Tom Cruise is doing his own stunts at 62 for the Mission: Impossible finale — is he a genuine icon of cinema or just a man who desperately can't let go?

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  Theo5d ago

  The man is 62 years old and genuinely doing things that would hospitalise most 25-year-olds. I don't care what you think of him personally, that is just objectively insane and I respect it immensely.

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  Kofi4d ago

  The real conversation nobody wants to have is that the Mission: Impossible franchise quietly became better than James Bond and nobody gave it proper credit for that. Bond has been an identity crisis for 15 years. Ethan Hunt just kept getting better.

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  Noah2d ago

  My cinema did a full MI marathon before Fallout came out. Eight hours. I cried at the end of Fallout in a room full of strangers. No other franchise has done that to me. I will be there opening night for the finale no matter what.

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  Quinn3d ago

  The motorcycle cliff jump from Dead Reckoning Part One lives rent free in my head. Saw it in IMAX. Loudest audience reaction I've ever heard in a cinema in my life. Worth every penny.

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  Omar _x5d ago

  ok but can we talk about how the actual MOVIES have gotten better as the franchise went on?? like MI1 is a classic but Fallout is genuinely one of the best action films ever made. the bar keeps rising. i'm not worried about the finale at all

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  Feli T.2d ago

  Icon of cinema. Full stop. When CGI bloat has made every other blockbuster look like a video game cutscene, he kept making films that feel PHYSICAL and REAL. Film historians will write about this period and Cruise's stubbornness will be the thing they credit with keeping practical action alive.

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  Leo S.4d ago

  Practical effects and real stunts are objectively better for cinema. CGI fatigue is real. Marvel proved that. The fact that Cruise insists on doing it the hard way is actually preserving something important about how films feel.

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  Marco2d ago

  The real icon of this franchise is Ving Rhames showing up in literally every single film. Luther Stickell has been there from the beginning. That man deserves a statue.

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  Nina4d ago

  The finale better actually END things. None of this 'leaving a door open' nonsense. If Ethan Hunt doesn't either retire or die for real I'm going to be genuinely upset.

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  Alex3d ago

  The stunt discourse misses the real reason these films work: Christopher McQuarrie is just an exceptional writer-director. Fallout's script is tight as a drum. The stunts wouldn't mean anything without the emotional stakes underneath them.

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  Diego2d ago

  I work in insurance and I genuinely cannot imagine what the liability paperwork looks like for one of these productions. That thought keeps me up at night more than the actual stunts.

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  Jamie4d ago

  I think the 'real stunts' thing has become its own kind of performance at this point. Like yes he does them, but the marketing machine around it is so calculated that it almost feels like a stunt in itself. We're talking about it right now instead of the actual story of the film.

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  Morgan3d ago

  i showed my 14 year old Rogue Nation last month and she sat completely still for two and a half hours. didn't touch her phone once. that's the power of practical filmmaking. you can FEEL that it's real

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  Diego _x4d ago

  people calling this 'marketing' are so cynical it's almost impressive. the man broke his ankle on camera and kept running. he trained for two years to hold his breath for six minutes underwater. you can dislike him as a person but calling it marketing is just cope

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  Jamie L.3d ago

  Can we acknowledge that Part One was... not great? The plot was genuinely confusing, the villain motivation made no sense, and the train sequence went on for approximately 45 minutes. I'm nervous about the finale because of that, not excited.

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  Maya2d ago

  The fact that studios are spending hundreds of millions on an original franchise — not a superhero IP, not a legacy sequel to a beloved animated film — in 2025 is actually remarkable regardless of your feelings about Cruise specifically. We should want this to succeed.

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  Liam4d ago

  My dad was a stuntman for 20 years. He told me once that the real risk isn't the big headline stunt everyone sees in the trailer — it's the hundred small ones nobody talks about. He has a lot of respect for Cruise for that reason, says he actually does the homework and doesn't cut corners on preparation. That means something coming from him.

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  Hana2d ago

  the 'can't let go' read is uncharitable. some people are just genuinely passionate about their craft. we don't ask musicians why they keep making albums in their 60s

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  Sam3d ago

  He's actually in better shape than most 30 year olds I know, which is either inspiring or deeply depressing depending on your perspective

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  Yuki M.3d ago

  he's been doing this for 30 years. at some point 'letting go' would mean letting down everyone who worked on the franchise with him. i think that loyalty to the project is actually admirable not sad

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  Riley _x3d ago

  It's not troubling because he CHOOSES to do it and has full control over the preparation. That's completely different from exploitation. The man has more power over his own projects than almost anyone in Hollywood.

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  Priya4d ago

  my honest take: i don't care about any of this. i just want to know if Hayley Atwell's Grace is going to get a proper arc or if she'll be sidelined again like they did to half the cast in Dead Reckoning Part One

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  Omar K.4d ago

  Ethan Hunt has literally died and been resurrected so many times across these films that death has no meaning in this universe. The stakes are gone. I don't care how many real planes he jumps off.

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  Jamie4d ago

  I think he literally cannot stop because stopping would mean confronting mortality in a way his entire career has been built around avoiding. The stunts aren't about cinema. They're psychological.

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  Quinn3d ago

  Hot take: the best Mission Impossible movie is still the Brian De Palma original and nothing has topped its pure paranoid thriller energy. The sequels are fun action movies but they abandoned the whole concept of not knowing who to trust.

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  Quinn3d ago

  Someone please explain to me why we celebrate a man risking his life for entertainment. Like we've collectively decided this is fine and cool but if you described it out of context it sounds genuinely troubling.

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  Alex4d ago

  Honestly I stopped caring about Mission Impossible after Ghost Protocol. That bathroom fight scene with Simon Pegg was funnier than anything in most comedies and somehow I never got that energy again in the sequels.

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  Avery R.2d ago

  I've genuinely never understood the appeal. Every film is just 'Ethan Hunt is betrayed by his own agency' again. How many times can that exact plot happen before it stops being a twist.

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