One – as yet unfounded – rumour about why the repeat of the South Park Scientology episode was never aired was that Tom Cruise threatened to stop doing Mission: Impossible III promotion if it was shown.
If it’s true, Tom Cruise should have just lightened up and let the episode be shown. Because, even without any trademark Tom Cruise promotional tomfoolery, Mission: Impossible III would have got plenty of promotion from the stuntman who is suing Tom Cruise’s production company C/W, Paramount and various Mission: Impossible III crew after a stunt went wrong and burnt 60% of his body.
From the stories you’ve read about Tom Cruise, you’d expect him to
be able to do all the stunts in all of his films. After all, if you can
jump on a chair or do a handstand on a piano, you can fly a plane through a burning barn, right?
Wrong – Tom Cruise, despite all his supernatural ablities for always
seeming creepily insincere, is only human, and stuntmen are often
needed on his movies. Stuntmen like Steven Scott Wheatley, who claims
he was engulfed in a fireball in a stunt that backfired during the
shoot for Mission: Impossible III. And, as a result, Wheatley is suing
Tom Cruise’s C/W Productions, Mission: Impossible III studio Paramount
and various individual members of the crew for negligence. According to
E! Online:
In a complaint filed in Los Angeles
Superior Court on Wednesday, Steven Scott Wheatley claims a pyrotechnic
accident on June 6 2005 left him with burns over 60 percent of his
body. He says the stunt coordinator and second unit director breached
Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations by failing to
take proper safety precautions, including fire protection suits and
keeping extinguishers nearby.
The incident in
question was an exploding car stunt which went awry, leaving Steven
Scott Wheatley with severe third-degree burns which he claims left him
"disabled" and "anxious" and unable to continue normal "marital
relations" with his wife. Wheatley is seeking damages for medical
expenses, loss of earnings, pain and suffering, legal costs and further
unspecified damages.
Typical; where were the Tom Cruise water squirters
when they were really needed? Maybe something can be learnt from this
lawsuit – seeing as how he’s apparently a new fan of them, maybe Tom
Cruise can put up giant posters around his filmsets, ordering any
burning stuntmen to remain silent and not make any sudden moves in the future.
Read more:
Stuntman Sues "Mission" Team – E! Online
[story by Stuart Heritage]
Mountain Goat says
well it burns when i pee pee
HonorofFame says
Tom Cruise narrowly missed serious personal injury when LEGEND set burst into flames. The disaster burned down the entire James Bond soundstage in England. Everyone could have been killed. Short memory? The MI:III explosion is more into negative publicity about this film rather than making things safer on the set for film makers. Stuntmen have been in body casts for over a year and some actors refuse to play the part anymore because these serious injuries are ignored. Is it time we stop demanding life threatening pyrotechnics and return to decent dialog for our US audience?
Harry Georgatos says
Tom Cruise has made three downright boring mission movies with boring IMF sting operations. In mission one they took Peter Graves character from the popular tv show and turned him into a post-cold war villian and traitor. That’s paying disgusting disrespect to fans of the tv show. No wonder Peter Graves wanted nothing to do with the movie. It was obvious in mission one that Jim Phelps was the traitor, considering the only dead body they didn’t find was Jim Phelps corpse. No way would the CIA implicate Tom Cruise without recovering all the dead bodies first. Brian De Palma was given a dog of a script and made it more interesting then it should have been. The three mission movies have disjointed bland scripts with a sloppy and clumsy narratives, where they hop, skip and jump all over the world. On mission 2 Tom had Oliver Stone set to direct only to go with John Woo’s pathetic boring mission movie. On mission 3 Tom had David Fincher set to direct only to go with J J Abrams laughable teenage movie which was reworking the weak formula of the first movie. Billy Crudup was supposed to be another Jim Phelps and Lautrence Fishburne was supposed to be another Kitterige. Once again Tom finds himself on the run from the agency. These three films are so boring they fail to capture the surreal illusion of deception within the methodology of the IMF sting operations from the tv show that made them mindbending to watch. I’m sick of the mission movies concentrating on corrupt IMF agents when there’s a plethora of villians on the world stage. The villians in the three films, especially SEAN AMBROSE and OWEN DAVIAN are cutboard cutout characters with no characterization whatsoever. The mission movies need overpowering villians that would make the IMF team look good. CHRISTOPHER NOLAN completely reinvented the BATMAN franchise by making sophisticated storytelling that not only drew in undemanding teenagers but adults alike. In THE DARK KNIGHT the JOKER was a richly realised villian and audience were on the edge of their seats. The plots were brilliantly conceived by superior storyteller’s, that audience didn’t get a submoronic film. The intelligence of the audience was respected and THE DARK KNIGHT has made box office history. TOM has to reinvent the mission franchise and make it tough and uncompromising in it’s violence that gives the film a strong backbone. The JOKER wasn’t afraid of blowing up public buildings. The villian in mission 4 should not be afraid of showing unmitigated violence to his innocent victims. That way the audience will get behind ETHAN HUNT knowing there’s something important to fight for. The IMF sting operations are extremely boring and need to be more inventive. Any one with a fraction of intelligence can see the plot twists coming in the first three movies. At this point TOM CRUISE has made the crappiest spy franchise in Hollywood history.