Tom Cruise Dangles From Upside Down Plane in BTS of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:01-Welcome back. -It's great to be back.
2. 0:02-Thank you, buddy. Wasn't that great?
3. 0:03That surprise? -That was awesome.
4. 0:04-That's so cool. That was really -- It was special.
5. 0:06-I've seen stuff like that on television before,
6. 0:09and to be part of it was really special.
7. 0:11-It's cool. Right? Yeah. -It's beyond cool.
8. 0:12-Yeah. Thank you for being back here.
9. 0:14-It was so beautiful. [ Cheers and applause ]
10. 0:16Thank you for having me.
11. 0:18-I went to see "Mission: Impossible -- Final Reckoning"
12. 0:20on the big screen, and it was unbelievable.
13. 0:23I want to dive into all of this with you.
14. 0:25It was like seeing, like, five giant great movies in one movie.
15. 0:28I don't know how you do all this stuff.
16. 0:29It's insane.
17. 0:30But you do it, and you love it.
18. 0:32And I want to get into all the stuff.
19. 0:34But first, last week we had The Weeknd on our show,
20. 0:37and he was -- [ Audience cheers ]
21. 0:38He was talking about --
22. 0:41You've been a great guest on our show many times
23. 0:43and you always do bits with us.
24. 0:45You did a lip-sync battle where you did "Can't Feel My Face."
25. 0:48-Yeah, I love doing that. Great song.
26. 0:50-And he said that it made the song go to number one,
27. 0:53and he wanted to thank you and we didn't --
28. 0:54He brought it up.
29. 0:56He started talking about you on the show. Look at this.
30. 0:58Did you end up seeing that? -No.
31. 1:01-Oh, I saw it. I definitely saw that.
32. 1:02It actually helped the song.
33. 1:04-It did? -Yeah.
34. 1:06It helped it peak to, like, the record-breaking top.
35. 1:08I mean, thanks to him, obviously.
36. 1:09-Thanks to Tom Cruise.
37. 1:10-The biggest movie star in the world.
38. 1:11-Have you ever met Tom Cruise?
39. 1:13-I've never met him. No.
40. 1:14I'm a huge Tom Cruise guy, though.
41. 1:16-Yeah, he's a huge Tom -- -That is so nice, man.
42. 1:18[ Cheers and applause ] -What a nice guy.
43. 1:20And then -- -So talented.
44. 1:21-No, he's so talented. -Actor, musician.
45. 1:23Like, guy's so talented.
46. 1:24-But then you saw that and invited him
47. 1:27to your premiere of "Mission: Impossible" last night.
48. 1:29And of course, he went. So you met The Weeknd.
49. 1:31-I know. [ Cheers and applause ]
50. 1:34That was cool. That was very cool.
51. 1:36-Come on. -That was very cool.
52. 1:38Very nice man. Very, very nice man.
53. 1:40-I love that you called him out.
54. 1:41I love that you called him out.
55. 1:42That's so good. -Absolutely.
56. 1:43-But this is -- You've been doing
57. 1:45Ethan Hunt now for three decades.
58. 1:46Can you believe that?
59. 1:48And you raise the bar with every single "Mission: Impossible,"
60. 1:50and you go crazier and crazier. In "Mission: Impossible 2,"
61. 1:52this is you hanging from a cliff.
62. 1:54-Yeah, that was fun. -No. That's frightening.
63. 1:56That is not fun at all. -That was fun.
64. 1:58-Then you -- -That hurt the shoulders.
65. 2:00-Yeah. Then you climbed the tallest building in the world.
66. 2:03Like, that's nothing. -That was fun.
67. 2:05[ Laughter, cheers, applause ]
68. 2:08-In "Rogue Nation," you gripped the side of a plane
69. 2:10while it was in flight and taking off.
70. 2:12-That was crazy. -That was actually crazy.
71. 2:14-Yeah, that was crazy. -"Dead Reckoning."
72. 2:16"Dead Reckoning," you drove a motorcycle off a cliff,
73. 2:18giving us one of the most iconic movie scenes ever.
74. 2:21-Yeah, I wanted to do that.
75. 2:22That was a lot of fun. That was fun.
