If there’s one thing guaranteed for an actor in Mission: Impossible, it’s being offered the chance to perform their own stunts.
For Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise went above and beyond his own exceedingly high standards to deliver some nail-biting aerial and underwater sequences for his long-time role as IMF agent Ethan Hunt.
The rest of his team all had their own fair share of action too, and they all loved the challenge that the real-life fights and on-location conditions presented.
Pom Klementieff opened up about the difficulty of Paris’ stunts in the final installment, as a trained assassin turned IMF recruit, whose stunts range from small-scale prison breakouts to simultaneous fight sequences in burning buildings.
“They were both very challenging in different ways,” Klementieff explained to GamesRadar+. “The first one was the restriction with hand cuffs. I had to do high kicks and also, I was wearing less clothing, so when you fall hard on the ground, it hurts more. I did all the fight for that, too.”
“The one with the fire, with the real flames, where we had to be in sync with the other characters, with Tarzan and with Simon,” she continued. “When we were shooting, I was wearing winter clothing, but it was hot inside and there was a real fire.
“Fighting all day long like that, it was exhausting and very hot, but I think it also shows on our face, the struggle, and it seems real. That was amazing to shoot too.”
Meanwhile, on the receiving end of those real kicks in the prison scene was Greg Tarzan Davis as Degas, who admitted that the stunt left him bruised due to Klementieff’s immense strength.
“I was getting kicked by Pom, repeatedly,” Davis explained. “I had bruises on my side. Granted, I did ask her to do it to make it look realistic. I just forgot how strong a Pom kick can be. She was like, ‘Oh my gosh, are you okay?’ I’m like, ‘I’m good. Just keep kicking.'”
Alongside the fight sequences, there was also the challenge of working in sub minus 40-degree temperatures when shooting in the Arctic, which Hayley Atwell found the most “satisfying” part of her role this time around.
“I loved it,” Atwell said, “I didn’t find it difficult as such because I found it really fulfilling and satisfying every day to be there, but spending my time in the Arctic in minus 40 degrees, that was my favourite climate to be in. It was just the most surreal place to be.
“I never thought in my life that I would be in such a remote landscape, let alone working with Sled Dogs and filming a huge franchise movie. I think it will always stay with me. A set being interrupted by the presence of a polar bear walking past is not something that you see every day.”
Across the eight films, Cruise has scaled one of the tallest buildings in the world, jumped out of planes (trains and helicopters) and held his breath for four minutes all to deliver the high-intensity needed in these near-impossible action films. But are there any stunts the rest of the cast were envious of?
“I would have quite liked to ride in the helicopters in Fallout,” Simon Pegg told us, before he admitted that Cruise would fly them around scenic locations on-set so he did have some helicopter time too.
“Although, mind you, we did that,” he explained. “Tom used to fly us back to number ones when we were doing the scene, when we drove up the mountain [in The Final Reckoning].
“We got to the top of the mountain, and then we’d all bundle into this helicopter, me, Hayley, Tarzan, and Pom and then we’d fly through this Canyon back to number ones, and we’d do the shot again. We’d just run, all five of us would run, jump in and Tom would fly us and so, I guess I did that already!”
Klementieff added: “Yeah, it was amazing. Or [Tom] would fly us from the studio back to central London with the sunset. It was beautiful.”
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in cinemas from the 21st of May in the UK and May 23 in the US.
In the meantime, see our guide to watching the Mission: Impossible movies in order for a movie marathon, or our guide to all the upcoming movies of the year to plan your watchlist.
