Christopher McQuarrie

It may or may not be the FINAL reckoning for the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE franchise but writer/director Christopher McQuarrie is here to talk about the unusual way they make these films, plus give some teases about the future of TOP GUN and DAYS OF THUNDER, and a glimpse at the Superman sequel he wanted to do. UPCOMING EVENTS 28 YEARS LATER Q&A with Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, & Danny Boyle 6/1 in NY -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠tickets here⁠⁠⁠⁠ Gary Oldman in LA 6/3 -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tickets here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes, video versions of the podcast, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 0:59Josh Horowitz?

  Is Top Gun 3 harder to crack in some ways than Top Gun Maverick?

• 1:03Speaker 03

  No, it's already in the bag.

• 1:06Josh Horowitz?

  You've cracked it?

• 1:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I already know what it is.

• 1:09Josh Horowitz?

  Easy.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, wasn't hard. I thought it would be. Yeah, I thought it would be. And I go, and that's a good place to go from, is you walk into the room going, "Come on, what are we gonna do?" And Aaron Krueger pitched something. And I went, "Hmm, actually." And we had one conversation about it. And the framework is there.

• 1:34Speaker 04

  Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, Sad, Confused begins now.

• 1:41Josh Horowitz?

  Hey guys, it's Josh here with another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. And yes, you knew I was gonna have to do something special for Mission: Impossible. It's the final reckoning after all. Well, it's the final reckoning on the screen, but it is the first reckoning between me and Christopher McQuarrie, the amazing filmmaker behind the last four Mission: Impossible movies. He is the main event on Happy, Sad, Confused today. Some light spoilers, that's why I held it to today. This is- A treat of a filmmaker conversation. Okay, more on McQ as we call him in a second. Updates as always, June 1, New York City. Come on out, guys. And all this information is on our Patreon.

• 2:23Josh Horowitz?

  Patreon.com/happy, say confused, discount codes, merch, all that cool stuff. Check it out if you can. And support because it lets us do more stuff. Anyway, June 1, Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Danny Boyle, all joining me live on stage. It's going to be a really fun night talking 28 years later, very anticipated, long in the making sequel. Danny Boyle was back. I am beyond excited for this one. So link is in the show notes for tickets. And then Los Angeles, as I've been saying, come on out, LA. I don't get out there that often for live events like this. This is your chance to see me do my thing with no less than Gary Oldman, living legend, talking slow horses.

• 3:04Josh Horowitz?

  The Dark Knight trilogy, Harry Potter, true romance. I'm going to talk as much as I can about his entire career because this dude. Call him a dude. This legend, this unparalleled performer has done it all and I have such reverence for him. He's a sweet guy. He's done the pod a couple of times. It's going to be a blast. June 3, again, information is in the show notes. Okay, let's talk Mission Impossible for a second. I've been doing a lot for this one. I was on the carpet for the New York premiere. Check out clips with me and Tom Cruise and the cast from that one on my Instagram page, on MTV's page. That was really fun, really cool, always amazing to talk to Tom.

• 3:49Josh Horowitz?

  And this is, this is really, I love these filmmaker conversations and McQ is so well spoken.

• 3:57Josh Horowitz?

  If you know him and you probably do if you listen or watch this podcast, he's had quite the journey as a filmmaker. Way back when, when he was quite a young man, he won an Academy Award for writing The Usual Suspects. And then kind of found himself, not kinda, he did find himself in director jail. Directed a movie called Way of the Gun, pretty good movie, but did not click and kind of had to claw his way back. And through his collaborations with Tom Cruise on Valkyrie, eventually directing Reacher, Jack Reacher, that film, and then kind of give being given the reins to the Mission movies has really risen to the heights now of blockbuster filmmaking. What they do

• 4:40Josh Horowitz?

