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Talk To Her -> TC Works -> 2023 [mi 7]
Post Info TOPIC: 2023 [mi 7]
juliezhou

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2023.06.10 World Premiere in Rome

Deadline report on premiere:

https://deadline.com/gallery/mission-impossible-dead-reckoning-part-one-premiere-photos-tom-cruise/italy-us-entertainment-cinema-3/

Collider report on social reaction:

https://collider.com/mission-impossible-dead-reckoning-part-one-reactions-is-it-good/

Vairety report on premiere:

https://variety.com/2023/film/global/tom-cruise-mission-impossible-7-world-premiere-1235647932/

Variety report on social reaction:

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/mission-impossible-7-first-reactions-tom-cruise-1235647961/



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Giorgia Meloni receives Tom Cruise: “‘Mission impossible’ is also our daily bread”

June 20, 2023byItalianPostNews

The Prime Minister with the actor at Palazzo Chigi: “Delighted that the capital of Italy is the protagonist of his latest film”

Tom Cruise by Giorgia Meloni at Palazzo Chigi. The Hollywood actor paid a visit to the Prime Minister in Rome. The procession of six vehicles, two sedans and four vans, entered the seat of government from the entrance in Piazza del Parlamento, where the prime minister was waiting for the actor. The visit lasted about half an hour, the star of Mission Impossible left Palazzo Chigi shortly after 20.30.

“Glad that the capital of Italy is the protagonist of Tom Cruise’s latest film” writes Prime Minister Meloni on Instagram, after their meeting, posting a photo in which the radiant premier and the American star are seen. “Today in Rome the world premiere. The ‘mission impossible’ are also our daily bread in government”.

The image sparked comments on Instagram. “Giorgia ask Tom Cruise if he can bring the resources to his home”, reads the first comment with a reference to the migrants arriving in our country. Vania rejoices and thanks “Giorgia for welcoming a great star properly”. For Analaika “Aí sim, dois lindos”, or “here are two beautiful”, with hearts and small hearts printed. Criticism Elisa “But where is the authority of the politician? This one posts a photo every 10 seconds!”. She replies to Prime Minister Alessia’s caption: “Truly the ‘impossible mission’ is being Italian in Italy! And with this I include everything! Traitor”. Dennis notes the premier’s meetings: “You understand our Giorgina, first Elon Musk and now Tom Cruise”. Lorenzo limits himself to a “fantastic”. Finally, someone sows doubt: “It seems to me the double, not the real @tomcruise”.

==

The prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, receives Tom Cruise at Palazzo Chigi. The Hollywood star, protagonist of the Mission Impossible saga, arrived at the seat of government aboard a luxury sedan with tinted rear windows, followed by another car and four vans. The meeting with the premier lasted about half ‘Now.

“Glad that the capital of Italy is the protagonist of Tom Cruise’s latest film. Today in Rome theworldpremiere. The ‘mission impossible’ are also our daily bread in government”.This is the message, accompanied by the emoticon of a smile, published by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, with a photo together with the Hollywood star actor received at Palazzo Chigi.

ANSA Agency

==

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 Premiere
MI7 is the first part of the last installation in the Mission Impossible franchise. Tom Cruise returns as the lead spy of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF), Ethan Hunt. Directed by Chris McQuarrie and produced under Paramount Pictures, the movie premiered in Rome, with a grand screening at the Auditorium della Conciliazione.

It was attended by hoards of fans, who were though, tired of the 90-minute delay as Cruise was on an impromptu call with the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, cheered the cast on the red carpet. The movie is locally distributed by Eagle Pictures, with a significant part of the movie being filmed in Italy.

Schermata-2023-06-20-alle-08.03.22.jpg



-- Edited by juliezhou on Tuesday 20th of June 2023 08:20:58 PM

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Hayley Atwell Recalls How Tom Cruise Took Her Grandmother on a Helicopter Tour of London (Exclusive)

By Meredith B. Kile 2:13 PM PDT, June 21, 2023

When you're in a movie with Tom Cruise, you can expect some pretty extreme experiences!

ET's Nischelle Turner sat down with Cruise and hisMission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One co-stars this week, ahead of the film's premiere, and franchise newcomer Hayley Atwell shared how the multi-talented superstar helped her give her grandmother an unforgettable memory.

"The first thing comes to mind for me is that he took my grandmother in a helicopter on Christmas Eve and gave her a tour of London," Atwell shared of Cruise's epic gift. "I didn't tell her it was coming, because I knew that she wouldn't -- there's no way she would get into a helicopter."

