(grunts)
(grunts) (thuds)
- They lost their (bleep) the end of the movie, for sure.
- I'm so glad, I'm so pleased to hear people responding
to the third act of the movie.
- That's what I wanted to talk with you about.
If I'm the Bond producers I'm watching that
third act, I'm going "This (bleep) just topped us."
(laughs)
Can you talk about, like I felt like I was watching
a Star Wars movie, in that, not to impose a Twitter (bleep)
in that inner cutting across like three spheres of action
the way Star Wars does.
And, I was just wondering like how did you lock in on that?
Was that from like early concept thing?
- Early concept was you had all of these characters
and I had to give them all their things to do.
So, the entire third act, I knew what Tom was going
to be doing.
He was going to be flying in this helicopter.
But, that his flying in a helicopter didn't mean
anything if it didn't have some immediate impact
on things that were happening on the ground.
And, the whole movie became about how do I engineer
a sequence where the team all has things to do
and if any one member of that team was removed
it all would have gone to seed.
And, even then I only had the vaguest sense of it
going into that village days before we shot it.
- Like, that sequence just in it with the IMAX scope to it
like is that, on an Empire podcast you said last year
that you showed Tom a picture of something
and he said, "I can't wait to fall off that."
Was that the helicopter?
- That was Pulpit Rock.
- [Phil] Oh that (bleep) rock.
- We had figured out the helicopter sequence
and we knew that it was going to end on a cliff somewhere.
But, we couldn't find a cliff like that anywhere
in New Zealand.
New Zealand everything was sloping downward.
And, I kept saying to the location guy, "not something
"he can fall down.
"It needs to be something he can fall off."
And, he brought me that picture and when I brought it
to Tom he was like, "That's it."
And, the trick became how to create the helicopter
sequence so that it would end on that mountain
with both of those characters together.
And, that really was the big challenge of that sequence.
- And, I love that, I mean I think if that sequence
has any theme it's like subverting expectation.
'Cause you're sitting there and you're like
Ethan's going to get out of the helicopter
before it hits him.
No it (bleep) isn't.
(laughs)
I was like he's not going to crash.
He's going to crash and the helicopter,
like was that something like, 'cause I know these movies
they don't exactly stop on dime.
So, is that something that you're coming up with
like leading up to the shoot?
Was that there in the original outline?
- It really became, it became the demands of
we wanna have this confrontation between
these two characters.
And, we wanna have this helicopter chase between
these two characters.
And, Benji when he asked that question saying,
"If he's in another helicopter how are you gonna get it?"
That was our question.
And so, a lot of what you see the team going through,
that's why when I introduced the film last night
I said, "Watching a Mission Impossible movie,
"the experience of watching it is very much like
"the experience of making it."
A lot of times we put together these sequences
not knowing how we're gonna solve these problems.
And, it's always just about doing it in a way
that just feels real enough 'cause they're so outrageous.
- Right, and what I like that question, another question
that's asked in the film addition to how the hell
are we going to do this?
We'll figure it out.
Is not a question but I love that Ethan says
throughout the movie, "I'm so sorry."
Like, six movies in we have not seen him
express the emotional toll this has.
And, was that a conscious effort from you?
- From the very beginning, when Tom asked me to come back
to do another one
I said, "But a new director has come on for every one,
"and that's the precedent."
And he said, "Precedents are made to be broken."
I said, "All right, well I'll come back but I wanna
"maintain that aesthetic.
"I want it to feel like a different director.
"And, I wanna make a very different movie
"from Rogue Nation."
Rogue Nation tipped its hat to Ghost Protocol.
And, Ghost Protocol wasn't broke and we didn't try
to fix it.
I said, I don't think we can do that three times in a row.
It's gonna become kind of cute.
And so, I wanna do something more emotional.
And, I never really even allowed inside Ethan's head
and I want this movie to do that.
So, what do you wanna do?
And he said, "Well, I wanna tie up the story with Julia.
"Everybody keeps asking me wherever I go
"they're asking me what about Julia?"
We thought we had tied it up in Ghost Protocol.
So, I said, "Okay, we can do that but you gotta do it
"in a way that it's not gonna end up on
"the cutting room floor.
"And, I need to reintroduce that character.
"You can't assume that people have seen
"every other Mission Impossible."
So, I pitched him the opening of the movie which is
the opening you saw.
And, that was the very first scene we came up with.
- The dream sequence?
