Tom Cruise really did get a US aircraft carrier for The Final Reckoning

For fans of Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible series, the Pentagon can answer the incredulous question at the climax of its latest trailer: “You gave him an aircraft carrier?”

Yes, the US Navy and Air Force Special Operations decided to accept the mission: help Cruise’s secret agent Ethan Hunt save the world. Or, at least make a movie about it.

For Paramount Global’s The Final Reckoning, officially released on Friday in the US and here in South Africa, Cruise and the crew spent three days in the Adriatic Sea filming aboard the USS George H.W. Bush, a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class carrier commissioned in 2009.

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It’s the latest cinematic incarnation of Cruise’s career-long affinity for the US military and its aircraft (as well as doing his own stunts).

It’s also an example of the Pentagon’s willingness to showcase its hardware and martial might through a classic piece of American soft power, the Hollywood blockbuster.

The Pentagon has a long history as a supporting character, most famously the 1990 spy thriller The Hunt for Red October — the one where Scotsman Sean Connery plays a Soviet submarine captain.

Before getting on board, the Defense Department reviews scripts for accuracy and depictions of the military. (The Pentagon declined, for instance, to support Oliver Stone’s multi-Oscar-winning Vietnam War drama Platoon.)

The US military also charges for equipment use, as well as transportation and lodging for personnel. For 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, for example, the Navy was paid as much as $11 374 an hour to use its F/A-18 Super Hornets — which Cruise couldn’t control as he flew in the fighter jet’s backseat.

For The Final Reckoning, however, Paramount’s reported blowout budget of $400 million got a break because the carrier and crew were already on scheduled training missions.

“Most, if not all, of the aircraft time was logged as official training requirements, and therefore not reimbursable,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

The cast and crew — including Cruise, co-star Hannah Waddingham and director Christopher McQuarrie — were ferried to the carrier aboard Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. MH-60S Seahawks, flown by the Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 5 based in Norfolk, Virginia.

While aboard from Feb. 28 to March 3, 2023, Cruise hosted a Top Gun: Maverick viewing in the ship’s hangar bay and visited with sailors, who had been deployed for about six months at that time, the Navy said in a statement on Friday.

“Given that we were on deployment, operational and safety plans were in place so that if called upon, we were ready to execute our mission on a moment’s notice,” spokesman Lieutenant Commander Matthew Stroup said in the statement.

The crew also filmed flight sequences, a scene in the navigation bridge and Hunt’s departure aboard a CV-22 Osprey tiltroter aircraft, from the 352nd Special Operations Wing out of Souda Bay, Crete, which was on a joint training exercise with the carrier group.

The film “supplemented the already scheduled training and did not interfere with any requirements,” said Air Force Special Operations Command spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca Heyse.

The USS Hyman G. Rickover, a Virginia-class attack submarine, also makes a cameo, shot off the coast of Massachusetts. The interiors, however, were pure Hollywood: stage sets and actors for sailors. They did, however, have the help of a Navy representative and a retired submarine commander as a technical adviser.

“Being able to namecheck an aircraft carrier that you’ve actually filmed on lends a dimension of accuracy to the film that elevates it,” Paramount said in a response to questions, referencing a scene where Cruise’s Hunt specifically requests the Bush carrier. The Pentagon’s support “lends authenticity to the military involvement necessary to help Ethan Hunt accomplish his mission.”

© 2025 Bloomberg

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