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, you know. I feel like AI could be a
01:07fantastic thing. I think it could help us enormously in medicine, in space travel,
01:13in ecological preservation. It has no place in art. It just doesn't belong in art. Art is a
01:20human expression. It's a kind of interpretation of our emotions. Until it gets emotions of its own
01:25and it can paint its own pictures, stay out of art. Well, I think what's so brilliant about this
01:32film is it really taps into the cultural consciousness and the zeitgeist of things
01:36that are on a global level that, you know, we contend with. And it does that within the story,
01:42but also does it in terms of pushing its technological abilities. So, for example,
01:47when we see that famous incredible stunt, which is now the most dangerous stunt in movie history of
01:50Tom motorcycling off a cliff, the cameras that were attached to the motorbike hadn't existed
01:57previously to the movie. They were invented for that specific stunt. So you get a sense up close
02:04that 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.
02:40I look at this film and I enjoy the story that McHugh wrote, you know, about the film and
02:47whatnot. And it's a wonderful journey to go on with him and his mastermind of crafting
02:53his 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.
03:09We let the city tell us the kind of chase it was going to be. Traffic in the city is notorious
03:14and the cobblestone streets make all of the driving unpredictable.
03:18The best part is Tom and Haley, they're handcuffed together.
03:24People are chasing us.
03:26Yes, they are. You're driving.
03:28We're not about obsessively executing a plan. We're about following the emotion
03:33of what it is we're playing with. So there was a lot of experimentation between Tom and Haley,
03:37what their relationship was and how that relationship was supposed to evolve over
03:41the course of that sequence. On top of that, when you got to roam with that car,
03:50and all the work we had done to increase its power, which made it very unpredictable,
03:55and 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 car
04:05chases that he was able to safely navigate all that.
04:08Most of the car chase sequence, if you see us, we're in a two shot,
04:12which is really, it's remarkable that we're able to do that. And it's, you know,
04:16take three would have been great for you, but take four was great for that person,
04:20so they would have cut to singles. But if you notice, Tom and I are in a two shot the whole
04:25time. And 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 of us drop 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.
05:00As intense as that sequence is, I got in that car for five minutes.
05:04I would never get in that car again. And my hat is off to Hayley Atwell for doing what she did
05:14in the passenger seat of that car, and being able to maintain her composure and give the
05:20performance that she gave. And the fact that it's the two of them in two shots together,
05:25doing physical comedy, which is difficult around a dining room table. They're doing it at 80 miles
05:34an hour in a tiny little car on cobblestone streets in Rome. You can't really appreciate
05:41just what an amazing performance those two actors are giving. His fate is written.
05:48Shall we write yours too? If anything happens to them, there's no place that I won't go to
05:53kill you. That is written. I got the impression that the members of the team are expendable.
05:59And I'm curious if you would be okay with Benji one day getting iced in a mission movie.
06:05I think you're very right. And I think that's something that has always been the case, but
06:10no more clear is it in these stories that we, as I think Luther says, we don't matter as much
06:20as the mission. And any one of us at any time could face the end. And if that happened, I'd be
06:27sad. He's been in my life for 17 years. I've watched him. I've been him growing up, becoming
06:33an older, more mature agent. And they live a sort of a tragic life in a way.
06:42Simon, there's a scene where passports are getting tossed around from Haley,
06:45and it made me realize just the number of places you've been able to go to this
06:49franchise alone. What's the one that you had the best time spending time in that location?
06:54That's a really hard question because I look back on all those different locations and they're all
06:59a separate adventure, you know? I mean, going back to Morocco on Rogue Nation, the car chase in
07:05Morocco was enormous fun. But I think even back to Prague, my first location on Ghost Protocol.
07:12And then with the pandemic being the way it was when we were shooting this one, our time in Italy
07:17was incredible because we were all in these bubbles. We spent all our time with each other,
07:21the new cast members. We all bonded so quickly and so sort of intensely. Having Venice to
07:26ourselves, we were in Venice when it was virtually deserted to the point where myself and Pom
07:32Clemente went off and made a little short film called Au Revoir Chris Hemsworth. It's on YouTube.
07:37Check it out. Oh, cool. Yeah, because we just had this beautiful Italian city to just have fun in.
07:44And we got shut down for 10 days because we had a COVID case in the crew. So yeah, I mean, so many
07:50memories, so many stories. Boy, I'd waste your time with it. That's like asking me who's my
07:55favorite kid, you know? You know which one is your favorite kid. Each one truly offered something
08:04different, you know what I mean? You start in Norway, which I'd never visited, and you start
08:10in a John Ford-esque landscape, you know what I mean, on top of a train. And you have McHugh saying
08:18profound things like, this is one of the top three days I've ever filmed, you know, had the
08:24experience filming, and we're part of that. And Tom, you know, lending, he's just a generous,
08:31you know, so you start there, and then your car chases in Rome, foot chases in Venice, you know,
08:37then you're in the Middle East, you find yourself. It's, you know, and then to end in London, like
08:41it's, for us, it's as good as it gets, you know what I mean? You can imagine how good it is,
08:47and it's even better than that.