Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible 7 Director Debunks Heartfelt Optimism of Fans With Devastating Update
Fans of Tom Cruise had great expectations for his most recent film, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which would see him reprise his role as Ethan Hunt after Top Gun: Maverick‘s huge success last summer. Despite outperforming The Flash and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the film fell short of expectations because Barbenheimer‘s enthusiasm could not be maintained.
However, there is a second installment of the film, which was also revealed along with the first, and fans are clinging to the hope that it will surpass the first. However, the director just revealed that one of the actors won’t be back for the sequel.
Christopher McQuarrie no longer plans to bring back Ilsa Faust in Mission Impossible 8
In a recent interview with Empire, Mission Impossible 7 director Christopher McQuarrie revealed that he is no longer planning to bring back the character of Ilsa Faust, played by actress Rebecca Ferguson, back in the Mission Impossible franchise. There have been theories about how the character has been simply playing dead and is alive somewhere, the director quashes all the theories as he goes on to explain,
“It’s a very heroic death for that character. It is not in any way, shape, or form disposable. It’s a noble and heroic death. That, to me, is the hardest thing to find for a character. [Ilsa dying for Grace was] hugely important, and again arose organically from the story. Her death was one of the first things we shot. But the reasons came later – and we were not satisfied the first time I cut the scene together without those reasons in place.”
McQuarrie continued to say that the scene did not work as it was all before Pom and Ethan, played by Tom Cruise, fight, adding that the stakes of that sequence and the gravity of the death did not allow them to showcase what they had filmed before. He noted that they were determined to showcase the death scene once they were able to make it have some meaning and dignity, adding that it was not about revenge but it became a test of character.
“It was one of the earliest conversations- around the set of Top Gun: Maverick”: Christopher McQuarrie on Ilsa Faust’s death
During the interview, the director revealed that the idea of killing off the character played by Ferguson started when he and Tom Cruise were filming Top Gun: Maverick. As he shared, “It was one of the earliest conversations – around the set of Top Gun, we were already talking about it. We knew that that emotional arc [of Dead Reckoning] was of a certain emotional tone. And we knew that if the movie was going to go darker, something in the story had to diverge.”
He explained that after the character evolved from Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation to Mission: Impossible – Fallout, wherever they would have taken the arc of her character, it would make less of her and would suddenly become frivolous, which is something that they specifically avoid doing. McQuarrie noted that she would have been either frivolous or a love interest and they never meant to create her character, which was defined by the love story with Tom Cruise’s Hunt.
The director further noted that the idea of letting her character bow down and leave with the utmost grace was the only way they could think of giving her a proper and dignified send-off. He added, “It felt like that story was looking for its resolution. And so we said, ‘This has got to happen’. What needs to happen in the story is, the stakes have to be real. They can’t be implied.”
Christopher McQuarrie anticipated the emotional reactions to Ilsa Faust’s death
The filmmaker in his interview said that he knew that there would be an emotional reaction to her exit from the franchise, adding that he knew that people would be upset because the killing of female characters can be controversial because of the way they are killed is mostly to motivate the male characters and he did not want to do that with Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson.
When it came to Ilsa Faust’s ending, McQuarrie noted that he was focused on serving the character right. The director pointed out, “It’s not what group that character represents when that character dies. It’s not what emotion that character instills in the protagonist when that character dies. It’s the value of that character’s death. It’s not any more complicated than that: did they die for a reason?”
He lastly added that for now, Ilsa Faust’s mission in Mission Impossible franchise has come to an end.
Source: Empire
