Mission: Impossible’s Christopher McQuarrie Claims His More Difficult Days Of Shooting Are Coming In The Upcoming Sequels, So What Insane Tom Cruise Stunts Await?

tom cruise in mission: impossible - dead reckoning part one
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)

It’s been a while since we last saw Tom Cruise playing Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible movies, with 2018’s Fallout not only earning critical acclaim like its immediate two predecessors, but also becoming the highest-grossing entry in the franchise. But for Cruise, director/writer Christopher McQuarrie and many more, they’ve been firmly entrenched in the Mission: Impossible world for years now, with Dead Reckoning Part One having filmed on and off over the latter half of 2020 and into fall 2021, and Dead Reckoning Part Two having begun filming this past March. But there’s still quite a bit of footage left to capture, and McQuarrie has claimed that his more difficult days of filming are coming up, leading us to wonder why kind of insane Cruise stunts are coming up.

Every now and then, Christopher McQuarrie will turn to social media to either share updates on how the movie he’s working on is coming along, and occasionally he’ll answer some fan questions/inquiries. This time around, a fan asked the filmmaker on Twitter what was his most difficult scene to film, and he answered:

I’m in the air, shooting it right now. And two harder ones await.

It’s impressive that Christopher McQuarrie responded to this fan while he was up in the air in shooting his most difficult scene yet, but more importantly, what’s coming up in these two scenes that make them even more daunting? McQuarrie didn’t clarify whether this will be part of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One’s reshoots (assuming a period of extra filming has ben scheduled for that production), or if this is part of Dead Reckoning Part Two’s principal photography. Speaking frankly, we don’t even know for a fact that what McQuarrie is teasing involves Tom Cruise, though since is a franchise where we’ve seen the actor literally climbing on the world’s tallest building and hanging onto the side of a plane taking off, one wouldn’t be faulted for putting money on these mysterious scenes featuring some classic Cruise stunts.

Some of the Mission: Impossible 7 stunts that we’ve already seen glimpses of or heard about include Tom Cruise driving a motorcycle off a massive ramp, repeatedly parachuting out of a helicopter, rushing around on a moving train and doing some paragliding, with one of those latter sessions resulted in him meeting a local couple. Cruise has also valued stunts in the Mission: Impossible film series since the very beginning, admitting that he and director Brian de Palma plotted the train sequence in 1996’s Mission: Impossible before the story was crafted. Hopefully after both parts of Dead Reckoning are out, McQuarrie reveals which of those movies’ scenes were the most challenging for him and his team to put on camera.

Although the first Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One trailer premiered back in May and gave us a taste of what to expect from the 2023 movie release, including that aforementioned motorcycle stunt, story details for both it and Part Two remain shrouded in secrecy. The cast members joining Tom Cruise in Part One include Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Frederick Schmidt, Henry Czerny, Hayley Atwell, Shea Whigham, Esai Morales and Pom Klementieff. Many of these individuals will be back for Part Two, and among the people who will be brought into play in the follow-up are Nick Offerman and Holt McCallany.

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 14, 2023, and Part Two follows on June 28, 2024. Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more information on what these sequels have in store for moviegoers.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.