‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’ sound editor James Mather on Tom Cruise: ‘You’re working with the man who was in the shot’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is not short on showstopping spectacles and action scenes. But when it came time for supervising sound editor James Mather to work on what is arguably the film’s biggest moment – a death-defying motorcycle jump off a cliff that became the centerpiece of the marketing campaign – he had a great resource on which to lean: star and producer Tom Cruise.
“What’s really interesting is you’re working with the man who’s in the shot, who knows what it sounded and felt like when he did that stunt. And he wants the audience to dial into that emotion,” Mather tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. “Tom’s take on [scene] was that the cut to him after we’ve gone to silence as the bike is falling away was to cut to him when he’s gliding through the air and the sound is massive. We were all a bit like, ‘Are you [sure]? Is that [okay]?’ And he’s like, ‘Guys, that is what it’s like, it’s so deafening that you have to wear earplugs and even then your whole body is feeling that.’ And so you go, ‘Okay, great.’ That now gives the audience a significant step into the way it was and what we’re trying to do at all times is to enhance the plausibility and the reality of the scenes – even though some of them are crazy fun. But you want to feel that there is a reality to there.”
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Mather is used to Cruise and his process. The supervising sound editor has worked with the star on three different “Mission: Impossible” films – “Rogue Nation,” “Fallout,” and “Dead Reckoning” – and won an Oscar this year for his contributions to the sound of “Top Gun: Maverick.”
With “Dead Reckoning,” Mather says, the goal was to combine what had worked so well on the prior “Mission: Impossible” movies with greater intimacy in the story.
“The difference is the emotional ride you get with this film,” he says of “Dead Reckoning.” “I think it feels like it’s a more personal storyline, the arc feels more tied into Ethan, and his responsibility or his growing awareness of his responsibility to the rest of the crew, the rest of his team. There’s a lot more nuance, and there’s a lot more character-driven drama in this as well as the butt-clenching action.”
Mather also credits “Top Gun: Maverick” for being a guidepost – whether or not that was intentional – at least in terms of the “Mission: Impossible” movie’s immersive nature.
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“This movie was very much about feeling the engagement, involvement, immersion, drama, and jeopardy of the situations,” he says, explaining director Christopher McQuarrie values that approach in terms of sound and music.
One aspect that brings viewers into the world of “Dead Reckoning” is the film’s chief antagonist: an artificial intelligence property known as The Entity. If the sound used to represent The Entity sounds vaguely familiar, Mather explains, that’s because it was based on his own experience. After his home theater system wound up on the fritz, strange audio feedback emitted from Mather’s soundbar. He recorded the noise, and when the time came to add audio accompaniment to The Entity, Mather was prepared. The result is an eerie and foreboding audio cue, one that Mather sprinkled throughout the film — and can even be heard in the “Dead Reckoning” prologue before The Entity even appears on the screen.
“It was like, ‘How far can we push it?’” Mather says. “You start seeing throughout the movie, there are little bits on the watch and The Entity sound grew exponentially into this character, which even appears at the end of the credits – there’s a little goose of it at the end. It’s one of those very, very happy accidents – we can’t take pride in it because it’s an accident. But it’s nice to know that when you hear something odd record it. Because you never know when you’re gonna find an entity in need of a noise.”
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