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Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Director Reveals Which Movies Inspired the Latest Installment

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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is heading to theaters this month, and the first reviews are quite promising. The movie is currently up on Rotten Tomatoes with a 98% critics score after 119 reviews. The seventh Mission: Impossible film marks the third to be helmed by Christopher McQuarrie, who is also tackling the upcoming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two. Recently, the director spoke with Collider and revealed which movies inspired the latest installment to the action franchise. 

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“There are films I am inspired by, competing with, in a sportsman-like way, kind of friendly. There are films that I deeply, deeply admire and kind of get stuck in my head. I love movies about the Arctic, I love movies about submarines. Submarines are just cool. The Arctic is just cool. I love The Thing, but I can’t really say that The Thing is an influence on Dead Reckoning. I love Das Boot and Crimson Tide, submarines are an amazing high-pressure environment, I can’t really say that they’re influences on the movie. They’re gauntlets. It’s a filmmaker showing me some cool environment and me going, ‘I want to do that! I want my opportunity to play in that space.’”

McQuarrie went on to say that he could list “a million movies” that inspire him, but he doesn’t directly reference any other films in Dead Reckoning. However, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation did have direct nods to The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor. As for the yellow Fiat 500 in Dead Reckoning, some fans thought that was a reference to Lupin the Third, but McQuarrie says that’s just a coincidence. He explained, “The Fiat is yellow because it’s a really distinct, fun color and that’s about it. I didn’t really know about Lupin the Third.” 

He added of the movies that inspire him, “I see a lot of John Ford in there. I see a lot of Steven Spielberg, Close Encounters, where I’m suddenly looking at something and where I wasn’t intending for that to happen. I’m seeing the ghosts of that stuff in there.”

Christopher McQuarrie Explains Why Dead Reckoning Is in Two Parts: 

During another interview with Collider, McQuarrie explained why Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning has been split into two parts.

“Well, we knew with FalloutFallout really grew because of all the character and emotion we were putting into the story, all the things that we had discovered in Rogue Nation that was so unexpected,” McQuarrie shared. “I knew I wanted to expand the cast, and I knew I wanted to give each one of those characters more to do, so I knew the movie was going to be bigger and longer than Fallout.”

“And at which point I said, ‘Why are we fighting this? Why are we going to try to jam this into two hours? Let’s just break it in half and make it two movies.’ That really was the rationale behind it being a two-part movie. It just it wasn’t just that the story was bigger but that we wanted more emotion in the movie,” he added. 

“Yeah, it’s massive, and it was complicated by the fact that certain things in Part Two required stopping Part One to shoot them, whether it was because of weather or actor availability. And so, with all the other challenges that were confronting this movie while we were making it, there was the challenge of stopping in the middle, not even knowing what the full movie was, and trying to predict what it was in the second film. It’s a testament to how great this team is and how patient this cast is. It’s really something,” McQuarrie explained. 

What Is Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning About?

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.