Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Director Addresses Uncharted 2 Comparisons

The director of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has addressed the comparisons between the film and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The Mission: Impossible franchise is one of the biggest, longest-running movie franchises out there and has evolved quite a bit since its inception. It started as a paranoid thriller, focusing on intimate, but painfully tense scenes of spy mayhem and then evolved into something with an extraordinary sense of scale with absurd stunts and epic action scenes. The series continues to escalate, but has cemented its identity as being a franchise you can reliably count on to deliver plenty of thrills thanks to Tom Cruise’s desire to do death-defying stunts.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has a pretty explosive climax on a train. Fans immediately started comparing the scene to the train sequence in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, especially as the finale of this set piece sees Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) climbing the inside of a train as it dangles over an edge, falling apart as it succumbs to physics and gravity. Even the co-director of the game, Bruce Straley, suggested the sequence appeared to use Uncharted 2 as inspiration. However, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One director Christopher McQuarrie stated on Threads that he doesn’t know much about the world of gaming and therefore couldn’t use a game like Uncharted as inspiration. Some folks previously noted that McQuarrie cited Uncharted for a stunt in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, but McQuarrie clarified he was using the word “uncharted” in a very literal sense at the time and not naming the video game, meaning it was pure coincidence. 

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Given the similarities at play here, fans were pretty surprised to learn this. With that said, McQuarrie may have very well accidentally made a better Uncharted movie than the one we got in 2022. The latest Mission: Impossible movie features several groups of distinct characters chasing after a cool looking set of keys that look like their own piece of treasure. And our protagonist is a charming middle aged man who does all kinds of cool jumps, stunts, and runs a lot… sounds a lot like an Uncharted game!

What did you think of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.