Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) [Audio]

I am writer director Christopher Macquarie.

I am Tom Cruise. Your director's friend, co-worker.

Why thank you. I'm honored to

Yeah.

Likewise.

This is number nine for us.

This is the ninth uh uh uh film that we've collaborated on in some capacity.

Yes, sir. And third time on uh Mission Impossible.

Yes.

Ghost protocol. We're all very grateful.

And this is Mission Impossible Fallout.

And this is Mission Impossible Fallout.

The first scene that we really discussed in this movie was this scene.

Yeah.

And strangely enough it was very much like the scene that you're seeing here, with one small exception. Uh Alec Baldwin was originally going to be the minister. Do you remember that?

That's right.

And Alec Baldwin was unavailable. He couldn't come to New Zealand. And Sean Harris was available and now it is unimaginable to me that it could be

No, that it could have been anyone else. And also we were talking about at some point maybe having Benji and Luther there also.

Yes, that's right. And that was ri it was originally going to be much more Long lengthy, esoteric, hard to see the background white. It was gonna be less about the environment, a much more dreamy effect. And the more we refined the situation, the more it really became clear that it had to be.

Yeah. No not doing it without Sean and

And what it came from was this of course, is that the very first conversation that you and I had at the very beginning of all of this. was I I I I asked Tom, what do you wanna do? And Tom said, I wanna I wanna resolve the story of Ethan and Julia. People are still asking me about this story wherever I go, whenever I'm promoting movies around the world And I wanna give them some closure. And I said, Okay, well in order to do that

It really allowed that emotional arc that we were always talking about, which was

Without compromising what mission is, build in more emotion. You know, how do we take them and let pull back wh who Ethan is, where he's at, but without compromising what Mission Impossible is, the team, the the action, the the suspense. And also I love that you chose this, The Odyssey, uh, as the book at the beginning because we also talked about this being an epic.

Yeah.

That we felt that the franchise had earned it, that uh it's where it needed to go. And also visually. You're talking about uh you know, this is your second mission that you directed and you approached it right from the beginning. You said, I'm gonna approach it as as another director to honor the franchise. But also l evaluating and looking at your lens choices, looking at

We're also taking you down a very dark top.

Yes, exactly.

And you and I were always laughing as we were watching this, thinking to ourselves, if this works, if this works, they're gonna be in that hospital room.

What is happening?

Yes. Is this mission impossible? Yeah. The last one was really funny. And there yes, there's fans of the franchise going, Oh, this is where they blow it.

This is it.

This is the one where they totally blow it.

Oh those poor guys that's a good thing.

They got it. They took themselves a little too seriously. They forgot what mission was. They blew it. And really what it is is we wanna take you down a road of Ethan's worst fears and his his deepest members of your his his deepest regrets that the first fifteen minutes of the movie Which we dreamed of being five minutes, but we just kept putting other ideas in it kept growing and growing. Credits go.

Yeah.

Originally it was twenty minutes before the and so we were looking for other movies. The departed was was slightly longer than ours and we felt justified.

It's good, yes. Die hard.

Yeah, it's fine. They all did it. Uh yeah, I it's and this location um this scene to your credit. With this this scene we shot it uh we went to this location multiple times because of technical issues. And we were able to cut the scene together. You remember because because of the ankle break we'll get to. And you were able to watch the scene and you said, I'm not feeling the teen. This banter wasn't at the beginning of the scene. We played it all for suspense. And all for speed.

Yeah, we were able to go back Look at these guys. Yes.

And you remember one of the last cuts we made to the movie, we moved that moment to after after the guy pointing the gun.

It was awesome what you did, showing the money, doing it. So now we know now we know

Well and Ethan felt oblivious. If it came earlier, the audience was ahead of Ethan. Because he's nodding like it's okay when the audience knows no it's not. Yes. And uh and it just just by shifting that, Ethan says, It's okay. And then a second later we realize oh no.

No it's not.

Okay. And now we're going Look out Ethan. Yes.

It's how do you you know, we're always talking about how do we invest the audience in this story? How do we get them to feel You know, it's a it's a structural I think really quite quite extraordinary what you did, McHugh, because it's how do you get the audience to feel what a m what Ethan's

Yes. Valkyrie was a very almost a documentary style movie that that was telling the whole story from orbit. And when you came on to Valkyrie you were one of the first big lessons I ever learned in that respect. In Valkyrie, you the bomb went off, you drove away, and we went back to the compound to see Hitler. And you said, No no no no no, don't go back.

Kept us in in Stauffenberg's point of view.

Tom Cruise University. Yes. Excellent, excellent film school by the way. And here you are, by the way, for another symposium of Tom Cruise University.

Here we are. Had a broken foot that you were incredibly patient through all of this.

Oh my god.

Oh my gosh.

Just

Broken foot was I was standing there.

I have a box. Oh my god. And it what's really amazing you th is uh uh keeping that in mind is how uneven all these cobblestones are. And a and the other thing to remember is the phenomenal lighting by Rob Hardy and Martin Smith, our gaffer Martin Smith, cinematographer Rob Hardy. these this the the choice of the sort of greenish light on one end yes the well it's tungsten he's got a he's got a tungsten color that he really likes that's given this entire movie

I love the look at and it gives us geography also. Yes. I g as we're going, I know where I am.

Yeah, well and that first shot where Benji walks in and the camera does this that ninety degree move around was all about familiarizing you with the space. This is a a big obsession of mine as you'll as you'll watch the scene, you'll see that the camera is constantly Setting you up for the three dimensional space before moving on to the next one.

So that the audience knows where they are. But we're still feeling the character pressure. And look at the length. The design of the film having those lengths. First of all, great actors, uh Ving.

So phenomenal.

Every time you just go to these guys. It was such a pleasure, uh always a pleasure working with them. Anytime you put the camera on them you just

Well you're talking like two two actors who understand A the characters they're playing so well, but understand the genre.

Yes, and how to make this move.

Yes. And Ving landing on his knees like

Gosh, take after take. Never complained.

And you and you remember the the your your line, that's a that's an ADR line. You say I didn't know what else to do. We were we were doing a lot of this on the fly and we would feel these scenes and you'd say, Okay, we want to make clear what your intention was. And we we added little lines like that later. And then this, you remember we we we were in in our in our effort to make the movie shorter, we didn't let these movies b these moments breathe.

Feel lane, you want to feel It was one of our things we kept reminding ourselves because we knew Let's not cut it too tight. Let's let these scenes breathe. I mean we really had to you and I really kept pace on that and going, it doesn't matter all the pressure that we feel in terms of length, what's important is story.

Well,

People make that mistake all the time, thinking, Well, I make it shorter, it's it's gonna feel shorter. It's like you make it shorter and it feels longer and I I feel less involved in the story.

Well you you said something very very wise when the studio was coming at us and wanting the movie to come down in length. You said it doesn't matter how long it is, it matters how long it feels.

Yeah.

When we cut a shorter version of the movie and tested it, the scores were lower. Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. The emotion of the moment was leaning.

Yeah.

This phenomenal Christopher Yanner.

Fantastic.

Amazing actor. Fantastic. Such a lovely guy too. And uh and this scene, this was again one of the earlier scenes. And you remember in Rogue Nation, we kept trying to write a scene like that. We were we were trying to figure out a way to to make a mouse trap scene. Yep where the audience didn't know

Yeah, do you remember we had it strap? We had it we started out in a train we also had the uh box.

That's right.

But look at I love Ving in this scene by the way. And I love him in this movie.

He s so th this is well a as uh we we coming coming into this movie The last one was kind of a buddy movie with you and Ethan. Uh I mean you and uh Benji. Uh and and there was a relationship between you and Ilsa and a relationship between you and Benji. And this I I this is one where I wanted Ving to really have after after five of these movies. to have his moment. And that very quickly fell into line with all of these All of these scenes because no one knows

And this is a scene that we started with. Do you remember?

Yes.

We started with this scene and we were like Ving was came in and we were like, No man This is...

Take it.

Take it. You know? Take it. And he did. He was like, Oh, do you remember that morning? Yeah.

Yeah.

Look when you're making a mission movie it's a lot of stuff is writing every day. These actors are incredible. But also when you have an idea you want to seize it. And not just go, Well, this is the way it is and this is but if you have something so we're

Well everybody's gotta have their entrance and everybody's gotta have

Yes, we talk about that. It's like what's that entrance going to be? What's that if you look at it, it really serves these guys up and ladies.

You remember here we had there was more of a moment between you and Ving. There's some great acting. But the audience started to suspect when there was too much conflict, they started to suspect something was up.

Ethan and Luther they're two Yes.

Is that while the audience as as you, somebody watching the movie for the first time, you're looking at Where is this all headed? You might be figuring it out. You might know that there's a trap. You might know that something is afoot. And we're hiding from you what our real intention is, which is we want you for the first thirty seconds to think that something terrible really happened. So that you feel what Ethan feels.

Is the structural you start with the the thing at the beginning now here and the audience is going Oh my gosh, this is gonna be really depressing.

No, that's just these Oh, my God.

McHugh and Cruz just.

This is terrible. They've gone off the rails. And and the truth of it is, you never get to see the doomsday scenario play out. In any movie, you never get to see the horrible ending come. So you never get to feel And what I love about this is we've We we haven't even met the villains of the movie yet and we've already met in Casper, the the the European at the the bomb exchange and in Christopher, you've met two fantastic villains. You've entered a world

And now now the Mission Impossible movie starts. And you've so and and the the The time we took and how we were biting our nails through all of it of how much can the audience take, how long can we do this to get deeper into the character? Uh and we'll blitz her. Awesome. Fantastic. I never thought we'd get him.

I it was incredible. When he showed up we were we were high fiving. It's so good. And he loved it. He was great. Worked hard.

He was so delightful. And we gave him a mask. We uh we sent him we sent him a gift of uh.

Fantastic.

Yes, and it's a old wolf mask.

Here we go, credits of course. I love these credits.

This is the work of the uh Filmograph LA. These guys are so fantastic.

My gosh, great work, guys.

Really awesome.

Thank you.

Oh it's great. This burning motif where we were kind of the the the discussion we had was one of uh imagine if The film itself is is melting. You know, the movie itself is burning. And uh and w and and which which speaks to the very last frame of the film. I hope I remember to mention it when we get it Uh but this whole idea that the movie itself is being consumed, that the the series itself is is coming to some horrible ending.

You know what? It's interesting'cause we're in it.

Yeah.

Husly wondering, is it enough? Are we are we are we going as far as we want to go? Yeah.

And here is the phenomenal Alec Baldwin. And here's what's amazing: is all of this detail, all of this sky and all of this. When you're watching this film in the editing room, before you've gone in and and do and doing what we call color timing, which is where you actually pull out the the fullness of the negative, none of this color was there. This was a very grey scene, you remember.

Yes.

And uh Asa Shoel and the nice guys at uh Filmograph, or not Filmograph, uh Molinair in London, who are our colorists, they brought out all of this colour and detail.

It's so gorgeous too.

And one of the things there's uh Lauren Balfour brilliant composer One of the things that they were trying to do was bring out more detail in everybody's face, but in doing it faces started to look muddy and I said, No, let it be a darker scene. Let it you know the th the light is gonna come. And so I I love the scene. It's got this very unusual dusky feel.

And of course I love I love the shot inside the aircraft us.

And you remember here we had there was more plot after this. He says don't don't make me regret it. And there was a little joke about and find out where the plutonium who stole the plutonium in the first place. There was a whole subplot we had introduced in case.

Yeah, it was something that we ultimately knew we had to do, but didn't want to do it because

कर दो

Kendra movie recover. But look at her. It was I mean, I think.

That that hallway is uh Rob Hardy's nod to uh point blank, John Borman's point blank.

It's awesome.

And so I built him that hallway so we could do a point blank shot. Everybody thought I was crazy for building that corridor there.

Fantastic. Great introduction. Look at her, she's got so much power.

She's really phenomenal. This was another this was another amazing Didn't think we'd get her very much at the last minute. And you needed somebody who from the very first moment they appeared on screen twenty.

power and I love how you I love the design of the shot. Also you have the two

It's an over into an over.

Yes. You know? Yes. And they're players behind them. Yes. And they are negotiating the fate of the event.

