FILM 1886: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT
TRIVIA: Tom Cruise trained for an entire year to perform the HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) stunt in this film.
The H.A.L.O skydiving sequence (distance of 7 km / 25000 feet, traveling speed of 265 - 320 km/h) was the last sequence filmed during production, but it was the first stunt designed and required a full year of planning out. The crew had only a limited time window of three minutes a day during sunset to film a jump. Because of strict air aviation regulations in France, it could only be shot in the Emirates. It took Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, the skydiving camera operator Craig O'Brien (who was instructed to keep a distance of three feet from Cruise while filming) and others involved a total of 106 jumps to get three possible takes. However, to rehearse the sequence, the crew built a custom oxygen helmet with RAF assistance that can be lit up to see a face, and then also built one of the world's largest wind tunnels for practice. The practice doesn't end there - Cruise and the other persons involved did five skydives a day with one in the morning, three in the afternoon, and one at dusk. Some of the other cast members turned up to visit, with Simon Pegg saying that he and his co-stars thought multiple times that Cruise was seriously about to die: "It is a daily stress going to work with him, because you don't know if you are going to see him tomorrow."
White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) is introduced as she delivers a tribute speech to her late mother, is referred to only as "Max." and as a lover of paradoxes. While never clarified onscreen, this is likely reference to the first film in the series, which features a female British arms dealer also known only as Max (Vanessa Redgrave).
In August 2017, Tom Cruise suffered an injury while filming a stunt jumping from one building to another. He was able to grab onto the other building thanks to a harness strapped onto him and his history of performing his own stunts for action films, but his ankle fractured upon the impact of the jump. Cruise then got up and attempted to run it off, which was what the scene called for, before he and the crew decided to stop filming. Shooting was delayed for eight weeks following the injury, but the footage of the stunt used in the film and its trailers just so happened to be the actual injury.
Solomon Lane is the first villain in the franchise to appear in two films.
Simon Pegg got in such good shape while training in the gym for his action scenes that he got eight-pack abs for the first time in 25 years even though it wasn't required for his role at all. The actor is not an action star or known for his body and was teased on set by co-stars Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill, who actually are action stars and regularly show their eight-pack abs in films. They nick-named Pegg 'Eight-Pack Peggles' due to his new found abs. Cruise said, "Six-Pack Peggles I call him! He had an amazing eight-pack going on. He's almost like Eight-Pack Peggles." Pegg responded to the good-natured teasing saying, "To be fair it was a six-pack, it wasn't quite an eight-pack. I think one morning, after training, my abs made an appearance for the first time since I was 23. You have to be in shape to do these movies and I put my mind to it. It's nice to know that I can still show out if I need to. My wife appreciates it!"
A clause stipulated in Henry Cavill's contract forbade him from shaving his beard required for the role. During production, the producers received a phone call from Justice League producer Charles Roven requesting Cavill back for some reshoots for his role as Superman. Co-producer Jake Myers suggested letting Cavill shave his beard, shutting down production while he does his reshoots and then getting Warner Bros to pay $3 million for additional visual effects (digital moustache) on shots of Cavill after completing his Superman reshoots. Paramount got wind of the idea and shot it down immediately through the clause.
During the Empire Podcast, director Christopher McQuarrie revealed that he provides the authoritative voice in the initial mission briefing.
Rescuing another person in free fall while sky diving is very difficult. Hewitt says that "it takes Accelerated Free Fall instructors over 1,000 jumps to get it right and something like 70% of the people who try to qualify at the instructor level fail. Tom had just 100 jumps to perfect this."
The Paris chase scenes involved stuntmen in 70 cars driving to avoid Cruise who was riding his motorcycle against traffic without a helmet at extremely high speeds.
The musical composer on "Fallout" is Lorne Balfe, but the iconic "Mission: Impossible" theme was written by Lalo Schifrin. He wrote it in just 3 minutes. When asked why he wrote it in the unusual time signature of 5/4, he joked at a press conference in Vienna, "Everybody knows that there have been beams from outer space coming because of interplanetary flights. The people in outer space have five legs and couldn't dance to our music, so I wrote this for them."