"I took her to a helicopter base in central London that had, like, a cafe attached to it, and we're having a cup of tea and I said, 'Oh, some helicopters out there,' and she went, 'Oh, you wouldn't get me in one of those things,'" the actress recalled. "We surprised her and Tom came walking around the car. It was so sweet, because my grandmother was like, 'Hiya, Tom, how are you darling?!' and talked to him like he was one of her own."

"She was so relaxed with him. And then he said, 'I would love to take you on the helicopter, on a ride of London,'" Atwell continued. "And she was like, 'Oh, fantastic! Yes, I'll just put me walking stick down here!'... The effect that he had on her totally disarmed her fear. And she had the most wonderful time... It was cute."

The Agent Carter star was also wowed by Cruise's presence on the set of Mission: Impossible, praising his interactions with the cast and crew of the beloved franchise.

"The charisma that he has comes from sort of a childlike enthusiasm for the work that he does," Atwell marveled. "And the fact that he remains a student of film, he's always looking to push, to explore, he's very curious. That keeps him taking creative risks."

"Also, I think his kindness," she added of what makes Cruise one of the biggest stars in the world. "He walks into the room, he knows everyone's name, he gives everyone his time. Very gracious, really charming. And that, of course, magnetizes people to him because they want to be in the company of people who make them feel good."

For Cruise's part, no surprise, he said taking Atwell's grandmother for the life-changing ride was his pleasure.

"I knew her grandmother's never been in a helicopter, so [I said] I'm going to take you at sunset," he recalled. "It was beautiful.... I said, 'Don't worry, Hayley. We're gonna just take our time. It's gonna be a lovely family outing."

Cruise also had nothing but praise for Atwell joining the Mission: Impossible franchise, noting that both the actress and their new locations in Rome both brought something special to Dead Reckoning Part One.

"Hayley's performance and who she is, it just allowed us a different kind of tone," he shared. "Rome is incredibly romantic. ... It's a cinematic city. In the history of cinema, La Dolce Vita, you know, Roman Holiday. And we're looking at this, seeing what Hayley as an actress allows us to bring, and allows those sequences in the same way."

https://www.etonline.com/hayley-atwell-recalls-how-tom-cruise-took-her-grandmother-on-a-helicopter-tour-of-london-exclusive



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Tom Cruise’s ‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One’ Sprinting Toward Franchise-Best $90M Opening

Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt in Paramount and Skydance's July tentpole, which opens three weeks from now.

BY PAMELA MCCLINTOCK

JUNE 22, 2023 9:09AM

Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One is tracking for a franchise-best opening in the $90 million range at the domestic box office in its first five days, a huge start for the July tentpole. And there’s plenty of upside, according to polling.

Cruise is in Europe this week for the Rome and London premieres of the movie. The Paramount and Skydance film begins opening in cinemas across the globe three weeks from now, including Wednesday, July 12, in North America. The $90 million projection includes a three-day weekend estimate of $65 million or more.

The latest installment in the famous action franchise is expected to be another win for Cruise after Paramount and Skydance blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick, which grossed nearly $1.5 billion at the worldwide box office last year despite ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic. Box office pundits believe moviegoers view the new Mission: Impossible pic as a sort-of spiritual sequel to Maverick, even though the two movies aren’t part of the same franchise.

In terms of the Mission series, 2018’s Mission: Impossible — Fallout holds the record for top three-day weekend opening ($61.2 million) at the domestic box office, followed by 2000’s Mission: Impossible II ($57.8 million), 2015’s Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation ($55.5 million), 2006’s Mission: Impossible III ($47.7 million), 1996’s Mission: Impossible ($45.4 million) and 2011’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol ($12.8 million), not adjusted for inflation.

Cruise is a favorite of cinema owners for promoting theatrical over streaming. His was also lauded by Steven Spielberg for his efforts. “You saved Hollywood’s ass, and you might have saved theatrical distribution,” Spielberg told Cruise during a private exchange at the 2023 Oscars luncheon that a bystander captured on video. “Seriously, Maverick might have saved the entire theatrical industry.”

Dead Reckoning, Part One is directed by Cruise good-luck charm Christopher McQuarrie, who has directed the star in a number of his films. McQuarrie also helms Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part Two, which is set to open June 28, 2024.

