Hollywood star Tom Cruise battled hypoxia and breathed carbon dioxide while filming a subaquatic sequence in Christopher McQuarrie’s upcoming spy action film Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, according to a report published Monday by British film magazine Empire.
The report states that a sequence in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning features Cruise’s Ethan Hunt trapped in the wreckage of the Sevastopol submarine, which sank beneath the Bering Sea’s ice caps in the previous film, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning.
The scene was filmed in an 8.5-million-litre water tank mounted on a gimbal ring, allowing for controlled rotation. Cruise wore a specially designed suit and an illuminated helmet to ensure his presence was visible on screen. However, he could only wear the gear for 10 minutes at a time before experiencing hypoxia.
“I’m breathing in my own carbon dioxide,” Cruise told Empire. “It builds up in the body and affects the muscles. You have to overcome all of that while you’re doing it.”
Looking back on filming the sequence, director McQuarrie said that it was “challenging and so terrifying”. He described it as “physically punishing for Cruise”. “He’s in a rotating structure filled with debris, and we had to make that environment look as chaotic and unhinged as possible,” McQuarrie explained.
Tom Cruise had earlier shared a behind-the-scenes picture that shows him underwater, breathing from a safety diver’s oxygen tank.
In addition to the subaquatic sequence, Tom Cruise has pulled off a gravity-defying aerial stunt in the upcoming Mission: Impossible movie. A trailer, released by the makers earlier this month, shows the 62-year-old actor hanging from a yellow biplane.
Backed by Paramount Pictures and Skydance, the eighth instalment in the Mission Impossible franchise also stars Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Mariela Garriga, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Angela Bassett, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, and Frederick Schmidt in key roles.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is set to hit theatres on May 23.