Tom Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie are no strangers to breaking new ground in action filmmaking. McQuarrie and Cruise have upped the ante in the Mission: Impossible series by doing even more spectacular stunts in recent films. Both parties are adrenaline junkies, so when brainstorming for Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, out in theaters July 12, the two came up with concepts for mind-blowing feats that would keep the audience on the edge of their seats.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Christopher McQuarrie said: “At the start of this movie, I said to Tom, ‘What do you want to do?’ He said, ‘I want to drive a motorcycle off of a cliff. What do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I want to wreck a train.’ We’re enormous fans of Buster Keaton, John Frankenheimer, David Lean, all of these filmmakers who at one time or another had a fabulous train wreck. I thought, ‘I’ve earned that, I want to wreck one, too.'”
McQuarrie directed the blockbuster spy franchise’s last two films, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Mission Impossible: Fallout. The incredible stunt that Tom Cruise pulled off in Rogue Nation, in which he clung to the outside of a moving Airbus as it took off and soared through the air, was accomplished without the use of any green screen technology.
However, that was only the start. McQuarrie and Cruise went much further in Mission Impossible: Fallout. Cruise piloted a helicopter during a frantic chase scene through the mountains of New Zealand and jumped out of an airplane at 25,000 feet, freefalling for over two minutes.
In the upcoming Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, Tom Cruise will reprise his role as Ethan Hunt, super spy and leader of the Mission Impossible Force. McQuarrie has said that Ilsa Faust, played by Rebecca Ferguson in Rogue Nation, will work with Cruise’s character to infiltrate a high-class event in Italy.