The Stunts, Masks, And Making Of ‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One’ | IMDb

I'll make him laugh at how ridiculous his life is sometimes. He'll suddenly come to and go, oh yeah, this is strange that I'm flying you in a helicopter to go and swim with sharks. Your life will always matter more to me than my own. Your character Grace outruns Ethan Hunt in a foot chase. Was that acting or are you actually faster on foot than Tom Cruise? The difference is in form because when Tom Cruise runs, and one of the reasons why he is the Mr. Running Man of movies, is because he has clearly studied the form and the composition of the runner's body. He runs with every cell in his body. So yes, he's incredibly fast. But what impresses me more than anything is you feel like he is literally running for his life because of how alive his whole body is and how perfectly harmonious and kind of anatomical his form is. Like it blows my mind. People are chasing us. Yes, they are. You're driving. I share a work ethic with him. It's very focused. It's disciplined. We're there for a common goal, which is to do the best that we possibly can and push ourselves. And, you know, he's done that for 41 years at an extraordinary level that sets the bar so high for me and other people around him. And for me, it really matches my own kind of value system when it comes to my work, which is to challenge myself and push my own comfort level and my own limits. And so I found that very invigorating, you know, to have a leader on a set as a producer and as a co-star and as kind of directing it sometimes too, of feeling so supported in my attempts to try lots of different things. It's a very freeing place because you don't bring your ego to work. You're just there to try things and see what works. Who is that person? I have no idea. So looking back on that interview where you laughed at the idea of being cast in Mission Impossible 3, Dead Reckoning Part 1 is your fifth film in the franchise. Yeah. So does it still seem so impossible? The irony of that will never be lost on me, but, you know, now it feels like it's such a part of my life. It feels very normal, however extraordinary these films are and the experience of making them is. You know, it's part of who I am now and I feel very lucky to be, you know, now a legacy character. You know, I'm like one of the old guys now. Any other franchises you want to scoff at the mere idea of being cast in to put out in the universe? No, not really. I mean, I've learned never to say never in my career. You know, that's one thing that's definitely the case. I look back on my childhood as a film fan. I remember seeing Mission Impossible 1 in the cinema in 96, you know, in my early 20s or whatever and not knowing, never knowing that I would one day be part of that group. You know, that to me, I love to think about that and think if someone had come up to you and whispered, hey, one day you're going to be doing that job, I would have been, what? Are you kidding me? Listen, I don't want to sound ungrateful, okay? I appreciate everything you do for me, but one of these days you're going to take it too far. The IMF team creates a mask of your face. Were you able to interact with that at all? And do you know who got to keep it? I don't know where it is. It's in some cupboard somewhere, isn't it? Ooh, let's find out. Well, I don't know. Did I get to interact with it? I don't know because I had to do a lot of, we took a lot of kind of footage of me lying in it and then cutting to it. They're so clever. I mean, the fact that you never doubt, I never doubted when I watched this movie. We watched it just this week, didn't we? That the masks, I mean, you're tricked just as much as everybody else. It's just amazing. It's amazing that they pull it off. They're so clever and it's really fun to film. Pom, if you were given an unsupervised hour with the IMF team's mask-making briefcase, which of your co-stars are you creating a mask of? Oh my God. I mean, maybe Tom. I would love to wear Tom's face. I would walk outside and just do weird stuff. I don't know. I don't know what would I do. I would dance. I would dance in the streets and that would create a lot of drama, I think. Yeah, that'd be great. There'd probably be a mob. That's a great question. I think you know the answer. I think to live a day in the life of TC would be like, that'd be something else. I mean, I get to see it. I walk alongside it. I have done for many years and I often pull him up on it and I'll make him laugh at how ridiculous his life is sometimes. He'll suddenly come to and go, oh yeah, this is strange that I'm flying you in a helicopter to go and swim with sharks. The thing is that he's got such a huge amount of humility as well though and I also get to see him being just ordinary man. Just on a Tom Cruise day, that would be fun to wear his face. Well, I'd immediately get an espresso given to me probably because Tom does like an espresso. I'd use his gym. His gym is amazing. It's got all these really incredible gadgets in. There's a lot of on-set dogs. Loads of people brought their dogs to the set and it was a very kind of dog-friendly environment and they got treated so well. Everyone gave them cuddles and treats and they got to nap throughout the day. So I would love to see if there's like a mask where I could just like be one of those on-set dogs and live their life for a little bit because I tell you, that's a very attractive idea to me. Ah! Oh man, that's a good one. Yeah, that's good. I think