Director Christopher McQuarrie Talks 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One'
Moviefone speaks to Christopher McQuarrie about 'Dead Reckoning Part One.' "We're always trying to take everything we've learned and take it to the next level."
Opening in theaters on July 12th is the latest installment of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise entitled ‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One,’ which was co-written and directed by Academy Award-winner Christopher McQuarrie (‘The Usual Suspects,’ ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’).
What is the plot of ‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One’?
In ‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One,’ Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, and dark forces from Ethan's past closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than his mission – not even the lives of those he cares about most.
Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One
Who is in the cast of ‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One’?
'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' stars Tom Cruise ('Top Gun') as Ethan Hunt, Hayley Atwell ('Captain America: The First Avenger') as Grace, Esai Morales ('Master Gardener') as Gabriel, Ving Rhames ('Pulp Fiction') as Luther Stickell, Simon Pegg ('Hot Fuzz') as Benji Dunn, Rebecca Ferguson ('Dune') as Ilsa Faust, Vanessa Kirby ('Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw') as Alanna Mitsopolis, Pom Klementieff (‘Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3’) as Paris, Henry Czerny ('Scream VI') as Eugene Kittridge, Shea Whigham ('Joker') as Jasper Briggs, and Greg Tarzan Davis ('Top Gun: Maverick') as Degas.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with writer and director Christopher McQuarrie about his work on ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,’ keeping the franchise fresh, creating the incredible stunts with Tom Cruise, practical effects vs. CGI, the most difficult scene to shoot, and what audiences should know to prepare them for this film experience?
Christopher McQuarrie, writer and director of 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One.'
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with McQuarrie, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, and Greg Tarzan Davis.
Moviefone: To begin with, this is the third ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie you’ve directed and you have a fourth, 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two’ coming out next year. How do you keep each story fresh?
Christopher McQuarrie: Tom and I simply take everything that we've learned on every film we do and apply it to the next one. So what you're looking at with ‘Dead Reckoning Part One’ is everything we learned not only from the previous ‘Mission Impossible’ movies, but also from ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Edge of Tomorrow.’ All the films that we've worked on together and separately, and we're always just trying to take everything we've learned and take it to the next level. Push it a little bit beyond.
(L to R) Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie on the set of 'Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning - Part One' from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
MF: What is it like working with Tom Cruise to design the amazing action sequences in these movies?
CM: We will be talking about stunts. For example, when we were shooting ‘Fallout’ and doing the halo jump out of the C-17, we were already talking about how cool it would be to drive a motorcycle off a cliff. There's motorcycle stunts, and there's skydiving stunts in our previous movies. So it was taking what we learned about motorcycles, taking what we learned about skydiving and putting them together, and then what would you get? We had talked about base jumping previously and all of that coalesced in this movie, into that stunt. We'd been talking about a train sequence for a long time, and a desert sequence for a long time. I've always been obsessed with submarines, trains, and the Arctic. They were all environments that I was fascinated with. The nice thing about these movies, and especially doing multiple installments of them, is that I get to make every movie that I never had the opportunity to make elsewhere. It's just a great playground and a great opportunity.
Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in 'Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning - Part One 'from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
Related Article: Hayley Atwell Talks 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One'
MF: Can you talk about why you prefer using practical effects over VFX, especially in this series?
CM: CGI would be in a lot of ways easier. Here's what the challenge is for CGI. First of all, I use it quite a bit and it's an extremely valuable tool. If everything is CGI, you get everything that you want. You'll get exactly the shot the way you designed it. What you will not really get is chaos and unpredictability. And that's what these movies are really about. So when you're doing it practically, you're making discoveries that you might not ever otherwise have made. That's where the reality is truly coming from, it's not something I made up, and it's not something Tom made up. It's chaos. It's the randomness of what's happening in those shots, the things that you never could have imagined. That's what truly makes it feel real. That's what makes it immersive. What's most important to Tom and I, it's not so much the spectacle. It's that whatever's happening, it's happening to you. You're experiencing it with those characters. That's something that I've yet to be able to create using only CGI.
(L to R) Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie on the set of 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
MF: What was the most difficult sequence in this movie to shoot?
CM: Every sequence was difficult in its own way. There were a lot of challenges in production itself, but also in the standard to which we held ourself. We created a pretty specific outline for how we wanted to shoot the movie and never deviated from it. Then we designed that sequence and a lot of that sequence, we designed virtually. As much as you might design something virtually, it can never prepare you for the sheer physics of what you're about to do practically. That sequence was extraordinarily challenging and very difficult to do. More than anything, it’s just extremely physically taxing on the actors. When you are seeing Tom and Hayley going through that environment, they're really doing it and it's quite physically challenging. There are times when they're on a set that starts horizontally and goes a full 90 degrees vertical while they're running up. It's as tough as any obstacle course you've ever seen anybody run in their life, and they're really doing it. It's quite extraordinary what they achieved.
MF: Finally, what would you tell audiences sitting down to watch this movie to prepare them for the cinematic experience they are about to have?
CM: Get ready to watch the biggest, boldest ‘Mission: Impossible’ yet.
(L to R) Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie on the set of 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
Other Movies Similar to ‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One:’
- 'Top Gun' (1986)
- ‘Mission: Impossible' (1996)
- ‘Mission: Impossible II' (2000)
- ‘Mission: Impossible III' (2006)
- 'Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol' (2011)
- 'Jack Reacher' (2012)
- 'Edge of Tomorrow' (2014)
- 'Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation' (2015)
- 'Jack Reacher: Never Go Back' (2016)
- 'Mission: Impossible - Fallout' (2018)
- 'Top Gun: Maverick' (2022)
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'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' is produced by Paramount, Skydance Media, New Republic Pictures, and TC Productions. The movie is scheduled to release in theaters on July 12th, 2023.
