Tom Cruise Dangles From Upside Down Plane in BTS of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

Welcome back. It's great to be back. Thank you, buddy. That was not great, that surprise. That was awesome. That was so cool. That was really special. That was really – I've seen stuff like that on television before, and to be part of it was really special. It's cool, right? Yeah. It's beyond cool. Yeah. Thank you for being back here. You're so beautiful. Thank you for having me. I went to see Mission Impossible and Final Reckoning on the big screen, and it was unbelievable. I want to dive into all this with you. It was like seeing, like, five giant great movies in one movie. I don't know how you do all this stuff, but you do it, and you love it, and I want to get into all this stuff. But first, last week, we had The Weeknd on our show. He was talking about – you've been a great guest on our show many times, and you always do bits of this. You did a lip-sync battle where you did Can't Feel My Face. Yeah, I love doing that. Great song. And he said that it made the song go to number one, and he wanted to thank you. And we didn't – he brought it up. He started talking about you on the show. Look at this. Did you end up seeing that? Did you – Oh, I saw it. I definitely saw that. It actually helped the song. It did? Yeah, it, like, helped it peak to, like, the record-breaking top – I mean, thanks to him, obviously. Thanks to Tom Cruise. To the biggest movie star in the world. Have you ever met Tom Cruise? Never met him. No, I'm a huge Tom Cruise guy, though. Yeah. He's a huge Tom – So nice, man. What a nice guy. And then – So talented. Oh, he's so talented. Actor, musician, like, guy. Yeah. So talented. But then you saw that and invited him to your premiere And, of course, he went. So you met The Weeknd. I know. That was cool. That was very cool. Come on. That was very cool. Very nice man. Very, very nice man. I love that you called him out. That's so good. But this is – you've been doing Ethan Hunt now for three decades. Can you believe that? And with – you raised the bar with every single Mission Impossible. Thank you. And you go crazier and crazier. And Mission Impossible 2 – this is you hanging from a cliff. Yeah. That was fun. No, that's frightening. That is not fun at all. That's – That was fun. That hurt my shoulders. Yeah. Then you climbed the tallest building in the world. Yeah, that was – Like, that's nothing. That was fun. In Rogue Nation, you gripped the side of a plane while it was in flight and taking off. That was – That was crazy. That was actually crazy. That was crazy. Dead Reckoning. You drove a motorcycle off a cliff, giving us one of the most iconic movie scenes ever. Yeah, I wanted to do that. That was a lot of fun. That's – that was fun. That was weird. That was wild. And somehow, you managed to get even bigger with the final Reckoning. I can't even talk about this, but when you see it, everybody, you're going to freak out. Tom, that's you. That's you, bud. I mean – Little guy. Yeah, that little guy there. Yeah. Now – Yeah, that – You all haven't even seen the – like, we're not showing anyone the sequence. You got to go see the movie. You see little snippets of it. I – I can't even understand. But do you manifest it? Like, do you see an idea in your head and go, oh, I think that would be a great stunt. I want to do that. And you see yourself doing it? Yeah, I do. I remember seeing, like, black-and-white footage of the very early days of Wing Walk, and I just thought, oh, I'd love to do that. I was a little kid. And then we just – you know, you see how we kind of work on different aerial sequences from Top Gun. And then, you know, I fly jets and airplanes and helicopters, aerobatics. And then Miku and I were just talking. We just discussed we'd like to do an aerial sequence, you know, after – This is Christopher McQuarrie. Yeah, Christopher McQuarrie. And we were talking about it. It's like, let's go do an aerial sequence and want to do wing walking. So we chose the airplane and, you know, I know how to fly that airplane and figure it out. And then we just start seeing, how can I get zero-G between the wings, and what can we do? And I don't know if you've ever had your hand outside a window going about 145 miles an hour. I don't know if you've done that. Yeah. Yeah, I've done. But, I mean, how do you even – Well, 60 miles an hour, and then, you know, multiply it. But feel the force of it. It was pretty intense. I gotta say. It was pretty intense. But how do you breathe? I mean, that's a good question. I didn't realize, like, that amount of force of air, I can't breathe. So I had to figure out how you're taking the wind, and you're breathing down here like this. And, I mean, the air particles coming off that propeller are traveling at the speed of sound. So the air is going around the fuselage like this. And the force of the air when I got close to the fuselage was brutal. I mean, the air going over the wing, period, was brutal. Yeah. But when the airplane went upside down, and also the engine would stop, so we did it like there's stuff where I'm there, and I was like, okay, let's see how long we can hold that so that, you know, with the engine stop, and then you, you know, so we, believe me, we spent a lot of time figuring this stuff out, like, you know, how to start the engine from here and not, you know, go underground. But you're on that thing, and then you must, and you practice, but if you're in trouble, you do this, right? And you go. Yeah. And then that's what I would do immediately. When I'm resting, it's, look, it's, it is the most intense weight workout you've ever had. Have