MAN ON A MISSIONS
Well, this is awkward.
Not least because Empire has convened with McQuarrie, in a London studio on a rare day when the writer-director isn’t racking up the air miles scouting locations for the next two Mission: Impossible movies, to discuss his evolution as a director. And, primarily, his evolution as an action director. And not just any common-or-garden action director, but one of the very best in the business.
“ I find it funny that we’re talking about me as an action director,”says Christopher McQuarrie.“I don’t consider myself one. I didn’t set out to be one. And if I don’t make another action movie, that will be okay.”
Because, while McQuarrie might McQuibble slightly with the label, that’s what he’s become, across the course of the four films he’s made as director. The Way Of The Gun, Jack Reacher, Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation and Mission: Impossible — Fallout feature incredible action sequences aplenty. There are bruising punch-ups, Tom Cruise running, stupendously staged shootouts, Tom Cruise running, crunching car chases, and Tom Cruise running some more, for good measure.
Each has, somewhat unusually, been better than the last. Fallout, in particular, is widely regarded as something of a masterpiece of mega-scale mayhem; the kind of classically staged action flick that puts shaky-cam aficionados on shaky ground. Not bad for a guy who didn’t set out to be an action director. “When I did have ambitions to direct, those ambitions were to direct more along the lines of big, historical epics,” he says. “Valkyrie was the sort of thing I had ambitions to direct. I was not waking up and thinking I wanted to be an action movie director.”
Yet some people are burdened with glorious purpose, even if it’s 180 degrees removed from their original intention. McQuarrie’s is to make action movies. It’s something Tom Cruise, McQuarrie’s creative partner, recognised in him the second they met in 2007. “It was working with, and the evolution of that, and working with him in the editing room,” says Cruise. “I could see already his understanding of how to put elements together to create an effect on an audience. I said, ‘You have to think about making movies that audiences want to see.’”
