25 things you didn’t know about your favorite action movies

Mission: Impossible – Famous scene was almost botched

Along with James Bond, Mission: Impossible is probably one of the most well-known, spoofed action franchises in history. There’s one notable scene that has been mimicked in everything from cartoons to music videos, and if you haven’t seen this movie, you may never have even realized it.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is a secret agent who gets into a hard spot when he’s framed for something he didn’t do. His entire espionage team is inexplicably killed, and when he meets up with the Director to tell him about the situation, he finds out the entire mission was to find a mole they were suspicious of. Hunt realizes that he’s the suspect, and is being framed for the deaths of his team, so he flees before they can catch him as he attempts to discover the truth.

The aforementioned notable scene from Mission: Impossible is when Hunt is showing off his impressive espionage skills. He drops down from the ceiling on wires. After a slip of the wires, he hovers inches above the ground without falling. This scene may have been copied a million times by now, but the scene was harder to capture than you may think.

While they were filming the scene, Cruise kept hitting his head on the floor. Obviously, a trained spy would not make such a mistake. He finally got the idea to put coins in his shoes to help him stay balanced. The trick worked, and they could finally get the shot.

Some younger fans may not know this, but Mission: Impossible was actually based on a popular television show that ran from 1966-1973. They had plans to adapt the show into a movie as early as 1986, many years before Cruise had any involvement. The 1988 Writer’s Guild of America strike put the project on hold, and luckily because then it became the hit movie that helped solidify Tom Cruise as an action star.