  in these movies is, without compare, I think it's fair to say, the practical stunts, the locations, the scale, the way they do it. And McQ is very smart and cool about, I don't know, opening up about the process, the very unusual process by which they make these Mission Impossible movies. Um, there's a lot in this, in this conversation. It's a deep dive into Mission, their process, his collaborations with Tom, lots of cool stuff about upcoming films they're working on, Top Gun sequel, a musical, Les Grossman, A Days of Thunder sequel, all of that is in this conversation. And stay tuned to the end because we do talk about the Superman movie that Christopher McQuarrie was going

• 5:22Josh Horowitz?

  to do with Henry Cavill. Some really cool stuff in there. Okay. So can you tell I'm excited? I'm excited. Enjoy this conversation. A long time coming with Christopher McQuarrie, AKA McQ. And check out Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning. And like I said, sorry, one more thing. There are some light spoilers. It's not like we go deep, deep into spoilers, but this conversation is best watched or listened to after you've seen the film. There you go. All right. Enjoy my chat. Christopher McQuarrie, McQ, we're doing it. It's happening.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  We're here. We're here.

• 5:53Josh Horowitz?

  I've been chasing you for a while. It's been my own mission impossible to get you on the podcast.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Can I just tell you, it's nice to be chased.

• 6:00Josh Horowitz?

  Thank you for submitting to the chase. Congratulations, man.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 6:03Josh Horowitz?

  We were at the New York premiere last night. Another insane accomplishment. I hope you're starting to exhale. I know it's pressure, but it's good pressure.

• 6:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, the exhale comes from the fact that when we finished Top Gun, we were, when we were promoting Top Gun, we had already started shooting Dead Reckoning. When we were promoting.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  When we were promoting Dead Reckoning, we were already shooting Final Reckoning. So you didn't get the same feeling that you do on this one where you don't have to be at work on Monday.

• 6:38Josh Horowitz?

  Dead Reckoning Part Three? Wait, no, no, we don't actually have to do that.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  It's not hanging over your head like this movie was last time.

• 6:43Josh Horowitz?

  Talk to me a little bit about, look, I've seen you in these giant contexts, like, you know, Spanish Steps, New York premieres, you're at Cannes. You have had such the journey as a filmmaker. You were in director jail, you were going to quit the business, you were done. Do you take stock in those moments where you are, it doesn't get bigger than the stages you are on now, to know where you came from?

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Oh, god, yeah. There was a moment on this movie in particular, I was on the, on the, this deck, looking up at a 1,000-ton steel, 360-degree rotating, fully submersible gimbal over an 8.5 million-liter tank, all of which had been scratch-built for this purpose. And stepped outside of my body and looked back at myself and said, "What are you doing here? How did you end up here?" It's not anything you set out to do.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  It's a very valuable lesson I learned when I was in director jail. What ultimately led to getting out of it was that I stopped trying to control the outcome. I had a picture in my mind of the kind of movies I wanted to make, the kind of career I wanted to have, and nothing was happening. As soon as I stopped focusing on execution and not result, you know, as a friend of mine explained it to me in a very, in a golf analogy.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  You focus on your swing and not where the ball is going.

• 8:23Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  You are constantly surprised at where you end up.

• 8:28Josh Horowitz?

  That's great, because that really like leads into kind of what I want to talk to you a lot about, which is, when we've talked a little bit about this, the very unusual process that you guys have established over the course of these four films.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:39Josh Horowitz?

  And it's almost this like embrace the chaos, find the film, see what it's going to be, let it tell you what it's going to be.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:48Josh Horowitz?

  In a way.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:49Josh Horowitz?

  That no one else has figured this out. And I don't know if you would even recommend other films do it the way you do it, but somehow, like, why does this process, without necessarily sometimes always a locked script, where you're filming sequences before you even know where they are.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:06Josh Horowitz?

  Why does it work for Mission where all these blockbusters collapse underneath?

• 9:11Speaker 03

  We never stop. We never give up. We are very honest with each other about what we're doing while we're doing it. You're constantly evaluating. You shoot a scene, you shoot a line of dialogue, you shoot one actor's coverage in a scene. And you step back from it and you look at it and say, never mind what I meant to say, what did I actually say?

