Day 2: 'Prices are Crazy'; Cruise ❤️European distributors in a Screen roundtable on the Cannes outlook and state of the market; the M:I valedictory
Bonjour and greetings from the Croisette. Probably the only way Tom Cruise could have caused a bigger stir as he arrived at Cannes’ Grand Palais Lumière for the gala premiere of his latest display of daredevilry, Paramount’s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, is if he chose to ride a zipline above the red carpet. (There is a precedent, of sorts — Jerry Seinfeld, dressed in a bee costume, crossed the Croisette by zipline in 2007 to promote DreamWorks Animation’s Bee Movie.) But, instead, Cruise stuck to Cannes tradition, spending more than a half hour on the red carpet, first dispensing autographs and posing for selfies with fans, then mixing it up and mingling with his various costars as live musicians played the famous M:I theme. Finally, he ascended the steps of the Palais, proving himself to be the very model of a modern major movie star. After more than 40 years in the spotlight, the 62-year-old actor doesn’t have much to prove. But with the new M:I, the eighth film in the series, he is still looking for a bit of redemption. Its predecessor, 2023’s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One was something of a commercial disappointment, grossing only $571.1 million worldwide. (Its predecessor, M:I — Fallout, grossed $787 million.) One obstacle it encountered: After one week of release, it lost IMAX screens to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a roadblock Final Reckoning, opening Stateside May 23, doesn’t face. So, as it unspooled Wednesday night at the Palais, the new film, the fourth directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who also cowrote with Erik Jendresen, picked up where the last one left off. The big bad is still a faceless AI called the Entity, which is bent on worldwide nuclear annihilation, and only Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his IMF team — but mostly just Ethan Hunt — can stop it. The screening was interrupted a half-dozen times by spontaneous applause, especially for the two big stunt sequences: one in which Cruise’s Hunt makes his way through a submarine abandoned underwater and then another on the wings of an out-of-control biplane.  The plotting in the nearly three-hour movie, which screened out of competition, does get impossibly complex — with lots of talk about the Entity’s source code, a specially designed poison pill and a spaghetti of wires that have to be cut at just the right moment before everything goes kablooey. At times, the tech-heavy exposition almost played like Danny Kaye’s comic rap in 1955’s The Court Jester as he tries to remember all the complicated subterfuge that’s afoot: “The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.” But the Cannes audience ate it all up for the movie rumored to have cost as much as $400 million. McQuarrie, handed a microphone, thanked his cast, saying, “This film was made during a pandemic and two industry strikes. These two films were made over a period of seven years with a lot of uncertainty, a lot of gaps in between.” He continued: “This film would not be possible without the hard work of each and every one of these people standing up here.” For good measure, he also offered a word of thanks to Brian Robbins, president and CEO of Paramount Pictures. Turning to Cruise, he exclaimed, “I got to grow up and have my very own action figure.” Cruise, in turn, then lavished praise on McQuarrie — or as he calls him McQ — saying, “Grateful to you, my friend. Every step of the way, what you’ve done and how you’ve expanded it — it just went beyond our expectations. I look forward to making a bunch of other kind of movies with you, I can’t wait.”
Both Cruise and McQuarrie have been coy about whether they’ll ever make another M:I movie; the new film does play as something as a valedictory to the franchise, with lots of flashbacks to high points in the series. But earlier in the day, when Cruise joined McQuarrie, who was holding a masterclass about his career, it was clear the two enjoy a mutual admiration. Although McQuarrie discussed his earlier films — like 1995’s The Usual Suspects, which he wrote, and 2000’s The Way of the Gun — his main focus was working with Cruise. “Tom Cruise is competing with no one but himself,” McQuarrie testified. He spoke of the actor’s intense dedication, how he’ll make sure other actors get their close-ups before he even steps before the camera himself. He also explained some of the planning that went into the stunts. That submarine sequence, for example, required the filmmakers to build a fully submersible steel gimble, 60-feet in diameter. And the biplane sequence employed 4,000 different sorties. While it’s common knowledge — and, in fact, is one of the series’ selling points — that Cruise does his own stunts, McQuarrie also revealed that Cruise also does his own inserts, those quick close-ups of an actor’s hand on a gear shift or his foot on a brake. Clearly, when it comes to film, there’s nothing that Cruise won’t do.
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Deal NewsAaron Eckhart Starrer Midair Racks Up Key Pre-salesConcourse Media is offering director Timo Vuorensola’s action thriller. → Click here to keep reading Filmax Signs Up for Judith Colell’s WWII DramaFrontier is set in the Pyrenees as Jewish refugees try to flee Occupied France. → Click here to keep reading Dogwoof Takes Sales Rights to Doc About DocsMark Cousins’ The Story of Documentary Film is a 16-part history of non-fiction filmmaking. → Click here to keep reading
NewsRenate Reinsve to Star in Alexander Payne’s LatestSomewhere Out There, the director’s first European feature, will shoot in Denmark. → Click here to keep reading Louise Stern’s A Hand Rise Wraps U.K. ShootThe BFI and BBC Film-backed movie is set in the deaf community. → Click here to keep reading
ReviewsM:I Concludes a Self-Regarding Double BillCritic Fionnuala Halligan deems Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning more stunt than substance. → Click here to keep reading Two Prosecutors Looks at Stalin-Era Soviet JusticeUkranian director Sergei Loznitsa tells a Kafkaesque tale of Soviet Union law and order under the almost 30-year rule of Joseph Stalin. → Click here to keep reading Sound of Falling’s Trauma of Rural German WomenMascha Schilinski’s film called “a work of thrilling ambition.” → Click here to keep reading
FeaturesThailand’s Film Industry Buoyed by Local HitsA new government-backed fund has also provided a fresh boost. → Click here to keep reading
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