I will make a mask of Simon so that I can say a lot of like rude stuff in an elegant British voice and you know, no one would take it seriously. I'd make a mask of Tarzan so I could be handsome, considered handsome for once. Or maybe McHugh. What about if we could walk around as McHugh? Oh yeah, finally call the shots, tell people what they're doing, what mountain they're jumping off next. Hey McHugh. How are you? Great day, man. I'm fascinated by how these films are constructed somewhat in reverse after location stunts or set pieces are devised. Can you talk about what it's like to build a movie at this scale in that manner and if it's a filmmaking style you'll take with you beyond the Mission Impossible franchise? You know, I would say the style changes with every movie simply because we're not trying to impose a style on it. I tend to look for what the location is telling me to do and what the story and the characters are telling me to do. We don't write a role and then go cast an actor. We cast an actor we really like and then we tailor the role to that. And so it's really a chemistry experiment. We go in with a plan but we don't let the plan get in the way of a better idea. And we're always moving towards a destination but along the way we might discover something better and we find a way to incorporate everything we've done into that new idea. And early on, starting as a screenwriter and starting as somebody who believed fully in the power of the written word, you would write a scene and then go looking for the place to shoot it. And I realized over time of making these movies that you're really just limiting yourself. And if you go to these locations and give into them, they tell you what they wanna be. Venice told us the kind of action sequence you wanted to see. Rome very clearly lent itself to the sequence that we shot there. And that's how we choose locations. We look at a place and say, what does it invite? Does it invite action? Does it invite intrigue? Does it invite romance? And it doesn't really matter what we want the scene to be. If you're looking through the lens and you see something different, why fight it? Just lean into it. What was in the script this time that you were like, they're not pulling that off? And then they did. Well, this thing, I mean that. Oh yeah, that's Tom flying behind you. Actually being there on the day and actually seeing it in real time, that was a genuinely nerve wracking experience because he'd do this moment here and then he'd go down there and we'd lose sight of him. And then there'd just be silence. And we'd wait to hear the radio come to life and say, oh, good canopy, which meant his shoe had opened. And that gap, I mean, it was an eternity. I think there were two. I mean, I was asked on one of the days in Rome to drift outside of the Wedding Cake Monument in a car where my character had knocked all four doors off. There was three cameras rigged on top of the windscreen so I couldn't actually see exactly where I was going. I was having to kind of look in between in the camera. And I was handcuffed to Tom Cruise, which was in the passenger seat, which is metaphorically and literally not his favorite place to be. It was in that moment when we finished and he'd given me a round of applause and the crew gave me a round of applause, which was so sweet and unexpected and had come from just five months of me training. You know, that's what I felt like my job was, so get good at it. And realizing at that moment that he'd really trusted me to be able to take control and have him be very much dependent on what I was capable of doing in that car was really kind of special moment in my career in general, I would say. And then also the vertical train rig. I mean, just insane. Going from horizontal to vertical in six seconds on a steep incline and having to reach a mark and hang from it as we're hanging over a ravine. At one point, Tom looked at me and he could tell that I'd had adrenal fatigue and he just looked at me and he went, you need some chocolate. And I went, yeah, I think I do. I think that's exactly what I need. And then gave me a beautiful piece of chocolate that I was able to carry on. Is there a specific stunt or scene that you can't believe that you pulled off? I mean, it was really exciting to get to run on top of a train, of a moving train, you know? And it's like some things that you usually are not allowed to do because people want you to do things with CGI and protected and all that. So to be able to do that outdoors on a running train and then like jump over carriages, it was so much fun. I loved it. And also if I had like any hesitation about anything, I would just hum right before the take and it was like, okay, let's go. Every single one of them. And I say that, I'm not being facetious. With these movies, the intensity of constructing them is so immense. The schedule is usually very, very tight. The challenges on this one were so extreme. Your head is down for most of it, just trying to execute what it is you've set out to do. And it takes a long time for you to really get a sense of the scope of what you've done. It was only when we were in the cutting room and started to put together the movie that we realized just how big a movie we had made. Is there something you still want to see him do? Is there some kind of like location that you want to see him jump from? I would love to see Ethan Hunt run a chef's kitchen. I think juggling plates and having to deliver a Michelin star restaurant cuisine over and over