• 9:35Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  What did we communicate? And we either alter it to get the result we're after, or we go with what is clearly more organic and working for the story. We don't write roles and then go looking for an actor to play that role. We cast actors and we tailor the role to them. And that's why, when someone came up to me after watching one of the earlier cuts of the movie, and said, "God, everyone in the film is so perfectly cast." Well, yes, if you write a role specifically for that actor, then they will be perfectly cast every time.

• 10:14Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  That's not something where we go in knowing what we want beyond knowing that we want to have affinity for that character.

• 10:29Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  We want that character to have power. We want that character to be likeable, even if that character is unlikable. We want to like-not liking that character.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  And we're, the big stuff, the submarine and the aerial and all of that, the, we're very, very, very specific and very rigid in terms of our planning of those sequences and that, and developing that technology. So the assets, the things that are really expensive are first the assets and then the time that it takes to shoot them.

• 11:02Josh Horowitz?

  But you're malleable in where they even end up. Correct me if I'm wrong.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 11:09Josh Horowitz?

  Some of your biggest sequences were intended at the beginning of one film and end up in the middle of another.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:14Josh Horowitz?

  That's just, I mean, it's insane to me. It works, but...

• 11:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, you just can't panic. You have to be able to pivot and you have to know, how do you do it responsibly? You can't be cavalier about it. You can't, I know the outside impression must be that, oh, they just give them whatever they want and they do whatever they want. No. And, you know, any more than, not that I am comparing myself to him as a filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, the way Stanley Kubrick had the control that he did, is he was actually extremely frugal.

• 11:46Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  He shot his movies quite cheaply.

• 11:48Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Everybody, the myth becomes that, oh, he had this amazing deal and could do whatever he wanted.

• 11:54Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Stanley Kubrick understood that if you kept doing what you wanted and your movies didn't make money, you were not going to get money to make another movie, even if you were Stanley Kubrick.

• 12:02Josh Horowitz?

  And I think what he wisely spent money on often was time.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  That's, that is exactly right. Stanley Kubrick understood how to save money everywhere else so that he could buy himself the time. What Tom and I recognize in our process is, you know, the bigger the movie is, the more it has to make.

• 12:22Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  And the more people it has to reach, the more universally accessible the movie must be, globally accessible the movie must be. However, we're also not compromising on the stuff that we consider to be the substance of the movie.

• 12:40Josh Horowitz?

  Sure.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  Which is where you're feeling the narrative tension in these movies. You're feeling the push and the pull between exposition and action, between emotion and spectacle, and how those things are fighting with each other. And that's, and that's what leads to the kind of unique tone that this franchise has.

• 13:01Josh Horowitz?

  And that conflict, that friction even applies to...

• 13:06Josh Horowitz?

  Action versus exposition. Dialogue versus silence.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:12Josh Horowitz?

  And it's so funny, like this film, I mean, I've seen it twice, more striking than even all your others even, it's the extremes it goes in both ways. There's a lot of, there's a lot of track to lay down. There's a lot of exposition you gotta do.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  A lot of setup.

• 13:26Josh Horowitz?

  You gotta do it. There's a ton of silence in this film.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:29Josh Horowitz?

  Like the most extensive indulgent in the best possible way, silent sequences. And there is that like, it's just fascinating to me, you as a screenwriter, that it seems like your heart is in the silence now.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  It really, my, my, my relationship with dialogue has evolved 180 degrees from where I began, you know, starting with the usual suspects. That is, that's, that's a story about storytelling.

• 13:58Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Speaker 03

  It is all dialogue. And, and over time, I came to realize two things. One, that the, the style of filmmaking, particularly coming out of that era, that there's a, dialogue became, became synonymous with writing.

• 14:19Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  And that, that.

• 14:21Josh Horowitz?

  This is how you prove I'm a good writer by?

