Eddie Hamilton, chief editor on Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, explained in an interview given to Variety the challenges he had to overcome in post-production.
For the first time since the launch of the Mission Impossible franchise, the studios have agreed to cut a film into two parts. The first part of Dead Reckoning was released on our screens on July 12 and generally pleased viewers. Director Christopher Mcquarrie and his actors led by an always on fire Tom Cruise offered 2h40 of pure entertainment, with crazy stunts all over Europe and Africa.
But even by cutting the plot in two, the director and his chief editor had a first version… of 4 hours! In an interview given to varietyEddie Hamilton explains indeed having reduced the duration of the film by imposing rather drastic cuts, which are sometimes seen on the screen.
He thus reveals that the long sequence in the train – during which Tom Cruise fights on a wagon launched at 215 km / h – could have lasted much longer: “It lasted 1h30 in our first version. We lowered it to 50 minutes in the final result“An already impressive length that doesn’t really feel like the adrenaline is there.
Hamilton explains that he mainly worked on one of the last scenes of the sequence, when the characters of Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell find themselves in wagons which gradually fall into the void. If some viewers were surprised by the fairly lively editing, it was because they had no choice but to shorten it as much as possible: “It was 3 minutes long and we had to shorten it because during the projo-tests everyone said it was too long“, concludes the editor.
It remains to be seen if part 2 of Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, expected in our theaters on June 26, 2024, will offer us an action scene as long as this one…