There have been numerous films ending on cliffhangers of late, including “Fast X” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” which close with sequences leaving the fate of various characters up in the air.
Even though “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning” was designed from the get-go as a two-parter and was being produced essentially back-to-back, it seems star/producer Tom Cruise didn’t want to employ that style.
Instead, the film opts for something more akin to “Dune: Part One” – it wraps up that part of the story on its own terms, and there’s definitely more work to be done, but no-one is in immediate peril at the end of the film and you have a rough idea of where the next part is going.
Speaking to Total Film, director Christopher McQuarrie confirmed Cruise was the one pushing for each of the two parts to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. In fact, he says Cruise was kept up at night worrying about audience satisfaction with the story and the first part’s ending:
“Where we ended the movie was always where we were going to end it. How we ended the movie was a big, big mystery for us. It kept Tom awake at night throughout production. He would come in all the time and say, ‘This can’t be a cliffhanger, it’s got to be satisfying.’ The audience has to feel a sense of completion.
Tom kept looking at that scene and he had all this anxiety about whether or not it would be a satisfying conclusion or whether it would feel open-ended. We constantly revisited it, constantly refined it.
If you leave it with a cliffhanger, it feels a little bit like we’re expecting you to come back. We didn’t want that feeling. The feeling we were reaching for – and we hope you feel – is we dare you not to come back. We want to leave you thinking, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see what happens next.”
Showing just how long it took to settle on the ending, a farewell scene involving Cruise’s Ethan was shot over two years after filming on the first part began. In fact, they were well into production on the second part when they opted to shoot the version of the scene in the theatrical cut. As a result Cruise dons a wig in the scene to cover the new hairstyle he uses in the second part.
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is currently out in cinemas. “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two” is scheduled to hit cinemas on June 28th 2024. As that second part hasn’t completed production and is being impacted by the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, that could change.