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And I watched, and I watched film geeks who are kind of dismissing things as, as this is the greatest thing ever because of this showy monologue. And, and the writing in this movie is, you know, I, I know people were very upset when Top Gun got nominated for screenplay, because they just, they were just laughing at the kind of very obvious overt dialogue.

• 14:48Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  The dialogue to me in that movie is the most, is the most necessary and obligatory stuff imaginable to get the point across in as few words as possible for the, for a global audience who's reading subtitles.

• 15:01Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  And the substance of the movie, for me, with very few exceptions, does not rest in the dialogue. Same with these. If you look at Mission Impossible, most of the dialogue is exposition.

• 15:16Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Very, very little of it is anything but. It's a genre movie, it's a spy movie, it's very, very particular.

• 15:26Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  By the way, same thing with James Bond. It's all exposition. What I'm most proud of in this movie are the scenes in which they are in exposition.

• 15:36Josh Horowitz?

  Right. And it's not just action, it's looks, it's emotional.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  Looks, yes. It's composition and behavior.

• 15:43Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  That is the evolution of Rogue into Fallout into Dead Reckoning into this movie. And I'm just excited to now take everything I've learned from this franchise, unburdened by everything you must put in this franchise, to go and make, you know, my silent movie.

• 16:05Josh Horowitz?

  I was literally just gonna ask, have you and Tom discussed doing an actual silent movie? Like, whether it's like literally no dialogue or almost no dialogue?

• 16:12Speaker 03

  The script that I have, that I brought to Tom at the start of this process, it was the movie I was gonna go off and do before we did this, and now Tom's attached to it, he has fewer than 500 words in the whole movie.

• 16:26Josh Horowitz?

  Is this broadsword?

• 16:28Speaker 03

  It is broadsword. He's a fairly stoic character. He says almost, he's all through, it's all done through action, behavior, and the character with whom he has partnered in the movie has fewer words than he does.

• 16:47Josh Horowitz?

  Fascinating. I always think back, I remember like the Coen Brothers were gonna do a completely silent movie at one point.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:53Josh Horowitz?

  I always wanted to see that, so this is tickling my...

• 16:55Speaker 03

  It's very, very hard, it's really interesting. The, you know, audiences don't like exposition and they're right not to.

• 17:02Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  And there's an art to presenting exposition. You can hide vegetables in a lot of sugary stuff.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  I just, for me, I just try to get through it as elegantly as I possibly can. And in a way that you can absorb the information.

• 17:22Josh Horowitz?

  Just because you brought a broadsword, is Cavill attached to that, or someone else? You're still looking?

• 17:28Speaker 03

  You read that.

• 17:28Josh Horowitz?

  Okay, but we don't know officially.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Don't believe anything you read about, about any of that stuff. That's just, I, my, yeah, my, the, my relationship with the world of film speculation and film expertise online. Yeah, I, I just warn everybody who speaks with any certainty about film when not working in film.

• 17:54Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  You are immortalizing your presumptions.

• 17:57Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah. Well, to believe what I read, you're making 10 movies with Tom next year. I mean, I know you're working on a lot.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  We're always working on, yeah.

• 18:05Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, we'll get to that.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  We're always working on something, we're working on something right now.

• 18:09Josh Horowitz?

  So, um, we talked about the set pieces. I'm curious, so where, where were they, were they intended ever to be either part of Dead Reckoning, part one, or other places in this film, the submarine sequence and the biplane?

• 18:22Speaker 03

  No, they were always, the, the structure of this movie was, was fairly constant from going all the way back to Dead Reckoning. Once we knew we were opening Dead Reckoning with a submarine, we knew, and Eric and I knew very early on, that's where Final Reckoning was gonna go. We were gonna return to the wreck of that submarine. And, and then it just became a matter of, okay, now how do we do it in a way that it's, that it's something audiences haven't seen before?

• 18:55Josh Horowitz?

  It's interesting, because like, you know, I, this obviously is very much linked with Dead Reckoning, yet totally it's a very different movie.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:02Josh Horowitz?

