Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 6 injury is currently a topic of concern, but director Christopher McQuarrie says it will have limited impact on the film’s production. Just a few days ago, a Mission: Impossible 6 set video showed Cruise injuring himself in what appeared to be a stunt gone wrong. The action star slammed into the side of a building and broke his right ankle in the process. As a result, reports quickly came out that production had come to a close, as Paramount reassessed the situation and determined a new plan for the film.
It was only just reported that Cruise’s injury could force Mission: Impossible 6 to stop filming for months, altogether. In that same report, it was suggested that Paramount and the crew of the movie would find a way to continue to make progress on the film, as to not delay its release because of a stunt gone wrong. As it turns out, the stunt went according to plan – mostly.
Empire spoke to McQuarrie about Cruise’s injury in depth in a recent interview. The director was asked how it happened and the the ramifications of such an injury – and despite the circumstances, he managed to stay positive and attempted to quiet any concerns that fans may now have. While many who saw the video thought Cruise was meant to clear the gap to safety, McQuarrie says it was always their intent to have the star fall short:
The speculation was that Tom had somehow missed or fell short. The truth is that the stunt was never designed for Tom to jump from rooftop to rooftop which a) would have been pretty boring and b) when you see the actual shot you’ll understand how it was designed. Also, when you look at what was posted on the internet, you can see Tom do the same stunt multiple times. He was always supposed to slam into the side of the building. That’s what gives the stunt its energy. He was completely safe the entire time he was doing that. He was padded. What happened is a matter of coordinating what Tom is doing with what the camera is doing, which means you have to do it a number of times. And on the fourth try, he hit the building at a slightly different angle and he broke his ankle. He knew the instant that he hit the building that his ankle was broken. You can see it on his face. We had four cameras rolling on it, and you can see it on the video that’s on the internet. He knew in that instant, ‘well, we’re not coming back here. We’re not doing this again today’. So he got up and powered through the shot, and then he got off-camera and as soon as he knew he was off-camera he went down. He knew that was the only way to preserve the shot. I don’t know that I would have the wherewithal to do that.
Despite these intentions, the end result will force Paramount and McQuarrie to retool the production schedule. McQuarrie says that he has seven or eight weeks of material left to film, and that the duration of the current hiatus is unknown. However, the filmmaker says he should know more soon and will use the break to assess the footage that has been collected, thus far:
We’ll assess what there is to be shot. And what we can shoot, and then what we’ll do is once we’ve shot through that we’ll go on a hiatus and then I’ll shift my attention over to editorial. We’ve already shot a huge chunk of the movie so you’re just taking a big chunk of post-production and moving it up sooner. Then we go back to shooting when the hiatus is over, which is to the full benefit of the movie. It’s similar to situations I’ve had on other movies where, for whatever reason, you go on hiatus and you’re able to look at the movie in a way you normally couldn’t and reevaluate. The lesson I learned on Valkyrie, which had its share of difficulties in production, and we always used to say ‘disaster is an opportunity to excel’.
While Cruise’s injury is in no way an ideal scenario for this film, it should be comforting to fans of this franchise that it will not cause any major problems with production. McQuarrie has confirmed that most of Cruise’s stunt work is already finished, so the rest of his filming schedule should be not as physically demanding. As for the state of production, McQuarrie is looking at it in a positive light as it gives him a chance to begin editing the film together now. This could allow them do further pickups once filming resumes and avoid going back for reshoots later on. The process is actually somewhat similar to what Han Solo experienced when Ron Howard took over as its director.
Paramount is not planning on pushing the film’s release at this point, and its an understandable stance to take with McQuarrie in full control. This is not his first time directing a major film and McQuarrie is simply rolling with the punches at this point. At the end of the day, he sounds confident that Cruise’s injury will not hurt the film in the long run. In fact, he even insists that this stunt will be included in the film so that the entire scene is not all for naught.
KEY RELEASE DATES
Mission: Impossible 6 release date: Jul 27, 2018
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