The Intense Mission Impossible: Fallout Scene That Took Henry Cavill Weeks To Film

Besides wielding a mustache that almost wrecked Hollywood, Henry Cavill's appearance as the bicep-cocking baddie in "Mission: Impossible – Fallout" was a massive highlight of the franchise's latest installment. A particularly commendable effort given he was competing with Tom Cruise, whose daily routine seems to be prank calling Death with the various insane stunts he's keen to be a part of. No stranger to a bit of excitement himself, given his role as Superman, Cavill was eager to match his co-star's commitment as best he could, taking a licking to continue ticking in what proved to be a massive movie blockbuster.

With that said, just because he has appeared numerous times as the Man of Steel doesn't mean he is one, as revealed in a recent interview with GQ. While recalling his time working on a handful of films from his career, the "Fallout" star was quick to mention the most demanding period of filming, which involved the movie's show-stopping finale.

The final act of "Mission: Impossible – Fallout" saw Henry Cavill's duplicitous character, August Walker, hang out the side of a helicopter as it swerves past rocky mountains while he fires on Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), who chases after him. Filming this "Fallout" scene was incredibly demanding, according to Cavill, who revealed new information about his time making the 2018 movie while speaking to GQ (via YouTube). In this new interview, Cavill explained just how long the last big chase scene was and the toll it took on him as a result.

"Some of the days that I was not quite counting as many lucky stars as others was the helicopter sequence," Cavill recalled before proceeding to clarify that he loved the helicopter scene and thought it was a fun sequence to shoot but emphasized that it was very taxing to actually make. 

He then explained, "Because I'm in a helicopter, with the doors open, above the mountains of New Zealand, in winter, it's particularly cold," and then revealed, to the best of his memory, it took somewhere between two and four weeks to shoot that scene. According to the "Fallout" actor, that meant "four weeks of me hanging outside of a helicopter with my head in the wind. And I'm firing real blanks, and so it's not like CGI stuff added. So I'm having blank residue flying everywhere, I can't hear anything because my headset's not working. I'm just waiting for the pilot to scream something and give a signal."

The punishment paid off. This third act sequence is one of the biggest highlights of the "Mission: Impossible" franchise so far, and Cavill is a crucial element to all of it.