  Has a much, there's a weight of the past, and we've had weight on the past of Fallout, etc., but this one even more so. It is, as you guys keep saying, it is a culmination. It is, has nods, overt, and subtle to the past seven films. Again, I'm just curious, like, the evolution, because like, I don't know, Dead Reckoning had a positive response, it had some mixed response as well, too. The box office, I know, wasn't necessarily maybe what everyone hoped for. Is there a reaction to that that affected what this movie ended up being at all?

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, there was, because, look, we, we take all that stuff very, very seriously. We, we... And I'm not one to sit there and say, "Ah, the audience didn't get it."

• 19:43Josh Horowitz?

  Right. These movies, you have to listen to the audience.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  That's it. You have to. You work for them. And I said, "Okay, what didn't work for them and why?" It would be very easy to say, "Ah, Barbenheimer," and just blame it on that.

• 19:55Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  We did not factor that into our thinking. We looked at the film very, very critically and said, "Okay, where could we have gone better? Where could we have done better? How could it have been tighter? How could it have been simpler?"

• 20:10Speaker 03

  And it could have been at the expense of other things that were important to us. We then said, "All right, let's try to make a shorter movie out of this one." And we pivoted and deconstructed the entire movie, and I built a nonlinear version of this film and shot it to be nonlinear in order to move certain critical scenes earlier in the story, particularly Mount Weather, the scene with Ethan and the president. Because that's really, that's where the journey, Ethan's journey kicks off.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  And it was very clear as soon as we assembled it, "Did not work." So Tom said, "Just make it linear." I made it linear, "Did not work." And when I made it linear, why it didn't work is there were, every scene you put first was a scene where they were talking about the entity before you knew what the entity was.

• 21:13Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Which is why we then created that opening, that cold intro that just says, "Here it is." And that's the big lesson for Tom and I, over and over and over again. There's just a point where you just have to say it. You just fucking tell them.

• 21:31Josh Horowitz?

  We can dance around this all day, but let's just get it, rip the Band-Aid and make it as entertaining as possible. Put it in Angela Bassett's mouth and it'll be good.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  That's it. And that's why the scene where he confronts the entity, that scene contains within it everything I insisted could not be in the scene and contains nothing that Tom insisted must be in the scene. It's a rejection of everything we believed it could or could not be. And we did it two days before we locked picture. We just said... Here's just, just, just spell it out, just, just lay it all out. But I also, by then.

• 22:12Josh Horowitz?

  Where he's talking to the entity.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  He was talking to the entity, but I had also, by then, made a discovery because I thought it needed to be visual and was really fixated on the visual nature of it and was frustrated with the visual nature of it from what I had originally imagined it to be. I'm glad I didn't do what I imagined it to be because it just, it, it wouldn't have been something, it, it would have been, it would have been noisy, it would have been, it, it just would have been, it would have left last to your imagination.

• 22:46Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  What I discovered was the, the essence of that, the essence of that sequence and what made it work was sound. And the way my sound team had discovered a way to mix that voice, particularly when you're sitting in a Dolby Atmos theater.

• 23:04Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Or when, when the movie comes to home media, to listen to that in a really good surround sound system, the entity really gets in your head and it's very effective. That's one thing, the sound mix. The other is the music that Alfie and Max created two days before we left the picture. It was really incredible. They came in at the last minute with that, with that cue. That is totally different from everything else in the movie.

• 23:32Josh Horowitz?

  When's the movie done? When it's about to come, when it's ready to come out, that's when you're done. I mean, you take what you can get.

• 23:44Josh Horowitz?

