Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One almost went to the past as director Christopher McQuarrie considered de-aging Tom Cruise for a scene.
“Originally, there had been a whole sequence at the beginning of the movie that was going to take place in 1989,” McQuarrie said to GamesRadar+ and Total Film. “We talked about it as a cold open, we talked about it as flashbacks in the movie, we looked at de-aging.”
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De-aging has been a recent hot topic after Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny used visual effects to make Harrison Ford younger in the opening sequence. When McQuarrie considered using the technique, he found that de-aging diverted attention away from Cruise and the story.
“One of the big things about [the de-aging] I was looking at while researching, I kept saying, ‘Boy, this de-aging is really good’ or ‘This de-aging is not so good.’ Never did I find myself actually following the story,” McQuarrie said. “I was so distracted by an actor [Cruise] that I had known for however long was now suddenly this young person.”
Despite scrapping the sequence, McQuarrie is not closing the door on de-aging in future Mission: Impossible films.
“In researching that, I cracked the code – I think – on how best to approach it,” McQuarrie said. “By then, we had kind of moved away from it. We may still play with it. We never say never.”
In Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt must track down a dangerous weapon that threatens humanity before it gets into the hands of a villainous organization. The ensemble includes Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, Esai Morales, Mariela Garriga, and Henry Czerny.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is directed by McQuarrie on a screenplay he co-wrote with Erik Jendresen. The film is now in theaters.