76. 2:25That was weird. That was wild.
77. 2:27-And somehow you managed to get even bigger
78. 2:29with the "Final Reckoning."
79. 2:30I can't even talk about this,
80. 2:32but when you see it, everybody, you're going to freak out.
81. 2:35Tom, that's you. That's you, bud. I mean --
82. 2:39-The little guy. -Yeah, that little guy there.
83. 2:41Yeah.
84. 2:43-Now, that -- You all haven't even seen the s--
85. 2:45Like, we're not showing anyone the secrets.
86. 2:47You got to go see the movie.
87. 2:48You see little snippets of it.
88. 2:49-I can't even understand.
89. 2:51But do you manifest it?
90. 2:52Like, do you see an idea in your head and go,
91. 2:54"Oh, I think that would be a great stunt.
92. 2:56I want to do that" and you see yourself doing it?
93. 2:58-Yeah, I do. [ Laughter ]
94. 2:59I remember seeing, like,
95. 3:01black and white footage of the very early days of wing walking,
96. 3:03and I just thought, "Wow, I'd love to do that."
97. 3:06I was a little kid, and then we just,
98. 3:09you know, you see how we kind of work
99. 3:11on different aerial sequences from "Top Gun" and then,
100. 3:13you know, I fly jets and airplanes
101. 3:16and helicopters, aerobatics.
102. 3:17And then McQ and I were just talking.
103. 3:20We just discussed we'd like to do an aerial sequence.
104. 3:22-McQ -- This is Christopher McQuarrie.
105. 3:23-Yeah, Christopher McQuarrie, and we were talking about it.
106. 3:24It's like, "let's go do an aerial sequence"
107. 3:26and want to do wing walking.
108. 3:28So we chose the airplane.
109. 3:30And, you know, I know how to fly that airplane and figure it out.
110. 3:32And then we just start seeing
111. 3:34how can I get zero G between the wings and what can we do?
112. 3:38And I don't know if you've ever had your hand outside a window
113. 3:41going about 145 miles an hour.
114. 3:43[ Laughter ] -Show of hands if --
115. 3:44-I don't know if you've done that.
116. 3:46-Yeah. But I mean, how do you even --
117. 3:48-Well, 60 miles an hour and then, you know, multiply it,
118. 3:51but feel the force of it.
119. 3:53It was pretty intense, I gotta say.
120. 3:54-How do you breathe?
121. 3:56-I mean, that's a good question.
122. 3:58The -- I didn't realize, like, that amount of force of air,
123. 4:01I can't breathe, so I had to figure out
124. 4:03how you're taking the wind
125. 4:05and you're breathing down here like this.
126. 4:07And I mean, the air particles coming off that propeller
127. 4:09are traveling at the speed of sound.
128. 4:11So the air is going around the fuselage like this.
129. 4:13And the force of the air
130. 4:15when I got close to the fuselage was brutal.
131. 4:18I mean, the air going over the wing period was brutal,
132. 4:21you know, but when the airplane went upside down
133. 4:24then also the engine would stop. -Tom, this is insane.
134. 4:28-So, like, we do it -- like, there's stuff where
135. 4:30I'm there and I was like, "Okay, let's --
136. 4:31let's see how long we can hold that" so that, you know,
137. 4:35with the engine stopped,
138. 4:37and then you, you know, so -- believe me, we spent a lot
139. 4:40of time figuring this stuff out, like, you know.
140. 4:43How to start the engine from here
141. 4:44and not, you know, going to the ground.
142. 4:46-But you're on that thing, and then you must --
143. 4:49and you practice, but if you're in trouble,
144. 4:51you do this, right? And you go --
145. 4:52-Yeah, yeah. -And then --
146. 4:53That's what I would do immediately.
147. 4:55-When I'm resting --
148. 4:56Look, it is the most intense weight
149. 4:58workout you've ever had.
150. 5:00Have you ever lifted a weight where you cannot --
151. 5:01It's impossible to lift it again.
