The Final Reckoning may have wrapped the Mission: Impossible franchise with its 2025 movies release, but not before the movies produced a slew of iconic scenes in which Tom Cruise hung onto the sides of moving planes, avoided lasers, scaled the Burj Khalifa, chased and got chased on motorcycles and so much more. Amidst these, the Burj Khalifa scene has always been a standout for me personally, and I just found out it was basically written on the fly by Christopher McQuarrie himself.
That Burj Khalifa Scene Was Not Fully Scripted When Ghost Protocol Went Into Production
At Paramount’s CinemaCon rundown earlier this year, Cruise apparently talked about McQ showing up on the set of Ghost Protocol while they were trying to figure out the particularly challenging scene, one he called a bit of a “Rubrik’s cube.” Christopher McQuarrie wasn’t helming the movie, Brad Bird was, and he wasn’t credited as a writer on the film, either, but Cruise brought him on board without even getting a greenlight first.
At this point in the film I’d already shot most of the action but I knew I did not have the structural foundation yet. … You’re constantly challenging your story… Films aren’t just on the page, they’re a living, breathing thing. You just have to constantly stay on top of and discover. So we’re a good way though filming and I called McQ and I said, ‘Hey please you gotta come help me.’
Though he would later basically become synonymous with the franchise, then-director Brad Bird and co-star Simon Pegg apparently didn’t even know who McQuarrie was during his first trip to the set. Yet, Cruise knew the famous scene where he was expected to climb the Burj Khalifa wearing only a pair of gloves was not working and he knew McQ could write them out of this pickle. As he told crowds at the event:
We’re shooting the scene, I’m holding up the gloves and I’m about to climb… we’re going back and forth, the scene’s like ‘eh’ you know? I’m holding the gloves up; I see McQ over there say, ‘Hey, I need a ride to set.’ [Later] Bird and Pegg look at me quizzically, like ‘Who’s this guy?’ I didn’t tell them he was there to write the script.
That’s when McQ quietly got to work. In short order, he’d worked out all the little details that helped make the scene feel massive in scope on the big screen. Apparently, all it took was Cruise telling him what the blue and red lights meant.
I quickly just introduced everyone, and I explained the scene to McQ very briefly. I said there’s a blue light and a red light, the blue means the gloves are sticking and the red means I don’t stick. Without hesitation McQ said, ‘blue is glue, red is dead,’ then he proceeded to write the entire scene that we shot. Like that. I remember Brad Bird… he looked at me like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?” I just said, ‘That’s McQ.’
It’s so incredible to even think this could be a path to success, but of course, we now know the final version of this scene is electrifying. It also seemingly cemented Cruise and McQuarrie’s working relationship, and he went on to direct the sequel to Ghost Protocol, otherwise known as Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. He and Cruise would continue the franchise together through 2025’s well-reviewed The Final Reckoning, which Tom Cruise confirmed marks the final outing in the franchise as a whole.
It’s wild to think about Mission: Impossible stunts not being carefully crafted at the start, but even since the Brad Bird era, a lot was being done on the fly. The scene worked, and Cruise told crowds his newfound pal would later do punch up scripts for other movies, including infamously World War Z, but also other Tom Cruise flicks Edge of Tomorrow and Top Gun: Maverick.
The two clearly work well as a duo, with Cruise admitting sometimes he pushes McQuarrie to make M:I changes too, and with Ethan Hunt getting a mostly happy ending, I’m interested to see where their partnership goes next.