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• 25:13Josh Horowitz?

  available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you've heard about them, you know what to do. Let them know it was happy, sad, confused. That's the best way to support our show. If I had a dollar for everybody in my life who's benefited from therapy, I would be a very, very rich man. Therapy has certainly helped me, especially when I was a confused teenager. And thankfully, that's not a shameful thing to say anymore, right? It's okay to seek help and need help and talk about it. We're all doing our best. We're just trying to get by, right, guys? Unfortunately, the reality is that getting help is still harder than it should be. That's why I'm thrilled always to have Rula as a sponsor of Happy Sad Confused, because it's very obvious to me that online therapy should

• 25:54Josh Horowitz?

  be both accessible and affordable for everybody. So let's make it easy for anybody who wants help to get help. That's where Rula comes in. Here's the thing, a lot of online therapy platforms don't actually talk about. Most don't take insurance. That means you're either paying out of pocket or signing up for some very expensive monthly subscription. Rula does it all differently. They work with over 120 insurance plans, so the average copay I can't get over this. It's just 15 bucks a session. So basically, two of your lattes, okay? A pretty good deal, if you ask me. That means you can get real therapy from a licensed professional without breaking the bank. And Rula doesn't just set you up and leave you alone. They give you that therapist, and then they're along the way, the whole journey with you,

• 26:37Josh Horowitz?

  to make sure your care is working for you and you're actually making progress, hitting your goals. This can all happen right away, guys. With Rula, appointments are often available as soon as tomorrow. There are no wait lists. There's no frustrating back and forth. They make it easy. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit rula.com/happy to get started. That's rula, R-U-L-A, dot com slash happy. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.

• 27:12Josh Horowitz?

  It's curious to me, like, his relationship with Gabriel, the backstory of Ethan, that you kind of flashback to in Dead Reckoning, Part One. Marie, the character of Marie.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:22Josh Horowitz?

  It seems like, was there an intent to go back to that more?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  We did. We did. Look, everything in the movie that you have questions about, we shot the shit out of it. And because what matters to us, we hate exposition, but we don't avoid it. We shoot it and overshoot it, and over, over, over-inform and over-include, and then are constantly pulling it back. How much do you need to know? And the truth of the matter was that that flash to it at the beginning of the story coincides with a line of exposition that summarizes what that is.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  And I shot a backstory. I shot a sequence that told you a little bit more about their relationship. And the truth of the matter was that unless I made that movie, it's always going to feel somewhat ambiguous and open-ended in any way. So we just said, screw it. The other thing was, we knew because of the... Strikes and everything else, we were that much farther away from Dead Reckoning.

• 28:28Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 28:28Speaker 03

  If it had come out the following summer, that would have been different. But there was so much distance on the movie. It gave us the permission we needed to just let Dead Reckoning go and make this a standalone movie.

• 28:40Josh Horowitz?

  I know you talked about when Dead Reckoning came out. The idea, among many ideas, to de-age Tom at one point.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:47Josh Horowitz?

  So was, and you had mentioned, I don't know if it was flippantly or seriously, like, what if we get Julia Roberts and we de-age Julia Roberts and we have them in the 80s? Was that essentially the Marie character? Is that what you're saying that was kind of the idea?

• 28:58Speaker 03

  That was an early iteration of it. And what we ended up realizing was, if you de-age those three people, if you took Esai and Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise and de-age them, and put them all in the same scene, it would have been as expensive as the submarine.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  It's so much money to do that de-aging correctly when you have multiple characters in a shot. As soon as I researched the technology, I realized it's, if you're gonna do something like this, it has to be awesome.

• 29:33Josh Horowitz?

  We've seen some masters try it, and even they've had trouble with it. So, yes, I guess.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Well, and what I look at when it works, when it works, all I'm thinking is, wow, this de-aging is really good. When you see a character that you've known for so long, be it Robert De Niro, Kurt Russell, Tom Cruise, and you see their younger self in a different concept, context.

• 29:56Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  On digital, not that like, you know. That's why the bit with the rabbit's foot.

• 30:05Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  We shot it on film. We went back and shot it entirely on film. And we studied the, we studied the lighting and the camera work on that movie and did our best to recreate something that was integral to Mission 3. And that helps that when you're looking at the shots that we have of Tom from Mission 3.

• 30:27Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  It doesn't feel out of place.

• 30:29Josh Horowitz?

  Makes sense.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  It looks like, it looks like Tom Cruise from that era.

