EXCLUSIVE Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One Cast Interview | Film4 Interview Special

Mission Impossible was the very first film I ever produced. And at that time, I'd been asked for many years to produce or direct. And I went to Paramount, who, the woman who was running at that point was Sherry Lansing, and I'd known her since I was 18. She cast me in Taps, and she was the first female president of 20th Century Fox. And it was something that I went to her, I was like, okay, and I looked at the library, it was Mission Impossible, I said, I want to help produce that our first film. And then we started, I worked on it for two years beforehand, hired Brian De Palma. And here we are all these years later. And my hope was to be able to have it continue, but also to be able to challenge myself as a storyteller, as a filmmaker, and really live, you know, and become part of my childhood dream, which was to make movies and travel the world. Tom and I are both big believers that we don't want you to have to leave the narrative and to remember another narrative to understand what's going on in this one. We don't assume you've seen another Mission Impossible. The same way with Top Gun Maverick, we didn't assume you had seen the original Top Gun. It had to be a movie that stood alone. And it had to be a movie that ended conclusively, even though it was a part one. We took that to the extreme in that we reintroduced the concept of the IMF. But all that was serving story, which was by bringing back Henry Cerny, bringing back a character from deep in Ethan's history, it felt important that we recontextualize what the IMF is. Your days of fighting for the so-called greater good are over. And answer some of those questions that really have always been taken for granted. The notion of should you choose to accept, the notion of where Ethan Hunt comes from and how he became this person. This is a really interesting film series. Initially, it was this really interesting series of eclectic directors with self-contained adventures. We've had a different style, you know, different approach. You had De Palma, Woo, J.J., and then Brad Bird. And then on the Brad Bird movie, McHugh came in as a writer and Tom and he began their sort of creative partnership. And after that, it became this incredible sort of concentrated collaboration between Chris McCrory and Tom Cruise. And one thing McHugh has is a wonderful command of the entire story from start to finish. He recognizes the legacy of what's gone before and wants to channel that into what goes forwards. This is an ongoing journey, has been for me as Benji going from a lab technician to a field agent. And I think it really helps to just have the whole thing feel more sort of a continuation of a story rather than those initial sort of one-off adventures. And McHugh has sort of knitted those together as well. Benji, I think I must have made a wrong turn somewhere. No, no, that's it. That's it. What? How can this be it? Well, you can see the train, right? Yes, I see the train. What about it? And you have a parachute. I've got a parachute. What do you expect me to do? Well, just, you know, jump. Jump? Yeah. Benji, it doesn't work like that. I'm not that high. There's ledges sticking out everywhere. I'm going to hit them before the parachute even opens. Benji, even if I could get the parachute open, I don't know if I can make it across the valley and intercept and land safely on a moving train. Do you copy? Yes, I copy. Look, I'm just trying to help you, okay? I need you to take a step back and pull yourself together, because I am under a lot of pressure right now. The story is in Chris's head, and he has a multitude of pockets, is how I can describe how I see him. So he has moments, and he has storyline, and he has plot, but everything is a mixed smash and all over the place, which means if he makes one decision, there's a ripple effect of all the other decisions that happen, and my character is a part of all of it. So it's not a matter of him coming to me. We don't really have the time to do that. Things are moving very quickly. We need a stunt thing to work. And why is it working? I have to see my own journey within the story whilst it is unfolding. And then I can say to him, I'd like to try differently. I'd like to take, how about this take? And he's very open to that. But it's not in a sense, and it can't be a collaborative process, because it is in his and Tom's head. And then when they are on set and they talk about it, that's where the magic happens, and you watch them. So what happens here, and why are they doing that? Tom often asks why, but why is she saying that, and why am I saying this? We're all kind of active at the moment of go. We talk about character and journey, and also, for me, it's also the other characters. You know, that is a story. It's not just about my character. It's about the world. It's about the story. It's about, you know, you look at this cast that we have. You know, you still have Ving and Simon and Rebecca, and you also have, we're bringing back the cast of Henry Cerny. And there's just this, it's an epic, epic adventure. People are chasing us. Yes, they are. We're driving. Well, it does feel like a little bit of a paradox when you go, okay, you walked into a well oiled machine. That's meticulous in the way that it's planning any kind of stunt, because that takes months, sometimes years of preparation, engineering, mechanical planning ahead. And then also the discipline of training for the stunts, whether that's Tom or myself in the drifting and the train sequence. So you know that so much of it has to be planned and thought through. But then also on the day, a lot of the time we're in real locations, so the weather might change, or they might set up a shot and then just go, you know what, we had this idea this morning that this would work, but actually the view from behind us is better. Or, you