Tom Cruise is known as the man who can do it all on movie sets. It’s well understood that stuntmen can take a month off when working on Cruise-led movies because the actor will be doing his own stunts. That's not all though, as it turns out the leading man also does his own magic. However, it sounds like performing death-defying stunts is significantly easier for Cruise.
Ahead of the release of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, a clip went viral on the official M:I Instagram page. Said post involved interview that included both Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie on the Light the Fuse podcast. In it, they discuss the Dead Reckoning scene where Cruise's Ethan Hunt meets Hayley Atwell’s character, Grace, for the first time and performs a bit of close-up magic with a key. McQuarrie reveals the scene took quite a few takes because Cruise couldn’t quite get the trick right. He said…
It’s all real, and it’s a very difficult trick to do and just to get right. He was doing it, and we kept having to do it, kept having to do it. And you could see Tom was just getting a little more frustrated. We were so behind, and he was getting more and more frustrated.
Tom Cruise insists that he does all his own stunts on set. While digital effects may be used to some degree, the stunt itself is always real. This was the case with the magic trick as well, as both actor and director really wanted to capture the trick practically, without the use of camera tricks.
Of course, magic tricks take a lot of practice to pull off and, unless Cruise was performing at children’s birthday parties before he became a movie star, he probably doesn’t have a great deal of experience with such things. Still, Cruise says that as frustrated as he became, he pushed through and eventually made the shot work. However, based on Cruise's comments, his director didn't sound all that enthusiastic when he finally nailed it. Cruise said...
‘This is going to work. I’m going to will this to happen.’ I just did it, and there was a pause, and [McQuarrie] says, ‘Okay, we got it, we’re done.’
It sounds like the magic trick took more takes than the shot of Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle off a cliff. While one of those shots certainly took a lot of preparation to make sure it worked, the actual filming of it sounds like it was decidedly easier than shooting a magic trick that actually worked.
I'm not sure whether or not fans will seen Ethan Hunt perform any further kind of magic tricks in the latest Mission: Impossible film. However, based on the teases that have been shared about the upcoming 2025 movie release, there are plenty of wild sequences in store for audiences. For instance, there's one scene in which Hunt hangs off a biplane. Cruise talked about filming that sequence, even admitting that he would "pass out physically" at times.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is set to hit theaters on May 23. Though we'll surely see more Tom Cruise stunts compared to any magic tricks, just know that many of the action sequences are the result of movie magic. In the meantime, you can stream the first seven films in the film series using a Paramount+ subscription.
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