His longtime stunt coordinator and second unit director Wade Eastwood told The Times of London newspaper how drained the actor was by one particular stunt in the eighth (and apparently final) instalment of his hit franchise Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning – one which involved him walking on the wing of a small biplane mid-air.

Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie knows his way around the action genre quite well, with the latest example of this being the 2025 movie release of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning this past weekend.

It’s not clear when it happened — sometime in the past 30 years — but the Mission: Impossible movies gradually evolved into Hollywood’s most dependable modern action franchise. Figuring out how this happened is far easier: Star Tom Cruise ‘s legendary willingness to do anything and everything to make each film a blockbuster while — as the franchise’s most powerful producer — savvily finding creative partners that bring out his best.