Christopher McQuarrie considered rejuvenating Julia Roberts in CGI for Mission: Impossible 7

The director had big ideas for the flashback scene with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and Gabriel (Esai Morales).

Christopher McQuarrie reveals that at the beginning of the writing of Dead Reckoninghe had thought of shooting a scene with Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt) Essay Morales (his opponent Gabriel) and Julia Roberts (the star would have played Marie, a key character in the spy’s journey). They would have all three been rejuvenated in digital for the occasion. The idea was to create a sequence of Impossible mission “in the way of Tony Scott”if the director of man on fire had filmed it himself at the end of the 1980s. McQuarrie finally changed his plans, fearing that the cost of this single sequence would explode the film’s budget, and that the result would not be as impressive as desired.

Here are the details, but watch out for spoilers : if the sequence described has been modified, its essence remains the same, with another actress, however: it is finally Mariela Garriga, 34, who plays Marie.

Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, by Tony Scott, in 1990.

“We first thought we couldn’t cast Esai Morales and Tom Cruise, rejuvenate them in CGI, and then cast a 23-year-old woman to play their trusted sidekick in Berlin in 1989, details McQuarrie in a podcast ofEmpire special Impossible mission. VSwould have been nil. So we stopped on her: who was to be Marie? In what period had she lived?

I said : ‘Ok, so if we do this sequence, it will be with Tom, say in 1989. So it would be a Impossible mission by Tony Scott.’ It is he who would have made this kind of film before Brian de Palma during this period. So we looked Thunder Days, we looked at his style, we started looking for what the film would have looked like if Tony Scott had directed it. And who he could have cast to play Marie.

I looked back to find a young actress, an ingenue who became a star in 1989. It was the time of Mystic Pizza. I tilted: ‘Oh my God ! Julia Roberts just before Pretty Woman. It’s her. Julia Roberts is our young wife.’

The only way to do justice to this scene by rejuvenating everyone digitally would have been to convince Julia to come, to shoot this very small role at the beginning of our story. Of course, when you conceptually design this kind of scene, you think it will work: ‘We will succeed in rejuvenating Julia Roberts, Esai and Tom, and Henry Czerny (who plays Kittrigde, editor’s note) Also.’ Then you ask for an invoice to find out how much it would cost, and even before talking about salary with all these actors, you understand the problem. If you choose two or three to shoot this scene, then it becomes as expensive as the train scene (filmed “in truth” with many effects “practice” and waterfalls, editor’s note). It was so difficult to set up… To shoot these scenes, you have to think about fluidity, camera movements, and of course making everyone look younger, it wouldn’t have been in the style of ‘a 1989 action movie. It wouldn’t have made much sense to shoot a Impossible mission from 1989 in the manner of Impossible mission in 2023.”

Christopher McQuarrie tells us behind the scenes of Mission Impossible 7

During the same podcast, McQuarrie also explains that he was never fully convinced by the rendering of digital rejuvenations. If the process is increasingly used, this summer in Indiana Jones 5for example, he sees the work of special effects artists, but is not fully immersed in the story: “In front of the best ‘de-aging’ that I saw, I kept thinking: ‘wow! This rejuvenation is really well done.’ But I was no longer connected to the story, I was focused on the effect.”

This idea of ​​rejuvenating Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise and the others in CGI was therefore abandoned, and the scene was shot without any particular special effect, simply by making up the actors and choosing a younger actress than planned. If the passage is short enough, it is crucial in the story of Ethan Hunt. We should also know more in the sequel, Dead Reckoning part 2, currently being made and expected to hit theaters in June 2024.

Here is the trailer for Mission: Impossible 7currently in theaters: