Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning featured a scene that involved real torpedoes being dropped on Tom Cruise.
Speaking on The Empire Film Podcast, stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood recalled the thinking behind delivering authenticity throughout The Final Reckoning's instantly-iconic submarine sequence, which saw Cruise's Ethan Hunt traverse the watery remains of the Sevastopol in the hopes of swiping The Entity's Source code. In one heart-pounding scene, that even involved the submarine rotating, complete with torpedoes crashing around Ethan.
"The easiest thing in the world to do would have been to have Tom swim through and react to CG torpedoes," Eastwood explained. "That would have been the way. But then you get CG bubble trails and you've got to match plate shots. You've done this whole amazing sequence [for] real, and suddenly you're swimming through and some of the audience are like, 'Nah, we can see that's CG. I'm disconnected.'
"Tom does not want an audience disconnected. He doesn't want them to be cheated… He just wants to do it for real as much as he can. As an actor, he wants to react to these things, you know?"
Director Christopher McQuarrie went back to Westwood, requesting more and more torpedoes in the scene – ultimately getting up to five, but with one key mantra after months of testing: "If it's uncontrolled, we're not doing it."
Despite the safety measures in place, Westwood revealed that Cruise was "trapped" during filming.
Westwood added, "He got trapped once. It wasn't bad, because Tom can hold his breath for a long time. Before he had even finished being trapped, I was already pulling the thing off him."
It's a little wonder, then, that one eyebrow-raising piece of pre-release marketing, which featured Cruise heading down into a body of water, saw the usually composed actor looking decidedly nervous.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is now in cinemas. For a spoiler-filled breakdown of the movie, check out our guides to the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning ending and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Easter eggs.
