Mission Impossible 7: the first cut lasted 4 hours, including 1h30 for the train scene

According to editor Eddie Hamilton, the train scene could have been even more spectacular than it looks…

Warning, this article contains spoilers regarding Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 !

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 was released last Wednesday, July 12 in French theaters, and is currently posting a good score at the global box office with 235 million dollars in revenue collected during its first weekend. On the 2h43 program of this new part, we find ever crazier stunts, with a Tom Cruise jumping from a hill on a motorcycle, but also a car chase in the streets of Venice, or even a galvanizing climax taking place in a train launched at full speed and whose journey is about to be greatly disrupted…

Mission impossible 7 starts less well than expected at the US box office

Eddie Hamiltoneditor of films in the saga since Rogue Nation in 2015, reveals to Variety that the adventure could have been even longer. In the final sequence, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and Grace (Hayley Atwell) must carefully climb the carriages of a train suspended in the air, avoiding certain sudden movements, which could lead to the inevitable fall of the entire train: “(The Sequence) was originally 1h30 in our first draft. We ended up reducing it to 50 minutes in the final version.” reveals Eddie Hamilton. The climax of the sequence, the one where one of the wagons begins to fall seriously into the ravine, lasted almost 3 minutes, but was finally reduced after first mixed reactions during certain test screenings: “It was originally a bit longer and we sacrificed several moments because I was told that the scene was maybe a bit too much.”

“If the scene lasts three minutes, it immediately becomes too long. So we analyzed each shot, wondering which ones were really necessary (…) We tried to remove every moment of uncertainty present in the film to have continuous action”, continues Hamilton.

Another decisive scene has undergone several treatments on the part of the editor and director Christopher McQuarrie: that of the reversal of the jacket of Paris, the hitman played by Pom Klementieff, who ends up making her mea culpa and gives her confidence to Ethan Hunt at the time of death: “There is a great moment of dialogue in this scene. I had mounted a shorter version of half. We looked at it and there wasn’t much coming out of it. No emotion. I realized that we had reduced it too much. I went back to the initial cut by working on it in more detail… What you see in the film contains everything that was shot in the end”, analyzes Eddie Hamilton.

The editor also reveals that Christopher McQuarrie did not hesitate to show certain sequences of the film to friends to have their opinion: “When a friend came to see him for a tea, he told him “Let’s watch this scene, and you give me your opinion!” The first time we watched it together, the film was almost 4 hours long and we hadn’t added the music yet. It was a difficult experience, because it was the first time we watched the film from beginning to end. Not having music was something very strange. Since there was no sound effect, it felt like watching a silent movie! (…) We then explored the different sequences and analyzed each moment with precision!”

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 is currently in theaters.

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