Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Director Christopher McQuarrie Reveals How They Plan Stunts

There’s a new Mission: Impossible movie hitting theaters in just a few weeks, which means a new set of stunts that audiences will be buzzing about for days after. The franchise is built around incredible feats — and around the fact that series lead Tom Cruise does a lot of his own stunts, so you can usually get a pretty good look at him doing something insane. This time around, there was a motorcycle stunt shot on the first day of filming that required weeks of training and setup, and was maybe one of the biggest, riskiest things of Cruise’s career. Then, later in production, there was a train sequence that filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie was determined to get right.

But Mission: Impossible isn’t just another movie with big action set pieces. Going all the way back to the first movie, what scene do you remember? It’s the iconic scene of Cruise suspended inches off the floor, being moved through a heist in a harness. ComicBook.com asked McQuarrie, who has written and directed more than one of these films, how he tries to crack “the stunt” of any given movie.

“There’s not a chicken, there’s not an egg,” McQuarrie told ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis. “Sometimes we start with…like, Fallout started with the emotional story of Ethan and Julia, and the stunts were kind of put around in the periphery. The beginning of this one, I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ He said, ‘I want to ride a motorcycle off a cliff. What do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I want to wreck a train. Let’s just wreck a train.’ Of course, both of us at one point or another would remind the other, ‘You know, this was your idea. You wanted to do this.’ Tom was very fortunate in one respect becuase he got his stunt out of the way day one. I’m still shooting that train. That just took forever, and it was very, very challenging.”

The Tom Cruise factor is something to consider, too. McQuarrie admitted that sometimes, it just isn’t worth risking the health and safety of Hollywood’s most bankable star…especially if you can’t even tell it’s him doing it.  

“Anything is doable. It’s, is it worth the risk?” McQuarrie said. “Can I put the camera in a place where you can see it? There are stunts — little stunts — where I just can’t see Tom’s face, it happens so quickly. And I look at him and say, this is not worth doing. It’s necessary for the story, but it’s not worth getting injured when nobody can tell it’s you. Normally your job is to hide the fact that it’s a stuntman. I have the opposite problem; I gotta show that it’s Tom. That means for every one of these stunts, we have to invent camera equipment, we have to invent ways to show these sequences, and it’s a testament to the crew. I’ve been there [when Tom] created an idea one night, and I said, ‘the camera equipment does not exist to do this,’ and by the next afternoon, the camera existed. The team built the rig.” 

Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which premieres in theaters on July 12th. It’s the beginning of the end for the action-packed franchise, as Cruise reteams with longtime collaborator and filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie for more death-defying and breathtaking stunts. Hunt and allies Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) attempt to track down a new weapon with the power to tear the world apart. Actors Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Esai Morales join the cast for the latest installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, which is set to wrap up with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two.