Footage screened at CinemaCon in late April included an inventive chase scene in which Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is handcuffed to Hayley Atwell’s Grace as they flee police and multiple factions of people who want them, most notably a character played by Pom Klementieff, whose most frightening feature is how much she seems to enjoy the chase and its ensuing mayhem.

In years past, Cruise debuted stunts from previous movies, such as hanging from the side of a plane, skydiving or jumping a motorbike off a cliff in Norway.

Other stars in Dead Reckoning include Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Cary Elwes, Indira Varma, Rob Delaney and Charles Parnell.



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I met Tom Cruise at the 'Mission: Impossible' premiere and I was impressed that he took the time to speak to every person on the red carpet. He even delayed the start of the movie by an hour to meet everyone.

Eammon Jacobs Jun 23, 2023, 11:55 PM GMT+8

Red carpet events and press junkets can often feel like a whirlwind, largely because there's a rush to get stars speaking to some journalists and fans, while also getting those all-important shots for photographers.

So, you can imagine my surprise when a publicist working Thursday's UK premiere of "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning" assured me that Tom Cruise was planning to speak to everyone on the red carpet.

The event kicked off with a fuse burning down the length of the red carpet, before igniting a small flare. It was unusual, but then the franchise revels in theatrical reveals, plot twists, and stunts.

Next came the main attraction.

Cruise was the first actor to arrive on the red carpet and spent the next 30 minutes signing autographs for the crowd of adoring fans that were waiting to get a glimpse of the "Top Gun" star. Not only that, but the actor posed for numerous photos, with one fan even crying with happiness after briefly talking to him.

After that, Cruise worked his way down the line of journalists waiting to speak to him. While waiting, I also spoke to director Christopher McQuarrie, British star Simon Pegg, and Marvel alumni Pom Klementieff, who all clearly had great respect for their collaborator.

But after all these conversations, it was well past 7 p.m., which was when the audience of cast, crew, dignitaries, and minor celebrities were expected to take their seats for the screening to begin.

7 p.m. came and went, and Cruise was still making his way down the line of reporters.

As much as everyone was excited to speak to him, the star equally radiated a surprising sense of gratitude to the people he was speaking to.

Cruise seems to possess an increasingly rare Hollywood charm that has largely dissipated among his peers. In an age when there are plenty of negative stories about celebrities and influencers being dismissive of, or out of touch with, the general public, his attitude on the carpet was gracious and personable.

It's clear that his time with journalists and fans in London wasn't a one-off, either.

A reporter next to me, who also spoke to the "Mission: Impossible" gang at the movie's world premiere in Rome earlier in the week, told me that screening was delayed by nearly two hours because Cruise was so committed to speaking to everyone.

This is a man who's determined to deliver the best experience for movie fans around the world, and that clearly includes meeting them in person too.

https://www.insider.com/tom-cruise-mission-impossible-premiere-impressed-every-person-red-carpet-2023-6?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=entertainment-sf



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Tom Cruise In 'Crisis Talks' With Studio Over Mission Impossible 7 Budget Ballooning Close To $300 Million

By:Joshua Wilburn

Feb. 12 2022, Published 12:01 p.m. ET

It's becoming an impossible mission to get this movie into theaters.

Actor Tom Cruise has been hard at work at getting filming of the latest Mission Impossible movie to the finish line. The 2-year-long production is costing the studios quite a pretty penny, and they are now in serious talks with Cruise about the future of the blockbuster.

Cruise and movie studio Paramount Pictures started filming the 7th entry of the Mission Impossible series back in September of 2020. Since then, the film's production has been delayed time and time again. The delays were mostly caused by the strict filming restrictions placed during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Along with MI7, Cruise's other pandemic sequel Top Gun Maverick had been pushed back nearly two years after its initial release date.

The stress of everything had gotten to the Golden Globe winning actor during the production of the latest Mission Impossible. The actor had a viral outcry at production workers on set not following CDC guidelines. Cruise yelled at the staff warning them that they were going to cause the film's production to get shut down yet again. The set was shut down weeks later due to an outbreak of COVID cases in the cast and crew.

Sources told The Sun "People are starting to sweat on the costs." They go on to explain how the multiple delays are making the heads of the project worried. "Nobody could have predicted what has happened but the fact is those delays and extra costs are stacking up now and it’s starting to get noticed."

Cruise and the Mission Impossible films are huge money makers for Paramount but several of the production heads are itching to get the film to the big screen. Sources claim the studio is worried that if another delay happens the film's budget could reach as high as $300 million. This would make the film near impossible to make a profit on.

