Director Christopher McQuarrie has recalled how slicing just five minutes out of Tom Cruise's action classic Mission: Impossible – Fallout led to a surprising backlash.
When the topic of director's cuts – and specifically Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven three-hour cut – was brought up by Collider, McQuarrie responded that shorter runtimes aren't always indicative of quality.
McQuarrie said, "Well, you know the story about Brazil, how they cut Brazil down. Or the original American release of Once Upon a Time in America. Shorter isn't better. Fallout, we did a cut that was five minutes shorter, and the scores plummeted. Only five minutes."
The director added of his and Tom Cruise's entertainment-at-all-costs philosophy: "Tom and I say all the time... We were asked when [Final Reckoning] was coming together, and we didn't know the runtime, and the studio would say, 'Well, how long is the movie?' And we always say, 'As long as it's entertaining.'"
McQuarrie, who has directed and written for Cruise across nine movies, reunites with his star for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
Touted as Cruise's swan song from the role of Ethan Hunt and the action franchise, McQuarrie even went a step beyond for the eighth Mission: Impossible movie – by trying out one of Cruise's death-defying stunts for himself.
"I said, 'Just in terms of the speed, because the force of the air, for me to move quickly on the wing was… You just can't do it,'" Cruise said during a Final Reckoning press conference in Tokyo of a biplane stunt that restricted Cruise's movement.
"You're limited by the physics of how fast the aircraft is traveling and the force of the wind, that was utterly brutal. So I just said, 'Listen, I think the best thing is if you just do it. Go out, sit in the airplane, go out on the wing, and feel it. Feel the pressure. So, here I am, training him."
For his part, McQuarrie said his own wing-walking went down a treat: "Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I would definitely do it again."
If you ask the director, that was probably a far less brutal five minutes than the one that didn't make it into one of Mission: Impossible – Fallout's divisive test screenings.
For more, check out the upcoming movies coming your way in the next few months. Then, your mission (if you choose to accept it, naturally) is to dive into our ranking of the best Mission: Impossible movies.
