Tom Cruise does appear to have a death wish when it’s made clear that the stunts he does for the Mission: Impossible movies are all him, or have been for a while now. So hanging off the side of an airplane, jumping from one roof to another (which resulted in a broken ankle even with wire work), and several other death-defying stunts have all been his doing since he’s produced several of the MI movies considering that he might not have been allowed to do the stunts had he not been the one behind the movies. A lot of producers don’t enjoy risking the lives of their talent and thus hire stunt doubles that can perform the most dangerous and risky maneuvers that Cruise appears to see as a welcome challenge. To say that he’s suicidal isn’t right but to think that he’s an adrenaline junkie might be a closer approximation of the truth. As far as the MI movies getting better I’ll have to disagree with Ryan Beltram of We Got This Covered this time. The movies have become more elaborate, the stunts have gotten crazier, and the action has definitely been taken to new and insane levels, but the story line is about the same since there’s always a threat to be faced, no matter what’s at stake, and of course it’s always up to Ethan Hunt and his team to take care of it. If anything, the stunts and the action sequences are the only things keeping the movies afloat at this point since if one strips those away the story is roughly the same each time.
Mission: Impossible has been a movie that gets high marks from a lot of people throughout the years since Tom Cruise found a formula and continued to work with it in a manner that people liked. The action and the various stories that are told throughout each movie are loved by a lot of people since each each new plot there are new action sequences and deadlier opponents that are ready to take over or destroy the world, or at least a significant portion of it. The only issue with this is that in each and every movie there’s a threat, Ethan Hunt and his team are called in, and against all odds they beat the bad guys and stop the evil plot that was about to be hatched or set things right as is their wont. It’s a perfect hero story since there is sacrifice, there is danger, and there are heroics, but it’s an idea that has been done numerous time and is still being done over and over. Alex Leadbetter of Screenrant has more to say about the movies.
Ethan Hunt never loses. He’s lost people he cares about, that much is true, and the character definitely appears to have a death wish since the casual disregard for his safety on most missions is evidence of this. But one has to wonder just how much of that has transferred over to Cruise over the years, and how confident he is that nothing will go wrong. The answer of course is that anything could go wrong at any moment and he likely knows this. To think that Tom Cruise feels invincible would be kind of a disservice to the man since he knows he’s not, and yet he’s willing to give just about everything in one calculated risk after another to bring the fans the best possible show he can give. Lia Beck of Bustle has more to say about this. Some people would call that absolute dedication to his craft and they’d be right since it is something that a lot of people in the movie industry won’t do since stuntmen are still entirely common and will be used more often than not when it comes to a dangerous scene that needs to be filmed. After all, the men and women that take over the stunt work are trained, they know how to take the hits, and they know how to make the shot look good while putting their bodies, and sometimes their lives unfortunately, on the line. But Cruise isn’t satisfied with this as he wants to take on his own stunts. More power to the man really since he wants to prove that he can do it, and he wants to make it look as authentic as possible. But given that he’s not getting any younger, despite the fact that he looks pretty good for his age, it’s bound to take a lot longer for his body to heal should any untoward happen.
The mere fact that the director of the upcoming two MI movies has said that the helicopter scene looks tame next to what’s coming is enough to earn a shake of the head and a very real thought as to just when Tom Cruise is going to call it a day and admit that he’s getting older, not younger.
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