know what, for some reason this isn't landing. And if there was a definite shot list, that goes out of the window by lunchtime, because they're often kind of finding something that feels more interesting in the moment. And, you know, they have that sort of, they're always searching for something better. They're never going to settle and be like, but the shot list says this, we've got to do this today. It's like, well, everything is up for discussion because they're looking for the thing that's going to be most exciting. The notion of a vision, of a set idea of what the film has to be, which is really how I started as a director, I now see that as something that cuts you off from any kind of discovery. You have all these great actors, you have this amazing talent, all of whom are very, very inventive. And if I came in in the morning and said, here's the script and here's how I want you to say it, and here's what I want to have happen in the scene, they're constrained. And as a result, when I get in the editing room, I'm constrained. The things that have to happen, the things that are absolutely necessary to plan in advance, if you're going to Rome, street closures, the number of cars, how many stunt drivers, how many cops, those things take an enormous amount of advanced planning. That takes a lot of preparation. In terms of what happens to the characters in those moments, those are the things where we try to remain very loose. The actors will always have a guide. They'll always have a target to hit, but it's not absolutely essential that they hit that target. The only thing that really matters is that I leave the scene with real affinity, a real emotional connection to the characters. You can try to write that, but the truth of the matter is most of that, the best of it comes from moments of behavior. There's a scene with Tom and Rebecca in a gondola on their way to a party. Their behavior tells you more about those two characters than any dialogue ever would. The scene that comes right before that, when they're on the balcony in Venice, there's two lines of dialogue in that scene. It had started as four lines of dialogue, and before that it was two pages of dialogue. It's all about just finding the emotion and the behavior and immersing the audience in the story. I always say it, don't ever let the plan get in the way of a better idea. Working with McHugh, you have the general idea, but there's a way to circle the drain and approach your character that eventually fine-tunes into a pinpoint, we can hope. He leaves room for collaboration. He knows he doesn't have all the answers because he expects people who've done this for years to bring something that he can't anticipate himself. I think it's really wise, the same with Tom. They make you feel at ease, even though you're playing in the big leagues and I don't know any other franchise better at doing what they do. As most of you know, I am merely a broker. I connect a buyer and a seller, sometimes for money, sometimes for information, but mostly for friendship. I just want everyone to get along, with me especially. But the world is changing, truth is vanishing, war is coming and the key to world domination is, of all things, a key. One that any government in the world would pay a king's ransom to take possession of. And some of my dearest friends, in this case, every major nuclear power and a handful of minor ones, have asked me to deliver this key. God, it's so funny because it doesn't feel like an action movie as we know it. It feels like this whole genre of its own because it's a kind of a drama. It also feels like a comedy. It also feels like a thriller and a sci-fi, you know, and a spy movie. I mean, it's so many in one and so that to me feels like it will always defy expectations and every character he kind of wants to do that with. He doesn't want them to feel like somebody that we've seen in cinema before. And so with Ilana, I remember the very first week when I signed on to Fallout, Chris gave me a book on power and it was about how power doesn't have to be loud. In fact, the quietest power is the most powerful. And so initially when we were playing scenes and I would try to be assertive with the power, he just said, oh no, just reel it all back and try and remain mysterious and try and remain, you know, as if you're kind of magnetising people to you because you don't have to because you have so many, you know, you're at the top of this organisation. It's a dark underground network of many different things, dealing plutonium and various things and playing many people off against each other. And so you always have to seem like everybody's side and on nobody's side. I don't write a role and then go looking for an actor. I cast an actor that I'm really interested in or that we're really interested in. And then we find the role. Vanessa Kirby was somebody I met, I met close to 10 years ago. Hayley Atwell, somebody I met 10 years ago. Actors I was really interested in and looking for the right opportunity and the right showcase for them. Cut to six years later, he called me in for a screen test with Tom and they both made it very clear that the way that they do Mission Impossible together is that they find the actor that they want to work with. And then the three of us will collaborate and create a character very much as we go along in real time. We had very little in terms of specific ideas of what we wanted Hayley to be. We knew what we didn't want her to be. Part of my kind of theatre background has meant that in a rehearsal space, you try 10 different things, 10 different line deliveries and you see what is most interesting. And so with Grace, on any given day, I was trying lots of different things and I had no idea what the through line would be for her until when I saw her, I went, oh, she's consistently inconsistent. One of the things that's really exciting when we start a new mission is who's