It stars Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby and Pom Klementieff, who was present when Cruise made his death-defying leap.
“We were all watching. We were in Norway and we saw him do it seven or eight times in a row in front of us, it was insane,” Klementieff, who plays new character Paris, said.
“It’s easier to be there than it is to wait to hear if it went well,” Pegg added.
“If you’re back at the hotel or the cruise ship we were staying on at the time — just watching your watch and just waiting, it’s terrifying. It’s better to be there. Get it over with, tear the bandaid off, see it happen. But my God it was extraordinary.”
Still, McQuarrie says another stunt in Part Two, which is due out in June 2024, will top even this one.
“So if you go back and look at the other Mission: Impossibles you can see within other sequences, the dress rehearsals for the sequences we’re doing now. After every movie, we just look at one another and say, ‘we can do better’.”
Currently, the Mission: Impossible series has grossed over US$3.5 billion worldwide.
Cruise is famous for performing his own stunts.
In 2018’s Fallout, he set a record and became the first person to ever execute a high altitude low opening, or HALO, jump on film.
Shooting during a pandemic
Production on Dead Reckoning occurred during the pandemic, and that allowed the filmmakers unprecedented access to cities like Venice, Rome and Abu Dhabi. The lockdown created both difficulties and opportunities, McQuarrie said.
“Everything was a challenge. And what we do is take advantage of those challenges. We just find ways to work within them and it permeates into the movie that everything you’re feeling in this movie is in part formed by the fact that we’re shooting it during the pandemic.”
Hayley Atwell, known for her role as Agent Peggy Carter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe appears as new character Grace, who becomes embroiled in Ethan Hunt’s mission.
Atwell says it was important for her to elevate Grace so that the character wasn’t a stereotype or one-dimensional.
“So there were moments when, because a lot of it was ad libbed, I made choices where she would be full of self assurance, then she’d be, you know, overwhelmed by self doubt — so what you have is a kind of character that’s consistently inconsistent,” Atwell said in an interview.
“The choices she makes change the trajectory of the story, at several times in the film. Therefore, she’s not just reactive to what the men are doing or what Tom (Cruise) is doing. She very much has her own agency in this.”
The film has been described as a farewell to Cruise’s character, Ethan Hunt, but McQuarrie says that might not necessarily be the case.
“Even if I set out to end the franchise, I couldn’t be sure that that’s how it would end. These movies are changing all the time,” McQuarrie says, adding that he would love to find a way to include Sydney as a location for Dead Reckoning Part Two. Cruise, along with Atwell, Pegg, Klementieff and McQuarrie, walked the red carpet at the film’s Sydney premiere on Monday. — ABC