That's right.

The world. And right away you just know the division. ไว้ ไว้ ไว้

And originally there was a slightly different cutting order and I was playing it as a sort of moment between you guys. I was playing more in the close coverage of you and you said no no no no no I prefer It's like make it about them. Don't worry about us until scalpel and hammer authority, you remember?

Yeah.

And it was a I thought that was a really great note and it created this it made more of these compositions. There's a

I love those compositions. Cut me out.

Push me into the background.

Let's go.

And see that yes, and it and it's that's a na that's that's Angela's natural Temperature when she's playing a scene like this. And Angela and I were always working to I was like, hold on to that. You know, just let that come out.

Let's get to that.

Awesome. Entirely CG? It was like the first time I've seen an entirely CG shot where I don't want to shoot myself. Great work of uh Jodie Johnson and all the people.

Great, great job.

I have a real problem with C G shots especially when the the subject of the shot is C G. You can you can put computer generated backgrounds all you want, as long as what your the eye is looking at is real and that's that's a very important rule to me. And there was simply no time to get that shot. There was no physical way to do it, to go from one C seventeen to another.

And he did it. When he showed me that shot I was like, What?

Oh I know and b and part of what made the shot work, sorry we're dwelling so much on a thirty second shot. Is all the imperfections we poured into it.

You have you just was like, Okay, that's all I have.

Yeah. And there's and when you're shooting air to air, there's the shot you want, there's the shot you end up with. And I just said, Give me the shot I end up with.

Now look at Henry Cabell.

Yeah.

This guy is just a movie star. He is a star. And he's he is a great actor also. When he came on, this guy worked so hard. Dedicated uh every day up for anything. It was very challenging.

Always positive.

Always positive. You know, very challenging. Very challenging film to make Mission Impossible.

Well, it mi Mission Impossible, every day you come to work not knowing what movie you're making. And whatever movie we were making yesterday we're not making.

Yes and the character kept changing and he just kept kept right pace with us and on with us.

Yes. Never questioned it. Never so he came to learn and by the way, the vapor on your helmet, all of that, that's all CG. That's all incredibly artful. That is.

The Halo was Uh you know, I skydived work, but I had to really get my skydiving up again and put in the hours. We're doing uh jumping out of twenty five thousand feet. We have to do we did an uh an hour breathe up. Going up to altitude, there's many different things that can go wrong, hypoxia, you know, many things that could lead to death at this uh at this altitude and jumping the way that we're jumping.

Craig's not looking through the camera.

Craig is a camera operator, brilliant skydiver, camera operator. He's never done anything like this before because it's narrative storytelling. Still one shot. Now he's backwards. He leaves backwards. I'm coming right at him. Now I have to get from there I have to get to within three feet. Not two feet and ten inches. Not three feet and two inches. I have to be right at three feet.

to be in front

To be in focus. Now I go past him in that. And we had really a window of a minute every night to try to get that shot.

We have three minutes. And and the the the the rule with mission is everything is subjective, which means I need to see Ethan's face when he jumps out of the plane.

And now you're I do the spin, now you're in my face, I'm up on my back, he's going up and around. It really is a dance between the two of us. I had to always make sure that the uh sunset was on my left shoulder. That's actually a guy there.

And f and Craig is having to keep the frame for all of that storytelling. It's n it's nothing he's ever done before. He hasn't done narrative storytelling. So keeping that frame open.

And we're traveling at two hundred miles an hour at times toward the ground. I'm coming in, it's like a sprint. Boom. I have to hit him. When I hit him, I have to hit him in a like I don't know where I'm gonna hit him on his body. I just have to try to take him out. And damn.

And not break your neck doing it.

Not break his neck, my neck, not entangle the chutes, deploy his chute or my chute. Any of those things could have led to serious, serious problems.

And what's amazing here is is Craig is keeping him in frame all the time. And what you're looking at here is actually not shot over Paris. It's shot over Abu Dhabi. And Paris has to be

Thank you Abu Dhabi and the UAE military.

Oh, yes.

For this we could not have gotten the sequence without them. So many, many thanks to you guys.

Many things. And we and and the inter and so people are saying, well if it's all CG in the background, why didn't you just do it CG? You can see the horizon in the background. And and what what you end up with, the relation by jumping out of the plane, the relationship between you and the camera is is in a way that we could never have duplicated on a stage. No.

Um no we could not have gotten what we what we'd gotten. We actually The bottle exchange is The bottle exchange is something that we actually we built the largest wind tunnel. uh in the world to train for this. And actually we're planning on shooting some of Some of the sequence there is

We were talking about it and when we did it.

We did it. It was just it didn't work.

It w what was amazing is it looked like you were on wires. Yes. It was re it was real but it wasn't real. And uh and that's uh the and you we took one look at it and you went, Well, I know the I know how we gotta do this.

I remember the ten was like, how are we gonna do this?

Oh everybody standing in the room was like, oh my god. I know what he's gonna do. It was straight out of a Mission Impossible movie'cause like, Oh no And except in a Mission Impossible movie Ethan is the one going, Oh no And in making a Mission Impossible everybody else in the room is going, Oh no

Yeah.

We're actually gonna jump out.

We have to do all of this for real.

For real. While you're falling.

While I'm falling, we're gonna have to get and switch the table.

Thanks. Yes. This is the Grand Palais in Paris, France, just kind enough to let us shoot there.

Beautiful.

Great.

Great choice. Look at this lighting.

Now Peter Wenham, our production designer, was really amazing. We only had a limited amount of time in the Grand Palais, and so I said to Peter, I want you to build a set. that you can build in two days and strike in two days. And all of this stuff was stuff that we could very quickly roll in and roll out again to give us the maximum amount amount of shooting time inside the Grand Palais.

And a whole swinging how we got there.

It was a big stunt and it was before we had the rest of the movie together and and it was a fantastic stunt. And when the whole movie was put together we realized

I know it's like, let's cut that out.

Uh we were supposed to shoot it in three days and we shot it over the entire production of the film. The last day of filming. You're shooting at every time.

This shot was a reshoot. We went back and reshot it because it we needed to make the geography clearer in the battery.

All the mirrors and everything was really This is like Henry, the training and you're gonna see Liang who we met on uh All You Need Is Kill. Uh

Yeah. He was Emily's uh stunt double.

and incredible uh Wu Shu champion. And we kept thinking about who do we want for this? We we

We were gonna cast an actor, it was gonna be a misdirection.

But it was just too much.

That this guy basically kicks the living, you know.

Somebody was going to get hurt.

Yeah.

Or Moorhurt, I should say.

The important thing, this is this is not only a very entertaining scene, but it's also the o what the audience doesn't realize what we're doing here is we're telling the audience First of all, they're human and Henry can get beat. Do you know what I mean? Like he's this is first just brutal. You're seeing two different styles. Henry breaks them.

Scalpel and hammer.

He's a scalpel in the hammer, you're seeing it instantly. Okay. But it's also putting into the audience's mind that as much of a hammer that Walker is, he is beatable.

He's vulnerable.

He's vulnerable. And that but and you still have this brutality. Uh and w the way that the scene was shot, McHugh is fantastic because if you look at the cuts, we're only cutting when we have to. And that's what we went in saying how we want to do this scene. It's not death by a thousand edits. It's playing out character. Which meant for the actors The takes have to be perfect and we have to be in like there's no cheating. So

The burden is on you.

So

I'm I'm allowed to just oh look, here's a mask machine. And there's no shaky cam and there's no all of that, the reason why this is not shot in the style of scenes you're seeing that is because the three actors were so Uh were so exhaustively trained and that also you guys were really putting a beating on each other.

No, and we wanted you're looking for the accident. And so there's moments where I get really get kicked and it I'm down on the on the floor and almost in the latrine.

That was improvised. Those guys were so fantastic. All of their dialogue is improvised. I didn't know anything they were saying until a week before we finished the movie when somebody put the subtitles in.

I love this scene. Laugh every time. Yeah. Just look at Liang.

Oh okay.

It's look at this move what Henry's do. It's just unbelievable. Whoa.

And and this is the this is the great thing that you do not see in a lot of these other action movies. It's the v the vulnerability that you're both showing in the scene. You're you you it's it's It's it's a testament to the both of you that the the fun of the scene is watching these two guys that we know are the heroes of the movie getting their asses beat.

Yes. And it is we're just with every time, we're not just doing the choreography, we're how do we And Henry Oh so Henry just delivers. Now of course here's the reloading the biceps that you down on the dish just.

Yeah.

Just.

Awesome.

Just creating that character, these moments that he just created are fantastic look at that. I love I love how you double cut this.

Is the same action repeated twice?

It's so good. Well you can see it all and you also think that kick that that hurt tell me.

my face.

Oh, yeah.

And I remember that slip that slip was not No That's d that's literally just it's it's very slippery in there, it's uneven. And you guys just let the space kind of Yes. The space is beating on you as much as

But also and it's like look at what Henry did to sell everything. Uh. Just Into it. Yes. You know?

Boom. I threw focus to the gun and it allowed me to show him getting shot in the game.

Now we introduced Ilsa earlier in the club and we cut that and made this her introduction, which is fantastic.

It's

Look at that.

She's so phenomenal. Amazing Rebecca Ferguson.

Risma. Also movie star. You know, you look at these guys, they're

And also in a in a white room with bright light, there's nowhere to hide. There's no what it What it both literally and figuratively. You look at the light on Rebecca's face and d and what we're looking at all of you guys, there's such a these are such fantastic close ups which are all provided by the environment. It's hard to look that good in a in a big bright white light.

Well,

Yeah. Um was added later so we could control the amount of blood and where it went and It just it wouldn't slow sh production down. And the and until we had the blood in the scene, the scene wasn't getting any laughs at this point. And suddenly when people saw the blood in the scene it had a whole other layer. This got a laugh.

Yeah.

Where it didn't before. And that's always how I pictured it. And it was and I was always uh I was always frustrated when we had to show this to test audiences without

Oh there's so much. Thank you. Don't understand music how how that affects the this we picked up again.

We picked it up again. And you were like you you you watched it, you went, Mm, I can do let me tr let me try that line again. So I can d I they and you gave this it was like and now we have to hope they never met the delivery you're giving is like and you just f everything.

Are we allowed to say f

But yes, exactly. But it gave a nice energy because now I could hold on you guys in these moments. And the way we had shot it before, it was forcing us to be cuttier. We were cutting around things. Do you remember? Yep. To try and give pace to it. And we said, No, let's go back. We have the bathroom. We're going back there anyway.

We're going.

Shoot this so we don't have to cut it.

And Henry and I any time like the at the end. When you're doing a fight scene, first of all, you never admit how painful it is. Ever. Like when you're doing stunts, you never say it hurts.

Oh, yeah.

No, it's a year later. But on the last day when we're in the bathroom I looked at Henry and he's like y you know, both of us had that moment of admitting how painful it was every day.

Yeah.

This is one of the first things we saw we shot with her.

And this line you can't come with.

With me.

On the day. But we talked about it. We kept talking about the relationship. We said, I don't know what it is, but it's in this moment. Yes. And I came to work that day and went, Ah I got it. And it was this.

You should have stayed out of the game.

And that was their entire relationship from the last movie, done in two lines. And remember there was a whole multi page scene where we met and we cut that down to just a let's you had with each other and then cut the lookout. This

I love this opening shot. We are entering a different part of our film, a different part of the movie. I love this. The rule for the new finesse of

Vanessa Kirby.

Okay, Vanessa. She originally

Yes.

And she was fantastic. It's fantastic. This close up.

And w and what we realized was the audience was just saying, Just get us to the story and the and the song was saying, Okay, well what's going on? It di the it actually worked against the tension of the scene. And now the and so I said, Well take out the song and see what's left and it was all of these shots. And I said, Oh I get it. She can be she can g be giving a speech and watch her hand. You can see with her hand right there, she was actually that's the one indication that she was actually

And we needed to feel the threat.

And that was always going to be a secret between us when we come.

It was always like stuff that McHugh and I loved and we cut the song out and he put it right there. I was like, Oh man, you're gonna

Do it.

I loved it. I loved it.

There's a lot of people.

Some people that know the boobies say friends are calling me going, uh my family was like calling me, going, That's Max's daughter.

