Emilio Estevez didn’t have the biggest of contributions to the Mission: Impossible franchise, and his appearance was essentially stunt casting. The actor wasn’t even credited as IMF agent Jack Harmon, and his cameo was designed with the intention of creating an air of unpredictability in Brian De Palma’s 1996 original, with Estevez being the biggest name out of Ethan Hunt’s support team who all met their demise in the first act.
However, that hasn’t stopped him from supporting his former co-star’s decision to let rip at a pair of crew members caught breaking the strict COVID-19 protocols in place on the seventh installment. Cruise’s expletive-laden tirade went viral online, leading to a discussion about whether or not the A-list megastar had overreacted. You can see both sides of the argument, in that he might have blown his top a little too excessively, but as the driving force behind the franchise, the burden falls on him whenever things take a turn for the worse.
In a new interview to promote his return as Gordon Bombay in nostalgia-driven Disney Plus sequel series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, Estevez said that Cruise was entirely justified to unload with both barrels, especially at a time when major productions were lucky enough to even be given the go-ahead to resume operations before vaccines began rolling out globally.
“And in the middle of all that, when Tom Cruise’s moment happened on the set of Mission: Impossible, I thought, ‘You know what? He’s absolutely right’. 100% right. Oh, yeah. I agreed with every word that came out of his mouth. Every expletive. And what you could hear in his voice was, I think, the fact that it was absolutely vital to adhere to the protocols. Not just in our industry, but all of the service industries that exist as a result of the film industry operating properly.”
It’s costing the industry millions of dollars in additional expenses to implement the health and safety measures, but you can’t say it’s not worth it in the long run. The quicker people learn that they can’t just break the rules whenever they feel like it, the faster they won’t have to deal with the threat of Tom Cruise, although he sadly didn’t hire an army of robots to keep the peace on Mission: Impossible 7 as was reported.