10 GENIUS Ways Recent Movies Pulled Off Insane Scenes

10. The Submarine - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

Honestly, picking just one insane scene from the most recent Mission: Impossible isn't easy, but the most technically challenging scene in the movie must surely be the sequence where Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) enters the sunken Russian submarine Sevastopol to retrieve the Podkova module.

The scene was shot in a massive water tank set which took two years to build and more than 15 days (!) to fill with water. 

Also, due to the submarine being scripted to move around during the sequence, it had to be mounted on a bespoke 1,000-ton steel gimbal, allowing it to be mechanically rotated and have Tom Cruise react accordingly.

And the torpedo props which are flung Cruise's way? Their weight was equivalent to real weapons to ensure they travelled through the water in a believable way, creating a genuine safety hazard for Cruise while shooting, further compounded by poor visibility underwater making it easy for the crew to lose track of the actor.

Director Christopher McQuarrie also learned to scuba dive for the scene, allowing him to direct Cruise underwater rather than helming the sequence from dry land, as is standard.

Basically, shooting the scene was absolute fresh hell, and yet the stunning end result speaks for itself - it feels so real because, while shot in controlled conditions, it basically is.