Last year RadarOnline.com reported that Paramount Pictures is suing Federal Insurance Company over its refusal to pay up on a policy they took out for the production. The studio purchased an insurance policy against losses resulting from delays and interruptions of the film.

The ongoing COVID pandemic has caused several movie productions to delay for the safety of their cast and crew - but the big budget film took out a ginormous $100 million dollar policy the Insurance company has yet to pay forward.

https://radaronline.com/p/tom-cruise-crisis-talks-mission-impossible-budget-300-million/



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DEADLINE: Before we get into that deal, I want to go back a couple of steps to your previous slate deal with Warner Bros. To what extent was the critical and financial success of Joker a transformational one for Creative Wealth as an investor? I know you’ve said in the past that the funds you manage accounted for a quarter of that film’s budget.Did that film help open doors at Paramount?

CLOTH:I don’t think it was transformational. It’s certainly something that everybody still wants to talk about. Being part of of quite a few studio films was more transformational than anything else. Before Dave and I took on the Paramount partnership, I was pretty much done with the slate financing side of things. We weren’t really treated much like partners before Paramount.

I began to realize that certain terms weren’t being given to you because that would’ve given you a slight advantage. It wasn’t a very fair game to play. I was lucky enough to have a lunch with my lawyer and one of the heads of co-finance at Paramount, at which I expressed my dissatisfaction with that side of the business, and then we started discussions.

Skydance was leaving Paramount at the time, so it really was fortuitous that we were speaking when we did. That was last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

It’s a little like playing Blackjack. Even if you play exactly like the house, the house still has a small advantage. That’s always what’s going to happen in studio slate financing, but the idea is to get as close to even with them as possible, and I think, given the way Paramount has treated us, we’re as close to that type of deal as anybody. We probably have the best terms of any major studio slate financier.

CAPLAN:The executives at Paramount are also very, very good. Brian Robbins, Marc Weinstock,Mike Ireland,DariaCercek and Peter McPartlin are very smart, and they have very good taste.

CLOTH:There aren’t many studios you can do a deal like this with. MGM no longer exists in that way. We’ve spoken to Warner Brothers, but there are just certain terms, deal points, that they are not open to giving us…

DEADLINE:You’re not going to disclose precise deal points but what are the parameters of these deals?

CLOTH:It’s about how close to being on par with the studio can we get in terms of return on investment. That’s what all the different terms do. It’s about minimizing the layers between you and the studio to make it more fair.

DEADLINE:What is your investment in these movies?

CLOTH:The overall deal is nine figures across the four films we’ve done, and then it would be substantially more than that for the films that we’re negotiating now. We’ve identified seven or eight movies we’re negotiating terms on now.

DEADLINE:That’s a lot.Was Mission your biggest outlay?[We understand that C2 filled a gap in financing left by Chinese financier Alibaba]

CLOTH:One of the things I learned withJokeris just because I know information doesn’t mean it’s always a good thing to give it out. Paramount didn’t need to co-fi those movie with us but it was about beginning a collaboration. If you really want to be in the slate finance business long-term, you need to have a piece of everything…

DEADLINE:What is your assessment of the box office return so far for Mission?

CLOTH: We’re hopeful that the movie legs out and performs solidly through the rest of summer and hits the numbers thatFalloutreached. The averageMissionmovie does 4.7 times its opening weekend. They tend not to be front-loaded. It’s more of a slow burn. I predict there will be some solid holds all the way into September.

DEADLINE:If it gets to nearly five times its opening weekend you’ll all be very happy, I’m sure.That looks challenging…

CLOTH: It’s an expensive movie. It was built to do that. There was almost no other direction for it to take — it had to be one of the biggest-grossing movies of the year.

DEADLINE:Very expensive, yes. If the $290M budget is accurate that would rank it in the top 15 most expensive movies all time…Have you been surprised by the box office performance of Barbie and would it have been less risky for Mission to open on a date further from that and Oppenheimer?

CLOTH: We believedBarbiewould be a huge hit, but were still taken back by the enormity of the cultural phenomenon surrounding it. Looking at the summer 2023 box office, we all knew it was going to be a highly competitive frame and have always trusted and maintained confidence in Paramount’s releasing strategies.