coming in, who's new, who's going to be the villain, who's going to be our antagonist's allies, that kind of thing. And we've had a whole bunch of new characters come in on this. And because of the way we shot this movie, because we shot it during a particular point in human history, I don't need to really refer to it, we all know what it was. We were very much put together at the beginning in bubbles and staying in the same place, eating in the same rooms. And it was a really, you know, there's nothing to be joyous about what happened, but one positive at least was that we were able to knit together very quickly. And it was really, really advantageous to the creative process to be, you know, sort of bootcamped together. And so all the new people in this sort of integrated seamlessly into the kind of family that we are. And it was nice. New faces, always fun. I felt like the granddaddy, you know, because Tom's always busy. Tom's always doing something. So I was the sort of next person that the guys would come to and say, what's happening? What's this? Do we make films like this? When am I coming in next? We're filming mission, but we're living mission. And the friendship and the group dynamic is so important. It's kind of, you can sit in your trailer and have lunch, but we try and bring ourselves together a lot. So that dynamic you find between us has been built up because of the safety that we feel with each other all the time. And McHugh, I remember, said to me once when, in the beginning, he said, you know, we've got Tom, the movie star. We've got Simon Pegg, who is this. We have Ving. You have to bring something. You know, who's Ilsa for you? And I could feel this with all the characters. You know, Hayley. Hayley's phenomenal. Her wit, her timing, her, you know, precise quirkiness. It is such a character you fall in love with. Hayley and I trained together during COVID because we lived near each other and our amazing trainer, Sam Eastwood, was down the road. So we would go on socially distanced runs every day. And it was so bonding. And we got to go through a kind of five-month journey together before we even started. And we bonded very closely. And I really love her. And I love Rebecca so much. And the women in this have always been a great inspiration to me. I'm very proud to be part of a group of women that are, you know, so fierce. That to me is just, you're learning something. You're not thinking about how you look doing it. Or if you're good at it yet. You're just working out the mechanics of it as you go along. And then over time, it becomes more muscle memory. And once you can kind of rely on that, and also I was very much relying on the stunt team and also Tom McHugh to get the feedback of going, am I ready to drive Tom while handcuffed to him in the streets of Rome? Is, what do you think? I can feel confident, but I could be confident that that could be reckless of me to assume that. So it becomes this sort of over time, this sense of we all have to trust each other and be very clear and transparent about each other. So we understand the expectations that we're bringing and if we can meet them. I have no idea. And you see Hayley and I in a two-shot. Did I, you know, in me as her fellow actor, as I'm responsible for her, did I prepare her correctly for this? And as we're doing it, I'm also driving and I'm watching her performance. I'm acting and I'm also, McHugh and I know I'm out there shooting this and he and I will go back and we're going, we know we have one hour and I'm losing the light. I have to get this shot on her. So I'm both driving and I'm looking at her performance and I'm going, okay. And sometimes I'll be like, say this line, say that line. You know, McHugh and I will write different lines and I'll throw other lines out to her going, because I'm thinking about him in the editing room going, he, this is a moment, try this, try that, try this so that we have that room in the editing room to create that. Just finding the lens inside that fiat. It's not just, you've got to go, what's the lens telling us? What's the story? Not what do I think it's telling us? What is it telling us? And then when you show it to an audience, it's like, okay, what works and what doesn't? It is the equalizer, no matter what I think, you know. Well, this film series has been part of my life for 17 years. And as someone who went to see Mission Impossible at the cinema as a, you know, 25 year old man, never knowing that one day I would be part of that team, it's extraordinary for me to kind of think about that journey. And it never fails to kind of fill me with a sense of wonder that, you know, I've become such a part of it. It's broadened my horizons in so many ways. I've grown as an actor, as a filmmaker. You know, I've watched McHugh and Tom kind of with a gog, you know, with their method of filmmaking, which is a parallel kind of Mission Impossible whenever we make a film. And I'm just very grateful. And it sounds awful, doesn't it? I'm so grateful. But I am, I am because it's a gift. This film series has been a gift to me, you know. Are you okay? Yeah, McHugh and I, it was like always when we finish a film, we'll be at the premiere, we'll be first screening for an audience. I can't help but look at it. And I lean over to him and always say, we can do better. That's something that I always say to myself. And I say to him for the past 16 years, we've been making films together. You just want to, you want to know there's any story you can come up with any story. You can take any, any characters and create a story. And the fun of it and the challenge is going, how do we create these characters and engage an audience? And what adventure can we go on? Fallout began to delve deeper into Ethan as a character. Really, Ghost Protocol started to, to play with that. Fallout went deeper. Part one of Dead Reckoning goes deeper still. And part two will, will take you deepest.