I love it.

Now if you wanna treat yourself, watch the background in this scene, rewind the scene and watch the background from the b when Tom first walks in until when she finishes her speech. These were shot months apart because we were shooting this scene. And we took a one day break to go foot to to go to go shoot the foot chase. Yes. And that was the day you broke your foot. And we came back to this and shot all of this months later.

Yeah, they were they were awesome.

And Vanessa in this scene is so good in in uh in portraying someone in just in her behavior as somebody who's excited by this by chaos. Yes. And not at all intimidated by this by this person.

By the danger. I love the brother sister relationship here.

It's really fun. Uh Freder Frederick Schmidt playing Zoe.

I always wanna I wanna go and make a British gangster film. We always talk about that with them. Just like he's he's just fantastic, this guy. And I love their relationship. It's just a nice color to have there.

Yes. And we shot remember all of this business at the bar was shot with three cameras simultaneously so that you you it was a profile shot.

Close up. Look at her.

And Rob Hardy's use of short framing. Rob Hardy likes to do what's called short framing where he he leaves a lot of see you'll see everybody's pushed over to one side. There's always a lot of depth in the frame. Now this shot Tom Cruise, you were you remember we were talking on the day

Now I love this where the audience is like you think she is a maiden in distress. Do you know what I mean? The first close up, here she is. You're just thinking like, okay.

Oh he's holding everything.

He's holding it, keeping it now you go. Now listen to the crowd. I love what you did with the crowd noise too.

Well I went through with the sound department and I said there was a lot of just wild reactions and I said no no no no no this is spectators watching a sport and it's getting crazy.

It was fantastic. First time I heard it I w but I and I also I love news look. You know, great job, Rebecca. I love those look at the chest'cause we're always talking about like how this it's like I could do this too. Yeah. And now you've got Henry come in and just the hammer.

It's and it brings everybody together.

I love it.

And remember we almost cut this out.

I know dude. I was so glad we got it back. Oh it was out.

In our food.

There's a scene here that we just picked and look I love that close up again of her is just like this is exciting.

There was all this dialogue in the car and we realized you don't need any of it. It's just feeling them together.

And she's like this is dangerous and you're fun and I'm having fun, and now we're going into another world. Like it goes from the collection.

Club.

To hear to this shot that you created, the whole thing. Remember it was all set up.

It was the hardest location in Paris to get. And we insisted on it because we needed the space. We wanted to feel her environment.

Her power and her environment.

And that you you sort of hit the nail on the head. There is a constant evolution of space. you're moving into another world, you're going deeper.

And she's taking us into a deeper place. It's like, okay, what do you think of this? Now she knows he doesn't know.

Mm-hmm. That's right.

And so she's very excited by this.

That's right. I cleared out all the furniture and put all the gun because the the furniture was getting in the way of the guns. Essentially what you're feeling is Ethan has pre walked into a trap. Yes. And it's it's the trap is not springing, the trap is slowly closing around it. And so if you look at all the framing of all the shots Ethan is surrounded in every one of these shots or the ceiling is above him. Each one of these angles is calculated to create a sense of

And Lane there this is where reintroducing Lane.

And look, she's completely free in the frame.

Yes. And she's in total power. She's come in and changed, made herself comfortable.

Yeah. And his and his sort of thing. Completely at ease and comfortable. All of this is very Henry is standing in front of the door. There are men outside the door. That's the one door Ethan could exit. And so every there's no exit for Ethan. And there's a m and that moment in the scene where we cut to the wide after you look at the lane picture is the moment when you realize I realize what I've stepped down.

Oh my gosh.

This is bigger than...

And his whole nightmare that he had at the beginning of the movie. This

Yes.

He's knew this was he was he was afraid this was coming.

And then here's the shot we both love. Uh it's it's this uh two shot coming up.

Right.

Where is it?

That oh my god.

And it marries the two of them in such a great way, puts her in the foreground. All of these shots are about power dynamic as much as they are about Uh you know, here it is, right here. It's Ethan realizing I'm mad. But he has to keep going. He can't we don't dwell on the moment.

I love how she just leans. She just just knows. It's like show'em. I'm drawing you in.

Oh and you remember this. We had three plutonium cores at the beginning of the movie. Yes. And we had two plutonium cores at the end.

And that's why.

And we were driving ourselves crazy going, Well what happens to the other plutonium core? And people kept saying, Well just get rid of the plutonium in the beginning I'm like, No, you have to have Mecca, the Vatican and the Temple Mount And we came up with the idea of the core as a down payment days before we shot this scene.

Your design of this.

And it tells you that it's safe.

Look at this shot. Look at your whole design. We rehearsed this at uh at track. Out in France and your whole idea was this.

Uh and you'll remember that when we we were in Paris and we were being very sensitive to uh to Paris with our with our presence. There were paparazzi across the river taking pictures of us shooting. We were there for several days and within an hour of your showing up you're seeing images of your own movie online, and this we were supposed to shoot first. And you came up to me and said, Uh, we're gonna be killing all these cops and there's people across the street watching. What do we do?

No, and I didn't want that's not what the movie's about. It's it's the exact opposite. And I didn't want that for France. Yep. We didn't want it, you know

No.

Yes, but it's gonna be we don't wanna wait and also with the mission movie we come in, we wanna celebrate the culture, celebrate the town, the city, the people. And that's the purpose why we went to France. And

It was wonderful.

Yes. And none of the guns had any blanks, you remember? And the explosion wasn't there. It was all added later. We shot it silently. And we shot that gunfight entirely under the nose of everybody above us. And nobody ever knew it was taking place until They saw the film. And the music in that scene. It's worth going back and listening to. It's Lauren Balf's the the first piece of music.

And it's so big.

Oh it's lovely.

Thank you for what you did.

Amazing. Really phenomenal.

And you guys work so well together.

I had such a great time working with Lauren.

Brilliantly. The surprises that you would send me as I you know as you're editing a go and I'd send me those surprises uh daily. I just look on like oh my gosh, this is just amazing.

This was originally not a hard cut. This was originally a long establishing shot and there was more dialogue at the top of the scene.

Shot.

And we were oh that's it's a we and and you're talking about it's like six o'clock in the morning. You had to go there. You only had about uh an hour to shoot the the establishing shots of the scene before you went into close coverage and we could hide That the sun was coming up. So all of these close shots were and you can see in the background the sun is starting to come up on the stones behind Angela who's We were racing to get out of there before it was in direct sunlight.

Premier, congratulations. That was such a great night. How beautiful France looks.

Hard to make La Paris.

But I thank you thank you Paris. Thank you France for trusting us. Yes. For allowing us to shoot at these loc uh locations to celebrate you.

For allowing us to fly over the city, for allowing giving us all the street closure.

It's amazing.

It's really incredible. And and they they were they they they were incredibly gracious, very trusting.

And and we we we I don't think we damage too much of the city. No.

No.

We left some. Yeah.

Some rubber. I was very nervous driving past those uh churches, fourteenth century, fifteenth century. I was like, I am not going to Drift into one of these walls. That is not going to happen.

This should be so bad.

This would be so bad. I would feel horrible. Yeah.

This great moment for Henry. And it's one in which Henry is talking about uh Walker is talking about Ethan, but he's really talking about himself.

Kind of goes back to you and I talked about it, uh mission one. Yes. Yeah.

That's right. And this and the notion that this movie gets away with things that I never thought we would were there's no point in the movie where Ethan explicitly explains the plot of the movie to the audience. And that's without that, it's it's a very dangerous dance because until Ethan says it, the audience

It's very interesting. Sometimes we try to allow others to have that. Yeah. If Ethan doesn't say it.

Well, because mission's all about fooling you and it's like until mish until Ethan tells you the truth, this is all lies. It's all just a web of lies. This sequence

This opening shot. Love this introduction of a character. Talk about introduction, the reintroduction of lane.

And the the the the the difficulty that that uh one has flying over Paris is restricted airspace and it was very generous of us to uh of them to let us shoot there.

And we landed at the uh the building that's

And you remember these shots were all done months later on stage. We were in s we we had such limited time in Paris we had to choose our shots very carefully. And so the first time you saw this sequence cut together, there was nothing of Ethan in the in the truck. Right. So you you felt the action sequence but what was really interesting is you felt no character. And just these few close ups of Ethan in that truck as the motorcade is coming.

Yes.

Those are real French special forces who come with the helicopter.

Incredible. Incredible uh

Yeah.

And the helicopter he couldn't bring all the weight on it because the structure, so he had to keep it just a little

Yeah, it was weighted for four tons, and I think that helicopter was fourteen. Yes. And no helicopter had ever landed on that heli. And that's the Ministry of Finance, which is a very important thing.

Thank you for allowing us to do that, Minister. Look at this. I love all this stuff. Look at him. He's fantastic in this.

Oh he's extraordinary. And then here you go, this shot was on a stage done a year later. This was on location. And you remember this was really the first day of you and Henry working together.

Yes. And we're finding we're finding the characters in it.

Yeah.

And then he just started doing it and you'd go

Uh uh

When he goes when he goes home, he's like, You're the one who caught him with a smile on his face and I said I said, Go home tonight and watch. Uh it happened one night and gone with the wind. I said you're Clark Gable. And that and and we started talking about it. Actors from another era. Yes. And there and you see that that smile he's got and the confidence he had. Henry starts to become

Yes. was just discovering on this day when we started going through it. And also you'll see the mannerisms that Henry brings to it. Just the bruteness, the kind of you see he's he's a brutal kind of Fighter, a brutal kind of guy. Just how he how he cracks his neck, you know, just stretches his neck right before he's gonna go. He's just like

No. Really?

No, no he isn't. There's there's an elegance, there's it's very interesting.

Yeah. And we uh here's the lovely Rebecca Ferguson again. We it was v all of this was worked out in this geography and we had we shot it over two Sundays.

Chris, the design of this is fantastic. Again, the length, uh the depth

The training.

Emotion.

Ha ha ha.

It was i it's just the choice of locations, how you shot it. I saw this, you know, I was just I was I'm so I I never tire of looking at these shots. And look at this, the design. You come over, here she is. Just wondering who is that But you don't. And It's taking your time, allowing the audience to absorb that now it's a perfect shot to have that here.

And a shift in Lorne's score. When the truck tips over, it stops being the mission theme and it tells you now.

And that you discovered

Right. Way less than a little bit. Well in a big

Incredible.

W a big thank you. A big thing about this sequence is the the sound design and the music and how they're mixed together. We we were getting a lot of notes that the sequence was too long and we couldn't understand why and we realized that The music and the and the moment there is a lot of things.

Right.

Right.

Here.

We still had a whole chase scene. Yes. You were already your ears were punished. And so we spent days mixing this sequence so that it was r it was right to the edge but never too far. And you had to pick your moments. When did music matter? When did sound matter? When did they both matter together? Yeah.

Caged in the Fantastic. And finally had this opportunity to work together.

This rig too, that was it there's a rig that had casters underneath it, you remember?

Yeah.

Impossible to control.

It would blow as I was just going out to help me make that turn.

This hurt.

Oh, these guys come out like that, that hurts.

Yes. And uh and we shot this. Um on a really sunny day and this we shot in a tank at Leavesden. These were all things we couldn't do in the There's a tank. That's near Neil Corbold's rig, which is revolving at a hundred.

And look at that. The water comes in.

Sean had to do that several times. And then look, it's pouring rain. And you d and and I was remember we were shooting Agonizing. I know. And we kept wiping off the windshield. Nobody notices. If you're on story

That's exactly it.

The rebreather? Yep.

Got certified in a rebreather.

He's certifiable anyway.

It's it's fantastic. Love him.

And uh that was again that was

Again. I know. All the cars coming in.

And then this alley. Uh

Yes I did want to hit the walls. I'm going in fast. Yes. I did not want to touch those walls. No.

No, it was so bad. Well, and then to wedge the truck in there, they weren't gonna give us the permission. So I said, Well what would it take for them to give us permission? They said, Well they don't want that truck coming down the alley and I said, Well what if we did it in a way that the truck doesn't have to go down the alley? And so That's him going in and then all of this we did we did later.

Flew down the alley.

I was like, Hey, Superman, try to make it look hard.

