Original Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Ending Featured Unexpected Betrayal

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is now playing in theaters, and the movie’s third act features a whole lot of train-related action. The scene initially begins with Grace (Hayley Atwell) using a mask to replace Alanna Mitsopolis AKA The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) in her meeting with a buyer for the film’s cryptic key. During a recent interview with Variety, editor Eddie Hamilton revealed that Grace almost double-crossed Ethan (Tom Cruise), Benji (Simon Pegg), and Luther (Ving Rhames) before the train sequence. 

According to Hamilton, there was originally a scene before the train sequence that saw Grace tranquilizing Ethan, Luther, and Benji before boarding to “try to get money from the buyer and maybe bargain her way out of the situation she’s in.” Hamilton explained, “But the test audience didn’t really like that idea, so we came up with this idea.”

Hamilton also revealed the film originally featured a third mask reveal, but they cut it “because it no longer had relevance” in the bigger story. The scene was towards the beginning of the film and got nixed because the filmmakers felt that it would undercut Ethan’s big moment. 

“It was the right decision, ultimately,” Hamilton explained. “There are quite a lot of people who’ve never seen a Mission: Impossible movie who might be coming to see this because of the goodwill of Top Gun: Maverick, so that [first scene] is a great moment to have a mask reveal, because you’re like ‘What the hell is going on?’” 

Hayley Atwell Breaks Down Mission: Impossible Car Chase:

In a conversation with ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis, Atwell expressed her admiration for Tom Cruise and said that she felt like he went out of his way to be good to his co-stars. During the chat, she also talked about her big car chase in the film.

“How did Tom Cruise manage to sit in the passenger seat first of all, handcuffed to someone else who was driving him, drifting him?” Atwell said. “That, to me, shows total dedication to his craft. [That’s] probably the hardest thing he’s ever done in Mission: Impossible. He was so generous, wanting to find moments for Grace that had real levity in the middle of the car chase sequence —  that had real comedy between them, that felt earned, that didn’t feel pushed, or didn’t feel like it was actually gonna take away from the stakes of it. Watching Tom and [Christopher McQuarrie] design this, this sequence and having me on a racetrack very early in the morning before the sun had come up with [stunt driver] Wade Eastwood in London, making sure that I was drifting competently and weaving in between cones, to make sure that I could obstacle courses, meant that by the time we got out to Rome, we knew what the shape of it was, and we knew that there was always gonna be time to ad lib.” 

Atwell added, “So there was one day where I’m drifting in front of the wedding cake monument in Rome, and there were three cameras attached to the windscreen. So I can’t really see where I’m going. Tom is in the passenger seat handcuffed to me. I’ve, my character’s blown all four doors off the car already and we’re improvising. So Tom will say something like, ‘slow down, slow down.’ And I’ve gotta 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. And I remember just at the end just going, this is a lot. But also I was having so much fun, because there’s so, you know, he really cares about the people he works with. He wants to make sure that they feel that they’re doing their best too.”

“No one in my life actually wants to get into a car with me now. They’re like, yeah, we’ll take the bus. We’re fine. We’ll see you there.”

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is now playing in theaters.