The stunt Tom Cruise banned Henry Cavill from performing: “I can’t let you”
When actors work on a Mission: Impossible film with Tom Cruise, they get an up-close and personal glimpse of the diminutive star’s dedication to risking life and limb for the audience’s entertainment.
Fittingly, signing up for a Mission tends to entail a hell of a lot of intensive training for each actor, because Cruise isn’t the only one required to do stunts in the films. The likes of Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Pom Klementieff, and Hayley Atwell have all shot their fair share of hair-raising sequences over the years, no doubt with Cruise standing nearby, shit-eating grin on his face.
For Henry Cavill, though, playing the villainously moustachioed August Walker in Mission: Impossible – Fallout was a chance to really show Hollywood what he was capable of as a physical performer. Even though he’d already played Superman a couple of times by that point, much of the action in those movies was performed on wires in front of green screens. This isn’t to say that it’s not difficult – it most certainly is – but it’s not quite the same kettle of fish as the average Mission.
So, Cavill threw himself into the role of Walker and tried his best to keep pace with Cruise in the movie. He endured extensive fight training for the extended brawls in a Paris nightclub bathroom and on a clifftop at the end of the film, and he spent two weeks hanging out the side of a helicopter, firing machine guns and bracing himself for the subzero gusts of winter air that consistently made it hard to breathe.
To his chagrin, though, when it came time for what is arguably the movie’s signature stunt, Cruise had to pull rank and tell him he wouldn’t be needed. “This is one of the saddest tales of the movie for me,” the English star told USA Today with a crestfallen sigh.
The stunt, which was heavily publicised at the time of release, became known as the ‘HALO jump’, and it involved Cruise jumping from a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III military cargo plane at heights of between 25,000 and 30,000 feet. Astonishingly, Cruise performed the jump 106 times, inhaling pure oxygen for 20 minutes before each jump, because otherwise he could have risked decompression sickness. The stunt, which also involved a cameraman plummeting from the plane along with Cruise, was so technically ambitious and fraught with pitfalls that, of the 106 jumps, only three takes were deemed usable in the film.
When it came time to shoot the stunt, Cavill, filled with a mix of excitement, bravado, and naivety, pitched that he should perform it alongside Cruise. After all, his character jumps out of the plane before Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in the film, so why shouldn’t he be involved in the death-defying sequence as well?
“The day came and I was begging Tom, ‘I’m wearing a parachute, I’ve got some wind tunnel training, surely I can just jump?'” Cavill recalled with a smile. To this, Cruise looked him in the eyes and, with complete sincerity, said, “Henry, I know exactly how you feel. I get it, you’ve done every single stunt in the movie so far, but this one, I can’t let you do. It needs specific training”.
Translation: this isn’t your garden variety wind tunnel stunt in a closely controlled movie studio, and you’re not prepared for it.
Indeed, Cavill’s enthusiasm likely turned to embarrassment when Cruise explained that, if he were to allow him to jump without the proper preparation, he could accidentally kill himself or Cruise as they fell through the sky at speeds of over 200 miles per hour. To this, the bashful actor conceded, “The idea of ‘I’m the guy that killed Tom Cruise’ after how many years of this franchise? I was like ‘OK, fine. I’ll sit this one out, Mr Cruise.”
