Tom Cruise made an unannounced stop at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, turning up unexpectedly at a TikTok creator workshop and offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at some of the jaw-dropping stunts featured in “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning“.
Tom Cruise on “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” Stunts
During an intimate fireside chat with TikTok filmmaker Reece Feldman — known online as @guywithamoviecamera — Cruise surprised about two dozen creators gathered for the event. Feldman, who is debuting his first narrative short Wait, Your Car? at a TikTok-hosted screening during the festival, sat down with the legendary action star for a candid conversation that quickly became the talk of the fest.
Cruise, who had just flown in from London after receiving the prestigious BFI Fellowship the night before, said he arrived in Cannes around 3:30 a.m. and revealed that his team had only just wrapped work on The Final Reckoning.
When asked about one of the film’s most daring aerial sequences, Cruise offered a deep dive into the complexity and planning behind it — a hallmark of his action career, which has long been defined by pushing physical and cinematic boundaries.
“I’m an aerobatic pilot being able to fly these airplanes, so I now choose the airplane and present it — what colors should they be, what engineers do I have building this aircraft and working on the engines and how far can I push that aircraft?” he explained.
Cruise also described the painstaking effort behind one particular stunt: wing walking. “I’m learning how to wing walk, and this kind of wing-walking that we’re doing has never been done before,” he said. “Because what I want to do is really, really extreme.”
He didn’t stop there. Cruise added that his vision for the stunt included walking between the wings in a zero-gravity state — an ambitious idea that led to several challenges. “I’m going, how long can I hold the airplane in an inverted position? The engine stops after a few seconds because it’s not a fuel injection, so I know the engine’s going to stop,” he said. “So what we have to do is just take our time, and I’m just approaching it step by step.”
In keeping with his famously hands-on approach, Cruise revealed he not only hired an elite team of pilots but also trained them himself to fly with him clinging to the aircraft. “I’m a human being on that airplane — it was violent. It was so violent on that airplane,” he said. “The amount of air force that’s coming over that wing…”
Tom Cruise’s Stunt Work
Cruise’s stunt work has become a cornerstone of his cinematic identity. From hanging off the side of a cargo plane in “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” to scaling the Burj Khalifa in “Ghost Protocol”, Cruise has continually escalated his commitment to performing real, high-risk action. His stunts are not only a marketing highlight — they’ve helped redefine what audiences expect from blockbuster filmmaking.
In recent days, the Oscar-nominated actor has been on a whirlwind promotional tour ahead of “The Final Reckoning’s” May 23 release. Just days earlier, Cruise gave a talk at the British Film Institute in London, where he also made a stunt-style appearance atop the BFI IMAX theater. During that discussion, he reflected on a pivotal moment early in his career — his casting in the Academy Award-winning film “Rain Man”.
Cruise recounted how his younger sister helped him approach Dustin Hoffman at a New York City restaurant back in 1984. “I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Hoffman, I’m sorry… And he went, ‘Cruise!’” he remembered. That encounter led to an invitation to see Hoffman in Death of a Salesman on Broadway and a backstage meeting. “As I was leaving he said, ‘I want to make a movie with you.’ And I said, ‘That would be nice, sir,’” Cruise said, laughing. “And that’s what happened, and basically a year later he sent Rain Man.”
“Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” is set to screen out of competition at Cannes on Wednesday and will hit theaters on May 23, distributed by Paramount Pictures.
