilarious way to poke a bit of fun at the Maverick star. The Bad Guys released in 2022, and though the original received mixed to positive critical reviews, there were some who did think that factors like that awesome voice cast, the intriguing animation style, and the cool heist sequences were all fulfilling reasons to give the film a shot. If nothing else, the sequel certainly looks to build on those first and third points. The cast has added the talents of Danielle Brooks, Natasha Lyonne, and Maria Bakalova, with Zazie Beetz, Richard Ayoade, Alex Borstein and others also returning. Meanwhile, who doesn't want to see how these creatures survive the vacuum of space? I'm already on the edge of my seat!
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' Review: Tom Cruise Delivers but the Convoluted Eighth Entry Takes Its Sweet Time Getting There
Two extended stunt sequences in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning are as bold and original as anything seen in the enduring spy franchise's almost three-decade history. That includes Tom Cruise, as covert CIA division agent Ethan Hunt, riding a motorcycle off a 4,000-foot cliff and BASE jumping the final 500 feet of a ravine, or the breathless climactic train mayhem in 2023's Dead Reckoning, the opening installment of this two-parter. In the new film, Ethan navigates a sunken Russian submarine, his movement between flooded and unflooded compartments destabilizing the vessel and sending it barreling down a slope into the depths. Later, he chases down a villain by scrambling between two vintage biplanes flying at 10,000 feet, frequently dangling from a wing over stunning South African landscapes. More from The Hollywood Reporter Nude and "Voluminous" Cannes Red Carpet Looks From Past Years That Would Violate New Dress Code David Lynch's Son Intros 'Welcome to Lynchland' Doc in Cannes: "This Festival Meant a Lot to My Dad" Kurdistan Film Commission Launches, Celebrating Cannes Premiere With Invite to the Cinema World Cruise's commitment to performing his own stunts and giving audiences the analog thrill of in-camera daredevilry instead of digital fakery has progressed to ever more astonishing feats over the course of eight Mission: Impossible movies. It's the key reason for this franchise's longevity — along with the self-destructing mission instructions, the identity-switching facemasks, the heroic sprints and the high-speed vehicular chases. The trouble is, aside from a pre-titles sequence in which Ethan and master thief turned Impossible Mission Force recruit Grace (Hayley Atwell) are captured and threatened with torture by slick terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales), we have to wait out roughly half the almost three-hour movie for much of the exhilarating action and fabulous locations that are the series' lifeblood. It's a relief when uber-cool assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff) — now on Ethan's team and eager to ice Gabriel, her former employer — grabs a machine gun and starts mowing down Russians in the Arctic Circle. If Dead Reckoning risked overkill with its barrage of spectacular set-pieces — that car chase around Rome and down the Spanish Steps with Ethan and Grace in a Fiat Bambino was an all-timer — Final Reckoning spends a disproportionate amount of time trudging through recaps, reams of exposition and mind-numbing cyber-speak. There are so many round-robin conversations about the gravity of the situation, it feels like being trapped in an endless committee debriefing. At times, it borders on self-parody. Director Christopher McQuarrie and his co-writer Erik Jendresen planted the seeds for a more brooding, rueful Ethan in Part One. I lost count of how many times we hear the IMF oath: 'We live and die in the shadows, for those we hold close, and those we never meet.' The melancholy vein runs deep as Ethan is repeatedly confronted with the wages of his rogue espionage activities in a film laced with callbacks to previous installments, stretching all the way back to Brian De Palma's still great 1996 kickoff. McQuarrie peppers snippets of the earlier films throughout, resurfacing not just moments of high-octane action but also lacerating losses. The script works hard to mythologize Ethan as a tragic hero, who can save the world but must go forever unacknowledged, always acting 'for the greater good,' but more than once at the cost of someone he loves. Cruise plays all this with corrosive interiority alongside his characteristic physical stamina. But as compelling as his performance is, the movie feels dour and heavy for long stretches at a time. The tongue-in-cheek wit of the franchise at its best is largely absent. Then there's the unfortunate matter of 'The Entity.' Introduced in Dead Reckoning, that sentient AI menace is capable of infiltrating the financial institutions, law enforcement and nuclear facilities of the world's most powerful nations, unleashing chaos. In the months since Ethan evaded capture in Austria at the end of the last movie, the Entity has expanded its power, building a fanatical cult, sparking global violence and inching toward the annihilation of humankind. The U.S. — led by former CIA deputy director Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett, welcome