Mission: Impossible Stunts Write The Story in Dead Reckoning (Exclusive)

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One offers a myriad of stunts which set the tone and stakes within the film but also help write the story itself along the way, offering dots for the filmmakers to connect and fostering sequences for characters to shine through. Franchise star and producer Tom Cruise is seen running across the tops of a moving train, launching himself off of a cliff on a motorcycle with a parachute strapped to his back, and driving a tiny Fiat through the streets of Rome at speeds which no tourist will ever dare. The stunts are a huge part in developing the story for these Mission: Impossible films, as the daring efforts are thought up by Cruise and his director Christopher McQuarrie before being slotted into places to send Ethan Hunt and his pals on globetrotting adventures. 

“There’s not a chicken, there’s not an egg. Fallout started with the emotional story of Ethan and Julia and the stunts were floating around in the periphery,” McQuarrie explained. In the case of Dead Reckoning, they started with the stunts. “The beginning of this one, I said, ‘What do you wanna do?’ He said, ‘I wanna ride a motorcycle off a cliff. What do you want to do?’ I was like, ‘I wanna wreck a train! Let’s just wreck a train!’” 

Ride a motorcycle off of a cliff and wreck a train is exactly what they did. Cruise, who started the Mission: Impossible franchise in 1996, is involved with the stunts from top to bottom (literally, in this case). “I produce these films, I’m involved in every single frame,” Cruise told ComicBook.com at Rome’s world premiere of this seventh Mission: Impossible movie. “McQ and I, every film I’ve ever made over the past 16 years, whether yu see his name on it or not, it’s both of our collective minds at work through here as well as the other filmmakers we’re working with. You just break it down and try to anticipate just like when I’m producing a film or any artist that I’m working with, any filmmaker that I’m working with, I study their work. I study every actor. I study our crew’s work and I try to be as prepared as possible and as detailed as possible just to anticipate any of the problems that could come up.”

The highly-toured motorcycle-off-a-cliff sequence is a breathtaking bit in the film, launching the 61-year-old Cruise into the air before gravity pulls him back down to earth with the actor performing the entirety of the sequence. While stunts exist where Cruise takes a seat and allows his stuntman to earn the paycheck, the motorcycle cliff jump was not one of them. “Anything is doable. Is it worth the risk, right? Can I put the camera in a place where you’re gonna see it?” McQuarrie explained. “There are stunts, little stunts, where I just can’t see Tom’s face. It happens so quickly. That’s when I look at him and say, ‘It’s just no worth doing. It’s necessary for the story but it’s not worth getting injured when nobody can tell it’s you and, so, that forces you… Normally, yourjob is to hide the fact that it’s a stuntman. I have the opposite problem. I have to show that it’s Tom.”

Cruise filmed his iconic stunt on the first day of production, launching himself off of a manmade ramp at the edge of a cliff in Norway half-a-dozen times. The ramp would be edited out of the film with visual effects but Cruise’s effort as Ethan Hunt required no special effects to send him soaring through the air. McQuarrie, meanwhile, had quite an undertaking with his train sequence. “Of course, both of us at one point or another, would remind this other, ‘This was your idea! You wanted to do this.’ Tom was very fortunate in one respect. He got his stunt out of the way on day one. I’m still shooting that train. I mean, that just took foreverr and it was very, very challenging.”

Then, there are all of the stunts on the ground where people aren’t flying and trains aren’t crashing. For example, an incredible sequence in the film’s first hour sees Cruise’s Hunt handcuffed to Hayley Atwell’s Grace as the two have to drift through the cobblestone streets of Rome in a mesmerizing and often hilarious car chase. After an intense round of training under Cruise’s watch, Atwell learned to be “fearless in the moment,” as she had to truly maneuver the car in front of the camera while developing lines of dialogue in real time.

“How did Tom Cruise manage to sit in the passenger seat, first of all?” Atwell joked. “He was so generous with wanting to find moments for Grace that had real levity to it in the middle of the car chase sequence and had areal comedy between them that felt earned, that didn’t feel pushed orr didn’t feel like it was actually gonna take away from the stakes of it. Just watching Tom and McQ design this sequence and having me on the race track very early in the morning before the sun had come up with Wade Eastwood in London, making sure I was drifting competently and weaving in between cones to make sure that I could just do obstacle courses, meant that, by the time we got out to Rome, we knew what the shape of it was. We knew that there was always going to be time to ad lib. So, there was one day where I’m drifting in front f the wedding cake monument in Rome and there are three cameras attached to the wind screen so I can’t really see where I’m going. Tom is in the passenger seat handcuffed to me. My character has blown all four doors off the car already and we’re improvising. Tom will say something like, ‘Slow down! Slow down!’ and I’ve got to work out whether Tom is saying to Hayley, ‘Actually slow down.’ Or whether he’s saying it as Ethan to Grace or whether he wants me as Grace to say that to him. I remember at the end going, ‘This is a lot,’ but also, I was having so much fun.”

Are you excited for Mission: Impossible to start its Dead Reckoning saga? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Twitter. Interviews from the Mission: Impossible 7 premiere can be found on ComicBook’s YouTube channel. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters tonight.