Christopher McQuarrie on competing with his past movies: "We're going to bury Top Gun"

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EXCLUSIVE: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One director says his only competition is himself

Exclusive Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One image
(Image credit: Paramount)

Mission: Impossible is back for a seventh installment with this summer's Dead Reckoning Part One, which sees franchise regular Christopher McQuarrie back in the director's chair. His last collaboration with Mission: Impossible star Tom Cruise was last year's hugely successful Top Gun: Maverick – a tough act to follow, some might say, but the only way is up for McQuarrie. 

"We don’t see ourselves in competition with Bond or John Wick. We love those movies, and we admire those filmmakers, and we want to see those guys win. All we’re really doing is competing with ourselves," McQuarrie says in the new issue of Total Film magazine, which is out on newsstands on Thursday, June 22. 

"And coming away from Top Gun, we looked at that movie, and said, 'We’re going to bury those guys. We’re going to crush Top Gun.' That’s how we look at it. Our only rivals are ourselves. You’ll see things in Part Two that benefit entirely from everything we learned from Maverick."

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Alongside Cruise, Dead Reckoning Part One sees the return of cast members including Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Vaness Kirby, along with new faces like Guardian of the Galaxy's Pom Klementieff. The franchise's eighth installment, Dead Reckoning Part Two, is set to follow in June 2024.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One arrives in cinemas in the UK on July 10 and in US cinemas on July 12. In the meantime, check out our guide to the other most highly anticipated upcoming movies in 2023 and beyond. 

This is just a snippet of our interview in the new issue of Total Film magazine, which features Netflix thriller Heart of Stone on the cover. The magazine hits shelves this Thursday, June 22. Check out the covers below:

Total Film's Heart of Stone issue

(Image credit: Robert Viglasky/Netflix/Total Film)

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Matt Maytum
Matt Maytum
Former Editor of Total Film magazine

Matt Maytum is the former Editor of Total Film magazine. Over the past decade, Matt has worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.

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