back), who's since been elected president — wants to control and weaponize it. Ethan, convinced no one should have their hands on that much power, wants to destroy it. Even more so after he gets a Clockwork Orange-type indoctrination from the gizmo itself: 'It's the Entity's future, or no future at all.' Gabriel, who failed the Entity and is now an outcast (I'm not making this shit up), wants to use it to dominate the world: 'The Entity will answer to me. It's only a matter of time,' he declares, tacking on a hint of maniacal 'bwa-ha-ha' laughter. If you play a drinking game pegged to every time someone gravely intones the words 'the Entity,' be warned you'll probably be hammered within the first hour. The existential threat of Artificial Intelligence, starting with its incursions into privacy and security, is all too real, as is the notion of a cyber force manipulating the truth. But renegade AI programs make incredibly boring supervillains, and the scariest part is that we're bound to see a bunch more movies about them. I'll take marauding robots over angry screensavers. Every time someone says something idiotic like, 'The Entity, it wants you to hate me!' or 'Madam President, we're in the Entity's reality now,' Final Reckoning lurches further into self-seriousness, which doesn't sit well on a plot as maddeningly convoluted and, well, silly as this one. A lot of risible dialogue doesn't help. Lines like, 'You're forgetting the bomb! The nuclear bomb!' delivered during a particularly hairy moment, make you wonder if the writers are winking at us. When Ethan — spoiler alert — saves the day and a high-level doubter in Sloane's administration sighs, 'He did it,' you just know 'That son of a bitch' is coming next. Did McQuarrie and Jendresen use AI to write this stuff? Gaining control of the Entity is a multipart undertaking, the first step achieved in Dead Reckoning when Ethan took possession of the bejeweled 'cruciform' key. Or was that just a MacGuffin? The crucial next step is retrieving the source codes from a gadget called the Podkova, which was lost when the Sevastopol, a Russian submarine, vanished on its maiden voyage at the start of Dead Reckoning, thanks to some Entity treachery. It now sits below the polar ice cap in the Bering Sea. Only Ethan knows how to locate it, which is why Gabriel wants him kept alive and President Sloane puts her faith in him, against the advice of her defense and intelligence chiefs. The Podkova needs to be activated at a precise split second to stop the Entity from launching the nuclear warheads of eight nations and claiming billions of lives. So the pressure is on. Activation also requires an additional component stolen by Gabriel from Ethan's trusty hacker sidekick Luther, played by Ving Rhames, the only actor besides Cruise who has been with the series since the start. That history is warmly acknowledged here in an affecting moment. Ethan's bantering rapport with his close collaborators Luther and Benji (Simon Pegg) is always pleasurable, though it's limited here by how much time Ethan spends globe-hopping solo. Atwell is a welcome presence again, even if her character has lost some of the mischievous charm she had as a thief, becoming more serious and less fun since joining Ethan's IMF crew and having to learn new skills on the job, like defusing bombs. It's good to see Ron Saxon back as William Donloe, the CIA analyst baffled by Ethan's entry into the supposedly impenetrable black vault in the first movie. Likewise Bassett (her second time playing a U.S. president this year, after Netflix's Zero Day) and Henry Czerny as Kittridge, the ex-IMF chief now heading the CIA. But all the tense meetings at Virginia Emergency Command are staffed by over-qualified actors given too little to do — Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany. Same goes for Hannah Waddingham as an aircraft carrier commander. Tramell Tillman has an amusing wild-man energy as U.S. rescue submarine commanding officer Bledsoe ('Mister, if you wanna poke the bear, you've come to the right place!') And Bledsoe's vessel provides the setting for some frantic mano a mano, when an Entity convert tries taking out Ethan, conveniently while he's training shirtless in athletic boxer briefs. But I wish someone had explained what exactly these killer cultists expect to get out of serving the Entity. I did get a kick out of Klementieff's Paris muttering arch nonsense like 'Who will live and who will die?' or 'It is written.' Her response — delivered in French, in a perplexed deadpan — when asked to perform emergency surgery on Benji is priceless: 'I kill people.' But despite the expected pluses of slick visual polish, muscular camerawork by Fraser Taggart and a dynamic score by Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey, The Final Reckoning ends up being a bit on the dull side. If it's going to be the last we see of one of the most consistently entertaining franchises to come out of Hollywood in the past few decades — a subject about which Cruise and McQuarrie have remained vague — it's a disappointing farewell with a handful of high points courtesy of the indefatigable lead actor. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
