Tom Cruise has jumped from planes, climbed the Burj Khalifa and strapped himself to the outside of an Airbus.
But in 2012, Jimmy Fallon discovered another way to put the action star in danger.
A deck of cards.
Several glasses of water.
And absolutely no change of clothes.
The Tonight Show has brought one of its classic Late Night moments back online as part of the Fallon Flashback series, revisiting Tom Cruise’s wonderfully chaotic Water War with Jimmy Fallon from December 2012.
Cruise originally appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon while promoting Jack Reacher, his first big-screen outing as Lee Child’s famously relentless investigator.
The interview naturally included discussion of the physical punishment Cruise had put himself through while making the movie.
Even then, years before Mission: Impossible began repeatedly finding new ways to test the limits of insurance policies, Cruise already had a reputation for throwing himself into his own action scenes.
One Jack Reacher sequence had left him with an unexpectedly painful injury.
It was not a car crash.
It was not an explosion.
It was not a giant stunt.
Cruise had repeatedly performed a kick during filming until his foot became badly swollen.
After all that discussion of action-star toughness, Fallon decided there was only one sensible way to continue the interview.
Get him completely soaked.
Enter Water War.
The concept takes the classic card game War and makes one tiny modification.
Instead of simply winning the round, whoever draws the higher card gets to throw a glass of water directly at the loser.
Win two rounds and you earn an even larger weapon.
It is the kind of late-night game that requires almost no explanation but immediately reveals exactly how competitive the celebrity sitting across from Fallon really is.
With Tom Cruise, the answer is very competitive.
Fallon and Cruise sit opposite one another with a deck of cards between them and several glasses of water waiting nearby.
Each player flips a card.
Highest card wins.
Lowest card gets wet.
Simple.
Fallon scores early.
Cruise suddenly finds a glass of water coming directly towards his face.
The audience erupts.
Cruise laughs.
And from that moment, the game stops feeling like a promotional appearance and begins resembling two school friends who have been given studio access without adequate supervision.
Another hand follows.
More water.
Cruise gets increasingly soaked.
Fallon is delighted with himself.
There is something inherently funny about seeing one of the world’s biggest movie stars sitting in a late-night studio with wet hair and a drenched shirt because he lost at cards.
But Cruise does not appear remotely interested in surrendering.
Anyone familiar with his movies can probably guess what happens next.
He starts fighting back.
A good card suddenly means Fallon is the one getting drenched.
Cruise does not gently pour the water.
He commits.
Glasses are thrown directly across the desk.
Water flies everywhere.
Fallon begins looking considerably less comfortable with the game he personally suggested.
Then the stakes increase.
A pitcher appears.
Losing a hand is no longer simply inconvenient.
It means someone is about to have a very bad evening.
Cruise takes another soaking, with Fallon emptying the water over his head as the actor sits there laughing and attempting to maintain whatever dignity remains.
At this stage, his shirt is soaked.
His hair is soaked.
The desk is soaked.
The floor is probably reconsidering its career.
And the game still is not finished.
Because Water War has a final weapon.
The Late Night water cannon.
Whoever wins the overall battle gets the opportunity to unleash it on the other person.
Fallon may have enjoyed several extremely successful rounds.
Cruise, however, ultimately gets the ending.
The action star grabs the oversized water blaster and fires directly at Fallon.
Suddenly the host who spent the previous few minutes gleefully throwing water into Tom Cruise’s face is taking the full force of his own game.
It is the perfect conclusion.
Cruise looks victorious.
Fallon looks completely drenched.
The audience loses it.
And a disposable celebrity interview becomes exactly the kind of late-night clip people are still watching more than a decade later.
That is probably why the Fallon Flashback format works so well with segments like this.
Late-night television normally has an extremely short lifespan.
A star appears.
They promote a movie.
They tell a couple of stories.
The film opens.
Everyone moves on.
But games remove the expiration date.
You do not need to remember what was happening in Hollywood in December 2012 to appreciate Tom Cruise having a pitcher of water dumped over his head.
The *Jack Reacher* connection almost becomes secondary.
What matters is the chemistry.
Fallon built much of his Late Night era around precisely this kind of interaction.
Instead of keeping guests behind a desk for an entire interview, he repeatedly pulled them into games, competitions, musical performances and deliberately ridiculous challenges.
Water War became one of the recurring formats.
The rules were understandable in seconds.
The results depended entirely on the guest.
And with someone like Cruise, the format was almost guaranteed to work.
He does not appear embarrassed by the situation.
He does not protect the movie-star image.
Once the cards come out, he simply plays.
That willingness to commit has been a defining quality of many of Cruise’s best talk-show appearances over the years.
The same actor famous for obsessively preparing enormous movie stunts seems equally willing to invest completely unnecessary amounts of energy into a silly late-night competition.
The seriousness makes the comedy better.
There is also an amusing historical element to watching the clip now.
Cruise was 50 when the segment originally aired.
Jack Reacher had not yet opened in US cinemas.
The first Mission: Impossible movie was already 16 years old.
And yet some of the enormous stunts Cruise is now best known for were still in the future.
The Burj Khalifa sequence from Ghost Protocol had arrived the previous year, but he had not yet hung from the side of an aircraft in Rogue Nation, performed the HALO jump in Fallout or driven a motorcycle off a mountain for Dead Reckoning.
Even in a comedy game, however, the same basic personality is visible.
Put Tom Cruise into a challenge.
Give him rules.
Add unnecessary risk.
He is probably going to take it seriously.
Fallon eventually discovered that the hard way.
The Tonight Show’s newly released Fallon Flashback gives fans another chance to revisit the complete six-minute battle, originally broadcast on December 18, 2012.
No elaborate movie stunt.
No CGI.
No safety harness.
Just Tom Cruise, Jimmy Fallon, a deck of cards and enough water to ensure neither of them leaves the studio dry.
Watch the classic Water War below.