Exactly.

Give it some effort.

Mm-hmm.

And this was the this was the beginning of of our you know, things going wrong for Ethan and and a all of it of course is the necessity of we gotta separate these two guys.

This is high speed.

And you and and the alley that it actually does it's not an alley, it's a brick wall. And you remember you had to take off and stop.

Before you hit the wall.

And we added the alley later. And then this is you just headed in the opposite direction.

Benji, Simon learning the boat. Yep. Okay, not as easy as it looks. I just want to tell you.

Definitely not. And and when we and it was the sort of thing that our we you know we had our heads down and we were shooting so quickly. That it wasn't until Paris was done that we were like, This scene had boats and trucks and cars and motorcycles and helicopters. It was crazy. Trains

I don't know. I love that train.

Tommy Gormley, our amazing A D, had timed the trains and knew when they were coming and knew when to call action. And then here we go.

Yeah.

Safety rig so that Tom wouldn't have to drive on these cobblestones. And you said, My brother we gotta shoot. You got on the helicopter on the motorcycle and took off.

We're gonna go like hell man.

And that's it. And this the the whole design of the motorcycle chase chase went out the window on day one and we went to old school practical. We're doing it all

High speed, no helmet.

No helmet, no stuntman.

Averaging.

Drivers in these in these cars.

With these cars coming in, boom.

And Lauren Score.

Fantastic. Me coming down through here. Hammering I'm hammering.

And we shot this.

Yes, that root opera's that inspired the opera house for Rogue Nation. I love that.

I'd love that we were coming back to that.

This is high speed. I'm driving in between these cars at high speed. That was

Scary.

It's

It's uncomfortable. I mean when we finish this day You'll see there's just we're all high fiving each other that I'm still Oh my god. Cobblestones are cold.

Which we shot the same morning.

Yep. Cobblestones are cold. It's dew. I'm just hanging on to this bike as best I can, keeping the speed up. Car is coming at me. I'm saying please just don't hit hold your line and don't hit me. Just don't try to avoid me, I'll avoid you. And I and I just going full tilt through here as fast as I possibly can.

Sharper eyes will notice that the sun is rising.

Yeah.

In those early shots, they gave us the Arctotriom for two hours at dawn. And by the time the sun came up we had ninety minutes to shoot. So any attempts of making that safer and easier for you or waiting for the cobblestones to warm up. That wasn't an option. And we got all of that in ninety five.

Bikes with tires warmed up. Oh.

Oh catapult. And uh everybody asks how we do that. Um we do it. Tom's on a catapult rig.

Out.

hits that car and throws him over it. It's a it's a pretty painful stunt.

That's not acting.

Take the credit. Take the credit. Yeah.

I love this shot, man. Lots of discussion as to which angle will they see the net, how to reveal it. Yeah. Look, I love this moment, McCue. This is this is pure Macquarie right here.

And you remember

I love that look between the music.

the music that was playing over the the the the Lorne music that was playing over the what if sequence and it was very emotional. It worked very effectively here and at the last minute

You changed it which is like McQue. I love this cue. Uh it's one of my favorite cues in the movie.

Lauren did this in an hour and it was so fantastic and it gave the whole movie it what it does Is it d we we we were so in love with that other piece of music we lost sight of what mission is, which is pulling the rug out. Yep. And And what we were leaning into was the regret that Ethan had in having to do this mission.

Yeah.

And it's like, no, they won. Let's give let's give'em that and it's and it's much more effective.

And I love that you took out all the sound. It's just the music. You did a brilliant job on this mix, McQueen. It just keeps it. It's like it and you feel the team I love Simon did this. It's like looking at him, it's like okay, he's good. Yeah, yeah.

waste of time and this is Alex Benichek who is just this phenomenal, phenomenal actor. Uh the this scene was originally written as you and a man. And you read the script and said, make it a woman. It'll be a lot more impactful if it's a woman.

And you made her she's just a traffic doing traffic. Yeah. And it's not a good thing.

No, that is not a reference to Pulp Fiction. Everybody asks me that.

What no?

Sving with the holding a guy with a hood on his head.

I never thought of that

Uh and she's so wonderful in the scene and a lot of what we did a lot of the dialogue we did in post. You remember some of the off camera lines and this shot of Henry. We to add tension to the scene we added uh this shot right here. That was shot months later. And because I c I kept watching the scene and feeling like there's no danger in the scene.

You wanna feel it come from walk, you're constantly hitting.

And I'm thinking it was Walker.

Now we haven't had this in the mission before. This whole story and what you've done by putting this emotion in here, McHugh. I I absolutely love it. I Oh, thank you. It's so it you're just telling people in a way, there's there's consequences. Yes. There's consequences. It's like this is this is dangerous.

The whole intention was that Ethan, the notion of the the one life over millions and not wanting anyone to get hurt, and it's not clean. It's it's and it makes it it's not easy. And that's uh

That's a great respon you know, great reaction by Simon going, you know

It's a Simon.

They're they're trying to do It's the least amount of damage.

Well it goes back to mission one.

Zero body count.

And and not wanting that to uh dishes. It's I want all of this to cost Ethan. And I w I w and and and how far can we can we take that? Uh and then and then when your suggestion was make it a woman, I was like, Really? You wanna leave a woman behind? That's really a little hard? And you were like, If it's g it's hard.

It's hard.

It's it's the it's

It's it's he can't fix everything. Yes. And you're feeling that like he saved her. First of all, I love this car. When you chose this car. You chose this car. I'm so glad we have it's Paris. Look we love rendezvous. McHugh and I we we love movies, we watch movies all the time, we And so the thing is is that it's also, you know our our whole homage, you know, and and the classic gorgeous city. You want a classic car. Yes. The green, you know.

The green was um you you remember Graham who who does our vehicles, he brought a BMW at slightly older than this one, and it was that color. And Peter Wenham, our production designer, he said but that's It's retirement green. It's like your it's like your father's BMW I said

Exactly.

It's great.

Look at this.

Yeah.

No, it's just we're saying this is it was so much fun to drive that car. I had a glass driving it.

It's not a it's a it's a strangely non flashy, very conservative car.

But it's got a lot of power, held the road well, and I just in Paris driving look look at look what it looks like. It just looks right. You look like it just pulls me into the movie.

It's

It pulls me into the movie. It's character. We had some pushback'cause they were like we

Don't you want a newer card?

We're like no, this is the movie, man. This is character. This is

It's timeless. Yes. And more important newer cars because of all the safety equipment in the newer cars, the way they're designed, the windshields are sloping, they're smaller. It's actually harder to see. Yes. And I wanted the car with the biggest possible engine and the biggest possible windshield. And that's how we ended up with that car. And then of course It was like

Great.

What's this? This is Jenny Tinmouth, who is driving the uh motorcycle. She also did Rebecca's uh doubling on

Rogue Nation.

He's a two time champion of the manned T T which is the hardest, most dangerous motorcycle race in the world.

Awesome.

Loveliest person.

Now here's I just didn't want to crash and and hit any of these things. Now we only had a few cars, so I had to do that move. And dance it off the stairs. Everyone was like, how do we do it? I said, I've got I'll go off backwards. They were like, what no?

Oh you said, I know what's wrong, I'll go off faster. Everybody's going no no no no no no no no please don't you were like I got it, I got it, I'll go faster. And you were originally supposed to go

Sideways.

Direction. And we realized oh if you overturn it you'll stick the landing. This location the French were very nervous about giving us this and thank you to the city of France for giving us that. Uh and again Jenny This is incredibly dangerous. She has to get up to speed and has to stop in time. It was really difficult to do. And this was a moment. This was one of the earliest moments we talked about in the movie. In fact, breaking lane out we talked about It and Rognik. Very last night.

Right. Yes, yes, yes. We were talking about breaking about and now we're gonna do it

Because Sean Harris was so upset that he wasn't he wasn't gonna be killed because he he only wanted to do one.

Sean Harris who plays Lane. Yes. He's like I only want to do one movie. Promise me you'll kill me. And then at the end of Rogue we couldn't figure out how to kill him and realize it's not the right thing to do. Yes. And then he was like, Oh my god.

And and d and Don Granger, the producer, said, Oh, you don't have to worry. Sean's Sean's character's never coming back and I said, Well, unless Ethan needs to break'em out to accomplish his next mission. Don said, Oh my God, oh my God, I want to see that movie

And I think that's a good thing.

ran to you, you were in your trailer. Sean was waiting to shoot the scene where he's chasing you. And I went to your trailer and I said, Tom, I've got this great idea. And you turned around and said, I gotta break lean out in the next movie? I was like, What? She said, I've been thinking about it all night. What else are we gonna do with them? So I said, Great, let's go tell Sean.

Ha ha ha.

It was like, You bastards, I'm never gonna get out of here. Uh this location is on the other end of the alley where we shot the plutonium scene.

the beginning of the

All in the same location. And for all these te we kept having uh we had a camera issue and a focus issue and we kept having to go back. We actually shot this scene three times.

Uh yeah, we had focus problems. We had to reshoot. Unfortunately, Sean's close up

But the value of that was it it allowed us each time to get deeper into the scene. First time we shot it and this is my credit goes to you. The first time we shot it, he said he doesn't say you should have killed me until Walker picks him up. And you watch the scene and you went, I think we should move that line sooner, that's the line that gets Ethan. Is the line from the dream and we're we're losing it by having it come later in the scene.

You're very generous.

But no, but Tom Cruise, big movie star, you know, and it's you know, this is Mission Impossible, it's his franchise.

It's not

And only two times in the all the years that I've worked with you have you ever come into the editing room and gone, I gave you something better, man. And it was this. You came in and you were like I gave a very subtle reaction and you were like, No, dude, he's freaking me out. Like I gave you a better reaction than that. I was like, What? And I went in and I pulled up all the takes and I was like, Oh, he actually did. I was like, two years.

She got great taste.

Well but you but you are also you will often say I acted it, I can't I can't judge it objectively.

It's hard for me to feel to be the effect of my cause.

That's a good thing. Right there, boom. You were like, No, dude. I and and and you had and so we c recut the scene so that you were more distracted and looking away more. And it affected it radiated out and affected the whole cut of the scene.

And you hear the music, I love the music and his performance here.

Fall out.

And there's the movie and there's the story.

What I know is you see his performance in Rogan then you see him here, you see

Yes. And Sean, who is is a very gifted actor and not an actor who wakes up in the morning dreaming about being in big Hollywood movies. Sean when we would say to him, This is for the trailer

He'd be like, ah.

Like you want to hear it. I was like, come on man, go for it.

Let's go.

Go for it. Be the villain, man. And he's trying to bring something authentic. And we're like, It's it's time to be in a movie show.

Yes, exactly.

And right here is where he originally said it.

Yes.

said, You should have killed me th and pulled him away. And here Walker said

I can kill you.

And he says death is too good for us.

We got rid of that. This is the first scene we shot with New. Yes. With Vanessa. Look at we're finding the character because really we're discovering like what

And and you you this was early in the story when we were playing with this idea that the movie was about how you were going deeper and deeper into a hole as John Lark. to get what you were really after. And Ethan was forced to become more of a villain to catch the villain. And we were gonna play it that way. And you had a whole character you were playing and Vanessa When she showed up, the dynamic between the two of you changed. Do you remember? And suddenly the scene started to become more

It's just the scene was better. And do you remember her these moments. He's on his back foot. Look at the power that she has.

Yes. The comfort and confidence that she has. And remember we played different versions.

We're finding it in stuff where it's not.

being more flighty and we were like, No, you should be should be threatening but not mean. There's not nothing malicious. It's just I don't know what's going on in her head. She's just a she'd

You wrote this line. Yeah, I had it edited. You're gonna bring her to me. I love this.

I'd hate for her to come. And

She's so good in the world.

We felt like we owed a payoff to this. Yes. And we agonized about it. Yes. And we were thinking, Well, this whole movie has to boil down to a conflict between

Her and

and Ilsa and we realize that's not really the conflict of the movie.

This moment this kiss was I love this because it First of all, I love the thing her line about family. What are you gonna do? And I love This kiss like I owned you.

She's achieved what she set out to do and there's more coming.