DEADLINE:Just looking from the outside, it could be said that none of Babylon, Dungeons & Dragons or Transformers have taken off at the box office. Mission, it remains to be seen, but it probably hasn’t done as brilliantly as hoped out of the gate. Do your core investors get spooked by those box office numbers? And if not, does that give credence to some people’s views that have been aired during the strike that ultimately studios never lose?

CLOTH:The studios certainly can lose. But box office isn’t the only barometer for success these days. Box office might be a bit lower but that might be a trend, not something that’s unique to these movies. Transactional business is way, way up, but that’s not reported on as much. Box office is one of around eight windows of revenue that these films generate, so the mix is just different nowadays.

DEADLINE:So, you and your investors were happy with the returns on Babylon, Dungeons & Dragons, and Transformers?

CLOTH:Babylonwas not commercially successful. But there’s more to these deals. We gain a level of copyright ownership. Owning a piece of one film might not have a lot of value, but owning a piece of 30, 40 or 50 films at a major studio has a lot of value.

DEADLINE:Why wasn’t C2 mentioned in the marketing and press around Mission and one or two of the other movies?

CLOTH:Our involvement came quite a bit later than everyone else’s [but still before release], and perception is everything. We’re just thankful to have been a part of these incredible movies. Our clients know whether or not they’re part of these films. We don’t have credits in the film, and the extent of the publicity was that Paramount was ok with us talking to you now about our involvement in them, and we’re fine with that. On the other films coming out in future, our involvement will be front and center. We are involved much earlier on those. Some of these have releases well into 2024 and 2025.

https://deadline.com/2023/08/mission-impossible-tom-cruise-transformers-paramount-financiers-c2-bron-1235450302/



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10 Spoiler Facts We Learned About Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One From Christopher McQuarrie

BY BEN TRAVIS, TOM NICHOLSON | POSTED ON29 07 2023

It’s finally here. No, not just Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One C though its arrival once again confirms that Tom Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie are an absolute force to be reckoned with when delivering breath-taking cinematic spectacle. No, the completion of (part one of) another Mission also means another dizzying deep-dive into the dramatic making of a Hollywood blockbuster like no other on the Empire Spoiler Special Podcast. Following in the footsteps of Fallout and Rogue Nation, McQuarrie C or, McQ C sat down with Empire’s Chris Hewitt for a lengthy, no-holds-barred, spoiler-filled conversation about his experiences of making Dead Reckoning Part One C from its lengthy production through COVID, to its narrative twists and turns, astonishing action sequences, and excised material.

The first part of that epic (and ongoing) spoiler conversation has now dropped on the Spoiler Special Podcast feed C a three-and-a-half-hour exploration of Ethan Hunt’s latest thunderous IMF mission. And believe us, this is only the beginning. There are hundreds of gems to be found in this instalment alone C be sure to listen to the full episode for a deeply incisive, honest, in-depth conversation. And here you’ll find just a smattering of the diamonds McQuarrie dropped along the way C delve into 10 fascinating facts from that first part here.

1) The actors ‘risked their lives’ for a sequence that was cut from the film

Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One

One of the most astonishing things about McQuarrie’s Mission movies is that, for all the incredible stuff you see on screen, you know that there was equally impressive stuff that hit the cutting room floor. Take, for instance, an entire sequence from the thunderous steam-train finale that was edited out. “It was supposed to be something we did with a resettable rig where everything could be very predictable, and nothing we did worked, and ultimately the actors had to risk their lives and do it practically,” McQ explains.

But when test notes came back with feedback on the pace and length of the movie, it had to go. “The train was a little bit like the car chase in Jack Reacher, where we couldn’t understand why we kept getting this note about length,” he says. “Finally, there was one shot in the Jack Reacher chase I pulled out, and it taught me everything about shooting action.” He had a sense a similar thing was affecting Dead Reckoning Part One’s finale. “With the train, I kept thinking, ‘Is this the shot?’ And we kept pulling and we kept getting the note, and eventually we identified what it was.” It was a shame to lose it, though. “The work that went into what was holding back the sequence was extraordinary C it was days, and it was a struggle, and it was very, very risky,” he says. “We took it out, and the scene just sang.”

