There's one achievement that's perhaps more jawdropping than any of the extreme stunts that star/producer Tom Cruise has completed. And it's that – in a world of IP fatigue and diminishing returns – Mission: Impossible is a rare (unique?) franchise that's managed to keep getting better. The biggest challenge that two-part epic Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning faces is living up to its predecessor, 2018's Fallout – the hands-down best film in the series, and the highest-grosser, too.
Dead Reckoning Part One finds Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his IMF team on a mission to stop a potentially catastrophic weapon known as the Entity falling into the wrong hands. As well as the likes of Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) returning, a figure from Hunt's past is back in the form of Henry Czerny's Eugene Kittridge (last seen in the first Mission: Impossible movie, back in 1996), and new threats are played by Esai Morales and Pom Klementieff.
Writer/director and long-time Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie returns for the third (and fourth) time here, and once again he'll be balancing globe-hopping scale and increasingly breathtaking stunts (car chases! Locomotive smackdowns! Motorcycle cliff leaps!), but, as he tells Total Film, he's increasingly fixated on Ethan's inner emotional journey. TF meets McQuarrie and key filmmaking allies – editor Eddie Hamilton, composer Lome Balfe and music supervisor Cecile Tournesac for a masterclass on crafting a crowd-pleasing spectacle under intense pressure, and to find out how their biggest competition is themselves.
DIRECT LINE
WRITER/DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER McQUARRIE OH TENSION, TEST SCREENINGS AND TOM. AS TOLD TO MATT MAYTUM
TESTING TIMES
‘We're actually big believers in [test screenings]. I actually lean into it. I've been asked, “Don't you ever just go with your gut?” And my answer to that is, “Yes, we do that every day.” Invariably, the audience is there to tell you whether or not you are communicating what you intended to communicate.
‘My education in film goes back to working as a security guard at a movie theatre for four years, and listening to the audience. The audience