There's more coming and and that kiss is I own you and I love, you know, we're finding it, you know, we're finding that where it's not flirty. Oh, yes, I love

This I love you son of a bitch. You were like, you know what? Before this scene, there should be a scene where she's following me and I get to drop on her. I'm like, I don't have time for this. I don't just I just wanna get to the scene. And this whole location is right next to where Jenny was driving down that colonnade. And and I and I went there with with with an hour and walked around and found this choreography and I'm so glad we did it. So thank

Because what's beautiful is look at her performance that you have too. It's it has a yearning.

It's a it's she's she has a problem, and it's a problem in conflict with Ethan's.

There's a yearning that she just has. There's a romance. There's something there's an emotion there that you feel

And they're trapped in a maze.

They're trapped. And I love your design of this because it's here's the problems. It's like here are these obstacles that we have and will we ever connect? And you know? Yes.

And can we see the forest for the trees? Yes. And the interesting thing about this, all of which there's there's something that Tom has said more than once, which is I'd rather be lucky than good. She's wearing green, you're wearing green, we're all we have all this beautiful green. None of this was planned before we shot it. She chose that outfit and you chose that suit separate of each other when you did the white widow scene, which was Yes, Aaron.

I didn't like the suit at the beginning and then you're like we went the day before Jeffrey, thank you very much.

Jeffrey Curlin, our customer.

Fantastic, fantastic.

And then look at that. It all looks like design. Yes. And it's actually the movie gods uh smiling on us, right down to Rebecca's eyes, your eyes. There's it it was it was that.

Yeah.

Yeah. And and by the way, some of that is natural light and a lot of that is Martin Smith or Gaffer and Rob Hardy as as the light was changing throughout the day.

Yeah. Tricky.

And

Yes. You know what I mean? That's that was who we wanted always. Wanted to get it.

Yes.

Exactly.

Whatever it is.

She just draws you right in.

Really does. She's very strong that way and very trusting. We've made so many movies together and and and and are after so much of the same thing that A lot of times we've had the conversation without actually articulating it. Yes. And Rebecca is often there going, You know no one understands what you're doing except you. Can you just

Just

Yes, but she never gets frustrated by it. She's just great, okay, boys. Boys.

Let me end, let me end.

And originally here at the end of this scene there was another scene of uh to remind you of Angela Bassett and Alec Baldwin who've been out for a while. And as we were going to as we were compressing The uh the the scene. As we were compressing the movie to make the movie shorter, I experimented with lifting that scene out. And another thing that's going on in this scene is that same music is playing over the wedding. But now what's playing we've taken out all the high string.

That was fantastic. I know. I showed up on the set.

What the hell are we doing?

What are you doing?

Yeah.

You guys threw this together at about twenty minutes.

Oh yeah.

I was like trying to get twenty minutes. And it is.

Oh it's this whole section. And it's another rule we've broken in Mission Impossible. We've jumped ahead to another place before we've established it. And you come out of it going, How much of this has been a dream? It was a really impactful cut that we discovered in the editing room and just went with. This we shot right next to Saint Paul's, shot it in about half an hour.

Same day.

Yeah. And uh this is one of my favorite cues in the entire movie.

Also structurally taking Angela out, I love this cue. I I love this cue, I love the shot that's coming up, by the way.

Oh well,

Yes.

Nothing is stopping.

No.

And I'm feeling all of their collaboration together and

The choreography's excellent. I love this how the lights go on. Uh and revealing bringing in Alec. We had a whole we don't have enough time to talk about we had a whole different story point that we were gonna go through here, but then having Alec here.

That's right. It was gonna go someplace else entirely and the movie was struggling to get there. And interestingly, Alec in the um in the wide shot there was not holding the on the the the dossier. Do you remember? And we moved on to the closer shot and I went, Oh my god, I forgot the dossier. We'll fix it later. And they put it in his hand digitally later. How much fun. And all of this we you remember we had to shoot this location, we had no time.

My foot, my ankle, I couldn't even walk. This was we'd done the running we did the day before. The day before and I couldn't walk. In any of these things. I couldn't literally couldn't walk. Like in between takes, I'm sitting down.

Tom has a broken foot and had finished the foot chase the day before and Alec is overdue for a double hip replacement to come and ship the scene. So the both of you are out of your minds in pain.

Yeah.

And but by the way, it's to understand the pain of a hip replacement, it is like having a knife stuck in your hip before when your when your hip is given out like that. Absolutely blind with pain. He was do he had finished the foot chase on an ankle that he had broken five months before. And that's why I blocked the scene. Exactly. I was like, Okay, I got an idea. How about you don't walk in this scene?

Oh, it's a great location.

And we never knew what scene we were gonna show.

Didn't we know about this location on Rogue? Didn't we find so we knew about this location on Rogue Nation?

We did.

Yeah.

On the morning.

On the morning.

The story right up until days before we did it. Your performance here is great. This is and what's lovely about the scene is and Eddie Hamilton watching it, he was going, but they would already know this information. And I'd look at him and say, Yes, Eddie, and he goes, Oh, I get it. Okay. It's all real, it's all true emotion, but it's all a performance. And and Eddie was so caught up in the scene that he kept saying, Why would Hunley be telling them this if they already know?

Uh

I know. So you see the second time how we're all performing. Everything is for what?

And here's here's um this is why you why you have Alec Baldwin. He's so good.

This guy.

Just brings such gravity to everything that you do. And and again you remember this scene was originally written as him coming to help you. And I realized there's no conflict in the scene. And when we changed that, when we turned it into this battle. Now two things I gotta give credit to Alec Baldwin for. Alec said uh he he said I have one request. If I'm gonna do another one. I said what? And he goes, I wanna die. Yes, sir. I wanna die helping you

But he just also understands story and understand this movie so well. Yeah. That he was able to I mean look at the stuff that he brings.

All this dialogue took so long because of all the coverage and and all the little bits of storytelling that are required. And And uh this is some I love your performance in this, and and Alec too. Rob Hardy. Um who loves to shoot in wide lenses. He loves to for people who don't understand focal length. A wide lens is is like a uh is like the human eye. And a long lens is has a much softer background.

Yep.

But we can't leave the space. So let's turn off all the lights. And Rob and Martin Smith were uh the gaffer were absolutely horrified'cause they said, Well well then it's gonna be dark. And I said, No, you remember when we came and scouted this location there were these two construction lights and it was the only light in the space. What if we have these emergency lights? And that changed that changed the whole space without really changing it.

Um It was a fantastic idea. Because you feel this progression in story and Visual progression.

And I wouldn't have thought of it if those construction lights hadn't been on.

Uh that's making movies you have to be able to relax. Exactly. comfortable but s try you've got to be in present time seeing what you're seeing seize opportunities and seize mistakes and turn them into opportunities.

That's exactly the same.

Yes.

It's you gotta welcome chaos'cause it's coming one way or another, as this movie proves. And here s so this uh here's a shot done in camera.

Yes

We used a motion control camera so that you could do the same shot two times. And we we we are always trying to find a fun way to do the mascot. That isn't CG and none of this required any CGI whatsoever. That shot's all done practically. And it's just a simple split screen.

How do we get out of here? The whole thing of how much do we see lane? How do we not see lane?

And what's Lane's behavior? Yeah.

Yeah.

Is if Lane is Lane and not Simon and you can see he's like handling him there but wasn't handling him around. We played. And Sean Harris, uh, in in in the in the moment coming up. He said um he said oh here we are establishing this is this is all taking our time to establish this, to establish the knife. That was the shot you kept saying. I wanna see the knife. I wanna know it's there and I wanna know uh I wanna tell the audience something's coming.

We know it's not a good idea.

Yeah.

Now look at this. This this scene is so much fun.

This is so

Here's Sean playing Benji.

Playing Benji and he's

It's so much fun.

Yes. And Sean's method was to say, Well I think I'm Benji now and Benji thinks he's giving the performance of a lifetime. So he's overdoing it. And I said, Sean, no offense. You should overdo it more often. You're really good at it. You're really good at it. And you remember we shot a much longer scene that explained the whole movie. And you didn't need it. Nob and nobody asked for it. No. But we made clear what everything how did the plutonium end up there.

That's the first swear word in the Mission Impossible movie.

To all the mothers and fathers out there who brought twelve year old kids who didn't know that word, I'm sure there was at least one.

I really like their performances. They came on this day. Yeah. And they just, each take, they brought it. They brought it. Every take.

Yeah.

And we didn't have the time to remember.

They crushed it. They crushed it. And when you have those moments and there's one coming up later which I'm gonna point out involving you.

Look at his eyes.

Yeah. And there's the plot of the movie. The pluton the apostles will give you the plutonium. And people I I love that the response to this has been either it's the most convoluted plot or that it's the simplest plot. Exactly. Depending on Who reviews the movie?

Okay, now hold it. I love this moment from Sean, right? I love this moment. Henry realizes the audience.

Starting to tremble.

This and I like his Sorry.

It is

Yes. When you wrote that line it's just

Everybody here was having fun.

Okay now Alec.

Alec improvised line. I think that's a good thing. And it was again just Alex, what he brings to it.

Just having so much fun playing this character and being in the movie.

movie and the audience how and are in the palm of his hand. Every time I've watched this movie with a crowd

They just and I I you just

Love it. And the choice Lauren made here. This music It's the end of a movie. Yes. It's it's and it was a really bold one. And you remember we pulled it back a little bit. Yeah.'Cause it really felt like the end of the movie. But it was a great but it was a great instinct of his to feel like it's all over and this is what the movie was about. You feel the team together.

Again you feel like okay.

You're feeling delivery and all of this sense of delivery is giv is bringing you to a to it's it's unpreparing you. for what's about to happen. And that's all very much that's that's a that's a calculation and again a sense of being surrounded and you and you're looking very carefully um Walker is not the one surrounded. In that shot, he looks surrounded. But the truth of the matter is the the trap is actually going the other way.

Tricky.

Where is he walking from?

From where's he walking from? You and I had Oh god too many discussions about what I don't know where I am in the space. Yes. Where is he walking from?

Yeah. We debated which way do they come from and was he here or was he there? And we we ultimately wanted them to land in that space without too much shoe leather. And these shots of Angela we stole in a scene that we ended up cutting out of the movie. U originally she was just on the phone.

This was tricky.

It becomes enter the nightmare. And you'll notice all of the light is provided by flashlights or these bright lights that you're seeing in the background where everything becomes silhouette. We had to move those lights constantly.

And when do you bring Ilsa in? We at which point? That's right. You know, editorially and also getting these shots and then

And making Angela's agenda clear. Remember we added a lot of the lines in posts so that you understood she was not in league with Walker.

Yep. And they that she's not. Now look at this. Now he knows what's coming.

And this is one of the earlier.

Yeah. Now how much time to take to know this is going?

And all of this was shot in a day. All of the gunfight, everything. We had no time. And it's little pieces Can't be cutty. And you remember, I said, We don't have time. I'm going to do shakey camp. I'm going to get us out of here. It's going to be silhouettes and confusion. And I tried to do it. It didn't. And I simply could.

It didn't work.

It didn't.

It just didn't work. And we're like okay, we have to stick with And we just keep going. We're all just let's go, we're in this area, just

And and you guys had to leave this day early to go to Graham Norton.

Oh my gosh, that's right. Yes. Here it is. Boom. Great performance.

Fantastic. All of this all of this was was h was happening. Uh some of these shots where you're not in, you're already gone. You'cause you guys had to leave and go to Graham Norton. It was all such chaos and little shots on the table that we got months later. But again, all of this was figured out, choreographed, and shot in a single day.

This is where we needed to go for this.

Yes. And I love this. I love that that necessity provided us with I was like that that Luther ends up saving you. It takes him into a different a a different place than we've seen him before. And then these moments with you guys were really nice. It was uh and and originally you remember we did it all Silently. And you called me in the middle of the night. And the audience was saying we want more of a moment between Ethan

Is that the final? Is that the final? That's an iPhone.

iPhone. He did an iPhone recording. He was in he was in Long Island, I think. And he just he and he gave me several versions of And and emailed them to us. He texted it to uh texted it to me. That's technology.

It's amazing. Look at that.

