‘There has to be a reason I’m chasing Ethan’: ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ star demanded a worthwhile backstory

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One crams a lot into every action set piece. For example, the movie is never content to simply have Ethan Hunt pursuing his target through an airport. He’ll also have to deal with the intervention of an enigmatic lady thief, a US government hit squad out to assassinate him, a mysterious digital ghost and, oh yeah, a ticking miniature nuclear bomb.

That director Christopher McQuarrie is able to keep all these plates spinning at once is a testament to his skills, though even in a two-and-a-half-hour epic there’s some stuff that gets left on the cutting room floor. For example, Shea Whigham’s Briggs, the government agent in charge of neutralizing Hunt, simply shows up in the franchise with an unexplained beef.

However, in an interview with SlashFilm, Whigham teased that answers may be on the way in Part Two:

“I told them that there has to be a reason why I’m chasing [Ethan]. Otherwise, it’s not going to play for two and a half hours, to have egg on my face in every country, that I just miss him. So I just wanted to ratchet that up without explaining anything. I didn’t want to explain it, other than going into, possibly, the next one. But also, man, I wanted to honor the Midnight Run of it all, The Fugitive of it all. I’m big on paying homage to films that I love, and so we sprinkled some of that in there and I just wanted to make Briggs a wild card. By any means possible, he’d tried to take Ethan in, with it being real and personal underneath.”

Cards on the table, Dead Reckoning was the first Mission: Impossible I’ve seen since III back in 2006. I’ll catch up, but when Briggs showed up with no explanation as to why he has a bone to pick with Hunt, I assumed that he was a returning character from a previous movie.

Whether we ever learn Briggs’ true motivation in a future movie or not, the world is now eager to see how this sci-fi Hideo Kojima-esque espionage adventure plays out. Sadly we may have to wait a little longer than expected, as production on Part Two is currently on hold due to the Hollywood strikes.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two is scheduled for release on June 28, 2024.