“I can’t believe he did that.” Henry Cavill confesses that his most iconic moment in ‘Mission: Impossible-Fallout’ was the result of improvisation… and muscle pain

You wouldn’t have to think too much about it to go directly to ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ if they asked me to choose a recent action movie to recommend almost blindly; and it is that its director Christopher McQuarrie seems to have found the perfect formula to balance suspense, spectacle and action of the highest level with a franchise that has reached truly unexpected levels.

peak moment

Perhaps, between truly vertiginous setpieces and the usual crazy things of a Tom Cruise who seems not to have much appreciation for life, my favorite passage in the entire feature film is the toilet fight in which the protagonist and a henry cavill impressive against specialist Liang Yang. An impeccable sample of narrative implemented in the action, assembly and production.

But if anything stands out among all that salad cakes, destroyed furniture, and broken bones, it’s Cavill’s now famous bicep “reload” move after taking off his jacket and putting fists back to work after being momentarily knocked out. A gesture that looks wonderful and, surprisingly, was fruit of improvisation… and muscular pain.

This is how the actor told it in the podcast Happy Sad Confused.

“There was nothing like [en el guión]. It was a pretty intense fight scene. In fact, we were shooting it for about three weeks on set, which is a long time compared to things like ‘The Witcher’ where you only have one day. Everything starts to hurt a lot because there are a lot of repetitive movements, and my biceps tendons were starting to feel sore, so I had to warm them up before throwing punches. I would literally do that to warm them up. I did it once and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that probably looked so stupid, I can’t believe I did that.’ He’s like, ‘Sorry McQ, I won’t do it again,’ and he’s like, ‘Do what? Okay, whatever, let’s go again’. Then I did another take without doing it and he’s like, ‘Why didn’t you do… that thing? It was great’. I said, ‘Was that OK?’, and he said, ‘Yeah, definitely do it.’ So we did it.”

The magic of cinema… and sore tendons.