Wolf Blitzer's Mission: Impossible - Fallout Cameo Earned Him A Creepy Souvenir
The sixth "Mission: Impossible" film, "Fallout," has the most fun toying with its audience. The first time it does so is one of the best surprises I've ever experienced in a movie.
The set-up: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team fail to stop a terrorist group called the Apostles from stealing three plutonium cores. So, they capture nuclear physicist Nils Delbruuk (Kristoffer Joner), a member of the Apostles.
Cut to two weeks later, with Ethan and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) standing in a hospital. Delbruuk is handcuffed to a bed while the room's TV blasts CNN. Newscaster Wolf Blitzer (as himself) is reporting how the world's three holiest cities — Rome, Jerusalem, and Mecca — have been destroyed, with footage from the nuked cities included. Have our heroes really failed this badly? Delbruuk thinks so.
Delbruuk makes a bargain with the IMF; have Blitzer read the Apostles' manifesto on-air, and he'll give Ethan and Luther his phone's passcode. That way, they can track down Apostle leader John Lark (Liang Yang). As far as Delbruuk knows, he and his comrades have succeeded, so he has nothing to lose.
Then the twist — there were no bombings. Two weeks haven't passed, only an hour. The hospital room they're in was a sound stage and the CNN broadcast was faked. Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) was playing the part of Blitzer, thanks to one of the IMF's hyper-realistic masks.
Blitzer told Jimmy Kimmel that he wasn't paid much for the cameo, but "whatever it is, it was worth it." However, Cruise did give Blitzer a token of his appreciation.
Playing a dude disguised as another dude
"Mission: Impossible" regularly features these sorts of deceptive gambits, but what makes this one so memorable is that we're in the dark just as much as the IMF's mark is. Blitzer's appearance also brings verisimilitude to the fakeout. Since he's a real newscaster, we're inclined to trust his presence more so than if it was a fictional TV host in the scene.
As a result, most of Blitzer's cameo is a screen within a screen; he only shows up physically when Benji walks up to Ethan and Luther then dramatically pulls off his mask in front of Delbruuk. On the audio commentary for "Fallout," Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie revealed that they gave Blitzer the mask prop as a gift:
McQuarrie: "[Wolf Blitzer] was so delightful. And we gave him a mask. We sent him a gift of a Wolf mask."
Cruise: "It's fantastic. In a clear box."
McQuarrie: "Yes, in a clear box."
Cruise: "He's got his own Wolf mask."
Take a look at the mask with some behind-the-scenes photos here. Now, since Hollywood's tech isn't quite up to snuff with the IMF's, the prop Wolf Blitzer mask is nowhere near as uncannily lifelike as it's meant to be in the movie. Take note of the black dots, which are markers for digital enhancement. Even so, the tactility of the mask is undeniable. One can only wonder if Blitzer kept the souvenir — I can't imagine keeping a boxed, latex copy of my own face on a shelf, but I've also never gotten to play myself in a Hollywood blockbuster. With a name like "Wolf Blitzer," the man definitely belongs in the movies.