Tom Cruise is 'Mr. Phenom' for the 'Mission: Impossible' movies. But is he really done?
Henry Czerny calls his old “Mission: Impossible” pal and co-star Tom Cruise “Tom Phenom.” If you’ve ever watched a “Mission” movie, it's easy to tell why.
Cruise hanging off the side of an Airbus military plane. Cruise scaling the Burj Khalifa. Cruise holding his breath for six minutes underwater. Cruise doing a cliff jump off a motorbike. Cruise performing a HALO jump from 25,000 feet.
The actor “loves” these stunts, Czerny reports. “It's in his marrow.” And Cruise somehow ups his own death-defying game as superspy Ethan Hunt in the newest installment, “Mission: Impossible − The Final Reckoning” (in theaters May 23).
Czerny, who plays CIA director (and Ethan’s former boss) Eugene Kittridge, recalls being wowed by Cruise pulling off an intense sequence where he traverses one biplane to another, in midair.
“There's a very visceral reaction that is, ‘Oh, my God, he made it,’ first of all,” Czerny says. “It's truly not just hair-raising, but hackle-raising and heart-pumping. I’m walking that plane with that dude, who is truly a phenomenal example of a human who does what he loves and loves what he does.”
The newest adventure brings closure, as well as returning characters and plot points, to a story arc that started in 1996’s original “Mission: Impossible.”
“It's the best sort of retroactive continuity you can get when it doesn't feel like it's causing time paradoxes or plot holes. It really made this film feel like a wrapping up of everything that had gone before,” says Simon Pegg, who’s co-starred as tech guy-turned-field agent Benji Dunn since 2006’s “Mission: Impossible III.”
Ving Rhames and Tom Cruise go back to the early days of 'Mission: Impossible'
Ving Rhames has been a part of every “Mission” movie as computer specialist Luther Stickell, going back to the 1996 original, and it wasn’t Cruise’s stunt work that stood out the most for him back then. “Tom is really the first White person I've met in life who doesn't see color,” Rhames says. “When I first got this role, my character dies in the first 10 pages, and I said to Tom and (director) Brian De Palma, ‘Why does the Black man always die?’ Tom said, ‘Yeah, why is that?’ And now this is the eighth one. I feel pretty close to him.”
Czerny met Cruise in 1995 when filming that first “Mission” and was struck by Cruise’s passion for “digging” everything he could out of a scene. “That has not changed. He will plumb a particular situation as deeply as he can for everyone involved, and he is there for everything. He doesn’t take coffee breaks,” says Czerny, who returned as Kittridge for the past two movies.
“The difference now is there's a gravitas to it. There's a beautiful weight to it. There's an intelligence to it that he didn't have.”
Tom Cruise's action-loving streak is infectious among 'Mission: Impossible' cast and crew
Over the years, Cruise’s daredevil nature has rubbed off on his co-stars. Pegg got to do his favorite stunt alongside Cruise in 2015's "Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation”: a car chase in Morocco with Benji in the passenger seat and a recently resuscitated Ethan behind the wheel of a speeding BMW.
“It was so much fun. Tom had to keep telling me, ‘Say more, scream more.’ Because I was just stunned into silence,” Pegg says. He admits to being “jealous” watching Hayley Atwell partner with Cruise for a similar chase through Rome in 2023’s “Dead Reckoning.” “I got a little FOMO.”
Even Christopher McQuarrie, who’s directed the past four movies (including “Final Reckoning”), is no stranger to the Cruise adrenaline rush. The filmmaker walked on the wing of the biplane and also put on a diving suit to direct Cruise in a harrowing underwater submarine sequence. “I never want the Tom Cruise experience. Tom Cruise wants the Tom Cruise experience,” says McQuarrie, whose wife has dubbed him “the great indoorsman.”
“This franchise just pushes you to do things you never thought you were going to do.”
Is 'The Final Reckoning' Tom Cruise's 'Mission: Impossible' swan song?
There is a question, though, about the franchise’s future. Cruise has been cryptic about whether “Final Reckoning” is the last outing, saying recently on the red carpet that “it doesn’t have the ‘Final’ in there for no reason.” (The 62-year-old icon also has warned that he’s going to keep making movies into his 100s.)
Asked if this is the "Impossible" conclusion, McQuarrie tells Paste BN that “I honestly have not given it a moment's thought. I just know that while we were making this movie, it felt like we could tie up a lot of loose ends in the franchise.”
Rhames doesn’t think this is Cruise’s final “Mission”: “I don't know until he's 90, but he will continue, I feel.” Czerny agrees, though “if I had to put money on it, there won't be one for a little bit."
He guesses that Cruise and McQuarrie will “take a little break, do a couple of other things. But I don’t think Mr. Phenom is done with the franchise. Not completely. Maybe like the Rolling Stones, there might be another tour in there.”
How to watch 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning'
The newest "Mission: Impossible" movie is in theaters nationwide May 23. (Read our ★★★½ "Final Reckoning" review.) You can stream the previous seven "Mission" installments on Paramount+.