152. 5:03-Yeah. -That's what it's like
153. 5:04after a couple of minutes on this wing, what we were doing
154. 5:06because the maneuvers -- you're going from
155. 5:0895 to 145 miles an hour,
156. 5:11and then you're pulling the Gs as we're going along,
157. 5:14because a lot of the stuff you're seeing --
158. 5:15I've got to get to zero G
159. 5:17as I'm floating in between the wings
160. 5:18and trying to maneuver up and down the wings,
161. 5:21and as he's going, it's throwing me in different directions
162. 5:23and, you know, and I don't know, it was crazy.
163. 5:28It was crazy. -It really was, honestly.
164. 5:29-I don't know. It was still a lot of fun.
165. 5:31-I'm glad you said it. -Yeah, it was crazy.
166. 5:33-You actually brought us --
167. 5:33-People were like, "It's crazy."
168. 5:35I was like, "Yeah." -Yeah, yeah, you did it.
169. 5:37You brought us an exclusive behind-the-scenes look
170. 5:38at how you prepared to do the biplane.
171. 5:41-Yeah, this is some of the testing that we did early on.
172. 5:43This is like months into the evolution.
173. 5:45Probably about a year and a half as we're testing stuff.
174. 5:47-It took you a year and a half to practice this stunt?
175. 5:49-It took decades to figure it out, honestly.
176. 5:51Like, I fly all these airplanes and I've been creating
177. 5:54and building different aerial stuff,
178. 5:55even privately and studying cameras
179. 5:57and developing the technique and technology
180. 6:00to be able to tell a story with aerials,
181. 6:02because, you know, if you look at "Top Gun,"
182. 6:04"American Made," "Fallout,"
183. 6:06that led into "Top Gun: Maverick"
184. 6:08and this leads into this aerial sequence.
185. 6:10So -- And I can't wait. Like, the next time
186. 6:12we do an aerial sequence, I'm -- I can't wait for that.
187. 6:15-Do you have another? -Oh, I do. I got other ones.
188. 6:17-Crazier than this one? -Yeah, I do.
189. 6:19-Take a look at how he prepared for this.
190. 6:22-McQ and I went through every step
191. 6:24of this aerial sequence.
192. 6:26-Tom and I had to develop the choreography.
193. 6:29-We're going to do rolls, loops, hammerheads.
194. 6:38We can do this now.
195. 6:40-Okay. -We can do it.
196. 6:42-When Tom is on the wing,
197. 6:43we have to communicate via hand signal
198. 6:45because the winds are from 100 to 140 miles an hour.
199. 6:49♪♪
200. 6:56♪♪
201. 7:04[ Cheers and applause ] -Yeah.
202. 7:07-That's the test? -That's just --
203. 7:10-That's not even the movie.
204. 7:11That's the test. -No, that's not the movie.
205. 7:13-That's the test of what you're gonna do.
206. 7:14-No, that's not the movie. That's us testing.
207. 7:16We're just testing.
208. 7:17We're just trying to figure it out.
209. 7:19So I was -- When it went up, I thought, "You know what?"
210. 7:20I talked to him.
211. 7:21I said, "Look, I can hang off the top of that wing.
212. 7:23I really think I can do that." You know?
213. 7:25[ Laughter ]
214. 7:27-No! You can't. It's insane. -I know. Yeah, yeah, I know.
215. 7:30-Also I will say the underwater s--
216. 7:33I mean, there's so many things.
217. 7:34There's car chases, there's hand-to-hand combat.
218. 7:37What you do to that dude's face with the treadmill,
219. 7:39I'm not gonna spoil it, but it's great.
220. 7:40It's a treadmill. yeah, but then the underwater submarine,
221. 7:44there's a whole different movie.
222. 7:46-It's like a 20-minute underwater sequence.
223. 7:48I love movies and all the way back to the silent era.
224. 7:51And we're looking at, you know,
225. 7:53when you look at the underwater sequence that we have,
226. 7:54it's very -- With submarines, we -- I mean, massive sets
227. 7:58that we've built, biggest water tanks in the world
228. 8:00to create this sequence, and what you're seeing in that lake,
229. 8:03it is submerged in underwater and that submarine is rotating.
230. 8:07I don't want to give too much away,
231. 8:09but it's all -- All that stuff in camera.
