Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has meticulous crafted stunts and many ties to previous instalments in the franchise, and yet the cast have revealed that “nothing’s written in stone” in the script when production began.
Director Christopher McQuarrie, who has directed four Mission: Impossible films, knows the resolution of the film but he prefers to let the “location we get to tell him the story,” before the cast shoot multiple scenes to create different versions of their character.
When asked about their reaction to some of the surprises and Easter eggs in the final script, Simon Pegg and Pom Klementieff turned to each other confused. Pegg said: “Script?” As Klementieff added: “What is that?”
Pegg went onto explain the full process to GamesRadar+: “When we go into this, we create these movies in a particular way. We know where the story is going, but McQ likes to let the location we get to tell him the story so nothing’s written in stone when we start.”
Klementieff added: “There’s big ideas, and also, they might change.”
Pegg continued: “Yeah, there were lots of ways, like the knife that you see in the trailer that comes from the first film, that appeared in a few different ways while we shot it, and so, we didn’t ever quite know which one was going to be the finished version.
“But McQ has such a great connection to the legacy of these films. He’s an expert on each and every one of them, and his ability to apply those films to this film were just genius. And any time he came with an idea, it was exciting.”
It isn’t until the actors watch the film in cinemas that they discover which version of their character made it into the final edit on-screen. Hayley Atwell opened up about the in-depth process of crafting her character, Grace, in The Final Reckoning, which took place across five years.
Atwell explained: “There was so much that we did over five years that then they edit together to become the version of Grace that they feel works best within the context of the story and within the context of the team.
“So as an actor coming in, it’s about facilitating lots of different ideas. When I saw it as an audience member, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the version of Grace. They went with.'”
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will be in cinemas from the 21st of May in the UK and May 23 in the US.
In the meantime, see our guide to watching the Mission: Impossible movies in order for a movie marathon, or our guide to all the upcoming movies of the year to plan your watchlist.
