The Mummy with Tom Cruise: Return to the plane scene, worthy of Mission Impossible

We all know that Tom Cruise loves impossible missions, especially when they involve airplanes, free fall and a good dose of adrenaline. After spending an entire scene attached to the wing of an Airbus in full flight (at 1,500 meters and 400 km/h) for Rogue Nation, and before he promises the greatest stunt of all time in the next installment. Saga Mission Impossible, he is going to play with gravity again in one of the most incredible scenes of The Mummy.

“Sometimes people are afraid of flying. And me, I’ve always loved it. I fly airplanes. And I think of different things I could do to engage the audience. Scare them, excite them, I love doing that kind of thing.” He told us on the red carpet of the Paris premiere.

But for now, it is the Airbus A310 that offers us to climb. When his character (Nick Morton) and Annabelle Wallis (Jenny Hales) try to fly the mummy’s sarcophagus to England, a flock of crows damage the plane’s engines, which promptly crashes. free fall.

A fall that would be instantly fatal for Nick Morton, and a scene the film crew won’t soon forget, if we’re to believe what director Alex Kurtzman told us in an interview:

“We shot a sequence in zero gravity. The plane was designed to travel in zero gravity. It goes through the sky at the speed of a rocket going into space, it balances itself, and then it’s in free fall for 22 seconds. , and that’s when the camera rolls.

We find ourselves in weightlessness. You can plan things out, choreograph a scene ahead of time, expect Tom Cruise to hit the ceiling, grab a parachute and give it to Annabelle Wallis, but once you’re in zero gravity, anything can happen. That’s what makes things magical and funny.”

A method that is unusual, to say the least, and that gives the viewer a particularly immersive experience, unlike the same scene shot in a studio:

“We felt very strongly that we had to do that rather than shoot that sequence on a green screen with cables, which wouldn’t really have given us a real result, no matter how good the special effects were. We had to be able to experience that. In that plane when it’s falling, it doesn’t cut the scene too much and watches Tom and Annabelle twirl around the camera.

There’s a moment where Tom walks right up to the lens and I used that shot because I thought his foot was hitting the camera as we were shooting. If you’re watching the scene in 3D, you’re really missing out. So it was great and it was a real challenge for the actors because when gravity comes back, it comes back twice as strong. That’s how it destroys you to the ground. It is very difficult to move in these conditions. “ says the director.

we will understand Tom Cruise And airplanes, it’s a long story that continues today. A chance to get a short tour of all his previous aeronautical adventures…