2) The flashback Marie could have been a de-aged Julia Roberts

Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One

A key sequence in Dead Reckoning Part One has Ethan looking back to his own past, before the first Mission: Impossible film C in which Esai Morales’ villain Gabriel kills Ethan’s partner Marie. The role (originally due to be a bigger part of Part One, and set to be expanded in Part Two) went to Mariela Garriga. But, given the time-period there were thoughts of casting a de-aged actor appropriate to the late-‘80s, early-‘90s time period. “We started thinking, ‘What would it look like if Tony Scott had shot this, and who would it have been? Who was the ingénue, who was the breakout star in 1989?’,” recalls McQ. “And right around then was Mystic Pizza, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, Julia Roberts C a then pre-Pretty Woman Julia Roberts.” Ultimately, it didn’t come to pass C not only because of the expense (and distraction) of de-ageing everybody for the scene, but because McQ would have “to somehow convince Julia Roberts to come in and be this small role at the beginning of this story”.

3) Young Ethan Hunt’s file photo is Mission: Impossible-era Cruise with Days Of Thunder hair

Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One

Speaking of Ethan’s past, this time we see the picture in his IMF folder, hinting at some kind of troubled history that he’s been working to erase. And the image of the young Hunt was a simple combination of two historic Tom Cruise eras. “It just so happens Tom has one sensational photo of him looking directly at the camera and that happens to be in his dossier in Mission: Impossible,” says McQuarrie. It needed some tweaks, though, to fit the 1989 time period. “I had found a picture of Tom from Days Of Thunder, with that hair. And we took his Days Of Thunder hair and stuck it on his Mission: Impossible dossier photo, put some vertical lines behind it and created it in about 15 minutes. We made young Ethan Hunt without any kind of de-aging or special effects or anything else.” Mission complete.

4) McQ fixed the movie after a ‘brutal’ post-screening email

Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One

As ever, test screenings and bits of feedback from filmmaker friends were a vital part of bringing Dead Reckoning Part One together C with the likes of Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, and Alfonso Cuaron offering notes. And one bit of feedback, from a friend of editor Eddie Hamilton, was especially helpful for not holding back. “He wrote the most brutal email I've ever read C not hostile, but just both barrels right to the chin, things that were not working for him in the movie, things that were really bugging him, and that he was not a big franchise action movie guy to begin with. He was not a huge fan of Mission: Impossible,” explains McQ. “And I woke up that morning and read this email and just wanted to vomit. It was so brutal.” As it turned out, it was exactly what the filmmaker needed to hear C and led to the removal of scenes, some involving Marie, that were holding the film back. “It just forced me to look at things through another person's eyes, which is really what the value of testing is,” he says. As for Eddie’s friend? He got his credit. “He's in the special thanks.”

5) Tom Cruise decided where the title sequence should drop

Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One

There’s a specific thrill when a film drops its title sequence surprisingly late into the runtime C almost at the point you’d assumed it wouldn’t even have any opening credits. Dead Reckoning Part One holds out 28 minutes before running that iconic theme music, as decreed by Cruise C who knew exactly when the sequence would work best.

It felt odd coming straight from the submarine opener, and played a bit subdued when positioned after the desert shootout too. “You went into the credits with a very down note,” says McQ. “[Tom] just said, ‘The credits are in the wrong place’. He looked at the whole first act and said, ‘The first act is great, it’s the best it’s ever been, you’ve fixed all those issues. But the credits are in the wrong place C they’ve got to go after the scene with Kittridge.’” As skeptical as McQuarrie was, when he tried it the filmmaker agreed with Cruise that it was “just the right place” for them to be. “So they go 28 minutes into the movie C who cares! It’s the right vibe. You go into the credits with a win. He was right.”

6) McQ and Cruise lived together while shooting during COVID

Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One

How’s this for a sitcom set-up: one of the biggest movie stars in the world and his long-time director, holed up together while shooting a behemoth action blockbuster. While you can imagine the laugh-track and slap-bass now, that’s exactly the position Cruise and McQuarrie found themselves in here, thanks to the intervention of COVID. “We’d wake up in the morning, we'd meet in the living room for breakfast, we'd talk about the movie, we would drive to work in the car together, we’d work all day, we’d drive back to the apartment together at the end of the night. And that was our life.” It’s the material the 22-minute network formula was made for.

