When COVID first hit in 2020, Mission: Impossible became one of the first franchises in production to brace its impact. No sooner had the latest installment in the series begun filming, than it had to be shut down due to new pandemic-induced lockdowns. Naturally, this threw a lot of the movie’s plans haywire. Now, just about a month away from release, director Christopher McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise open up on just how some of those plans were affected and how they adapted.
In an exclusive feature for Empire Magazine’s latest issue, McQuarrie revealed that they had originally planned to shoot a foot chase in Berlin, before the city shut their doors to the crew. To their luck, they were invited by Abu Dhabi to film at their airport. This forced a script change, leading McQuarrie and team to adjust the setup from an airport in a city to a desert.
We were going to shoot this airport sequence and a foot chase there. And then Berlin said, ‘No, we’re too close to the opening of the airport.’ Then Abu Dhabi said, ‘Well, we have an airport,’ And we said, ‘Great — instead of a foot chase, let’s do something in the desert.’
This switch was not without its logistical challenges. In fact, McQuarrie didn’t hold back when describing the difficulty of filming the entire thing.
[It was without doubt] the hardest, hardest sequence I have ever had to work out. Now, it’s a sequence of which we are immensely, immensely proud. But it’s like everything else on Mission — if I’d known going in, I would never have done it.
Rebecca Ferguson who reprises her role as Ilsa Faust from prior McQuarrie-directed Mission: Impossible films, recalled how COVID reared its ugly head with just two days to go for the commencement of principal photography.
I was on a little bridge, doing a roll-up on one of the stunt guys, and I nailed it. And then they said, ‘Something’s going on. We’re just gonna pause shooting for a little bit.’ That pause kept expanding.
When filming resumed multiple months later, the bike stunt ended up being the first thing that was filmed. From there, it was a case of keeping an eye out on which countries were opening their arms to filmmakers and either heading there to shoot sequences meant for that country first, or altering bits in the script to accommodate the said country. That’s how the production next headed to Venice, Italy to film a boat sequence, a portion of which can be glimpsed in the movie’s trailers.
I had to go into the canals of Venice in a $300,000 bespoke, beautifully handcrafted boat, and driving around at night was pretty epic. It’s also easy to just crash it into a protruding piece of concrete.
But McQuarrie and Cruise both love the thrill of confronting challenges head on and emerging out of them with workable solutions. That, in Cruise’s view, makes things fresh and exciting, certainly far from the mundanity of other film productions, as he describes in this quote:
[It’s] never boring. It’s constantly evolving. You have to be pretty unrelenting, and honest with yourself about stories and structure and what’s working and what’s not. I don’t want to stop until it’s right.
McQuarrie and Cruise may have felt their series of setbacks is over, but it appears like the duo just don’t have any respite. After all, we recently heard reports about Cruise campaigning hard to obtain IMAX screens for Dead Reckoning Part One which have been locked by Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer for a full 3 weeks.
We’ll just have to wait another month to find out just how much the pandemic impacted production and, whether after these setbacks, the movie still plays together like a cohesive piece. Judging by McQuarrie’s track record and his partnership with Cruise though, chances are high things will turn out just fine.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is due for release on July 12, 2023.
