'I want to wreck a train!': Behind the scenes of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
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When Tom Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie began discussing what they would like to include in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (out July 12) the two longtime collaborators each zeroed in on a different stunt they wanted to achieve.
"At the start of this movie, I said to Tom, 'What do you want to do?'" recalls McQuarrie, who directed the previous two films in the blockbuster spy franchise, 2015's Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and 2018's Mission: Impossible – Fallout. "He said, 'I want to drive a motorcycle off of a cliff. What do you want to do?' And I said, 'I want to wreck a train.' We're enormous fans of Buster Keaton, John Frankenheimer, David Lean, all of these filmmakers who at one time or another had a fabulous train wreck. I thought, I've earned that, I want to wreck one too."
Cruise got to fulfill his ambition on the very first day of shooting for the seventh Mission: Impossible film in September 2020, when he repeatedly rode a motorcycle off a ramp and over a cliff in Hellesylt, Norway, safely base-jumping down to the ground far below each time. McQuarrie had to wait almost a year to see his dream turn into reality, in part because of the difficulty in finding a locale where he could stage the train sequence. In the summer of 2020, media reports suggested the director was set on demolishing a 111-year-old bridge in Poland for the scene, prompting protests from numerous parties. McQuarrie swiftly clarified the situation in a statement to Empire magazine, making clear that the production had only planned on wrecking unsafe sections of the bridge and that "no one had asked for permission to destroy a historically significant landmark." The director eventually shot much of the train sequence in the United Kingdon, with the BBC reporting in August 2021 that the production had finally sent a train plunging into England's Darlton Quarry. "A 70-ton train, yes," McQuarrie, who produced the film with Cruise, tells EW. "I think the energy that went into developing it, designing that, building it, and then making a sequence that justified its existence was probably the biggest challenge of my entire life."
Christian Black/Paramount Pictures and Skydance Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson in 'Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One'
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, of course, finds Cruise reprising the role of Ethan Hunt, super spy and leader of the Mission Impossible Force, which he initially played in 1996's Brian De Palma-directed Mission: Impossible. As usual, Hunt is assisted by Ving Rhames' Luther Stickell, Simon Pegg's Benji Dunn, and Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa Faust who made her franchise debut in Rogue Nation. McQuarrie reveals that, in the new movie, Faust teams with Cruise's character to infiltrate a swanky event in Italy, as seen in the exclusive image above.
"They are at the Doge's Palace in Venice," says the director, who will wrap up the film's story in the currently-shooting Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two, which is set for release in June of 2024. "It wouldn't be Mission: Impossible if there was not some formal event that our characters had to attend. They're walking into an event not knowing what it is they're walking into and it's compounded by the fact that there's a great deal of uncertainty. Ethan is involved in something that he himself does not fully understand."
The film also sees the return of Vanessa Kirby, playing arms dealer White Widow, and Henry Czerny, whose former IMF director Kittridge has been absent from the series since the De Palma movie. New franchise cast members include Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Cruise's Top Gun: Maverick costar Greg Tarzan Davis, and Ozark actor Esai Morales.
"I can tell you that he's definitely the antagonist in our story, or rather he is one of the antagonists in our story," says McQuarrie of Morales' character. "He's something of an enigma. You discover more about him over the course of the two movies. There's definitely more to him than meets the eye and he's something of a ghost of the past."
The director confirms that MCU actress Hayley Atwell has a major role in the film but declines to elaborate too much on its nature.
"The less I tell you about Hayley Atwell, the better," says McQuarrie. "Hayley represents a stranger in a strange land — she's somebody who does not come from this world, she's not a spy, she's not an agent. If anything, she's an agent of chaos, and is something of a random element that's thrown into this story."
McQuarrie and Cruise dealt with their own bit of chaos, behind the scenes: The pandemic meant that keeping the production on the tracks proved as testing as hurling a 70-ton train off them. In February 2020, the director was just two days away from starting principal photography in Italy when the COVID outbreak shut down production for six months. From that point on, the shoot would be repeatedly delayed for pandemic-related reasons. In December 2020, The Sun newspaper released audio of Cruise purportedly scolding crew members for breaking COVID protocols. The actor's outburst was subsequently given the thumbs-up by some of Cruise's peers, with George Clooney telling Howard Stern "He didn't overreact because it is a problem."
"That all took place during a very complicated and a very uncertain time," says McQuarrie today. "Obviously, we're grateful that people took it the way that it was intended. We were fighting to keep the industry alive, we were fighting to keep people employed, we were fighting for the studio, we were fighting for cinemas, and we still are. We're still there doing that. I'm just glad people understood the intention behind it."
While the worst of the pandemic is behind us, it doesn't change the fact that making these movies is a, well, mission. Which begs the question if McQuarrie and Cruise have a ninth movie in them.
"Look, we're still shooting 8 and there's any number of ways that that story could play out," says the filmmaker. "When you're watching Mission: Impossible, and watching the team go through these adventures, you're having some sense of what it's like to make a Mission: Impossible movie. There's always a plan, the plan always changes, everything goes completely awry, and hopefully everything always turns out alright in the end. But you never really fully understand, or trust where it is you're going, until you get there."
Something McQuarrie will confirm: Any subsequent Mission: Impossible movie directed by him will not overly involve one specific type of vehicle.
"I am all set with trains until the end of time," he says.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One opens July 12.
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