And again the dynamic of Ethan Ethan saving Ilsa and or I Ilsa saving Ethan and then Ethan ultimately delivering Ilsa. The the the the the the that motif that we brought back from

I love this the editing they're already there. I wondered how You know, and we talked about it. How's the movie gonna recover from Hunley's death? It's a broken ankle. Every time I look at this, I'm thinking, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.

His right foot is broken in every shot of the foot chase except half of one shot, which I'll point at you. Broken foot. St. Paul's Cathedral, thank you so much to everybody at St. Paul's.

Thank you.

Who let us do this. It was an enormous act of good faith. And this shot here was originally coverage. We were gonna and we were gonna cut from this shot. And when we watched it on the monitor, we realized it's the first part of a very gradual reveal of what's actually happening in the church. And we saw this, I started laughing.

It helped the audience.

Yeah, and frankly, it's a little more inappropriate.

Yes.

Broken foot? Ow.

Just location.

Uh and all of these shapes were shot later. Well, because again, you were every day you'd come to set and you'd be like, Okay, what's Benji saying to me here? Let's and we would play with different things. So everything that you improvised to Benji we then had to shoot.

Yeah, you would throw me lines and we'd just keep playing.

Yeah, we were just playing with what your conversation was. None of it was really planned. Um and this w this was the day you broke your foot.

You went and shot Henry after I broke it.

Let's just shoot Henry walking around to burn up the rest of the day. And I shot versions of it with the case and without the case because we didn't know

What's the right thing?

We didn't know if there was gonna be an exchange. We didn't know where w is this where they lose the third plutonium. This is actually a hundred and twenty feet from one building to the other, but magically it doesn't look like it. And we were we were originally gonna have a big crane that you were gonna get on and swing over and I went and when I was scouting that roof I went, Wait a minute, this looks like it's ten feet away. Ever course everybody in London knows how ridiculous that is.

Okay. Here it is. This. This is the start.

Here's where it happened.

I go in, take three, go. First time I grabbed the pole, broken. I know it.

And he re all of this is being shot simultaneously.

Yeah.

And it's all right. Yes, exactly. I gotta get past camera. And I went to see you and you were you were laying on this you were laying on a couch with your foot up and a bag of ice on it and you said, Did we get the shot? And I said, Yeah, yeah, we got it You said, Good,'cause we're not coming back.

Yeah. It's broken.

Yeah, right.

Oh and this this uh this woman Fionn, she is so perfect. The the extra casting in these scenes, um it's a very big deal. You don't think much about it. But look at all the extras, especially the extras in the church. They're extraordinary. Uh a shout out to all of them. It's it's uh one wrong extra can really take a scene apart. Everybody in this was really excellent and helping to convey Improv.

Let's go through different reactions and coming up with an idea to go how do we how do we start winning the audience? But without breaking character. Finding the character comedy that we love. So how I love doing this.

It hurt and you remember you were originally gonna jump through the glass, bounce off a train and tackle a guy in the train station before we knew that the tracking thing was in his neck and you couldn't do it anyway.

Yep.

And I said to you, I go

It's a cool shot, McHugh. I love the design of this. So cool. And that was the last shot that was the last running shot right there.

And here we go. and I'm gone.

This is it.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

That's right.

That was in the morning.

Lauren by the way talks about this uh in his in his commentary. There's a really nice piece about how this is all composed. You should definitely check it out. But you remember you were gonna jump through the train bridge. That's right. And you and I talked about it and I said, you know what? Here's my problem with the stunt. Two things. I can't see your face and it isn't that great a stunt. Why are we gonna do this? And there's so much other stuff coming up and thank God we did.

And not spectacle. His performance here.

Performance is wonderful. And then this remember we originally

Dude, I love your design though. Always you write it, you're like, Okay, no, he's staring at me when I get there and it's chased.

Sure.

Every time we get a laugh.

And and it and I was totally inspired by that just in the writing of the scene. And you've we've s because I thought we've seen this scene before. We've seen other characters jump on the bottom of elevators. But this notion that Our expectation is that he's not gonna he's not gonna know you're there and to have you and you're totally vulnerable. Puts a vulnerability on you. And also the way we originally edited the scene, we saw the photograph before you did. and it forced a cut.

Pulls you in.

Lighting in this is extraordinary.

Yeah, lighting is a good thing. I loved filming that.

This we b we we built this roof on a back lot. And that's real. That's and everybody was saying, You don't need to go on the real thing. We have the back lot shot. I was like, Really?

Really? Really? Where are we doing that?

And you wouldn't have

Yes.

We ha shot on the fly, no pun intended. There was no time to coordinate. We were doing it all by walkie-talkie and we were finding the shot.

It was the day the last running day that I had and this

There is no elevator up to the top of that. You actually have to climb a wooden ladder. And then um and this was uh we originally had a scene in between the That it got into character and subplot and all of this other stuff. And we took it out and it kept on story. Just made a much more effective.

I'm glad. I'm happy with the decision. I'm really I think it was absolutely the right decision.

Yeah.

We always wanted to have some sort of Just uh

That comes from how they care about each other, not Yeah. It's it's the conflict between how they feel about each other and what they must each do. And And what I what I think what we realized is there's more of their story to tell, yes.

At the end we felt that with the story that's going to come with Michelle.

That's just it. It's what you felt. The way into the scene was remote People were saying, Well what about Julia? And we were asking that same question.

Yeah.

And we need to resolve that story. So for future missions, I'm sure you've got at least ten more in you. And this scene was when we talked about Bringing Julia back. This was the second scene. I knew that if we were gonna introduce her, someone had to tell the story to Julia and I knew right or to to Ilsa rather

And that's Fink.

Yeah, yeah. They showed up. You know, Ving's ne I've Ving's never really done anything like this in mission. And I didn't really know it was another scene like when Sean and Henry showed up. Rebecca and Ving were just crushing this scene. And something I like to point out, what's being said is often just as important as who is listening. And as good as Ving is in the scene, V r Rebecca's reactions to what Ving was saying.

Look at that.

Are c she's there's there's a re what Rebecca's doing in the movie is communicating emotions that Ethan can't. Or Ethan won't. And and you're you're you're deepening their relationship by showing the understanding that she that she has of him. It's a very fine line you have to walk.'Cause you you don't want to make her

There's a lot of.

There's an empathy that that Rebecca has, that that Ilsa has for Ethan. And Rebecca is just so good at communicating that without ever sacrificing her character.

Both of them. Yeah. Really. Look at that look. Look at her That reaction Lutherai.

And that reveal, that shot was and now look at this great location. It was this parking garage that was just filled with water. And one of the challenges of that is there's a lot of lights in there.

And it's

Space heaters and everything. That's a very dangerous environment.

Well, yeah.

You guys think the helicopter chase is dangerous. Everybody could have been electrocuted.

Yeah.

The movie could have everything could have ended up.

I don't care how many how much how many rubber boots you're wearing. And now and and the other thing about the scene that we just went through, it's the exposition that's setting you up for the third act of the movie. We're introducing new stakes yet again. And these scenes are always a challenge. Um and normally we tend to shoot these scenes in as confined an environment as possible so we can go back and reshoot them and retweet them. And we didn't have the option to do that. Yeah.

And a lot of times we'll overshoot the story so that we can cut it back.

Always. It was right there. Yeah.

After three of them?

After three of them, well in your case six of them but also by now in the movie. The rules were clearer and the options were fewer and the and and what needed to be made clear. And also we'd spent a couple of weeks in the editing room during the break.

That's right, Dr. To go through

Yeah.

How

We had hiatus when Tom broke his ankle and it allowed us to be able to do that. Yeah.

But what I love about a mission movie also is you could go cashmere, push in the computer screen, and then cut to these beautiful shots. This is actually we're shooting in New Zealand for cashmere. I'm doing it. Uh There was a whole great scene that you wrote and shot that we loved where we come upon a camp where you see the the border where and you see that Lane and Walker have basically annihilated these people at the border. And it was haunting and it was in the first trailer.

No.

Sload everything down.

But what it was for the other thing. It was before Walker killed Lane uh Hunlane. Yes. And it was to establish what kind of war we have.

He decided that Lane killed Hunter.

And we we and the scene was meant to establish the brutality of Walker and Lane and they had murdered all these people. You didn't need it.

You didn't need it, and also it's better to see the character do it. That's correct. That's where I feel.

That's right. And so all of this this dialogue was uh and you'll remember we went back and shot it again. This is a typical scene where you're getting an information dump.

Yeah.

And we shot it early the it's a little earlier in the in the London part of our shooting when we were we were at the studio. And it and because you shoot it in this confined environment, you're allowed to go back and change it. And we had to just we had to tweak little bits and and you remember We debated long and hard about motive. This is really the only nod to the villain's motive, their plot in the movie. Which is always a very difficult thing.

Where we are at the geography.

I just as as an ignorant American I didn't know enough. But we did vet it and nobody said anything. For example, when we did you know Russia, the the Russians when we showed it to them, they said this is

Yeah.

Yes. Yes. So we did check, we just nobody gave us the flag for anybody upset about that.

This is where it ends for me. Love the score here by the way. This is New Zealand.

And this campaign. Um except for the deep background, all of this is built practically. And all of it is arranged around a single shop. When we went down to that location, we we still hadn't worked out a lot of what was happening on the ground, but we knew that Ethan had to meet Julia and we knew that Julia we wanted to put her in the absolute best spot we possibly could. The sun rises behind those mountains behind them.

Look at her.

Well it's all look at the light.

She's a brilliant actress.

Manahan is incredible. And came to us at a point when we hadn't worked out a lot of this business in the camp.

Remember they were gonna have a baby at one point.

Yes, they're gonna have a big

Days before we lost that.

Oh I cast a baby and looked at it and was like, This is just too much business in the scene. It's getting in the way. And it was also Luther could say goodbye with your friends.

It's like

Well this is a very tricky scene because all the actors are playing A lot of subtext along with the text. And you have to do one of the most challenging things in the movie, which is you have to tell the audience you're lying, but not lie.

Yeah.

And so you look at the way we've positioned the cameras, there's a camera over Wes's left shoulder that becomes about the conversation between the two of you, and there's a camera over Michelle's right shoulder, which becomes a conversation between the two of you. There's two separate conversations. And part of the thing about the light.

Great performance by Rebecca. Go on. Great.

We shot it late in the day. So they had lots of time to do their side of the scene and you had eight minutes before the sun went down. I'll take. And you said, just shoot them first. You can shoot me later. You know, we ca I'm standing in front of a tent. Get this light. Get this light. That's very generous. That's that's you know, that's and and

But that's what you and I do.

I we'll get it. Let's go. Well I was like it's eight minutes. I mean the sun's really going down. I'd I'd like you to have more time. And also keep in mind in that eight minutes, you have to play the scene three different ways. Because remember we said it's like play one where you're just being totally straight.

The editing on this is so good, the design, how you where you place the team. Michelle came in and she just She's unbelievable and I love what you did with Rebecca and having Ilsa feeling

Yes.

For Ethan. Yeah. Her friend, this man she cares about, this relationship.

And to Rebecca's credit, she didn't know what that story was yet. So she's like What am I doing? Aren't I looking for a nuclear bomb? I was like, No, no, no, no, no. There's a whole other thing going on here and I need you to trust me.

Yes.

So everything she's doing there is getting emotional about the scene and going, Why am I getting so emotional? There's a box.

Yeah.

Exactly. Why what about okay, I'll do it. And she's really wonderful that way. She's very supportive and very trusting. And this you remember, we had minutes to shoot some of these things. And all of this was under the pressure of the fact that you had to go train for this

'Cause I'm also training every day. Obviously is before I broke my ankle I'm training every day for the helicopter. So all the stunts on the helicopter I've been I went to Airbus, I got my license in twelve days, but spent the next year and a half training to become

Favorite cut in the movie.

Love that cut.

Oh scrape. Sorry.

No, no. I trained after that to be commercial pilot, aerobatic pilot.

There's a story there that Wes is telling. That he's he's there's not jealousy in that scene.

Yeah.

He's it's it's a it's an understanding that there's his wife's past has come back and I don't know the story. Lauren's score here is unbelievable. Landing on these entrances. It's really wonderful. I love the sense of team. that that was coming together here. And this is as the movie this is early in the movie and it's our second location and it's as we're starting to find the team rhythm of the movie.

