This story contains spoilers for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
That riveting train sequence in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning was so long in the original cut that it could have been its own feature film.
In the big-budget action movie, there’s a train sequence that takes up a bulk of the film, as was suggested by the trailers. It notably features star Tom Cruise fighting Esai Morales’ villain on top of the speeding locomotive before the train derails, plunging off of a bridge one carriage at a time while the characters climb as fast as they can. While speaking with Variety, editor Eddie Hamilton recalls putting together the wild train sequence for the original cut of Dead Reckoning Part One. He explains how it was originally put together as a 90-minute sequence before around 40 minutes were chopped out with subsequent editing.
“[The sequence] was about an hour-and-a-half long in our first iteration. We got it down to like 50 minutes in the finished movie,” Hamilton explains. The editor says that changes were made after test screening the film with director Christopher McQuarrie, noting, “It was originally a bit longer and we lifted a few sections out because they were saying it was too much.”
Hamilton also added that the scene with the train falling into the ravine itself was originally more than three minutes. McQuarrie and Hamilton are said to have poured over that same scene “dozens of times,” and when it came to getting the editing just right, the key was for the action to be non-stop throughout. From there, it’s a matter of shaving off more seconds at any time they could just so there weren’t any unnecessary moments in the sequence. He explained, “If it’s three minutes, it’s too long, so we combed through every shot and asked if we needed this frame and ‘Can we cut this any tighter?’ We’re really trying to squeeze every bit of air out of the movie.”
Hamilton would touch on how McQuarrie was open to collaboration on how to make the footage as perfect as possible for the final cut. The original cut of Mission: Impossible 7 was nearly four hours long when the two watched it together for the first time, and from there, the editor and director would start “going through the movie and really drilling down on every moment.” Ultimately, the film was edited down to two hours and 43 minutes.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is now playing in movie theaters.
Source: Variety