Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One: Christopher McQuarrie discusses how he and Tom conceive the death defying stunts

Tom Cruise is comfortably seated at the table next to Jackie Chan for action stars who are known for planning and personally attempting death-defying stunts in their films for the entertainment of the audience. Whereas Jackie has wisely decided to take it easier at his age, Cruise, nine years younger than Chan at 60, seems to keep turning up the dial with each installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Cruise has been hanging onto planes, hanging from trains, and jumping off cliffs for this next installment, Dead Reckoning Part One.

The madman who collaborates with Cruise during the thrill ride productions is writer/director Christopher McQuarrie. ComicBook.com got to speak with McQuarrie on the process in which he and Tom come up with the breathtaking action set pieces for their movies. McQuarrie explains, “There’s not a chicken, there’s not an egg. Sometimes we start with…like, Fallout started with the emotional story of Ethan and Julia, and the stunts were kind of put around in the periphery. The beginning of this one, I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ He said, ‘I want to ride a motorcycle off a cliff. What do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I want to wreck a train. Let’s just wreck a train.’ Of course, both of us at one point or another would remind the other, ‘You know, this was your idea. You wanted to do this.’ Tom was very fortunate in one respect becuase he got his stunt out of the way day one. I’m still shooting that train. That just took forever, and it was very, very challenging.”

Cruise has a reputation for giving his all for his movies, and that includes putting his life in harm’s way. As admirable as it is and exciting to know that he has that card to play with, McQuarrie isn’t oblivious to the risk of endangering one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. “Anything is doable. It’s, is it worth the risk? Can I put the camera in a place where you can see it? There are stunts — little stunts — where I just can’t see Tom’s face, it happens so quickly. And I look at him and say, this is not worth doing. It’s necessary for the story, but it’s not worth getting injured when nobody can tell it’s you. Normally your job is to hide the fact that it’s a stuntman. I have the opposite problem; I gotta show that it’s Tom. That means for every one of these stunts, we have to invent camera equipment, we have to invent ways to show these sequences, and it’s a testament to the crew. I’ve been there [when Tom] created an idea one night, and I said, ‘the camera equipment does not exist to do this,’ and by the next afternoon, the camera existed. The team built the rig.” 

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning parts one and two filmed back-to-back. Not much is known about the second part, except that Tom has filmed a scene on an aircraft carrier. But with Part One already setting the bar high, it only means they will have to top it for Part Two.