Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning director considered de-aging Tom Cruise for flashback sequence

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny kicked off with an extended sequence featuring a de-aged Harrison Ford, but another action hero came close to joining him in peeling back the decades. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One director Christopher McQuarrie told Games Rader that he was considering de-aging Tom Cruise for a flashback sequence that would have taken place in 1989 but ultimately decided against it.

“Originally, there had been a whole sequence at the beginning of the movie that was going to take place in 1989,” Christopher McQuarrie said. “We talked about it as a cold open, we talked about it as flashbacks in the movie, we looked at de-aging.”

When de-aging is done well, it’s quite something, but Christopher McQuarrie worried, rightfully so, that it would distract from the story no matter how the de-aging turned out. “One of the big things about [the de-aging] I was looking at while researching, I kept saying, ‘Boy, this de-aging is really good’ or ‘This de-aging is not so good,’” McQuarrie said. “Never did I find myself actually following the story… I was so distracted by an actor that I had known for however long was now suddenly this young person.“

However, just because Tom Cruise didn’t get the de-aging process in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One doesn’t mean that it won’t happen in the future. McQuarrie teased that he may have “cracked the code” on how to approach the de-aging process. “We may still play with it,” McQuarrie said. “We never say never.“

In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Ethan Hunt and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, and dark forces from Ethan’s past closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than his mission – not even the lives of those he cares about most.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is now playing in theaters, so be sure to check out a review from our own Chris Bumbray and let us know what you thought of the film as well.