Christopher McQuarrie, the director of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, has explained the reasoning behind this rewrites of Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
The hugely successful Mission: Impossible – Fallout wasn’t director Christopher McQuarrie’s first interaction with the franchise and neither was Rogue Nation, which he also directed. McQuarrie was also brought in to rewrite Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – a film directed by Brad Bird.
But was the reasoning behind McQuarrie’s involvement in that particular film? Well, the director has revealed the details to Light The Fuse (via JoBlo):
“When I read the script, the big things were, you didn’t know what was in the suitcase, you didn’t know what was in the envelope, you didn’t know what the villain was doing – this was all a mystery in the movie – and Michelle Monaghan was dead, Julia’s character was really dead. I came on board and I said, ‘Look, there are two things going on. One, emotionally if Julia’s dead, no matter how this story turns out, I’m sad.’”
McQuarrie is also responsible for the combining of the Julia and Brandt (Jeremy Renner) storyline: “I said, first of all, let’s try to integrate Tom’s story with Jeremy’s story so that Jeremy’ story is actually relevant to the movie, right now it feels like there are two movies happening. And again, no matter how you resolve Jeremy’s story, even at a hundred you were at ninety because he still hesitated and these two guys were still dead. Whereas, if we integrate the stories to say that Jeremy feels responsible for the death of Julia and at the end of the story we found out Julia’s not dead and Jeremy finds out that Julia’s not dead, you get to use that emotional engine, but then you get to let the audience off the hook at the end of it.”
It sounds like McQuarrie had a lot to do with the version of the movie we ended up seeing in cinemas. Were you a fan of Ghost Protocol? Let us know how you think McQuarrie’s own directorial efforts in the franchise stack up against it.
Originally published January 4, 2019. Updated March 19, 2020.
