The ante has been continually upped as the Mission: Impossible franchise progressed, with Christopher McQuarrie leading that charge since his arrival as a writer on Ghost Protocol. He directed the next two movies, which have turned out to be the most successful by far. As Tom Cruise does crazier and crazier stunts, more people show up. Funny that. But with McQuarrie having agreed to direct the next two movies he’s now beginning to realize just how high the bar has been set and he’s understandably concerned.
See, that bar, no matter how high it is, will probably have to be jumped off of by Cruise. Speaking with Empire about the back-to-back M:I films he’s shooting, McQuarrie admits to being “freaked out” at the task in front of him.
“I pitched the idea of making two movies, and now I have to justify why it’s two movies. You’ve got to earn that. You’ve got to make something that swallows the last three movies whole. I’m freaked out now. We’ve talked ourselves into something. Holy shit.”
Asked why he doesn’t just send Cruise’s IMF agent Ethan Hunt to the moon, McQuarrie has the only rational response…
“Here’s the problem with going to the moon: how do you fall from the moon?”
Because we know Cruise would find a way to skydive down from the moon if he could, and he’d do the stunt himself.
The one thing I’m not concerned about is McQuarrie and Cruise coming up with some off-the-wall action sequence that blows our minds. Finding creative missions for the team to go on is a bigger issue, but McQuarrie hasn’t let us down in that regard yet.
Mission: Impossible 7 will arrive on July 23rd 2021, followed by Mission: Impossible 8 on August 5th 2022
