rogue squadron
MISSION: IMpOSSIblE 6 ethan and crew are back for another stunt-packed Mission…
DIRECTOR Christopher McQuarrie STARRING Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Michelle Monaghan, Ving Rhames ETA 27 July Even by Tom Cruise’s headlinegrabbing standards, the sixth instalment of the Mission: Impossible franchise has been pumped with drama. First, reports surfaced of salary disputes between Paramount and Cruise, aka IMF agent Ethan Hunt. Conflict resolved, the Cruiser then had a nasty accident during a daredevil leap, forcing a semi-hiatus in production while he recovered from a broken ankle. The reverberations of Cruise’s close shave stretched to superhero shaving protocol on Justice League: when the delayed shoot on M:I 6 clashed with reshoots on the DC team-up, co-star Henry Cavill had his Mission 6 moustache removed by CGI to play Superman, who doesn’t do porn ’taches.
What Cavill does, mind, is dangle like a pro. After the Brit star’s droll post about the “fiasco” of his “despotic” face-fuzz, another Instagram entry showed him hanging backwards over a 1,980ft drop, kept from doom by “fashionable nipple attachments”. Assuming it’s not another porn-y thing, the nipple-wear indicates that the M:I series is maxing the stunts again after the Cruiser flew by Airbus (from the outside) for 2015’s Rogue Nation, which scored the franchise’s secondbiggest box-office hit yet.
Rogue director Chris McQuarrie will also direct Mission 6, marking the first time a director has returned for two IMF adventures and offering ongoing evidence of his Cruise connection: he also wrote and directed Jack Reacher plus co-scribbled Edge Of Tomorrow, two of Cruise’s better recent vehicles. (He also co-wrote The Mummy. Ahem.)
While we know nothing about the plot, we do know that Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn, Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell and Sean Harris’ nefarious Solomon Lane return, alongside Rogue’s knife-handy show-stealer Ilsa Faust, again played by Rebecca Ferguson.
“I felt I was given the most incredible introduction scene,” she said of Rogue, “and I was given equally as many cool fighting sequences. Tom [Cruise] backed away and really gave me the light and something to work with.” And, hopefully, did so again for the follow-up.
Also on the receiving end of Ferguson’s respect is Mission vet Michelle Monaghan, whose return as Hunt’s wife Julia Meade-Hunt signals a more personal bent to the story for Ethan. “She’s awesome. She is so funny and quirky and smart,” gushes Ferguson. With Jeremy Renner too busy at the MCU for more IMF-ery, other cast-members range from old hands (Alec Baldwin) to new Missionaries Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby (The Crown) and Sian Brooke, who’ll hopefully get to shred scenery like she did as psycho-genius Eurus Holmes in Sherlock’s fourth series.
As for Cruise, his return to set two weeks early was broadcast when he was pap-snapped navigating choppers and trucks in Essex. Quite what groundbreaking (not bone-breaking, we hope) other stunts await for the as-yetuntitled thriller remain as closeguarded as the plot. But we do know the location sweep has been wide, spanning London, Paris, New Zealand and Norway. And we know Cruise has straddled his BMW bike in Paris and scaled great heights all over the shop: he was spied parachuting over Oxfordshire for one set-piece and dangling off a cliff in Preikestolen, Norway, for another.
As producer David Ellison claims, “What Tom is doing in this movie, I believe, will top anything that’s come before. It is absolutely unbelievable.” True, The Mummy may have blotted his copybook, but don’t expect that
– or busted ankles – to keep Cruise down. Mission accepted.