What viral moment in Mission: Impossible — Fallout was totally improvised?
And how did the director react?
Henry Cavill is well known for his devotion to each role he takes on.
Whether it's being faster than a speeding bullet as Superman to grumbling his way through
a fantasy world as Geralt of Rivia on The Witcher, he knows how to give his all in every
role and genuinely applies himself to every single part he accepts.
In Mission: Impossible — Fallout, the actor took on the character of August Walker, a
CIA hire tasked with keeping an eye on the entire Impossible Missions Force through their
Special Activities Division.
That puts Walker on a collision course with death-defying Ethan Hunt, a member of the
IMF and head of a globetrotting, tech-loving unit of misfits and rogues.
"You're not getting rid of me that easily, Hunt."
"That's not what this is about."
After a film filled with derring-do, the two men fight it out via a helicopter duel, then
battle to the death on the edge of a cliff.
Naturally, it's Walker who meets his maker instead of Hunt.
While Walker chases Hunt up the sheer side of the rock formation, he's smashed in the
eye with some of the rigging attached to one of the disabled helicopters when it comes
unmoored from the rockface.
He falls into the explosion caused by the now-dislodged helicopter as it hits the ground,
leaving Hunt to scramble to safety.
There's another, more iconic moment Cavill's character took part in — one that he admits
he's seen discussed multiple times on Reddit — and you may not be surprised to learn
that he improvised that bit of onscreen action.
It turns out his sense of humility and his wicked sense of humor were both factors in
birthing the moment to life.
Here's what he says about the iconic moment he improvised during a very memorable fight scene.
During the film, Hunt and Walker are involved in a bathroom brawl.
As Walker approaches his opponent, he seems to be pumping his arms, "reloading" his biceps
as if they were guns.
The moment became something of an online meme.
[sounds of fighting]
During an October 2022 appearance on the podcast Happy Sad Confused, Cavill admitted that the
moment was an unscripted improvisation he came up with off the cuff, saying.
"The connective tendons in my biceps were getting sore, so I had to warm them up before
I threw punches, and I'd literally do that to warm them up."
He added in the podcast,
To Cavill's surprise, the director didn't seem to have a problem with the gesture.
Cavill said,
"He said, 'Yes, definitely do that, do that.'
And so, and so we did."
Henry Cavill is no stranger to thinking on the fly while on set.
He told Digital Spy ahead of the release of the second season of The Witcher in 2021 that,
to better avoid missing a critical character moment from the novel series in which Geralt
communes with Death, Cavill inserted some of that dialogue into a different scene.
Cavill told Digital Spy that he used some of the novel's dialogue from that scene in
the moment where Geralt deals with the death of his horse, Roach.
"Be not afraid of her for she is your friend."
Cavill told Digital Spy,
Cavill also recently spoke with Looper about Enola Holmes 2 and admitted that during filming,
he and actress Millie Bobby Brown indulged in some improvisational work on-set.
He said in the interview,
Now that's called dedicating yourself to the art of acting.