Tom Cruise made a surprise early appearance at Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday at a TikTok creator workshop, where he previewed some of the “never been done” stunts in “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”
Cruise participated in a fireside chat with TikTok creator Reece Feldman, also known as @guywithamoviecamera, shocking around 25 creators attending the festival. Feldman is premiering his first narrative short, “Wait, Your Car?,” at a special TikTok event during the fest and Cruise’s “The Final Reckoning” debuts out of competition on Wednesday. Cruise began the conversation by telling Feldman that he got into Cannes at 3:30 a.m. that morning after receiving the BFI Fellowship in London on Monday night, adding that the team had “just finished” “The Final Reckoning.”
When Feldman asked Cruise about the death-defying aerial sequence in the film, Cruise said he applied his “decades of knowledge” flying planes.
“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 said. “Now I have to hire the crew; I audition the crew around me. And I’m learning how to wing walk, and this kind of wing-walking that we’re doing has never been done before because what I want to do is really, really extreme.”
The Oscar-nominated actor said he wanted to “go zero-G” when walking between the wings of the airplane, which presented some logistical 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.”
Cruise went on to say that he hired “incredible” pilots for the sequence, but he also “had to train them how to fly the airplane with me on the wing.”
“I’m a human being on that airplane — it was violent. It was so violent on that airplane,” he continued. “The amount of air force that’s coming over that wing…”
After the 20-minute talk with Feldman, Cruise held a meet-and-greet with the TikTok creators, speaking with them one-on-one and taking photos.
Cruise has been making the press rounds lately ahead of “The Final Reckoning” premiere, giving a talk at the British Film Institute in London on Sunday (and also showing off his stuntman skills by appearing on the roof of the BFI Imax cinema). During his BFI conversation, Cruise reflected on the roles that made him a movie star, including the best picture-winning 1988 road comedy “Rain Man” alongside Dustin Hoffman. Cruise said that he landed that role after his little sister forced him to go up to Hoffman at a New York City restaurant in 1984.
“I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Hoffman, I’m sorry… And he went, ‘Cruise!’” he recalled. Hoffman ended up offering Cruise and his sister tickets to “Death of a Salesman,” which he was starring in on Broadway at the time, and invited them backstage after the show. “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 at the memory. “And that’s what happened, and basically a year later he sent ‘Rain Man.’”
After premiering at Cannes on Wednesday, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” debuts in theaters on May 23 via Paramount Pictures.
From Variety US