Tom Cruise Had Anxiety Fueled Sleepless Nights About Landing the Perfect Ending for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE

Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie pulled off something awesome with Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One as they made a perfect action thriller. I loved the movie, and I was completely happy and satisfied with how the movie came to an end. While this is the first part of a two-part film, they managed to end the movie without making it feel like a cliffhanger.

Getting that satisfying ending is something that gave Cruise anxiety and sleepless nights. He wanted to make sure that audiences didn’t feel like they were left hanging, like what Sony Pictures Animated did with Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. My kids were pissed off with that ending!

During an interview with Total Film writer and director Christopher McQuarrie explained:

“Where we ended the movie was always where we were going to end it. How we ended the movie was a big, big mystery for us. It kept Tom awake at night throughout production. He would come in all the time and say, ‘This can’t be a cliffhanger, it’s got to be satisfying.’ The audience has to feel a sense of completion.

“Tom kept looking at that scene, and he had all this anxiety about whether or not it would be a satisfying conclusion or whether it would feel open-ended. We constantly revisited it, constantly refined it.”

I think they managed to deliver a very satisfying ending. Yes, it left us wanting more, but it also did offer that sense of completion. The ending to Dead Reckoning - Part One is a far more conclusive ending than Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which is a hardcore cliffhanger.

This is also just another example of how much Cruise cares about the movies that he makes and that he wants to make the audience and fans happy when they walk out of his films. McQuarrie went on to say:

“If you leave it with a cliffhanger, it feels a little bit like we’re expecting you to come back. We didn’t want that feeling. The feeling we were reaching for — and we hope you feel — is we dare you not to come back. We want to leave you thinking, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see what happens next.'”

That’s exactly how I was feeling after I watched the movie! So, they won and the fans won. Everybody wins! Except for the villain of the story.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is now playing in theaters and Part Two is set to open on June 28, 2024.