- Yes, and that from that moment on
we were in different territory.
We were starting an action movie in way
action movies don't begin.
Not because we were saying, "Oh, let's be different."
It was simply well, what would the story require.
And, everything that's you're seeing in the movie
that feels subversive is just us following the story
where the story wanted to go.
- As a huge fan of three I love that you guys
wrap up Julia.
I thought it was such a ballsy move to open with
a dream sequence. - Thank you.
- Is that, not to be a Mission nerd or anything
but is that supposed to be Lake Wanaka where they
got married in three?
Or, it can be now.
- Well, that's just it it's we actually to get
to that location took off from Lake Wanaka.
- [Phil] Oh nice, awesome.
- We were in New Zealand and it all sort of came home.
We didn't make any conscious effort to do that
but when we found that location, that's a place
called Millford Sound, which is actually quite beautiful.
We had one hour to shoot that scene.
- Holy (bleep) nicely done.
- Thank you very much.
- In terms of your visual approach, I know you said
that was important to you to be distinct
and the movie it feels like if Gordon Willis had
like a three way with Three Days at the Condor
and Michael Mann.
I'm watching this movie I'm going, "I think this is
"your best directed, - Wow.
- "Visually," - Thank you.
- And two sequences that really like felt
very Paccouli to me was the funeral beat which,
I don't know how you guys away with keeping that in there
for such a, it's such a small beat in such a big movie
you'd think that would be the first thing cut.
And, I also love the one=er where Ethan is imagining
the first heist with-- - Yes.
- Can you think about how you pulled those two scenes off?
- Thank you, first of all you're speaking my language
when you say Gordon Willis you are talking about
the cornerstone of everything I think cinematography is.
- I mean, you've got two eyes and a heart so.
- But, what I realized about people ask me
"Who's your favorite director?"
And, I say Gordon Willis.
Gordon Willis has such a distinct impact over
so many movies with so many different directors
from Woody Allen, to Francis Ford Coppola,
to Alan Ber-coola.
He's a distinctly powerful
filmmaker in his own right.
And, the sequence you're talking about, that one-er
when I was pitching to Tom the breakout
the rule of every Mission Impossible is you have to show
how something is supposed to happen before
you show how it all goes wrong.
And he said, when we're describing this sequence
I wanna see what they plan to happen.
And, I said, I'm gonna take that a step further
and I'm not gonna let you know it.
And then, I designed as something that was going to be,
there was going to MOS.
It was gonna be shot without sound.
I knew from the very beginning it was going to have music.
I never considered for a moment using that particular
cue which is the same music playing over the wedding
at the beginning of the movie.
- [Phil] Oh, nice I didn't catch that.
- And, that piece was written by Loren Blafe
before we ever started shooting the film.
And as I started, and I don't cut with temp music.
I edit the entire movie together before I ever put music in.
And, as a result you had the freedom to drop
this piece of music throughout the movie
and it worked in scene after scene after scene.
And, it became sort of a theme for Ethan's regret,
all of his emotional baggage that he's carrying with him.
And, that became more or less the theme of the film.
- That's awesome, and can you talk about
the little funeral beat, how you guys came up with that?
- The Saint Paul's? - Yeah.
- Yes, well it was originally going to be a wedding.
And, we had talked about a wedding
and talked about a funeral.
Somebody said the funeral was going to be too heavy,
it was going to be a little bit depressing.
And, I said, "Great, then it's going to be more
"inappropriate and that'll be funnier."
But, the shot that reveals the coffin, where Ethan's
walking through, it's all done in a one-er.
That was just coverage.
We didn't think that that's how the shot
was going to pay.
And, it wasn't until I saw it on the monitor
and realized, this is actually funny all by itself.
And, I changed the entire way we shot the scene.
The real impetus of all of that
was we started on the roof where Ethan runs along and jumps
from one building to another, where he ultimately
broke his foot.
And, we were there and we saw Black Friar's Bridge.
We saw the Tate Modern, we could see Saint Paul's
and it became very clear to us that all of these pieces
within this geography were great for
the set piece itself.
So, we didn't even think of Saint Paul's until
after we picked the roof.
And then, it became the question of how do I
get him onto the roof of Saint Paul's.
And originally, we had a meeting that was gonna happen
up inside, it was way too complicated.
And, the simplest solution became I'm gonna force him
up those stairs.
And, how do I funnel Ethan into that place?
