Earlier this month, it was a surprising revelation when we learned that a flashback cold open sequence featuring a de-aged Tom Cruise was considered for the beginning of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1... but it turns out that we didn't even have all of the cool details about the not-to-be scene. Not only was the blockbuster going to feature a de-aged Cruise, but there was consideration of pairing him with a de-aged Julia Roberts.
Christopher McQuarrie reveals more about the abandoned cold open for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 on the new episode of the Empire Spoilers Special podcast, providing details about the setting, the vision, and the A-lister cameo. The writer/director explained that he was going to fully embrace a late-1980s vibe, and that would have included having a period-accurate breakout star: Julia Roberts. McQuarrie explained,
I said, ‘Ok, if I were doing this sequence, it would be Tom in, say, 1989. It would be Tony Scott’s Mission: Impossible. That’s who would have been directing the movie before Brian De Palma, you know, in that era. We looked at Days of Thunder and we looked at the style of it, and we started thinking what would it look like if Tony Scott had shot this, and who would it have been? I looked back at who was the ingenue, who was the breakout star in 1989? And right around then was Mystic Pizza. And I was like, ‘Oh my God. Julia Roberts, a then-pre-Pretty Woman Julia Roberts, as this young woman.’
Continuing, Christopher McQuarrie added that Julia Roberts being paired with Tom Cruise became a lynchpin idea for the whole cold open sequence in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, but eventually the production realized that her inclusion in the blockbuster would result in a snowball effect of sorts:
The only way I could have seen doing the sequence justice was to somehow convince Julia Roberts to come in and be this small role at the beginning of this story. And of course, as you’re conceptually going through it, you’re like, ‘Now all anybody’s going to be doing is thinking about the de-aging of Julia Roberts, and Esai [Morales], and Tom [Cruise], and Henry Czerny.’
As you may have guessed, all of the advanced digital work that would have been required to make the whole thing feasible would have been ridiculously expensive – and it was ultimately decided that the price was a bit too high. Or as Christopher McQuarrie put it,
I got the bill for de-aging those people before their salaries were even factored into it. And if you put two of them in a shot together, or three of them in a shot together, it would have been as expensive as the train by the time we were done.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 was an expensive blockbuster to make as is (with a budget of $291 million, per Deadline), so one can only imagine what the price tag would have been had the production included the opening flashback sequence.
As cool as it would have been to see Julia Roberts cameo in a Mission: Impossible movie, it seems that most would agree that the film doesn't really need it, having earned widespread critical acclaim and an "A" grade from CinemaScore surveys. The blockbuster is now playing in theaters everywhere.
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