Mission： Impossible - The Final Reckoning ｜ New York Premiere Highlights ｜ Tom Cruise

New York, one of the greatest cities on the face of the earth. A city that I love and adore and have lived in, you know? So it's a joy to bring Mission to New York City here at the iconic Lincoln Center Plaza. It's pretty emotional, I mean, with this cast and what the world was going through, what the industry was going through. When Tom and I started this, we were in post-production on Top Gun, shooting Dead Reckoning, pre-production on this movie, making all of them at the same time. When we were promoting Dead Reckoning, there wasn't the feeling we're having now because we were still making this movie. So it was almost like you stopped to promote a movie while you were making it. And after such a long period of time, we became such a close-knit family. And it kind of felt like it was never going to end. And this was just what we did for a living. It's very strange. It's a bit of a double-edged sword. I make movies for the big screen, for audiences. I don't want people to watch the film. I want them to experience it and participate in cinema. And that's why, look, I love going to movie theaters. I love the popcorn. I love seeing a big screen experience with strangers. But we're all unified in this experience of watching a movie. The sound, the scale of the movie, it is an epic film. And they're going to see stuff that they've never seen before. That's been down to McHugh and me working with the camera, mainly McHugh. He joined on Ghost Protocol, which was the first time Benji was in the field. And he was able to kind of be present for all of Benji's evolution as an agent. And rather than him just suddenly become super adept to everything, he can fight, we didn't do that. We made sure that Benji grew very slowly. And as he went through different things, he got more skill. He got more confident. You know, so in Ghost Protocol, he's like a puppy in the field. He can't wait to wear a mask. And he's all excited. And then through Rogue Nation and through Fallout, he goes through it. The action is unbelievable. There is scenes in the air, in the water, incredible fight scenes. There's a lot of very emotional scenes, too, with close-ups. You want to see it on a big screen, you know. And the music, the sound, you know. And in IMAX, in a movie theater, it really, like, ticks you, you know. It, like, really, really moves you in a much deeper way. So that has to be seen on the big screen. Over each iteration, they have discovered what they are. And they go deeper and deeper. And they're better and better at doing it. And they call this dude back after 25 years. Now that we have a really great idea of what we're going to do, will you come back and give us your gravitas that you've picked up over the last 25 years and feed that into the production? So it was a gift. I don't think there will ever be a man like Tom Cruise ever again in a genre like this. He is our modern-day Buster Keaton. It takes my breath away what he does to prepare and sustain that high level of performance as a producer and as a movie star. And I'll take away a sense of what it really means to be a leader on a set, which is to be someone who's devoted to service. I think that he is someone who is the embodiment of knowing that you can't succeed unless everyone around you succeeds. And he actively wants other people to thrive. And oddly enough, it was May 2020 that I got the call, you know. And this is five years. Exactly. It's a graduation. It's sad. You know, when you graduate, you're sad because those are your mates that you've seen, you know, through the years. You've developed bonds and shared experiences that I don't know that I'll ever get a chance to again. It's that big. These movies, I don't know if anybody could do them like Tom and McHugh and Paramount Pictures. You know, we've been around the world with this film so far. The reception has been amazing, thank goodness. And now this is the final stop in New York. I'm very excited. What a great way to finish it off, you know, on America's soil. So let's see how you all enjoy it. It really pushed me to get out of my own way, you know, as an actor and really just trust the process. You know, they keep me on my toes. And it's not easy to film a high intense movie. So I'll never forget the experiences I've had. It's quite astonishing. It's such an accomplishment of decades. And just, you know, the shooting and production of number seven and eight, which they did together, is just so gargantuan. I'm so grateful to be a small part of it. I had so much fun shooting my bit in London. My wife, Megan, came and stayed with me. And I mean, all of a sudden, you know, I'm playing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff interrogating Tom Cruise in a Mission Impossible movie. It's an absolute dream come true. It's the biggest movie franchise in this genre ever. We'd like you to come back and do this. As I was saying, I thought it was a joke. I thought somebody was winding me up, a friend of mine. And when I found out, when Q came on the screen, it was like, get the heck out of here. Although I didn't say heck. But he knows. But it was amazing. And then as we started working on it, and he filled me in on what he wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. And it's very collaborative. So it was wonderful to be a part of. It was so much fun. He just has, I know everybody knows he has charisma and great energy and everything like that. But he was also so collaborative. And I wasn't expecting the biggest movie star in the world, basically, to be standing, doing his off-camera lines, giving me 100%, even when he wasn't on. And it was, yeah, it was inspiring.