Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie Tease MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE ROGUE NATION Action Scenes

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation is one of my most anticipated movies of the summer, and I can't wait to see how the globe-spanning spy franchise moves forward under the direction of director Chris McQuarrie. The filmmaker and star Tom Cruise sat down with Yahoo UK to talk a little about the film, and the duo revealed some interesting aspects about the movie that we hadn't heard before:

Cruise: "We have something I’ve always wanted to do: an underwater sequence without cuts. The kind of training I had to do for that was pretty intense. I’ve done a lot of underwater scenes but I’ve never done one [like this] that will get the audience to lean forward and have a visceral reaction."

That sounds awesome. I can't wait to see what kind of insanity they've cooked up here. The plane sequence (which you can see a part of in the trailer) looks bonkers, especially considering that Cruise himself actually strapped on and hung on to the side of the plane as it took off. The mega-star mentioned why he felt the need to do his own stunts:

"There was no question the [plane] stunt was always going to be me. When you look at Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton - when I see the practical things they did as an audience - it brought me more into a subjective reality of the characters in those stories. If you look at the CIA sequence in ‘Mission 1’ – if someone else did it the audience isn’t invested in it."

He has a point there. And as for McQuarrie, how will he attempt to live up to the action and iconic sequences that already exist in this series?

“I asked myself ‘what can I do to celebrate all those elements of the franchise?’ A signature sequence the way (Brian) De Palma did, a villain the way JJ Abrams did, the stunts the way Brad did. You’ll see references to all those films throughout the movie. There’s [also] a real Easter Egg for anyone who notices it – it’s almost a reverse of something from one of the earlier movies.”

Did you notice how he didn't mention John Woo's name in that list? Man, Mission: Impossible II can't even get any love from its' own franchise directors. Oh well. I still dig that movie.

And finally, remember the motorcycle scene we caught a glimpse of in the trailer (pictured above)? That was apparently one of the toughest things to shoot:

Cruise: “It was physically the most grueling sequence. We’re going at very high speed with Simon Pegg as my passenger, drifting it through very narrow streets with cameras on [the bike]. I’m not wearing a helmet or pads, and at one point I’m highsiding a guy. It was hairy actually. I come up and I hit him and he is in the air doing it live. It was intense.”

McQuarrie: “That’s part of a much larger sequence that takes place in Morocco. We built camera equipment for this movie specifically to shoot this sequence. It’s stuff that’s never been done before.”

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation hits theaters on July 31st. Are you excited to see what Cruise and company have in store for us?