And, all of the choreography, everything you're seeing
is just what forces Ethan to have to go where we
want him to go for the sequence.
And then, the funeral is this beautiful discovery.
- That's a great little beat.
- Thank you, I'm so glad you picked those two moments.
- Oh well thank you, yeah me and the Fandango guy
were nerding out about those scenes so I had to
talk about it.
Also, Simon said that the movie
when he first got the story for the movie
it was 30 pages of dialog and an outline.
And, I know you said you didn't want to start
without a complete script.
I just like, what's harder to do that while you're
trying to chase a bullet with another bullet while
riding a horse while making this movie?
(laughs)
Or writing like the full script?
- Probably, in retrospect writing the full script.
Because, what happens is when you write the script
you then tend to go out looking for places that match
what you imagined.
And, what I did going into this one based on what
I learned from Rogue Nation is I told the studio,
"I'm not going to start writing the screenplay
"until I know where I'm going to shoot it."
I encountered situations like that on Rogue Nation
which were really frustrating to the crew.
So, they said, "We don't know what to look for
"if we don't know what's happening there."
And, I said, "Well, I don't know what to shoot,
"I don't know what story to tell if I don't know
"where it's happening.
I can invent action all day long but then
we're gonna kill ourselves finding a place to shoot it.
So, just find something that looks cool and I'll
tell you what's going to happen.
And, I drove my crew crazy.
And, nothing that you saw in this movie existed
before we knew where it was going to be shot.
Except for the opening scene.
- Okay, like the callbacks to one in this movie
as a huge fan of that one like were those intentional?
- You say callbacks plural?
- I thought there were a few in terms of having
the reference to Max and now we have her daughter,
the helicopter ski, Baldwin getting stabbed with the knife
at the fence kind of felt like a callback to one, too.
- Oh, that's interesting.
- That wasn't intentional?
- No, the one intentional callback you nailed the one
intentional callback. - Which was?
- The Max, yeah.
- Okay, were there other callbacks.
There's definitely a nod to the TV series when
he opens the book we used the reel to reel tape recorder.
But, it's interesting, for the most part so many people
were looking at all of the Easter Eggs I'd laid out
in Rogue Nation and I was determined to, that was the
first thing I let go of so that it would not feel so much.
That was one of the-- - It's so distracting.
- Distinctly, the Chris McQuarrie that directed
that movie I said let's do something completely different.
And, I'm always amused when people see things that
they think are like, if you have a pigeon anywhere
in your movie they think you're referencing John Woo.
(laughs)
And, I was like, "No actually, there's just a lot
"of pigeons in Paris and they just happened
"to be going through."
But, that's interestingly the--
- I'm surprised that wasn't intentional 'cause
it felt direct.
- No, it's the way the scene came together.
Everything that happens to Alec in this movie
was Alec's suggestion.
- Really? - Yeah.
- I'm kind of bummed he died.
- Well, here's the great thing about movies
there's a two year gap between five and six
so seven can start two years earlier.
- [Phil] That's true.
- He's not going anywhere.
- I like how unlike the other missions,
like every character in this has their little
hero moment, especially Luther.
And, was that something that you and Ving
came up with together or was that just,
"Look, this is what we're gonna do for Luther?"
- It was funny.
I said, "Look, it's Luther's turn.
"The guy has been in a van for five movies
"and this is really the one where I want him
"to carry the emotional weight of the movie."
He's known Ethan longer than any of these characters
and he's the one, if anybody is going to tell the audience
what's going on in Ethan's mind it's gotta be Luther.
And, if anyone has a history with these characters
it's gotta be Luther.
And, I think what was really surprising was watching
Ving over the course of the movie, who I think
is accustomed to being the guy in the van.
Ving will come to set and go, "Just give me the line
"I'll give it to you five times."
'Cause he knows, you're just gonna cut to me
for this line.
And he really, he would come to set everyday
and say, "I really like where this is going.
"I see what you're doing here."
And, he really rose to the occasion.
That scene that he has with Ilsa
just absolutely, it's all of his really emotional
moments in the movie you feel a sense that
he grounds the movie in such a way and brings
such an emotional depth to it.
And, the first time he said to Ilsa when we were shooting
the scene where he said, "We're in this mess because
"Ethan wouldn't let me die."
The way he said it I remember being so profoundly,
you're making a movie you're not--
- It's a gut punch.
- Oh yeah, yeah and I knew, "Oh, this is gonna work.
"This is gonna be great."
(air rushes)