Christopher McQuarrie tells us behind the scenes of Mission Impossible 7
“Tom Cruise understood that it was going to be necessary to fight so that the experience of cinema in theaters remains a reality”.
Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – part 1 will be released in theaters this Wednesday, July 12. To celebrate that, Tom Cruise is on the cover of First, with a file that tells you behind the scenes of the summer blockbuster. As the seventh part of the saga comes out, the director Christopher McQuarrie gave himself in a long interview to the magazine. Who better than the director of the last three Impossible mission to let us discover all the secrets of this new episode?
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Tom Cruise has taken on a new dimension following the success of Top Gun 2but for McQuarrie the characters of Maverick and Ethan Hunt are very different:
“The nature of the stakes facing Maverick probably allows him to be a more selfish character. He always goes to the physical limits of what is possible. Ethan Hunt is not fearless, he is someone one who is only too aware of his own mortality. But he is constantly put in situations where he has no choice but to take these risks. It comes from our shared passion, Tom and I, for films by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd.
All monster action sequences from Impossible mission are a direct descendant of silent cinema, where characters were projected into situations in which they had absolutely no desire to be. An influence that, by the way, prevents us from taking ourselves too seriously, while allowing us to develop a real suspense. Action, suspense and mind-blowing stunts have become what people expect from a Impossible mission. Our job, beyond what Tom has to do physically, is then to figure out how to emotionally engage the audience in these scenes.”
During the interview, Christopher McQuarrie also describes the chaotic production of this new Impossible missionwhich was originally slated for release in July 2021: “Filming was supposed to start in Venice, in February 2020. Two days before we say “action”, I am informed that the city must be evacuated… And here we are, three years later, while the first part just getting ready to go out!“
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But Tom Cruise never gave up, despite the consequences of the pandemic. On the contrary. The star has always believed in the return of cinema to theaters, and he was even the main architect:
“Tom instantly perceived the extraordinary changes we were going to have to face. His predictions turned out to be incredibly accurate. He chose very early on to push everyone, the team, the studio, to get the machine back in motion, to get back into production as soon as possible… Beyond that, Tom understood that he was going to have to fight so that the theatrical cinema experience remains a reality, at a time when the industry seemed ready to give free rein to streaming. Audiences are more and more fractured today, we almost only talk in terms of niches, target demographics, fandoms… People tend to like only genres of films. We want to fight so that they continue to be interested in cinema, in the broad sense! Top Gun: Maverick demonstrated that the audience was still there.“
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1by Christopher McQuarrie, with Tom Cruise, Haylee Atwell, Simon Pegg… At the cinema on July 12.
Spend the summer of 2023 with Première and Tom Cruise
