One Mission: Impossible 8 stunt with Tom Cruise is so insane one viewer “almost had a heart attack”

Mission: Impossible 8 director Christopher McQuarrie says a stunt in the new movie is so intense that it had one viewer “suffocating throughout the entire sequence.”

The Mission: Impossible movies are all about big action and crazy stunts. It started with Tom Cruise hanging off a train and outrunning 16 tonnes of water in the first Mission: Impossible movie, and the action only got more insane from there.

Fan-favourites include Cruise scaling the Burj Khalfia in Ghost Protocol, hanging off a plane in Rogue Nation, and riding a motorcycle off a cliff in Dead Reckoning, which topped our list of best stunts in the Mission: Impossible movies.

Now director Christopher McQuarrie is teasing a sequence that’s blowing early audience minds during test screenings of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which will be the last film in the franchise.

Small Mission: Impossible 8 screening elicits big reaction

While speaking to Empire in the magazine’s March issue, Christopher McQuarrie reveals that a Mission: Impossible preview got some wild reactions.

“We had a small screening,” McQuarie explains, “and someone said, ‘I was suffocating throughout the entire sequence. I almost had a heart attack.’ And I thought, ‘I guess we did something right.'”

The director didn’t reveal what the sequence in question was, but early trailers feature intense underwater action, and Cruise’s Ethan Hunt clinging onto the side of a biplane that then flies upside down.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning hits screens on May 23, 2025, and stars Cruise, alongside Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Vanessa Kirby, Ving Rhames, Angela Bassett, and Pom Klementieff.

For more about the year’s biggest films, check out our 2025 movies release calendar, as well as the blockbuster that’s guaranteed to make $2 million. You can also read our picks for 2025’s best movies, which features Mission: Impossible 8, plus why we believe it’s a make-or-break year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.