New Mission: Impossible 8 featurette shows how the crew developed a new language to film in dangerous depths

It’s no secret that Tom Cruise goes above and beyond the call of duty to stun audiences with death-defying stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Cruise seems to cheat death every time Ethan Hunt returns to screens. In the latest featurette for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures, we see other cast members and crew pushing themselves to the limit. As we’ve seen in promotional materials for Mission: Impossible 8, the over-the-top action sequel features a harrowing underwater sequence that laughs in the face of danger. Today, we learn how Cruise and his fellow filmmakers communicated while navigating the watery depths to shoot an unforgettable display of dedication to the art of acting.

“Everything we’re doing is underwater. We all know it’s a dangerous environment. We’ve developed hand signals underwater for talking to understand the depth of the frame or “do it again,” Cruise says about the elaborate filming process in today’s Mission: Impossible featurette. “All of these things, there’s a lot of stuff happening.”

Today’s footage shows Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning director Christopher McQuarrie displaying various hand signals used on the set, including signs for “Cut,” “Rolling,” “Close up,” “Longer,” “I’m resting,” and more. McQuarrie says the hand signals make filming the complicated sequence much more efficient. When shooting underwater, everything feels more dangerous and unpredictable.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tells the second half of the story that began in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, with Ethan Hunt out to destroy an AI system called The Entity, which is housed in a sunken Russian stealth submarine. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and Dead Reckoning writer/director Christopher McQuarrie remains at the helm, working from a screenplay he crafted with Erik Jendresen. The official synopsis is very simple: Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

Cruise is being joined in the cast by Hayley Atwell, reprising her Dead Reckoning role of thief-turned-IMF-recruit Grace; Vanessa Kirby as arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis, a.k.a. the White Widow, a character who was previously seen in both Fallout and Dead Reckoning; Ving Rhames as IMF agent Luther Stickell, who has been part of this franchise since the first Mission: Impossible movie in 1996; Simon Pegg as IMF agent Benji Dunn, who joined the party back in Mission: Impossible III; Henry Czerny as CIA director Eugene Kittridge, who was introduced in Mission: Impossible (1996) and finally made his long-awaited return in Dead Reckoning; Rolf Saxon as William Donloe, a CIA analyst who got in trouble after Ethan Hunt accessed his computer way back in the first Mission: Impossible; and more Dead Reckoning reprisals: Esai Morales as the Entity-serving terrorist Gabriel; Pom Klementieff as Gabriel’s former ally Paris; Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis as US Intelligence agents Briggs and Degas; Mariela Garriga as Marie, a mysterious woman from Ethan and Gabriel’s past; Mark Gatiss and Charles Parnell as the heads of the NSA and NRO;. There are also a handful of new additions to the franchise: Holt McCallany as Secretary of Defense Bernstein; Nick Offerman as Sydney, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Katy O’Brian, Stephen Oyoung, Tramell Tillman, Janet McTeer, Hannah Waddingham, and Lucy Tulugarjuk.

Would you trust Tom Cruise to take you into the murky depths to film an off-the-wall action sequence? Let us know in the comments section below.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning begins blowing the hinges off theater doors on May 23, 2025.

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