Tom Cruise wants you to see the footage of how he broke his ankle during a stunt he performed on the set of Mission: Impossible 6. There were three cameras on this shot and in slow motion you can see how his ankle breaks, and if you’re squeamish you might want to look away because a person’s ankle is NOT supposed to bend like that. Even more unbelievable though is the fact that he STOOD UP and started running again, at least hobbling away as opposed to a full gallop. That seems like something Tom Cruise would do, right? The rest of us might be clinging to the building for dear life yelling at the director to cut and get us to a hospital.
But since this guy has done enough of his stunts in his career it’s likely that he’s toughened up a bit and despite the pain was at least to hobble off screen and announce that it was broken. If you remember this did make the news since any time Tom Cruise or another important actor is injured, one that can’t be easily replaced, it tends to make headlines. MI6 was postponed for about six weeks after this and it’s likely that people responsible for the film’s release date started getting nervous. But a broken ankle is a broken ankle and that means that Cruise would have to take time to heal. In fact during this interview his ankle still hadn’t fully healed but they were already back to filming. I get the feeling that there are tricks of the trade and methods by which he could possibly go back to doing a movie like this while still not fully healed but he would still have to be extremely careful.
Breaking a bone is one thing and it can be more painful than anything you’ve ever done in your life, but breaking it again before it’s fully healed can be even worse. It won’t necessarily make the bone any weaker but it does run the risk of making the initial break worse if it happens in the same location or somewhere near it. I’m kind of guessing on this but think about it this way. If you break something solid and then mend it back together in the most complete way you can that break is still there. It’s healed, mended, whatever, but it’s still there. If you break it again in the same place the chances become good that you’ll start wearing away at the integrity of the object and making it less likely to respond to any type of mending once again.
I don’t know as he’ll break his ankle again, I would hope not for his sake, but simply walking on it and putting pressure on it before it’s fully healed doesn’t seem like the best idea in the world. But then again they’re on a deadline and need to get the film done. I do think that there are ways a bone could be made to heal faster, or they could be watching him extra close to make sure he doesn’t worsen the injury.
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