7) Tom Cruise was adamant not to end Part One on a cliffhanger

Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One

Dead Reckoning is one of several summer movies in 2023 that’s actually just ‘Part One’ of a bigger story C see also Across The Spider-Verse, and Fast X. And while there’s plenty more story to come in Part Two of Mission, it was Cruise who was particularly adamant that this film have its own ending. “Tom was fixated day and night on the ending of the movie,” says McQuarrie. “He had great anxiety about the end of the film C that the end of a ‘Part One’ was going to be a cliffhanger, and that cliffhangers by their very nature tend to be deeply, deeply unsatisfying. You feel like the camera just stopped and you're not there. You're not given that release. ‘I have to wait a year? I have to wait two years, for whatever that release is?’” Cue the reveal that Ethan has the key (Mission: Accomplished!), and that Part Two will be all about heading to the very thing it unlocks. “He said, ‘We gotta give them that sense of completion, and yet the story has to feel like it needs a place to go.’”

8) The title Dead Reckoning didn’t arrive until after Part Two had started shooting

Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One

One of the benefits, though, of having a Part Two? It gave them time to, er, come up with the title of the film. It wasn’t until work began on the next film that Dead Reckoning emerged as the title for Ethan’s latest mission. “Somewhere along the line, the title of this movie C which did not exist until we were in Africa shooting Part Two C became both fitting for the story, and the making of the story itself,” muses McQuarrie. “We were quite literally navigating via dead reckoning for most of the production, it's the most aptly named [movie].”

9) Tom Cruise is basically like Gromit in The Wrong Trousers

Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One

You wouldn’t necessarily expect to compare Tom Cruise C the most American of all-American action stars C to Aardman’s Lancashire legends Wallace and Gromit. And yet, the process of making a Mission movie C where the action literally comes first, and the rest of the film is built around it, with Ethan’s arc coming into place right at the very end C brings to mind an iconic scene from The Wrong Trousers. “[Tom] is a train in front of which you must lay track,” McQ explains. “There's that little GIF of Wallace And Gromit, and Gromit is putting the track in front of the train. That's very much what making Mission: Impossible is.” Did he watch a version of The Wrong Trousers where the train crashes down a ravine?

10) Cruise and McQ are still working on ‘The Gnarly Movie’

Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One

Back in 2020, in an interview looking back on Jack Reacher, McQuarrie told Empire that he and Cruise had been looking to make a hard-R movie together with “a very un-Tom character” in it. And while the two-part Mission has taken precedent, they’re still planning to make that together, under the codename ‘The Gnarly Movie’. “There's a movie that Cruise and I are talking about doing next or in some probable next, that Erik [Jendresen, writer] and I developed together C what has been referred to on the internet as ‘The Gnarly Movie’,” McQ teases. “It's that movie that they're all asking for, and that we want to do.” First, they just have to get through the gnarliest movie of all: Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part Two.

https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/mission-impossible-dead-reckoning-part-one-10-spoiler-facts-christopher-mcquarrie/



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juliezhou

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Hampshire magician who taught Tom Cruise for Mission Impossible brings his new show Jadoo to Portsmouth

When Tom Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt needed to pull off what is effectively a magic trick in the latest Mission Impossible film, of course the Hollywood mega-star was going to want to perform it himself.

By Chris Broom

Published 17th Nov 2023, 15:52 GMT

So they called on the Hampshire-born magician Ben Hart to teach Cruise how to do it.

"It was a pretty crazy experience,” recalls Ben. “It was a very flattering thing, I am sure they could have chosen anyone C why they chose me I don't really know. But I have quite a good eye for detail and they had spoken to some people in the movie industry who had said if you want someone with an eye for detail, maybe ask Ben.

“I got this call early one morning, about 6am, saying: ‘Can you come onto the set of Mission Impossible today?’ But it was during Covid, so I had to go and have a rapid Covid test, then wait in a van until I'd passed, and then go on set and speak to Tom Cruise.

"It ended up being about six weeks of work spread over a period of about three months. I spent quite a lot of time on set, but it's probably only about 20 seconds of screen time. But they have an eye for detail and are very committed to doing things in camera, without camera tricks, and if Tom's going to do something, he's going to do it properly. So we did back-to-basics, sleight of hand lessons, all the way to what you see on camera.”

And was he a good student? “He was very focused, very dedicated, very driven. Scarily driven. You end up thinking: there's a reason why you're Hollywood's most famous actor, because you're much more driven than anyone else!”

https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/arts-and-culture/theatre-and-stage/hampshire-magician-who-taught-tom-cruise-for-mission-impossible-brings-his-new-show-jadoo-to-portsmouth-4414433



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juliezhou

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RE: 2023 [mi 7]
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Mission: Impossible’s Actor-Auteur Theory

By ARMOND WHITE

July 14, 2023 6:30 AM

Tom Cruise chooses empty thrills over gravitas.