232. 8:10There's missiles going around and stuff.
233. 8:12-It's genius because you go, oh, when water comes in,
234. 8:14the gravity is going to move the sub and start --
235. 8:16It's crazy! -It's crazy.
236. 8:18And you got to see when I'm doing it
237. 8:20because of the lights inside,
238. 8:21like, we built a lot of technology,
239. 8:22a lot of stuff from "Fallout"
240. 8:24when I jumped out of the airplane at 25,000 feet,
241. 8:27that helmet and the lighting,
242. 8:29we kind of put that and took it to the next iteration,
243. 8:31underwater, but I can't see.
244. 8:34The light -- A lot of times I cannot see
245. 8:36because of the reflection of the light.
246. 8:37So I would go in kind of blind,
247. 8:40spent a lot of time on the set figuring out,
248. 8:42you know, as we're figuring out the shots,
249. 8:44and then when I'm doing it, I have a hard time.
250. 8:45Plus the suit, when it's wet,
251. 8:48increases in weight by about 125 pounds.
252. 8:51So the kind of workouts and things
253. 8:53that I have to think about just to prepare for these things,
254. 8:56it's years of development and yeah, and I'm producing it.
255. 9:00So it's also that kind of thing.
256. 9:02So I'm producing it. I'm up early.
257. 9:04I'm like... [ Cheers and applause ]
258. 9:06-This guy is doing it all, man.
259. 9:08-My pull-ups. Like, the pull-ups and the training
260. 9:10I'm doing, it's crazy.
261. 9:12I have a gym. It's called the Pain Cave.
262. 9:14[ Laughter ] -Yeah.
263. 9:15-And I have a sign on it
264. 9:17that says "Only the motivated may enter."
265. 9:19-Yeah. But the U.S. Navy actually helped you
266. 9:21with that submarine scene, right?
267. 9:22-Oh, they did. Yeah. It was amazing.
268. 9:24-The servicemen and women are here tonight.
269. 9:25-Thank you all for being here. Thank you.
270. 9:27[ Cheers and applause ]
271. 9:29Thank you, all.
272. 9:32-It pays off.
273. 9:33It is such a great -- It is such a great scene.
274. 9:37-Yeah. Thank you.
275. 9:38-How do we set up what is happening
276. 9:40in "Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning"?
277. 9:43-Uh, how do I set it up? -Yeah.
278. 9:44How do we set up what's happening in this?
279. 9:45-In what? -In "Mission: impossible."
280. 9:47-Like, in the whole movie? -Yeah.
281. 9:49-Well, there's a mission, and it's impossible.
282. 9:52-Okay, that's perfect. [ Laughter ]
283. 9:53That's why I get paid the big bucks.
284. 9:55I ask the hard questions. -Okay, good.
285. 9:57I thought, like, "Is this a trick question?"
286. 9:59-No, no, it's not a trick question.
287. 10:00-Crazy stuff happens. -It is so good.
288. 10:02This is a movie that you definitely want to see
289. 10:04on the big screen.
290. 10:05I would say go to IMAX.
291. 10:07In fact, everyone here is going home with tickets
292. 10:09to see "Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning" in IMAX
293. 10:12thanks to Tom Cruise! [ Cheers and applause ]
294. 10:13Come on, bud! You're the best. I love you, buddy.
295. 10:17I want to show a clip. Here's Tom Cruise in
296. 10:19"Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning."
297. 10:21Take a look at this.
298. 10:24♪♪
299. 10:33♪♪
300. 10:43♪♪
301. 10:53♪♪
302. 11:03♪♪
303. 11:12♪♪
304. 11:15-Mark the turn. -Aye, sir.
305. 11:16My rudder is right full.
306. 11:17♪♪
307. 11:25♪♪
308. 11:28-Godspeed, mister.
309. 11:29♪♪
310. 11:38♪♪
311. 11:45[ Cheers and applause ] -That's how you do it!
312. 11:47Tom Cruise, everybody.
313. 11:49"Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning" is
314. 11:52in theaters and IMAX this Friday.
315. 11:54We'll be right back with more "Tonight Show," everybody.
316. 11:56Come on back.