again with the threat of starting kitchen fires and having very angry customers giving up and walking out. I want to see something sort of more domestic or like maybe even Ethan Hunt, I think his biggest challenge would be probably taking a nap. I think that will be impossible for Ethan Hunt. Can he take a nap? Honestly, it's scary to say it because if you give him the idea, he will really do it. So I'm kind of skeptical to give any type of ideas planted in his head. I want to see him walk between the two tallest buildings in any great city. But someone already did it. So he's going to want to do something that someone hasn't done. So let's stop giving him ideas because he will do it. And somehow he's very convincing. And I'm like, yeah, that sounds cool. And then you up there, you're like, wait, why did I say yes? And for Tom to just to take a moment off, that would be Ethan and Tom's biggest challenge. You know, the funny thing is every time we make one of these movies and we get to the end, I always get asked, what's next? What could you possibly do next? And I always say, I have no idea. And then I turn up for work the next time and there it is in the script. There's something even crazier, even more vast. And I can always trust Tom and McHugh to just like push the envelope that little bit further. Taking a nap is so good because I can't imagine Ethan or Tom taking a nap. Or a holiday. Yes, maybe a holiday. Oh my God, yes, a holiday. Like a beach holiday. With a cocktail just on the beach. Like tanning? Oh my God, I don't think so. Like a nice martini, a nice chilled martini. I would actually love that for him. If anything happens to them, there's no place that I won't go to kill you. That is written. I must commend you both on your performances. You know, I actually believe that your characters believed that you would be able to catch Ethan Hunt. I mean, you've seen these movies, right? Come on, how'd you get in the right headspace to play that? Oh, there's a lot of self-talk, a lot of confidence boosting. Like you can do it. You can do it, Brett. You can do it in him back. You can do it, big guy. I mean, yeah, all kidding aside, that's the whole key to this. Is you have, he and I have to believe. You know what I mean? If we don't think we can catch him, then I said the movie unravels for us. It just, you don't believe it. So we have to continue to be, think we're going to get him, even though whatever happens, happens in the film. Yeah, that's one of the keys to it. You know, you always want these films to be topical, you know, capturing real world fears. So what is it like to release a story about Ethan Hunt taking on artificial intelligence run amok as the Writers Guild hopes to likewise reign in AI in Hollywood? Well, it's look every, the basic concepts of storytelling are humanity versus humanity, humanity versus itself, humanity versus nature, humanity versus technology. There's only so many stories to tell. And with a spy movie, you tend to end up with humanity versus technology, whatever that world ending threat might be. And this was just a natural progression. This was a new technology that the franchise had not really dealt with. And it just turned out to be pretty timely. You flashback to 30 years ago and Tom Cruise was not de-aged to play a younger Ethan Hunt. Was there any discussion about possibly using that technology to de-age Cruise? We look at everything. And what we found ourselves feeling was we wanted you to be emotionally connected to the scene. We wanted you to be in Ethan's point of view. We didn't want you watching the scene and scrutinizing how good or not good the de-aging was. Even perfect de-aging, I find myself looking at it and saying, wow, that de-aging is amazing. It was really more important for that particular scene that it be about the emotions he was feeling than the moment in history that he was in. If it was absolutely necessary, if I had to take you back there and really immerse you in a scene, it would be another thing. But this was, it's more dreamlike and it's very much through his point of view. And as a result, it wasn't important that we saw Ethan as much as we saw what he was experiencing. I don't accept that. Dead Reckoning Part Two will supposedly end the series. What is still on your Mission Impossible bucket list? Well, now I have to say, no one has come up to me and said officially, this is the last one we're gonna make. Never say never is a mantra I carry forward. And I am never dissatisfied when I get to the end of making these films. I always feel like I've just done, you know, I'm wrung out, I'm just completely exhausted. As you are when you watch it, you know, you get to the end and you're just completely exhausted. One thing I really enjoy about what McHugh does is he's always really true to the characters. And sometimes people ask me, oh, would Benji like to jump off a cliff or do this? And I said, well, that's not Benji. You know, Benji has a job in the group. And if you suddenly saw him being almost superhuman like Ethan is sometimes, it wouldn't be true to the character. And that's the thing that Tom and McHugh really care about with these films. It's getting the characters to feel real and 3D and people that the audience can invest their emotion in. Because without that investment, those big stunts wouldn't mean a thing, you know? I don't know how part two is going to end, just to be completely clear. Because of the nature of these movies, I, even if I knew how it was going to end, I wouldn't bet on it.