you ever lifted a weight? Yeah. Where you cannot, it's impossible to lift it again. Yeah. That's what it's like after a couple of minutes on this wing, what we're doing. Because the maneuvers, you're going from 95 to 145, you know, miles an hour, and then you're pulling the Gs as we're going along. Because a lot of the stuff you're seeing, when I've got to get to zero G as I'm floating in between the wings and trying to maneuver up and down the wings. And as he's going, it's throwing me in different directions and, you know, and I'm, I don't know. It was crazy. It really was. Honestly. I don't know. It was a lot of fun. I'm glad you said it. Yeah, it was crazy. You actually brought us. People were like, it's crazy. I was like, yeah. Yeah, you did. You did it. You brought us an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how you prepare to do the biplane stunt. Yeah, this is some of the testing that we did early on. And this is like months into the evolution, probably about a year and a half as we're testing. It took you a year and a half to practice this stuff? It took decades to figure it out, honestly. Like I fly all these airplanes and I've been, I've been creating and building different aerial stuff, even privately and studying cameras and developing the technique and technology to be able to tell a story with aerials. Because I've, you know, if you look at America, Top Gun, American made, Fallout, that led into Top Gun Maverick, and this leads into this aerial sequence. So, and I can't wait, like the next time we do an aerial sequence, I'm like, I can't wait for that. You have another? Oh, I do. I've got other ones. Crazier than this one? Yeah, I do. Take a look at how we've prepared for this. McHugh and I went through every step of this aerial sequence. Tom and I had to develop the choreography. We're going to do rolls, loops, hammer hits. We can do this now. Okay. We can do it. When Tom is on the wing, we have to communicate by hand signal because the winds are from 100 to 140 miles an hour. Yeah. That's not even the movie. That's the test. No, that's not the movie. That's the test of what you're going to do. No, that's the movie. That's us testing. We're just testing. We're just trying to figure it out. So I was, when it went up, I thought, you know what? I talked to him. I said, look, I can hang off the top of that wing. I really think I can do that. You know? No. You can't. That's insane. I know. Yeah. I know. Also, I will say, the underwater, I mean, there's so many things. There's car chases. There's hand-to-hand combat. What you do to that dude's face with a treadmill, I'm not going to spoil it, but it's great. A treadmill. Yeah. But then the underwater submarine, it's a whole different movie. It's like a 20-minute underwater sequence. I love movies. It's brilliant. All the way back to the silent era. And we're looking at, you know, when you look at the underwater sequence that we have, it's very, submarines, we, I mean, massive sets that we built, biggest water tanks in the world to create this sequence. And what you're seeing in that, like, it is submerged in underwater, and that submarine is rotating. I don't want to give too much away, but it's all, all that stuff in camera, there's missiles going around and stuff. It's genius, because you go, oh, when water comes in, the gravity is going to move the sub. It's crazy. And I, you got to see, when I'm doing it, because of the lights inside, like, we built a lot of technology, a lot of stuff from Fallout, when I jumped out of the airplane at 25,000 feet, that helmet, and the lighting, we kind of put that and took it to the next iteration of the underwater. But I can't see. The light, a lot of times, I cannot see because of the reflection of the light. So I would go in kind of blind, spend a lot of time on the set figuring out, you know, as we're figuring out the shots, and then when I'm doing it, I have a hard time. Plus, this suit, when it's wet, increases in weight by about 125 pounds. So the kind of workouts and things that I have to think about just to prepare for these things, it's years of development. And, yeah, and I'm producing it, so it's also that kind of thing. So I'm producing it. I'm up early. I'm like... That guy's doing it all, man. My pull-ups, like, the pull-ups and the training I'm doing, it's crazy. I have a gym. It's called the Pain Cave. Yeah, yeah. And I have a sign on it that says, only the motivated may enter. Yeah, yeah. But the U.S. Navy actually helped you with that submarine scene, right? Oh, they did. Yeah, it was amazing. And the servicemen and women are here tonight. Thank you all for being here. Thank you. It pays off. It is such a great, it is such a great scene. Thank you. How do we set up what is happening in Mission Impossible, the final wrecking? How do I set it up? Yeah, how do we set up what's happening in this? In what? In Mission Impossible. Like, in the whole movie? Yeah. Well, there's a mission, and it's impossible. Okay, yeah, perfect. That's why I get paid the big bucks. I ask the hard questions. Okay, good. I thought, like, it's just a trick question. No, no, not a trick question. Okay, crazy stuff happening. It is so good. This is a movie that you definitely want to see on the big screen. I would say go to IMAX. In fact, everyone here is going home with tickets to see Mission Impossible, the final wrecking, in IMAX. Thank you. I love you, buddy. I want to show a clip. Here's Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, the final wrecking. Take a look at this. Mark the turn. Aye, sir. My rudder is right full. Godspeed, mister. Back with more Tonight Show, everybody. Come on back.