Posted in: Movies, Paramount Pictures | Tagged: Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

A Polar Bear Crashed The Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Set

Hayley Atwell says that a polar bear crashed the Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning set, and how the extreme setting becomes part of Grace's journey.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is ending on a high note and not just because star Tom Cruise is hanging off a plane for one of the big stunts. The film is also taking its cast all over the world yet again, and this time, we're going to Svalbard and its intense weather conditions. We learned a little about it during a behind-the-scenes featurette released a little while ago. However, it turns out the weather wasn't the only thing the cast and crew had to contend with. Star Hayley Atwell revealed to Entertainment Weekly how they had something crash their set, and it wasn't a person.

"The hairiest thing was coming into close proximity with a polar bear who visited the boat we were staying on. He was very curious, but thankfully for us, looked well fed. He looked majestic," she explained. The intense conditions were a lot for everyone to deal with, but that was very much intentional. Atwell explained that these scenes were an important step in Grace's journey in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. 

"It's the core part of Grace's journey in the film," she says of shooting in the tundra. "What she has to do under pressure and intensity forged in me a new level of resilience and discipline. We had an expert team of survivalists, and I learned a lot about how to be safe out there in extreme conditions. It's not lost on me that where we were able to go and how I was able to work there was a lifetime opportunity and only one that could have come through working with Tom Cruise."

The Mission: Impossible films are all about the team dynamic, and Grace is becoming part of that in The Final Reckoning. Atwell said, "In Dead Reckoning, Grace was a lone wolf, out for herself and distrustful of others," she explains. "It took her the whole movie to accept Ethan's friendship and be part of a team. In this movie, she's emotionally attached to her friends and has a purpose bigger than personal ambition. She's begun her training in the IMF, and although she's brave and competent, she's in over her head, and this can get her into sticky situations."

You can give Cruise a hard time for many reasons, but he half-assing any production he's on is not a criticism we can lobby against him.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: Summary, Cast List, Release Date

Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, stars Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman and Angela Bassett, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, with Rolf Saxon, Lucy Tulugarjuk. It will be released in theaters on May 23, 2025.

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