Tom Cruise breathed in his own carbon dioxide filming terrifying stunt
Tom Cruise has detailed his latest death-defying stunt undertaken for the upcoming eighth Mission: Impossible film.
The action spy franchise is based on the 1966 TV series of the same name and star Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, an agent of the Impossible Mission Force who is faced with stopping enemy forces and stopping global disasters.
The first – Mission: Impossible – was released in 1966 and has since been followed by six more.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the eighth movie, will be released this month.
Over the years Tom, 62, has undertaken countless spine-tingling stunts, including scaling the Burj Khalifa, diving without an oxygen tank and hanging onto the side of an airborne plane.
However, he’s now spoken about what might be one of the most dangerous stunts he’s ever performed.
In the latest movie, a huge water tank was built to film a submarine interior.
The tank was able to tilt and rotate 360 degrees, however it tumbled Tom and everything inside it like a front-loading washer.
But to feature the actor’s unobstructed face in a SCUBA mask, Tom breathed his own carbon dioxide.
Tom Cruise’s craziest on-screen stunts in Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning cliff jump
The last Mission: Impossible film Dead Reckoning, which was released in 2023, saw Tom stare death in face when driving himself off a cliff on a motorbike as part of a wild stunt. It was described as ‘the biggest stunt in cinema history’.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout – the broken ankle
While filming Mission: Impossible – Fallout Tom jumped across several high-rise buildings but during one filming sequence, he slammed into a wall and broke his ankle. Although he ‘instantly’ knew it was broken, Tom later revealed he didn’t want to do the take again so ‘just got up and carried on’ before going to hospital.
Breaking his ribs in Mission: Impossible III
One of the defining sequences of Mission: Impossible 3 is the bridge attack when fighter jets bomb the Chesapeake Bay Bridge while Ethan Hunt is on it. In one shot he is pushed into the side of a car on the bridge, a stunt that left Tom with two broken ribs.
‘You’re not going to feel as connected with the character if I went with a regular mask and a thing in my mouth to breathe,’ he told People.
‘Luckily when you’re flying jets you train for hypoxia and for carbon dioxide buildup.
‘You start to be able to perceive your body and how it’s reacting so that I knew when to stop.’
Although director Christopher McQuarrie admitted ‘if we knew what it took to do it, we would not have done it’, Tom said he was up for the challenge.
‘On Mission, if it was easy, I guess we wouldn’t want to do it,’ he added.
Doing this stunt put Tom at risk of hypercapnia, which is when you have too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in your blood.
What is Hypercapnia?
According to the Cleveland Clinic hypercapnia, also called hypercarbia, is when you have too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in your blood. Your body creates CO2 when your cells make energy. Your red blood cells carry it from your organs and tissues to your lungs, where you breathe it out. If your body can’t get rid of carbon dioxide, a waste product, it can build up in your blood.
Hypercapnia can be chronic (long-lasting) and cause symptoms like shortness of breath (dyspnea) and daytime tiredness or fatigue. It can also be acute (sudden or all at once), with much more serious symptoms.
Acute hypercapnia is a medical emergency and can cause neurological (brain) symptoms like confusion, disorientation and paranoia.
If your body can’t get rid of carbon dioxide, a waste product, it can build up in your blood and cause symptoms like shortness of breath and fatigue, as well as more serious issues.
In Final Reckoning, Ethan also hangs from and crawls along the wings of a 1940s-era biplane flying above South Africa’s Drakensberg mountain range.
Stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood told People while ‘everyone will think we did some on green screen on the ground…I guarantee there was not one single shot that was not on a plane flying for real.’
In 2021 stuntman Greg Powell spoke about how Tom was ‘an exception to the rule’ while he would otherwise discourage actors from trying to take on too many intense stunts, due to the risks it poses to them and the delays that it could cause to production if they get injured,.
‘The thing is, if he wasn’t an actor, he’d be a very good stuntman,’ he told Metro.
‘He can actually do it. He’s very safe, he knows what he can do and what he can’t do. You’re there watching him doing it. Tom’s a very sensible guy – and he can do more than most.
‘He is an exception to the rule because there’s not too many Hollywood actors as big as him, worth as much money as him, who want to be hanging off the side of a plane or the building in Dubai – let someone else do it! But he gives the audience what they want – Tom Cruise.’
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will be released in cinemas on May 23.
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