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 Command decided to accept the mission: help the American actor’s secret agent Ethan Hunt save the world. Or, at least make a movie about it.

For The Final Reckoning, showing at cinemas nationwide, 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.

It is 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 is 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 US Department of Defense reviews scripts for accuracy and depictions of the military. (The Pentagon declined, for instance, to support Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning 1986 Vietnam War drama Platoon.)

The US military 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 US$11,374 (RM48,125.05) an hour to use its F/A-18 Super Hornets – which Cruise could not control as he flew in the fighter jet’s back seat.

For The Final Reckoning, however, movie studio Paramount’s reported blowout budget of US$400mil (RM1.69bil) 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 sailors, who had been deployed for about six months at that time.

“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 filmed flight sequences, a scene in the navigation bridge and Hunt’s departure aboard a CV-22 Osprey tiltrotor 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 spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca Heyse.

The USS Hyman G. Rickover, a Virginia-class attack submarine, 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 filmed on lends a dimension of accuracy to the film that elevates it,” Paramount said, referencing a scene in which Hunt specifically requests the Bush carrier.

The Pentagon’s support “lends authenticity to the military involvement necessary to help Ethan Hunt accomplish his mission”. – Bloomberg