I’ve said it before plenty of times to the point where my nose is now permanently stained brown and I’ll say it again: JJ Abrams is a genius. If for no other reason than he’s the mastermind behind "Lost" and "Alias" but now he’s taken a franchise 10 years old and completely revitalized it. Even more so, he did what David Fincher, Frank Darabont and Joe Carnahan couldn’t in getting MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III off the ground. He sat down recently for a phone conference with some online journalists and talked all things Tom, stunts, directing his first movie and how the "Lost" season finale is going to royally kick your ass. Nice.
Did any of the ideas for action sequences or stunts or anything come from what you wanted to do on ‘Alias,’ but couldn’t do for any reason?
There were so many things that we wanted to do on ‘Alias’ that we could never in a million years afford and one of the things that we did in this movie was the Vatican break-in sequence. A sequence like that requires so many pieces and it’s a very intricately, visually intricately told sequence and in television you never have the kind of time and the pieces that you need to really sort of tell it properly. Clearly sequences like the one on the bridge, the helicopter chase, the whole factory sequence, the Shanghai jump, the race · each one of them in a strange way was a trained version of the kind of thing that we might conceive of doing on ‘Alias,’ but never have the time or budget to properly execute.
Will there always be a role for Greg Grunberg?
Only as long as I’m directing. No, I’m kidding. Greg is my oldest friend since kindergarten and I love working with Greg.
Now that you’ve completed ‘Mission’ will you return to running ‘Lost’ or are there other movies?
I look forward to going back to ‘Lost’ although I hope to do both. It was an amazing experience doing this movie and if they’ll have me back to direct another movie I would love to do one.
What’s it like having all these questions about being a first time director floating around and did you ever doubt yourself in this process?
Well, I’m getting the same question too which is what was it like to be a first time feature director · the opportunity to do this movie was so remarkable. I can’ think of anyone else who would let someone who’d never directed a feature before take the reigns of something that was this and on this margin and scale and was this expensive and yet Tom [Cruise] did. He believed in me and never wavered from that for the entire experience. I do think that there were moments where I was in shock that I was given this opportunity, but the truth is that I’ve wanted to do this all my life and the pressure and experience of doing television seemed to continually confirm that doing a movie was something that was certainly possible.
I didn’t necessarily think that the first movie I would get a chance to direct would be something as large as this one, but the crew was so incredible. Tom and his producing partner Paula Wagner were so supportive from the beginning and I believe the whole crew always felt incredibly supported and safe which always allows for me creativity. So the whole experience was great and I honestly never doubted that I could do it. I actually felt incredibly comfortable doing it. It was a fun challenge.
Since Tom and his character being such a strong personality what we’re you looking for with the other cast members?
I wanted to make sure was that we were casting actors and writing parts that were as strong as they could be because when you’ve got Tom Cruise he’s got blinding star power. You can’t put him on screen with someone that can’t play at that level or they will get drowned out and the movie won’t have a spark. So you bring in actors like Laurence Fishburne and Billy Crudup and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, certainly Phillip Seymour Hoffman and you find people like Michelle Monahan and Maggie Q and I got to bring Kerri Russell back who I had worked with on ‘Felicity’ and so it was incredibly important to me not just as a team, but for all the supporting actors to be, not just wonderful actors, but have a certain level of that charisma. It was also great to see Tom with all of these actors because I’m sure he could feel that same energy coming from them and I think that it only made him better and I think that it certainly makes the film better · populating it with people who are that compelling to watch.
With the MI team in particular, what were you looking for in regard to how they would compliment his activities?
Well, I wanted to make sure that very quickly everyone felt incredibly distinct. What I love about Jonathan Rhys Meyers is that he sort of felt to me in many ways the Irish version of where Tom was in the first ‘Mission’ movie which is a little bit more of a cocky guy who is at an age where he hasn’t been doing this for very long. I wanted to have with Maggie Q, I really wanted to have an incredibly strong female powerful character and someone who was as lethal as she is brave as she is vulnerable.
Maggie brought all of that. She also looked incredibly good in that red dress that she wears in all places at the Vatican. I knew that we had Ving [Rhames] coming back who I had loved in so much of the work that he had done in other films, but I felt like he still hadn’t been as kind of relatable as I wanted him to be in the first two films. I just think that he so brought an incredible personality to the role of Luther. So it was just important that Tom’s character be surrounded by distinct and unique and compelling other characters.,
In this film you showed how the masks were made and how the wire worked for the signature drop. Was that a conscious decision to lift the curtain a little bit to show how the team does it? And why did you go for that?
Thank you for mentioning that little calibrating thing on the wire. That kind of stuff to me · it was so easy not to do that stuff. Part of the fun of ‘Mission Impossible,’ the series, for me was always not just the what and the why, but the how and I just loved watching this team using the kind of equipment and using it with such a precision that I wished I had that kind of equipment. I wish that I knew how the hell to do that stuff. It’s easy to skip that stuff and go right to the end game and get to the point, but I feel like part of getting to know and love the team is seeing them do their job and appreciating why they have been chosen to be out in the field as they have.
Anyway, doing that stuff with the mask or doing the little moments with the calibration thing here or there or when Tom puts the cross on the wall and transmitting that or when we see Ving open up the drill case · all of these little details were to me the things that I felt when I watched the show respected the audience and their ability to track the sort of machinations of that kind of operation. I just feel like if you lost that stuff you’re not sort of getting to really see details that matter. So it was really important to me to do that stuff.
I know you like throw people out of windows or off of buildings. Why are you so attracted to the jump or the falling sequences or repelling sequences?
Well, to me the fun of the movie is in same movie having the crazy, larger than life moments and also the incredibly relatable, intimate character moments. So part of that stuff, repelling down or falling down which was obviously a nod to the first films · that stuff to me was just showing the extreme measures that Ethan has to go to either pull off a certain mission or rescue the woman that he loves. It’s classic, old school, physical thrills, but those don’t really thrill us anymore unless we have characters that we can relate to. So the goal is to try and do both.
What was the most challenging aspect of making this film for you?
The most challenging thing was probably the logistics of filming in the United States, in Los Angeles and Virginia and shooting in Italy in two cities and in China in two cities, in Berlin and having all of the visual shocks. There are many, many visual FX shots in this movie and special FX and stunts. It was really just logistically preparing this and a lot of that credit goes to the producers of the movie who helped schedule and setup the production of the film, but we were incredibly responsible, I think, making this movie. We finished ahead of schedule and under budget and for me it was totally the result of having a crew that was just hard working and dedicated and great at what they do and my TV training has gotten me used to limited time and budget.
The hardest thing truly was just in every scene where people are talking making sure that you believed that those people hate each other or that those two guys are great friends or that the couple is in love. It was always the stuff that was the most relatable stuff, the most mundane that ultimately I think people just know rings true or not. So the stunt work was always a cool and exciting challenge, but the hardest stuff was always the most unexpected, kind of small character work.