The Fall Guy

In Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Tom Cruise’s unstoppable agent Ethan Hunt will reach new highs and find himself at his lowest ebb, on his most personal Mission yet. Total Film meets the indefatigable star and his team to talk the jumps, stunts and breaks that are upping the stakes.

- Matt Maytum

We don’t take anything for granted,” says Tom Cruise, when Total Film asks him how the Mission: Impossible franchise has managed to buck the trend of diminishing returns that so often blights sequels, with the series going from strength to strength over the past 22 years. “And we try to take the lessons that we learned on the last one, and put it into this. And also, with this one, all of the Missions have led to this, in terms of our skill as storytellers and the characters themselves. We’re just trying to push ourselves as hard as possible.”

That’s something of an understatement, even when you consider Cruise’s trademark work ethic and commitment to getting involved in everything from producing to stuntwork. This summer sees the release of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the sixth instalment in the ongoing spy series that has become Cruise’s flagship brand (2011’s Ghost Protocol is the biggest hit of his career to date, followed closely by 2014’s Rogue Nation). But, Fallout is doing anything but resting on its laurels. Think Ethan Hunt’s missions sound pretty difficult? Well, filming them sounds even harder. From the kind of helicopter stunts that have never been filmed before, to a high-altitude skydive that required more than 100 practice jumps, to a motorcycle chase around a major landmark in a capital city, Fallout has constantly had the odds stacked against it, and that’s before you get to the leap-gone-awry that left the leading man with a broken ankle and production on hiatus, all while the release date was edging closer. Difficult? Try impossible.