Tom Cruise is an actor-auteur as were Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier, and John Cassavetes, but unlike them, Cruise has enjoyed immense popularity as a matinee-idol movie star and tends toward pop-star filmmaking. Cruise doesn’t direct, yet he’s still the “author” on films he produces, famously and consistently calling the shots in the action-flick category. The broad success of Top Gun: Maverick demands that Cruise’s choices be taken seriously, even though the latest, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, cannot be taken seriously.

That three-clause title puts Dead Reckoning in the realm of excess. We’re already familiar with its caper-teamwork premise (originally derived from the 1960s TV show), and the elaborate, large-scale action stunts have reached such surfeit that, in addition to becoming the selling point, they are the raison d’être of the series.

That the regime media dutifully celebrate Cruise’s auteur calculations should be cause for concern. Thrills were an overture to the heroic, death-defying humor of the James Bond films, but something is wrong when a 27-year-old franchise grinds out familiar routines in the same blatant, humorless manner. Admittedly, Cruise’s house director Christopher McQuarrie has gotten better at being a circus ringmaster, but he has mastered a worthless craft. In Dead Reckoning, McQuarrie’s emphasis on in-your-face spectacle calls upon the most primitive kinetic responses to fast motor vehicles, dizzying heights, and point-blank physical and mechanical violence. It garners rote reviewer response: “This is why we go to the movies,” one shill gushed. I hadn’t read that cliché since it was used for Peter Jackson’s now forgotten King Kong remake.

Reducing cinema to gimmicky sensationalism is regressive, especially when McQuarrie’s repetition is this witlessly conventional. In visual terms, McQuarrie and Cruise outclass the tiresome Fast and Furious franchise, but these careening chases and top-of-the-world vistas are more like theme-park rides. As super spy Ethan Hunt, Cruise’s running atop a speeding train is a too-literal stunt. It doesn’t make him Buster Keaton — McQuarrie lacks the visual rhythm that Chad Stahelski displays in the dazzling John Wick movies. Without that essential cinematic wit, the M:I films seem devoted to anesthetizing our senses. Overplaying depth and height dimensions gets old. The instant the stunts are over, there’s nothing to think about. “Wow!” is an empty expression.

The best of the M:I series was 2011’s Ghost Protocol directed by cartoonist Brad Bird, who understood spatial humor. (Plus, back then, Ethan’s teammates were still characters, spying and fighting with credible competitive emotion.) Ghost Protocol’s hands-on, close-up stunts were fascinating illustrations of something at stake. Ethan/Cruise’s mature face adds character — a failed idea in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Yet Dead Reckoning keeps reshuffling interchangeable uninteresting females (Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Hayley Atwell), and the pretend political risks (this time involving AI — talk about ghost protocol!) are no more substantial than the geopolitics of Top Gun: Maverick.

The personal — auteurist — elements of the ever accumulating, nonstop action stunts reveal Cruise’s yahoo taste: Born in 1962, having grown up on both James Bond and Bruce Lee exploits, he entered Hollywood during the Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger phase, when movie stars seemed detached from their craven blockbusters. As Cruise vacillated between high-concept deals and art projects — Days of Thunder, The Firm, Born on the Fourth of July, Far and Away, Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, The Last Samurai — his sincere play-acting still didn’t seem personal, as Andrew Sarris theorized auteur films must.

Cruise’s collaborations with Spielberg on Minority Report and War of the Worlds were career peaks for both, convincing me that Cruise was a superb actor. He was tragicomic perfection in Lions for Lambs and Tropic Thunder, capable of conveying spiritual and political meaning. Like a lot of people, I expected the same in the facile Top Gun: Maverick. Now we know how impersonal that film really was, so are the M:I movies, despite the star-auteur’s professional dedication to them.

Welles, Olivier, and Cassavetes were intellectuals, yet Cruise possesses the popular knack they lacked (maybe he learned it from actor-auteur Paul Newman, his co-star in The Color of Money). But this shrewdness prevents us from respecting Dead Reckoning Part One. The return of Henry Czerny as Kittredge, the villain from Brian De Palma’s first M:I installment, raises a topical issue. He warns Ethan: “This is our chance to control the truth, the concepts of right and wrong for everyone for centuries to come.” This world-conquering threat relates to everything audiences deal with outside, and then trashes that concern. The auteur of Top Gun: Maverick missed the opportunity to give this weightless movie gravitas.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/07/mission-impossibles-actor-auteur-theory/



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