Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning keeps making a big splash at the box office, and Paramount Pictures has Tom Cruise to thank for literally getting his feet wet along the way to ensure the film was successful. A new look at the recently released sequel shows how Cruise pulled off his stunning underwater sequence that ranks among his most eye-catching stunts yet.

Paramount unveiled a clip of Cruise’s intense underwater scene in The Final Reckoning, which sees his central protagonist, Ethan Hunt, inside the sunken Russian submarine, the Sevastopol, at the bottom of the ocean as he continues to chase down the AI-powered villain, the Entity. The clip shows Cruise in a diving suit weighing 125 pounds as the water inside the submarine fills up around him. Cruise is seen gasping for air as he looks around, showing the high-risk nature of the sequence.

The sequence isn’t the first time Cruise went underwater during a Mission: Impossible film, having done the same in Rogue Nation. However, The Final Reckoning scene, which Cruise claimed he spent his entire Hollywood career preparing for, was more challenging as he could only wear the suit for 10-minute intervals, or he’d suffer hypoxia. Cruise nearly suffocated during the stunt, shot inside an 8.5-million-liter water tank, as he kept pushing limits at every interval.

The Final Reckoning Puts Cruise Through the Wringer (And Is Reaping the Rewards)

Cruise has done a plethora of surreal stunts throughout the Mission: Impossible film series, from scaling some of the world’s tallest buildings to riding bikes off cliffs and fighting aboard a moving train. However, The Final Reckoning may feature Cruise’s most insane sequences, as not only does he fight for his life underwater, but he is also seen hanging off the wing of a moving plane at 8,000 feet and 150 mph with no CGI. The plane stunt took so much of Cruise that he was carried by the cast and crew after he finished filming.

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Rumored to be the last Mission: Impossible film, The Final Reckoning continues from Dead Reckoning‘s cliffhanger ending, with Hunt and his team of IMF operatives hunting down the Entity and its liaison, Gabriel (Esai Morales). The sequel, which boasts an 80% critical rating and 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, set a new franchise record with its opening weekend domestic return and has topped the $200 million mark globally. Cruise thanked fans and all involved with making The Final Reckoning during an open letter he posted to his social media pages.

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Cruise headlines a star-studded cast in The Final Reckoning alongside Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, Angela Bassett, Henry Czerny, Hannah Waddingham, Vanessa Kirby, Ving Rhames, Nick Offerman and Pom Klementieff. The Christopher McQuarrie-helmed film was made on a franchise-record $400 million budget, reportedly needing to make twice that at the box office to break even.

The Final Reckoning is now showing in theaters across North America.