As filming continues on Mission: Impossible 6, director Christopher McQuarrie has taken a break from the production to chat to Scriptnotes (via Collider) about the latest entry in the blockbuster spy series. McQuarrie, who also helmed Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and becomes the first director to return to the series for a second outing, discussed how he intends on increasing the emphasis on Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) character arc, as well as taking the franchise in a new direction tonally.
“I was determined, unlike the last movie, to spend more time in one location,” said McQuarrie. “I went back and I looked at the first movie, which started in Prague, and realized that they’re in Prague for the first half of the movie. So, I sort of pulled back a little bit on the globe-trotting. I think in Rogue Nation I think we might have been in six countries in the first ten minutes of the movie. The problem with something like Mission, the action is dictating the narrative. And I was determined to change that in this movie. And I started with that. I started with more of an emotional story for this character and more of a character arc within it. It’s definitely more of an emotional journey for Ethan Hunt in that movie. But then the action comes in. And the ambitions of that action, so there’s a sequence at the end of the movie which is fabulous. It’s never been done. It’s all photo real. It’s going to be incredible. You then have to create the contrivances for that sequence to happen.”
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McQuarrie then spoke about the film’s tone, and how it will differ from previous instalments: “We had a big conversation about tone. Because [Ghost Protocol director] Brad Bird really changed the tone of the franchise and Rogue Nation embraced that tone completely. At the beginning of this I said to Tom, ‘I don’t think we can do that three in a row. I think now it’s going to become cute. I think we need to take it another direction still.’ And we did. But now we find ourselves going, you know, are we going where Bond went where Bond became – serious. It’s another kind of tone. Which, by the way, has not hurt their bottom line at all. They’ve really found their place. But we can’t go there. We were sort of laughing because we were looking at Rogue Nation and saying, ‘Well thanks, Bond, for not doing that anymore, so we’ll do it.’ Now we’re looking at it and going, ‘But we can’t keep doing that’. We suddenly hit that same wall and understood why Bond went the way they did. And we’re at this kind of emotional crossroads with the franchise saying well how dramatic can you take Mission? It’s not going to a dark place. It’s going to a more emotionally dramatic place.”
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“Rebecca Ferguson’s character is back in this movie and her introduction in the movie was originally this page of dialogue when Ethan runs into her at this event. I also am working with a new cinematographer [Rob Hardy],” McQuarrie continued. “And we kept talking about shooting things in longer takes, oners, less editing. And I realized that the scene that I had written for the two of them forced me to cut back and forth. And I was very frustrated in the last movie that every time people started talking, it eventually – the movie just stopped and turned into – just coverage. Just coverage, coverage, coverage. And I thought how do I get out of that. I want the camera to feel lighter. I just want the scenes to feel lighter. So, I realized this scene between Tom and Rebecca was going to just drag me down into coverage. So I started taking away the lines of the scene that weren’t necessary. And one by one I cut away every line until there was nothing left in the scene. And what happens now is Rebecca just bumps into Tom. Tom sees Rebecca. Rebecca sees Tom. And they have this whole moment. There’s a whole story between the two of them and there’s another person standing there. And she can’t say what she wants to say. He can’t say – and they just behave the scene. And it was really liberating. So we’ve gone in and done a lot of that. We’ve just sort of chipped away.”
Mission: Impossible 6 will see Tom Cruise joined by returning stars Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin and Sean Harris, along with new additions Henry Cavill (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), Sian Brooke (Sherlock), Angela Bassett (American Horror Story) and Vanessa Kirby (The Crown). It is set for release on July 27th 2018.
Originally published June 6, 2017. Updated November 30, 2022.
