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Apparently Tom Cruise Shot Down Harrison Ford Starring in ‘Mission: Impossible’

We know him as the hero of the “Indiana Jones” and “Star Wars” franchises, amongst other things, but Harrison Ford came pretty close to being the villain in another popular movie series.

Ford was almost cast to play the main villain in “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.” However, Tom Cruise quickly swooped in to make sure that would not happen. At the time, although Cruise was the leader of the franchise, he suffered a bit of a hit.

Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford ‘Mission: Impossible’

The third movie was not nearly as successful, which meant the fourth movie could potentially take a hit as well. Kurt Hendricks ended up being the villain in the movie, portrayed by the late Michael Nyqvist. He is a mad, mad scientist that believes the world is on the path to destroying itself via nuclear war.

In order to speed things up, he decides to get an early start on that nuclear war himself. He hopes that whoever survives this attempted nuclear war would then emerge better people that would be forced to unite.

In the film, you may notice the villain gets very little screen time. There are a few fight scenes, including a particularly hardcore one with Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt character in a parking lot of sorts.

The villain didn’t necessarily transfer onto the big screen that well. That might be due to the fact J.J. Abrams actually wanted Ford to be the evil scientist, to begin with.

According to screenwriters Josh Applebaum and André Nemec on the “Light the Fuse” podcast, Ford was open to the involvement, and casting was underway. It was Tom Cruise that apparently noticed a fault in it all. While he is a fan of Ford and thought his involvement would be interesting, Cruise didn’t think audiences wanted to see the two of them violent with one another. They both are hero-type archetypes, after all.

Although Harrison Ford just wasn’t “Mission: Impossible” villain material, his involvement still would have been interesting. He was set to play a dark version of Hunt himself if he had taken the wrong path in life.

Cruise Sends Cakes

While he’s not off filming epic action scenes for movies like “Mission: Impossible,” Tom Cruise is instead sending sweet gifts to his friends via a private jet.

He decided to fly cakes from his favorite bakery back to the UK “Mission: Impossible” set.

“Tom wanted to give the team on Mission: Impossible a treat for Christmas and decided that only cakes from his favorite bakery in LA would do. He organized for the shop to make 300 cakes especially and they were then flown back to the UK on his jet,” a source said to The Sun.

It was definitely a very, very sweet gesture from the action star. The entire crew has been working on-and-off on the movie due to different COVID-19 delays.