The joints in Tom Cruise's fingers "separated" due to the forces involved in his death-defying biplane stunt in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. The latest instalment in the action blockbuster franchise concludes with Cruise's agent Ethan Hunt engaging in a biplane chase with the evil Gabriel, played by Esai Morales. To retrieve a device, he jumps onto Gabriel's plane and has to hold on for dear life as the aircraft flies out of control. Cruise, who performed all of the mid-air stunts himself, and his director, Christopher McQuarrie, reflected on shooting the death-defying sequence in the bonus content with the film's digital release. As Ethan hangs from the wing of Gabriel's plane, Cruise says in the commentary, "Oh, this almost broke my back," and McQuarrie adds, "You're talking about a lot of pain here." Later in the commentary, McQuarrie revealed that the Top Gun star was in severe pain at the point where Ethan grabs onto a seatbelt and dangles from it as the plane flies upside down. "Now watch this: The thing we haven't talked about, holding on to this belt," McQuarrie states. "This separated the joints in Tom's fingers from the force, so by the time we finished this sequence, your hands were absolutely swollen. Oh my God, it was so painful to watch." According to Entertainment Weekly, Cruise simply adds, "Oh God, that was brutal." At a later stage in the sequence, Gabriel rolls the plane, forcing a dangling Ethan to slam into the side of the craft. In the commentary, McQuarrie revealed that the moment was not planned in advance. "You improvised that, thank you very much. I appreciate that," McQuarrie tells Cruise. "You were like, 'I think we're gonna need that,' and I was like, 'I didn't ask you to do that.'" The action man simply describes the moment as "brutal" and admits the hit "was a hard one". Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is now available on digital. It will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on 14 October.