‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One’ | Anatomy of a Scene

“I’m Christopher McQuarrie, the director and one of the writers and producers of ‘Mission — Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “What are we going to do?” “Let’s find a new car.” “The inspiration for this sequence actually occurred to me during the shooting of ‘Mission — Impossible Fallout’ when I was looking for locations for the chase scene in Paris. And I saw a small Fiat 500 parked by the Seine River. And I thought it would be great, the idea of ​​watching Ethan Hunt and Tom Cruise drive in a car like that. When I pitched this idea to Tom, he immediately appreciated the notion of doing a car chase that involves more humor than any of the sequences we’ve done before, and he really leans in. One thing to watch in this sequence is the behavior between Tom Cruise and Haley Atwell. You’re looking at two actors performing in two-shots, which means you don’t have any editorial control. It’s not like I get to pick each actor’s best moments. I really have to give you their best at the same time. And what it really does is it creates a connection for these two characters. The most important part about this sequence isn’t really the action. It’s the feeling of a relationship that develops between two people who really don’t want to be together. And this car chase is about creating circumstances where they’re forced together, and over the course of a sequence, you feel like they’re becoming a team. Rome is a very difficult place to shoot. The Fiat is a very difficult car to drive. And obviously, it’s very difficult to drive that car in handcuffs, especially on the cobblestone streets where all the driving, everything you see Tom do, becomes completely unpredictable. And what you end up with is a sequence where the car almost has a mind of its own. It becomes a character in the sequence along with Haley’s hair, as you can see there. In this part of the sequence, we end up at the Spanish Steps. We were allowed to shoot on the Spanish Steps with the understanding that we couldn’t actually physically touch the Spanish Steps. But as long as we don’t touch the Spanish Steps, we can do whatever we want. So what we did was we built the Spanish Steps in three sections on a backlot so we could drive cars down them. And everything Tom and Haley do here is very hard, very punishing. The car does not have a really good suspension. So riding down the stairs was very annoying. And we got into a little bit here with the rolling cars that we did in three sections. One, Tom went down the stairs. Then we had a bunch of gripes roll a car down the empty steps. And then, finally, we built a padded interior for the two actors to actually roll up the stairs while the cameras rolled.”