Yes, and the story Shot that New Zealand.

How to make this truck look fast? Lots of customers.

Yes.

Ha ha ha.

There's Henry. I'm going down.

Down the hill and we forgot to shoot this dialogue.

And she's pregnant.

She's pregnant and that was the hill that was gonna be where your helicopter was down.

Great.

And this was back in New Zealand.

Wow!

I'll figure it out.

That's a big Surbato. It's like that's what you cute. I was like, what do we do now? I'll figure it out.

And that was your suggestion by the way. It was don't don't look, don't look and I was like, I know what it is. I know what it is. He goes, It's something. It's like tell her not to look. What would he say? And I was like, I know exactly what he said.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Great note. And and you remember originally when the helicopter took off, we didn't follow you. We cut to that shut sooner to show your face and it was Eddie Hamilton who was like, No no no, stay with the helicopter and that was not our instinct. No our instinct was boom, how do you get to the The shot sooner. And it actually had a real impact. Now this is one of the lovely discoveries that the teams that begin forming in this third act all came from the necessity of who's where and doing what.

Yes.

Luther and Julia to be doing.

Brilliant design, McHugh. That's the stuff that you do so damn well.

It's

And it's all character, it's all story.

It's all necessity. Yes. And it's it's it all comes.

That was tricky to figure out actually. That hurts. That hurts. That does hurt. That was tricky to figure out. Like, instead of just letting go and I have to say You don't want to let go.

back that we came up with on the yep you were like you and you were saying you were just like it you you you you were you had this shot And you were trying to articulate it and you were like, It's it's we you know, we cut how do we show Ethan on the bag and and it's like it's like a hill somewhere. I go, I got it, I know what you need and we went and scouted. And we got dropped off on the side of a mountain.

We got that the second day, do you remember? We're like,

We did it once and I was like we can do it.

It wasn't close enough as I was climbing up the bag.

too long and that other helicopter wasn't in the background. Yes. And I said, guys we can do this better and we went back and got it and we ended up using all the shots in conjunction with each other. But a lot of our obsession

Now I'm glad you wait. Editorially it's like I like you're taking time with me breathing. It was exhausting climbing up that rope. And this the movie is taking its time here.

Well uh what I was about to say is our obsession was anywhere we can hold in the shot. Yes. And we were being discouraged from shooting this moment. Yes.

They're saying no, it's boring, don't do it. I saw and I was you could see in the EPK I'm yelling at them. I'm I'm this is what I'm gonna do.

It's like I could do it, just get out of my way. Yeah. This is really great. This is all fun. Adrian, you and Adrian worked on this forever. ご視聴ありがとうございました And another thing to to th is that the the this is obviously all stuff that everybody would be dead if they were doing it for real. And so we had to we had to find our moments in the story when we were doing things that were not real and in you know

That shot.

Yes. And then and what's really incredible is You can't tell the difference between the right.

All that's real.

And that's what's really effective about the work that Jody Johnson and his team did. Yep. Because we had to get you to the place where it was real

All this is practical here.

Oh some but some of it you'd be surprised. Some of it you'd be surprised. And then what's really nice, you remember we shot a whole bunch of stuff on a back lot of close ups of you. Because we felt like the more close ups we had the more connected we were with Ethan. And we shot a ton of it, we threw it all out.

Just wasn't working.

Remember the first.

He's talking too much.

Yeah, exactly. Why is he talking so much?

Which we're grateful. Yeah. So we just threw it out.

We thought audiences needed it. And so look at all of this stuff. These these are all these camera angles are designed to show you that there's not only is there not another pilot in the helicopter, there's not another seat for another pilot. And it creates visibility. that uh that creates completely unique shots for you. And then of course we have to teach the audience just a little bit.

about helicopters,

Flying a helicopter and how difficult it is. And we had we shot a lot of stuff of how much did Ethan know about flying a helicopter. So we we we could shoot Ethan knew nothing?

Performed I know nothing, yeah to different levels of I know a little bit.

Some sense well.

Yep. I have to say, this is all in New Zealand. When we were flying out we had I don't know how many helicopters, eleven, twelve helicopters to get out there. Yeah. The design of this with the bag it's

Mark Wolf.

Yep. Andy, all the guys that taught me how to fly, that trusted me to fly, that trusted us to be able to do this, uh it and and getting the locations and getting these locations.

Coordinating these look that and coordinating that shot. The the the the amount of work of three helicopters and a counter move, all of this stuff is incredibly painstaking, very dangerous. And to and then of course there's just luck. The fact that when we went to that lake that's called Lake Quill and it was mirror smooth.

Which which also is helicopter pilots makes it a little difficult when we're flying that low over

You can't tell how far you are over the water.

So you really have to know.

So watch when Tom does this dot What Tom doesn't understand, to Tom, it looks like he's flying into the sky. And this shot will get look at that. That's a reflection.

Yeah.

And that and so when Tom's looking down, he can't tell how far away he is from the it looks infinite. Uh and and so he you had to do this bank away and this uh

Really?

Wingover. We were very nervous. It was one of the scarier shots. Don't try this at home.

No please. And I'm trying to keep as close to the side of the mountain as possible and go as low as possible. And keep it moving. I mean that is a it's a very tricky maneuver.

And and he's doing all of that. There's no stunt pilots used in that.

All of that. Gosh, this was fun.

Yeah.

Shot from a boat.

Do you remember that?

Yes.

Now we're so close. Look at Henry also doing this. He's hanging out of that helicopter.

Trying to do it. It's very cold.

It's...

And it will only get...

I at least had heat, Henry. My hat's off to you.

Guys. Ah he's Superman. He's used to

It's awesome.

All of this, uh not all of it, but quite a bit of it was shot on a on on our back lock. This was another thing where I knew I knew with these tents, if we couldn't finish it in New Zealand we could finish it at home. And so we we had these tents built on the location but we would only go there when w as weather cover or or anything else and the rest of the time. We spent with Julia and And uh uh Luther.

Like we're

Yeah.

Rotor plates are just Sometimes a foot, two feet. Three feet off the rocks if I either one of us made a mistake.

And the balance of the editing of this sequence. You remember we we we we we were in we were in a place where we were testing the movie and there were times and it felt too long. And and it was always about finding the right mix of what was happening on the ground, what was happening in the air, and how did the two things intercut. So that they they felt like one was

Well we go back to Valkyrie. Yes. Which is the end of Valkyrie. The editing, the last, you know, ten minutes of Valkyrie, the last five minutes of Valkyrie the skill that you have in terms of balancing that many characters in this kind of story.

Well, and it's around... I love Simon Newcomb. Nuclear.

Bobby's just fantastic.

And watch this. Cuts like that. Yes. What we do is what Eddie Hamilton and I will do in in post is we will experiment with cutting from one thing to another. And once you find a good cut, it tells you well what happened before and what happened after. And we and we experimented many times with what cut to what.

Um it's just

And there are numerous versions of those cuts, and this is the one we ultimately said. This shot, I had to take out a whole wall behind the camera to get this. And so it took hours to get it.

Haunted house.

Dis it's deceptively complicated. Getting a shot like this, the timing of everything just right.

It's so good.

And I originally did it as a wonder from the time she came all the way down the steps and into this I got carried away. Let's be honest. But again, you hear this inner cutting.

Okay now this cut.

You made a very good suggestion here.

From there.

He says she gets hit and he says, Ilsa, come in and you were like you don't need it. Cut to here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes. Going. What's happening?

And and we realized yes, you didn't need to know that her comms had I said, Well her radio's been knocked out and I w and you were like, Nobody cares It doesn't matter, man, we're on story, we gotta move. And I really didn't think we'd get away with it and it

It just goes it's what a balance. act to come up and be able to

And all the other material that we shot, which we just we ultimately looked at and said, What's really on story? We were very, very ruthless about it. There were things we really loved in And a lot of those that you'll see in this um Uh again in the deleted shots reel. I don't I don't I don't like deleted scenes. Yeah. It just give you a little sense of there's a lot more work behind it. And each cut is painful because each each shot took so much to get.

Story is king.

Yes. Story is king. That line Michelle improvised on the day and and did it as a joke after we yelled cut and I was like that's a good line, let's put that in the scene. And this Rebecca originally woke up in this scene and she startles when she opens her eyes because Lane is right in front of her and they're having this dialogue.

And of course.

Yes and and all the weight of the movie. But it comes to this point where you're not quite sure Yes.

Are we going to kill Benjamin?

Are we going to kill Benji? And I had a delightful time on social media with people when I you know I posted the picture of the funeral. They said, Who do you kill? And people were saying, You're gonna kill Benji, I know you're gonna kill Benji. There will be rioting in the streets and I would reply, oh. Maybe that was a mistake that I shouldn't have done that. So to everybody I tortured, I enjoyed that.

This is so well shot, McKee. Come on, look at that. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Amazing camera work that's going on in that because again we had very little time in these locations and we didn't know what was happening when we were shooting the helicopter chase. We didn't quite have the the scene in the house worked out yet.

A lot of this stuff we just when we were shooting this we were. We are feeling our way, even even with the aerial stuff. We we don't know what's gonna happen with the team. We shot this. We are we have

Simon is so good here. And Rebecca, they're they're How quickly they become a team at that at this point in the movie. And a very important thing. I almost didn't have her tied up in this thing because I didn't want the damsel in distress. And I realized what a damsel in distress really is, is a damsel who needs to be saved. And if if taking it too far, Rebecca uh never ends up in any real danger.

Incredible.

And this this is real. That's really Tom and Mark. They're a rotor width away from one another. When they're doing that shot, it's incredibly, incredibly dangerous.

Look at this.

And a lot of these shots are very, very, very difficult.

What you can really do and what's gonna kill somebody.

Yes. The audience is as far as we could.

And as a result, some of the rigs we built were the best amusement park rides that no one will ever get to ride except you. There were some really cool rigs. I was like, we could charge for

We could ha give him on the

Seven months pregnant. At this point in the movie, Rebecca ended up getting pregnant right around the time you broke your ankle. Yes. And the movie should have been over. Long before. And because of the ankle break, she's seven months pregnant and I mean gave it her absolute all.

Nikh, I just love the story that's going on here too though. Look at this. Okay, she's getting hit and Benji gets to kick and that kicks him off. That's

And you remember this was a lot of this was workshops with you and me and Wade. Wade came to us with a choreography and we came up with the idea of the box and we would just add layers to what was a pretty simple fight choreography. We weren't trying to be stunty and showy. We were just trying and this dilemma of trying to choke the villain.

That's just Macquarie. I love it. Oh, yeah.

But it but it all came y and do you remember what it came up from is that Sean Harris early on said, I wanna kill Benji

Yes, exactly.

He goes, that's uh he goes the only thing I want to do is kill Benji and I go, You know what, Sean? I you can't kill him, but that gives me an idea. And I knew I was gonna have Sean some way or another choking Simon. And that's all I had going into that room. And I said to Wade, find a way for him to choke him. And Wade came up with the hangings. Fantastic. And it was one layer after another, all because Sean was just go Sean was so funny, he goes, I'm the funny one. He's not funny. I'm funny.

I could be funny.

That could be funny.

That could be funny.

Ha ha ha.

Wade did a great job. Way Eastwood. Thank you, my friend. Thank you so much.

Now all of this chaos all of this mayhem where it's just one thing on top of another is the simple Problem of how do I get these two guys together in the same place after they've been in a helicopter? And you said, this was great, you said Five days before we went to shoot pulpit rock, he said, I think what if we messed up Walker's face? Like what if he was more of a monster? And I said, well, we can't cut him because it'll be blood and there's a rating issue. So what if we burn him?

to get him to a point where he is a monster by the end of the movie and Henry, to his credit, was like, Yes. I loved it.

Yes.

It was no hesitation. It was like absolutely

He was like, Let's do it. Okay. And we were throwing things like you know, hey, today your face is gonna be hamburger. All right. Yeah. Okay, I guess.

That'll be cool.

And this was so wonderful. The two of them.

Lovely.

Just two great actors. So great to work with. I know. Such a fun time. And was fifteen minutes before rap on the last day. Fifteen minutes to midnight.

That was it.

