Director Christopher McQuarrie and the cast of “Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One,” including Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Pom Klementieff, Vanessa Kirby, Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis, sat down to discuss the making of the franchise's seventh installment. They tackle the debate on the use of A.I. in the moviemaking business, the incredible feats met while shooting a car chase with Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise handcuffed to one another, and more.
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00:00I would be sad. He's been in my life for 17 years. I've watched him, I've been him growing up,
00:06becoming an older, more mature agent, and they live a sort of a tragic life in a way.
00:11I'm curious how this movie and working on this film in particular has personally affected how
00:32you feel about the ongoing conversation about AI and how powerful it has the potential to become,
00:37even in our own industry. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. When McHugh told me the idea for
00:42the adversary in this film, I was like, oh, that's great. That feels very Mission Impossible. It's
00:46kind of out there, but it's really, you know, in keeping with Mission Impossible's kind of
00:50tech narrative. And then while we were making the film, suddenly this issue came to the forefront
00:56in such an accelerated way to the point where now the film feels precedent. This doesn't feel like
01:02science fiction. This feels like a mirror up to nature. I feel like AI could be a fantastic thing.
01:08I think it could help us enormously in medicine, in space travel, in ecological preservation.
01:15It has no place in art. It just doesn't belong in art. Art is a human expression. It's a kind
01:21of interpretation of our emotions. Until it gets emotions of its own and it can paint its own
01:26pictures, stay out of art. Well, I think what's so brilliant about this film is it really taps
01:33into the cultural consciousness and the zeitgeist of things on a global level that, you know, we
01:38contend with. And it does that within the story, but also does it in terms of pushing its technological
01:45abilities. So, for example, when we see that famous incredible stunt, which is now the most
01:49dangerous stunt in movie history of Tom motorcycling off a cliff, the cameras that were attached to the
01:55motorbike hadn't existed previously to the movie. They were invented for that specific stunt. So you
02:03get a sense up close that they're always on the cutting edge of movie making and what is possible.
02:08Yeah, I mean, we've obviously been talking a lot about it today. And I think really what I think
02:14we all feel is that it's kind of remarkable that this movie was developed years ago and the idea
02:19was conceived years ago. But as it's coming out is when it's really part of the cultural conversation
02:24and global conversation, really. And I think the best movies feel so specific, but so universal.
02:30And there's something this is something that affects absolutely everybody in the whole world.
02:34And seeing as Tom and the crew are trying to save the whole world from it seems, yeah,
02:39more relevant than ever. I look at this film and I enjoy the story that McHugh wrote, you know,
02:46about the film and whatnot. And it's a wonderful journey to go on with him and his mastermind of
02:52crafting his craftsmanship as a writer, as well as a director. I think it's interesting that he's
02:58able to put everything together because when we were filming it, it felt like discombobulated to
03:03us. But he saw the vision and only a man like McHugh can do something like that. We let the
03:09city tell us the kind of chase it was going to be. Traffic in the city is notorious and the
03:14cobblestone streets make all of the driving unpredictable. Best part is Tom and Haley,
03:22they're handcuffed together. People are chasing us. Yes, they are. You're driving. We're not about
03:28obsessively executing a plan. We're about following the emotion of what it is we're playing with.
03:34So there was a lot of experimentation between Tom and Haley, what their relationship was and how that
03:39relationship was supposed to evolve over the course of that sequence. On top of that, when you got to
03:46Rome with that car and all the work we had done to increase its power, which made it very
03:54unpredictable. And you were very fortunate in that you had somebody like Tom Cruise behind the wheel,
03:59admittedly with one hand cuffed to somebody else. But Tom has so much experience shooting
04:05car chases that he was able to safely navigate all that. Most of the car chase sequence, if you see
04:10us, we're in a two shot, which is really, it's remarkable that we're able to do that. And it's,
04:16you know, take three would have been great for you, but take four was great for that person.
04:20So it would have cut to singles. But if you notice, Tom and I are in a two shot the whole time.
04:26And that's because of the work that we did together as a team of going, how do we stay
04:31present in the moment with each other, where we know each other's characters inside out,
04:35and we trust each other as actors to remain present so that we neither has dropped the ball
04:40so that I can react to anything that he is offering me and vice versa. And that is a,
04:46it's such a small thing. Seemingly, most people would never pick up on this, but to be able to
04:50achieve that in a two shot within the context of a car chase sequence is a huge, huge achievement
04:56technologically, as well as creatively and something I'm really proud of. As intense as
05:01that sequence is, I got in that car for five minutes. I would never get in that car again.
05:06And my hat is off to Haley Atwell for doing what she did in the passenger seat of that car
05:16and being able to maintain her composure and give the performance that she gave.
05:21And the fact that it's the two of them in two shots together doing physical comedy,
05:27which is difficult around a dining room table. They're doing it at 80 miles an hour in a tiny
05:35little car on cobblestone streets in Rome. You can't really appreciate just what an amazing
05:42performance those two actors are giving. His fate is written. Shall we write yours too?
05:50If anything happens to them, there's no place that I won't go to kill you. That is written.
05:55I got the impression that the members of the team are expendable. And I'm curious if you would be
06:00okay with Benji one day getting iced in a mission movie. I think you're very right. And I think
06:07that's something that has always been the case, but no more sort of clear is it in these stories
06:15that we, as I think Luther says, we don't matter as much as the mission and any one of us at any
06:23time could face the end. And if that happened, I'd be sad. He's been in my life for 17 years.
06:30I've watched him and been him growing up, becoming an older, more mature agent. And
06:37you know, it's a kind of a, it's a, they live a sort of a tragic life in a way.
06:41Simon, there's a scene where passports are getting tossed around from Haley and it made me realize
06:46just the number of places you've been able to go due to this franchise alone. What's the one that
06:51you had the best time spending time in that location? That's a really hard question because I
06:56look back on all those different locations and they're all a separate adventure, you know?
07:01I mean, going back to Morocco on Rogue Nation, the car chase in Morocco was enormous fun.
07:07But I think even back to Prague, my first location on Ghost Protocol. And then with the pandemic
07:14being the way it was when we were shooting this one, our time in Italy was incredible because we
07:18were all in these bubbles. We spent all our time with each other, the new cast members. We all bonded
07:23so quickly and so sort of intensely. Having Venice to ourselves, we were in Venice when it was
07:29virtually deserted to the point where myself and Pom Clemente went off and made a little short film
07:35called Au Revoir Chris Hemsworth. It's on YouTube. Check it out. Oh, cool. Yeah. Because we just had
07:41this beautiful Italian city to just have fun in. And we got shut down for 10 days because we had
07:46a COVID case in the crew. So, yeah, I mean, so many memories, so many stories. I'd bore you.
07:51I'd waste your time with it. That's like asking me who's my favorite kid. You know what I mean?
07:57You know which one is your favorite kid. It's truly, each one truly offered something different.
08:04You know what I mean? You start in Norway, which I'd never visited, and you start in a John Ford-esque
08:14landscape, you know what I mean, on top of a train. And you have McHugh saying profound things like,
08:20this is one of the top three days I've ever filmed, you know, had the experience filming,
08:25and we're part of that. And Tom, you know, lending, he's just a generous, you know, so you start there
08:32and then your car chases in Rome, foot chases in Venice, you know, then you're in the Middle East,
08:38you find yourself, it's, you know, and then to end in London, like it's, for us, it's as
08:42good as it gets. You know what I mean? You can imagine how good it is, and it's even better than that.