Director Talks Tom Cruise's 'Mission: Impossible 6' Injury

Tom Cruise proved to be mortal just like the rest us when a stunt on the set of “Mission: Impossible 6” went wrong, leaving him with a broken ankle. It has caused production on next summer’s blockbuster to be halted for an as yet undetermined amount of time (the trades are varying wildly in their assessments). Indeed, there has been a lot of chatter about the incident, but not much in the way of official details, but director Christopher McQuarrie has shed some light on what went down, but first you might need a refresher of the video that went viral.

While many assumed that Cruise missed his mark after leaping, the filmmaker explains it was intended that the actor not clear the jump. It turns out, it was a landing gone awry that caused problems.

“The speculation was that Tom had somehow missed or fell short. The truth is that the stunt was never designed for Tom to jump from rooftop to rooftop which a) would have been pretty boring and b) when you see the actual shot you’ll understand how it was designed,” McQuarrie told Empire. “Also, when you look at what was posted on the internet, you can see Tom do the same stunt multiple times. He was always supposed to slam into the side of the building. That’s what gives the stunt its energy. He was completely safe the entire time he was doing that. He was padded. What happened is a matter of coordinating what Tom is doing with what the camera is doing, which means you have to do it a number of times. And on the fourth try, he hit the building at a slightly different angle and he broke his ankle. He knew the instant that he hit the building that his ankle was broken. You can see it on his face. We had four cameras rolling on it, and you can see it on the video that’s on the internet. He knew in that instant, ‘well, we’re not coming back here. We’re not doing this again today’. So he got up and powered through the shot, and then he got off-camera and as soon as he knew he was off-camera he went down. He knew that was the only way to preserve the shot. I don’t know that I would have the wherewithal to do that.”

Another thing the trades seem to get wrong is that “Mission: Impossible 6” will miss its summer release date. According to McQuarrie, the production schedule will be moved around, but everyone is still aiming to hit next July.

“We’ll assess what there is to be shot. And what we can shoot, and then what we’ll do is once we’ve shot through that we’ll go on a hiatus and then I’ll shift my attention over to editorial. We’ve already shot a huge chunk of the movie so you’re just taking a big chunk of post-production and moving it up sooner,” he said. “Then we go back to shooting when the hiatus is over, which is to the full benefit of the movie. It’s similar to situations I’ve had on other movies where, for whatever reason, you go on hiatus and you’re able to look at the movie in a way you normally couldn’t and reevaluate. The lesson I learned on ‘Valkyrie,’ which had its share of difficulties in production, and we always used to say ‘disaster is an opportunity to excel.’ ”

“Nothing that we’re looking at right now is going to affect the release date,” McQuarried added.

Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether Cruise’s ankle shattering scene will make the film, and you better believe McQuarrie is going to try and get it in there. “I now have to move heaven and earth to make sure that the shot is in the movie. We went to all that effort to get it. It’s a pretty fantastic shot,” he said.

“Mission: Impossible 6” opens on July 27, 2018.