Henry Cavill went missing in action at this past weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con, equally disappointing hundreds of angry fans with unframed Joker posters on their walls as well as thousands of Twitterbots paid for by somebody who really wants to #RestoretheSnyderverse. This despite the fact that Warner Bros Discovery bosses have already said the Snyderverse is over, movie audiences didn’t really enjoy his tenure as Superman, and also Cavill already said he wasn’t appearing because he was in another country working on a project that gave him COVID.
However, there was good news for those in a parasocial relationship with the actor, as it is apparently the four year anniversary of the time he did something slightly amusing in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. In a movie that had audiences buzzing for Tom Cruise’s commitment to his stuntcraft, Henry Cavill also spent a split second doing something that kind of looked like his fist was maybe mimicking a shotgun reloading.
That’s pretty much the whole story, unless you want to sit here and read a bunch of reactions to that tweet. So instead let’s talk about Tom Cruise’s insane stuntwork in that film. As a refresher, let’s just take a look at this sizzle reel that Paramount put together of the five biggest stunts Cruise did himself, along with commentary from costars like Isla Fisher and Simon Pegg:
Let’s talk about that HALO (High Altitude Low Open) jump stunt. Tom Cruise actually jumps out of a plane cruising at 25,000 feet and freefalls until he opens his parachute at the very end. While the following featurette from the Mission: Impossible – Fallout Blu Ray explains the process of filming the stunt in more detail, essentially Cruise had to film it three times. He had to stay no more than three feet from the cameraman at all times. The cameraman, by the way, essentially had to make the jump all three times with Cruise while keeping the actor in focus at all times.
In the film, Cruise is wearing a helmet and that’s not just for show. It was a special helmet, certified by the Royal Air Force, that provided the actor with oxygen. Any head-on collisions with other actors or crew and he would have been rendered unconscious. Any sparks from equipment and it would have ignited.
In short, Tom Cruise is the world’s biggest star for a very good reason.
