Tom Cruise doing Tom Cruise things has become a staple part of the cinematic diet over the last three decades, but even his Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One director Christopher McQuarrie has admitted one sequence from the long-awaited threequel was a lot more dangerous than he realized.
He’s not even talking about the already-iconic money shot that sees the A-list superstar ride a motorcycle off a cliff and then parachute to safety; something Cruise did no less than six times because he’s utterly insane. Instead, a fight on top of a moving train posed untold risks, so much so that McQuarrie stated to Empire he probably wouldn’t have done it in the first place had he known the dangers ahead of time.
“We’re making a movie that involves sequence that they just don’t shoot practically anymore, and haven’t in a long, long time. The sequence that we’re shooting right now is no exception. And like most things on Mission: Impossible, if we had known what the challenges were when we started, we would never have done it.”
Not that Cruise minded, but the actor and producer must be an absolute nightmare to insure whenever he signs on for any production given the high likelihood he’s planning something that even the most seasoned stunt professionals in the business might think twice about.
That’s all part of the fun, though, and one of the major reasons why Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One stands a very good chance of being the blockbuster to beat this year.
