Tom Cruise will once again save the world (and, above all, the box office). He will do it in the film Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , As Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise and his IMF team are faced with the most dangerous challenge they have ever faced: find and defuse a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity.
With the fate of the world and control of the future hanging in the balance, the team embarks on a frantic mission across the globe to prevent the weapon from falling into the wrong hands. Faced with a mysterious and all-powerful enemy, tormented by dark forces from the past, Ethan will be forced to decide whether to sacrifice everything for this mission, including the lives of those who hold dear.
Alongside Tom Cruise, the film directed by Christopher Quarrie also stars an infinite number of Hollywood stars: Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Mariela Garriga, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Frederick Schmidt, Cary Elwes, Mark Gatiss, Indira Varma and Rob Delaney.
THE MOST SPECTACULAR SEQUENCE
On September 6, 2020, the first day of principal photography for the film Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , Tom Cruise rode a motorcycle down a mountain. In particular, he launched himself with a custom-built Honda CRF 250 from a specially built ramp into the Norwegian mountainside of Helsetkopen, a vertiginous rock face some 1200 meters above sea level. He dived into the cliff before deploying his parachute just over 150 meters above the ground. Upon its landing, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, starting with director Christopher McQuarrie .
That shot is by far one of the spectacular scenes of the Mission: Impossible franchise that Tom Cruise has accustomed us to but it is certainly not the only one. “I repeated the sequence and the jump seven times to make sure it was perfect,” the actor commented. “Every time I went down the ramp, it was dangerous. I risked my life but on the set of the saga there is always a motto: be competent, not safe. To be truly safe, it is not enough that all the danger prevention measures are in place, but you also need to know them and stick to them”.
And the result of Tom Cruise’s expertise is there for all to see. After all, in the past he had already accustomed us to extreme stunts (to be performed strictly without a smartphone) by climbing the Burj Khalifa, hanging from an Airbus A400M in flight or jumping from a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III from almost 8,000 meters in height . In particular, bike jumping is something the actor has been thinking about since he was a child, as he candidly reveals: “As a kid, I used to build ramps for bike jumping over trash cans. I was eight years old but I was already looking for dangerous things to do!”.
Fantasy, imagination, courage, innovation and dedication are the elements of the sequence that make it clear what is the spirit that animates the entire film. “The jump represented a breaking point and no return,” commented Cruise. “It wasn’t just a stunt but a real statement of intent: it represented the high standard of the entire film that we were preparing to shoot.”
THE MOST DANGEROUS MISSION
For the first time in the history of the Mission: Impossible franchise , the character of Ethan Hunt led Tom Cruise to face situations that were new and unprecedented for him, not just dangerous. But to see how the story of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One ends , it will be necessary to wait for Part Two to be released in June 2024. “This is the first time we have divided a story of the saga into two chapters,” underlined the actor. “It’s something we’ve never attempted before because of the inherent complexity of the stories. But this time it was all so epic that we just had to do it.”
“We were filming Top Gun: Maverick , when director Christopher McQuarrie and I started talking about the new Mission: Impossible , a film that would be able to test all our limits, not just physical. It’s like we both shared the idea of challenging ourselves and surpassing everything we’ve done so far.”
But where to start? Fallout , the previous film in the franchise, had achieved incredible results at the box office and garnered rave reviews. It was therefore necessary to focus on action and emotion, which is why Ethan Hunt finds himself with his team trying to save the world from a mysterious and all-powerful enemy capable of controlling the way humanity perceives reality. “The stakes this time are global as well as personal,” McQuarrie highlighted. “Ethan Hunt is forced to remember that nothing matters more to his mission than he does, not even the lives of those he cares most about.”
“ Dead Reckoning is an ancient maritime expression. It was used in navigation and was the process of calculating one’s course based solely on one’s last known position,” explained the director. “Essentially, you go blind. And that becomes a perfect metaphor not only for Ethan but for several key characters in the story as well.”
And much of the emotion is certainly to be found in the story introduction of the character Grace, played by Hayley Atwell . “Grace is an outsider,” the actress clarified. “Lone wolf, she steals the key to a powerful weapon from Ethan early in the film, lighting the fuse for a worldwide chase. When we meet her, she works for various people with whom she has no emotional or moral attachment. The audience will love her inconsistency of her” of her.
Photos of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