And I put three cameras, I put a camera between their feet, and I put a camera pointed at each of them, and all the energy you're feeling in this scene is the actors knowing that. If we go one minute over, it'll cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars that we don't have in the budget. We can't go one more day. We pushed it to the absolute limit.

And the crew was amazing by You know, working so hard to get it, I gotta tell ya, incredible. So look at I love this shot that you have. This is at Popit Rock. This is now we're now in Norway.

Now we're in Norway. And what what I asked for, and it was the only time I asked for a location after the fact, everything I scouted the movie.

I said shot.

And how we manage To kind of hold that as a reveal, even though his face is burned much sooner, uh everything was sort of designed around coming to that moment. But here at Pulpit Rock I said to Ben Pills, our location coordinator I need something they can fall off of, not down. And New Zealand didn't have a straight drop. They had a lot of sloping drops. And he brought me a picture of pulpit rock and I said, this is something we can fall off of. And it's a real testament to Jake Myers.

Very challenging. We got lucky with the weather. With the weather. Because my broken ankle. I still have a broken ankle here.

This was your this was your first day back.

Yeah, this is a break. All the climbing, everything. My ankle's broken here. I'm wearing a brace. If you can see my right foot is much bigger because I'm wearing a little brace.

I can't tell.

I know. And I all that Right ankle's broken. And

And you remember when you're not going to be able to do I said he's he's holding your ankle and you looked at me and you went my left ankle, right?

That's right. Yes.

My left ankle right there.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

But

I couldn't pivot on it.

I know.

The weather, because we were supposed to shoot this in September.

And now, No in November and the you had uh This was like eight

Weeks after I broke the ankle.

And we had three.

Yes.

We had we had three days on pulpit rock. Three. And we lost a day and a half to weather. So everything that you're seeing that we shot actually on pulpit rock, we shot in a day and a half.

It's incredible.

And then

A day and a half.

Other pieces we we we me we shot little tight things all the tighter stuff we shot at uh at Leavesden. Again, great yes. Great visual effects work, great production design.

This is a moment we came up with.

Later. Later.

Look at that. Like the walker smudge.

And do you remember that look to the l th that's that's pulpit rocks but the other shot now look at this. This is real. This is real. And remember Tom's right ankle is broken. Pivoting on his ankle is extraordinarily painful. This is all that is your first day back on the job after breaking your ankle. Look at it. Oh, that's painful.

Oh but look at that. So beautiful.

And Lauren's score there.

Fantastic.

If you remember we were we were coming towards the end and Lauren had scored all of this and you said I'm missing the theme and we went back in and just tweaked so that the mission theme was starting to repeat through it. Yeah, we got so focused on the drama, you're like, don't forget. It's mission. And here's where we found it. We found these little places for it. All the score was done and Lorne was able to just surgically drop the moment.

All those shots are the ten minutes. I just wanna say I remind you guys who are listening. This is all in the last Literally ticking.

Okay. And they were yelling at me. They were like, Stop interrupting and I was like, Save the line right. Just the clock is ticking. Oh my god, there was so much stress and you could Rebecca is so mad at me. Rebecca is so mad at me.

Wait, can we make a decision on this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And this moment of what do we do?

McQueen.

Thank you.

Elegant. Don't need to see me take the thing. It's cut to the white.

Well there was no dramatic to do dra way to do it. There wasn't a cliffhanger way of you pulling that out with your teeth. Now here's where we got lucky. We knew all of this in the script. One of the few things we did know in the script was that you were looking at the sun. Yes. But in pulpit rock. It was cloudy, foggy, hazy. It was never there was no sun. We didn't even know where the sun would be when we got to this moment. And on the day

Lucky were we.

Oh my god. I'd better be rather be lucky than good.

That's exactly it.

Again, all these things it started raining right after we got that.

And it started snowing.

Start well when we got in the helicopter to leave

It was snowing snowing and that was it. And it was it was snowed in for the rest of the season.

leave equipment up there for the whole winter. Yeah, p and some of our crew had to hike down in the snow. Thank you to our crew who did that. Yes.

I wish I could have done it. Broken I.

And this was

Okay.

So this was

Michelle Monahan.

The fourth scene. This was the thing. And uh so when you have something this specific, the whole movie has to build up and work to it. And then you remember we shot this and we shot the wedding at the beginning of the movie on the same day.

That's right.

And this scene had to be finished. For us to get on helicopters and fly a skeleton crew

To the opening.

Yes. To film the opening.

And in between I was training and I had already I was falling off the bag in between this. When you guys were shooting those other things, I was off and you were you were running from both things.

You literally are beat to hell in that thing.

That was already me going Oh yes. Now look at Michelle just it's like

She's so wonderful. She's wonderful in the scene. And the the thing that was really funny is if you go all the way back to mission three where Ethan and Julia are having a party at the beginning of the movie and talking about where they met or Julia's talking with her friends about where they met and you're reading her lips in the other room. They met in Lake Wanaka and to fly out to The Milford Sound location we actually took off from Lake.

That's right. That was amazing. That was that was a moment.

Yes, I when I saw the Lake Wanaka sign I was like Yeah.

Yeah.

And we couldn't bring Michelle back. You remember she had a she had a commitment to her show The Past. And there was no way to bring her back and you'll see that some of these shots are just slightly a little soft and w there's there it's there's an opportunity there to reshoot. We didn't have it. And there was an opportunity to use shots that were more in focus, but the truth of the matter was the performance was so much stronger and overpowered that. And so you it's

It's not a good thing. Who cares? Who cares? Also you'll see intercut in this scene. after this scene with Michelle and Rebecca ad libbed this n moment coming up that was really quite beautiful.

And these flash forwards and this is lovely moment. These just these three actors who really understand the kind of film they're making, the kind of story they're telling. There's such a warmth

And look at that frame with Vings. Okay. Simon, like every time and there's Michelle.

That's all real.

Yep, that's a New Zealand. I love what Rebecca does here.

But it's interesting oh, this is great. And this was an improv moment. I'm watching it on the monitor and I saw her do this and what is she doing? And it was so lovely. It was such a nice moment of a connection. It was such a great instinct between those two actors.

This is the same thing. We thought it was a whole scene and we thought potentially it was gonna be the end of the movie.

Well, you said to me You said the movie can't end with Ethan Hunt lying in bed. Like it's just not like it's an action movie.

I know. And we want to feel like I want like

Where are all these characters? You were like, what's it? There he goes you you were like there's all this unresolved stuff. And I was like, You're right, you're absolutely right and we wrote the coda.

We shot it.

We shot it, didn't include it.

Didn't work.

I didn't well the moo you you felt clearly that the movie wanted to end

And it ended here.

And when you saw it you went, Oh yeah, I totally said it. But then the audience was asking, where are the other people? We have this dilemma of What are we gonna do?

We're there in the editing room.

Well I was lying in bed.

We know we were in the editing room, we left, we're like, What are we gonna do? And then the next morning

I came to her because I I suddenly realized well what of the scene do I need? I just need her dialogue and I need to see the widow and I need to see Land.

And I came in that afternoon and you were like, You didn't say just I'm not gonna tell you, I'm just gonna show it to you. And this is what he did with all of that. It's just fantastic. Those great McCory gifts that you get.

And watch this. This last shot of Tom was originally a profile and Eddie Hamilton I said, Give me a close up instead. Goes well I have one but it's not long enough'cause it rolls out and boop that's the camera rolling out, that flash. That flash. And the typical of Mission Impossible, you delivered the last line of the movie as the camera rolled out. Congratulations, my friend.

Oh look at this. Look at this cast.

friends again at Filmograph and the curtain.

And the curtain call.

Which you and I talk about on every movie. We love curtain calls. Yes. And we tried to do one on Valkyrie.

I know.

And it just it was the wrong kind of

You know. I I just love having it. It's just to be able to celebrate these actors and as an audience to be able to Just give me the highlights again that I could relive and it's so much fun.

And well and th the the Mission Impossible theme and the feeling one gets, the punch you get out of uh and you know and again being able to go back to moments like this, uh is is really fun and it takes you out of the movie with the same feeling that brings you in.

I gotta tell you it's number nine with us McHugh. It's such an honor to work with you. I just think I I love your sense of story, your taste. You're so elegant as a filmmaker, as a storyteller. I have so much fun working with you. It's it's constantly like to be able to like hit that ball back and forth. I have such respect for you. You're my dear friend and I just greatly admire you and and I feel very privileged to work with you. I think it's I'm so I look at this movie and you know, it's

Well th thank you. And I I and I mean that most sincerely going all the way back to first movie we worked on, which was Valkyrie, and coming at it with a very different with a very different sense and a very different sensibility. And anybody who wants to look at the four films I've made to date, can see an evolution and that that evolution is owed very much to both the all of the wisdom that you've brought from all of the films you've made and all the filmmakers you've worked with

We're gonna live.

Come with me if you've got to be.

You wanna live.

And you can see I would not be the filmmaker that made this movie had I not been making movies with you since Valkyrie. And you can see a clear delineation. between the first film I made and the three subsequent films I made with you. Uh and and so all of those things that you're saying which are on the one hand very kind, they're also greatly influenced by My collaboration with you, so I thank you.

Well I'm very honored by what you said and it's really just from the moment I met you, uh you know and Valkyrie's uh typewriters are going. He just knows so much about filmmaking and you honor filmmaking and storytelling and it

Great privilege. Oh well thank you. You've you've said something before. You said it in the when we were promoting this movie, is as where you said I'm a t in in that one clip where you said I'm addicted to making movies. And that really is what it is. It's like it's it's it's a

We share that.

You can't really help it. No.

Yeah.

You we just start on a story and you just can't let go and and you know, and of course we've really thanked the whole crew guys. Uh

Every everybody here. This this is a film that belongs to each and every one of the people that you're seeing here going you know, going all the way back to our amazing sound department, James Mather and all of his mixers, uh the stunt team, the art department, the costume department.

Yeah.

Wade and Jake and uh all of you guys, thank you. Uh uh Tommy Gormley.

Tommy Corn Thank you so much.

It really is a team effort and this movie, more than any other movie I've I've worked on, either one that I've directed or worked on with other people, this was the most difficult.

So ambitious.

The most challenged. Yes. And so many things being thrown at the movie. And every single one of the people that Winter.

Winters. Two winters, very um No, we actually we had three we lived through three winters. Yes, you're right. And it was three winters and a very uh because of New Zealand. Yeah. Uh and just the cast. Guys. brilliant actors, uh a privilege every day to work with you all. I know, you know, McHugh and I just every moment Like th just thank you.

Grateful grateful to have every single one of you. And by the way

Eddie.

Eddie Hamilton. Eddie. Our amazing Eddie. Eddie. Eddie and I, uh you'll you'll find it on this disc. Eddie and I did a did a separate commentary, uh which which you should listen to just to listen to Eddie, who was absolutely wonderful. And also Lauren Bauf, our composer.

Ralph. Lauren. Incredible. Guys, a it was like A plus across the board, guys. Uh can't wait for the next one.

Oh god. Stop.

Enjoy the credits.

You remember a minute ago when you said I never rest on my laurels?

Two.

And you correct me, you start talking. And then I'm in a helicopter. On a mountain.

Yes, and now we're working on Top Gun.

That I guess the secret's out now. Or it will be out by the time I listen to it.

McHugh's work we're now working on our next one.

Joe Kaczynski

Joke is in.

Brilliant Joe Kaczynski and uh yeah I'm Jerry. Jerry Bruckheimer and Aaron Krueger were all tinkering on the script upstairs.

Many other stories. Many other things.

You bastard.

You bastard.

The adventure never ends.

Uh no if that's that moment and and but but and and you have such a you take such delight, you son of a bitch. You take such like'cause Tom knows that I would literally never make a movie again if he did not create The the pressure cooker that makes me go, Oh, all right. You know, every time you're pitching me, we move back. I don't want to hear this.

At the premiere in Paris.

Yeah.

I always sit next we always sit next to each other at the premiere. So at the premiere pairs it's you, me, and Heather is next to you.

And right here, as the movie as the the credits come on, what did you say to me?

We could do better.

You went Yeah, we could do better.

You're like

Yeah, like whatever.

Yeah, we could do better.