Christopher McQuarrie has worked on almost every Tom Cruise project dating back 15 years to their first collaboration on World War II thriller Valkyrie, and that includes his contributions to the screenplay for Top Gun: Maverick. He knows the epic blockbuster very well, then, so he’s in a better position than most to say he’s planning to top it when Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One comes to theaters next month.
To be fair, it’s not as if the filmmaker is making some sort of ludicrously hyperbolic statement when his efforts behind the camera yielded the phenomenal Rogue Nation and Fallout, which was good enough to see star and producer Cruise break the habit of the franchise’s lifetime by having him helm three consecutive installments.
The dynamic duo have a proven track record for success, but let’s hope that McQuarrie’s comments in an interview with Total Film don’t end up coming back to haunt him.
“Coming away from Top Gun, we looked at that movie, and said, ‘We’re going to bury those guys. We’re going to crush Top Gun.’ That’s how we look at it. Our only rivals are ourselves. You’ll see things in Part Two that benefit entirely from everything we learned from Maverick.”
It’s more of a friendly competition given that Cruise and McQuarrie are essentially trying to outdo themselves, but the battle will be fascinating nonetheless. It seems unlikely that Dead Reckoning will be able to match Maverick‘s massive box office haul, universal acclaim, or Academy Award recognition, but it would also be foolish to rule it out by any stretch.