Tom Cruise passed out from a lack of oxygen when filming aeroplane stunts for ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’.
The 62-year-old actor reprises his role as Ethan Hunt in the latest movie in the action franchise and pushed himself to physical extremes for the death-defying sequences that have defined the film series.
Cruise told Empire magazine: “When you stick your face out (of an aeroplane), going over 120 to 130 miles an hour, you’re not getting oxygen.
“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.”
Previous ‘Mission: Impossible’ movies have seen Cruise climb the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and cling to the roof of a moving train but director Christopher McQuarrie explained that a scene in the latest flick – which is set for release in May – made him “want to puke” from “the stress”.
The 56-year-old filmmaker said: “There are stunts in this movie that will melt your brain.
“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.”
There has been talk that ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ could be the last movie in the long-running franchise but Cruise is staying tight-lipped on the matter.
The ‘Top Gun’ star said: “You gotta see the movie.
“It’s a hard thing for me to discuss at the moment, because it really is something that you have to experience.”
McQuarrie was also coy on the subject but promised that the new picture will encompass Cruise’s time portraying Ethan Hunt.
The director said: “It is, I hope, the satisfying conclusion to a 30-year story arc.
“I’m pretty confident that people are going to feel that the title was appropriate.”
Meanwhile, McQuarrie revealed that an audience member “almost had a heart attack” during a screening of the movie after watching one of the intense action sequences.
He said: “We had a small screening, and someone said, ‘I was suffocating throughout the entire sequence. I almost had a heart attack’. And I thought, ‘I guess we did something right’.”
The ‘Jack Reacher’ director has promised that the franchise’s eighth film will give fans the chance to see more of the characters Grace (Hayley Atwell), Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) and Paris (Pom Klementieff).
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He said: “I can only say that the end of the world makes strange bedfellows. And I’m excited for people to see the evolution of Paris, Degas and Grace.”
McQuarrie explained that he doesn’t want characters to be pigeonholed in the films as tech wizards or all-action agents.
The filmmaker, who has helmed four movies in the series, said: “‘Mission’ has a mind of its own.
