Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One Director Teases Part Two: “It’s Just Outrageous”

When Christopher McQuarrie directed Mission: Impossible – Fallout, he became the first director to helm a second film in the Tom Cruise-led franchise. Now, his third installment is headed to theaters next month, and he’s currently working on his fourth. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One had a long and difficult production, and it looks like the follow-up might have some struggles of its own. However, McQuarrie is teasing that the eighth Mission: Impossible will be worth the wait, and it’s even expected to top the upcoming seventh installment. 

“Tom and I are always trying to get the big shit out of the way first,” McQuarrie shared with Empire. “South Africa was intense. The aerial sequence is…” He pauses. “It’s just outrageous. The thing to remember as you’re watching this monster [aka. Part One] is that another monster waits behind it.” Cruise went on to explain that his manta when making these films is: “We can do better.” Apparently, the actor whispers it to McQuarrie after every Mission debut.

Cruise added, “He knows it’s true. Since I was a young actor, people go, ‘Well, what do you do next?’ There’s always another mountain to climb. Always.” McQuarrie added with a sigh when asked about halting the production due to the writers’ strike, “Behind each tsunami is another tsunami … It’s unrelenting. We live in a state of 24-hour tsunami awareness. That’s just what we do.”

What Does “Dead Reckoning” Mean? 

McQuarrie previously spoke about the meaning behind the “Dead Reckoning”, which was revealed during last year’s CinemaCon.

“When I came up with the title, I knew it applied more to Part Two than it did to Part One, which is why it eventually settled on being Part One and Part Two,” McQuarrie told  Light the Fuse. “The title for the first movie was nearly … a title that referred to something like a Ghost Protocol kind of thing, it was a government policy – It wasn’t a government policy, it was a government, what would you call it? A government measure of last resort, with catastrophic consequences. By the time we got to the end of Part One, that had distilled down into an entirely different set of circumstances that appear in Part Two and not in Part One. So, the word would no longer have been appropriate for the title of Part One.”

He continued, “And yet, Dead Reckoning didn’t really apply as well to Part One as well as it did to Part Two until we started to play with the beginning of the movie, and kind of recognize that Dead Reckoning, while it sounded cool, what did it really have to do with the movie? And over the course of our, really starting to dig down into the arc of the character journey for Ethan [Hunt], it took on deeper and deeper meanings as we went. And you’ll see just how thematic and how it represents, how it’s conceptually represented in every character’s journey in this film we’re in.”

What Is Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One 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.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 12th.