Despite being best known for playing Superman in the DCEU, Henry Cavill has done a lot over the past few years to show that there's more to him than just being the Man of Steel.
As well as starring in The Witcher, he took on a villainous role in Mission: Impossible - Fallout which saw him play the badass August Walker. One of Ethan Hunt's most formidable foes to date, he proved just how tough he was during a memorable bathroom fight scene that generated a lot of discussion online.
During the action sequence, Walker literally reloaded his arms before continuing to dole out punishment, and that visual became a meme online before Mission: Impossible - Fallout even arrived in theaters.
Talking to Josh Horowitz, Cavill reflected on that now infamous scene saying, "I've seen so many conversations about this on Reddit." Asked whether the moment was in the script or something he came up with on the fly, the actor revealed it was the latter, and said director Christopher McQuarrie loved it.
"There was nothing like that [in the script]. It was a rather intense fight scene. We'd actually been shooting it for about three weeks at that stage, which is a long time in comparison to things like The Witcher, where you get a day," he recalled. "Everything starts to get quite sore after a while because it's just a lot of repetitive motion, and the connective tendons in my biceps were getting sore so I had to warm them up before I threw punches."
"I would literally do that to warm them up. And I did it once and I thought, 'Oh god that probably looked really stupid, I can't believe I did that.' I said 'Sorry McQ, I won't do that again,' and he's like 'Do what? Okay whatever, let's go again,'" Cavill continued. "Then I did another take without doing it and he's like 'Why didn't you do...that thing? That was really good.' And I was like 'That was good?' And he said 'Yes, definitely do that.' And so we did."
It's awesome to learn the origin of this standout scene, and there's no denying it helped make Walker an even bigger badass. Cavill won't be returning to this franchise given what happened to the villain, though we do hope to see him take on more roles like this, even with more Superman in his future.