Sure there are multi-million dollar stunts galore in the film, but one of the most memorable moments of Christopher McQuarrie’s 2018 action tentpole “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” all ties to a zero-cost actor stretching.
First shown off to the world in the trailers for the film (and understandably the most replayed moment of the trailer according to YouTube’s stats), the shot sees Henry Cavill’s agent August Walker cocking his arms – his fists punching the air downwards before coming back up and laying into his opponent.
It’s a brutal and superly choreographed fight scene. However, it’s that quick action that has been memed and copied in the years since, the shot an example of pure masculine energy – helped along by Cavill’s model looks, insanely high fitness level and memorable moustache.
As part of his interview with the podcast Happy Sad Confused, Cavill was asked about his famed arm cocking move. Turns out his arms became fatigued and he did the move to warm himself back up in the moment. Asked if it was a choreographed move, Cavill says:
“No, no, there was nothing like that. It was actually because — it was a rather intense fight scene, and we’d been shooting it for about three weeks at that stage, which is a long time in comparison to things like ‘The Witcher,’ where you get a day. Everything starts to get quite sore after a while, because it’s a lot of repetitive motion. And the connected tendons in my biceps were getting sore, so I had to warm them up before I threw punches.”
In fact, Cavill says he was initially embarrassed about what he did until McQuarrie said he liked the move and made him do it deliberately:
“I’d literally do that to warm them up, and I did it once, and I thought, ‘Oh, God, that probably looked really stupid. I can’t believe I did that.’ I said, ‘Sorry, McQ. I won’t do that again.’ And he’s like, ‘Do what? OK, whatever. Let’s go again.’ Then I did another take without doing it, and he’s like, ‘Why didn’t you do that thing? That was really good.’ I was like, ‘That was good?!’ And he said, ‘Yes! Definitely do that. Do that.’ So we did.”
The shot has become a modern urban legend as, due to the lighting of the room and Cavill’s movement, his beard appears to grow denser during the single shot. This has led to people examining it frame-by-frame to see if it were separate shots joined together. Tom Cruise himself was even asked about it.
Cavill has most recently been filming the third season of “The Witcher” which has wrapped and has made headlines lately for confirmation of his return to the Superman role with an appearance in “Black Adam” and a new Superman film on the way.
As part of the same interview, he shot down other online rumours such as those he would be making appearances in either “House of the Dragon” or “Loki” – saying pretty definitively neither is happening.