• 30:34Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  The film looks like Tom Cruise movies from that era.

• 30:38Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  And that's why when we did originally have a very elaborate.

• 30:45Speaker 03

  Scene of Ethan's past and we were doing all that research. The understanding was, how do we, how do we do everything down to the grain of the film? Make this look like.

• 30:57Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  And, and so I, I realized, okay, that it would have been, what was the Mission Impossible before Mission Impossible?

• 31:04Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  If I'm shooting Ethan's past, if I'm shooting Mission Point Five, it would have been 1989. And that's how we found Julia Roberts as it, cause she was just, just popping. And we thought it would have been Tony Scott's.

• 31:16Josh Horowitz?

  I love it.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Uh, uh, Mission Impossible.

• 31:18Josh Horowitz?

  Mission Impossible, The Choice. I can see the movie.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Yes. And having worked on Top Gun, um, learned a lot in terms of studying Tony Scott's photography and, and, and watching Joe Kaczynski build upon that and, and remain Joe Kaczynski while making a Top Gun movie. Um, but I had a lot of time during that process to go, well, what if, what if we were making the Tony Scott movie? How would you do it? And I, uh, and that would have been fun. I would have enjoyed doing that. So I went from making a 10-minute Tony Scott sequence to making, you know, probably 12 seconds of J.J. Abrams.

• 32:01Josh Horowitz?

  I got you. Um, when you, I know you're plugged in, you see what the fans are saying. When there was.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  I don't.

• 32:07Josh Horowitz?

  Really?

• 32:07Speaker 03

  I haven't. I, yeah, I've, on this one, I have specifically avoided it.

• 32:13Josh Horowitz?

  Well, let me ask you going back. I mean, you must have been aware, I would think, when Ilsa dies in the last one, a lot of folks were like, she's not really dead, she's coming back. Did you ever consider like, if that's kind of what they want to see? Do we, you know?

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Um, I, it's the cost versus benefit. Um, it's, the, the, the death of essential characters has followed Ethan throughout every one of these movies.

• 32:43Josh Horowitz?

  From the start.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Yes. Um, I, I, I don't think up until that point, a character that resonated so deeply with the audience had died. And I know there were people who were dissatisfied with the way it happened, um, which is where I thought that, that. That wouldn't motivate me to undo the one thing that gives Mission Impossible teeth, which is death is permanent.

• 33:11Josh Horowitz?

  Right. One thing I wanted to bring up, and I hope you appreciate in the spirit I bring it up, is that leaked audio from the making of Dead Wrecking Part One. You never want somebody recording something illicitly. But I will say this, a lot of folks, we all already have respect for Tom. The kind of things he was saying there is who he is. Maybe not that, you know, that was an unusual tone for him, we were not used to hearing that. But he and you, safe to say, felt the weight of not just that film, but the industry. The industry puts movies like Top Gun, like Mission Impossible, on their shoulders. Do you feel that? You talk about that with Tom?

• 33:52Speaker 03

  We consciously decided that. We agreed to that. You know, we, people, Tom is asked all the time, why don't you do more movies like, why don't you, you know? And Tom answered, quite frankly, at one point during all that, he's like, look, the industry needs movies like this right now. We made the, I, these movies are very hard to make. They're enormously physically, emotionally, and mentally taxing. Factor in a pandemic and two industry strikes, what should have been a two and a half year process for both movies stretched on to seven years. I didn't see my family for half of that time.

• 34:36Speaker 03

  That put an enormous strain on all of us. We're, you know, you don't see me driving around in a gold-plated Lamborghini. We, I'm not, I'm not, when you make a movie, you don't get paid overtime. When you, when the movie goes, when the movie goes as long as this one did, we made an agreement very early on that Top Gun Maverick and these two Mission Impossible movies were going to be movies that did everything they could to preserve a kind of filmmaking, a kind of storytelling, and a film-going experience during a time when I really feel the industry is.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  I don't want to say imploding, but certainly receding. And I feel there is a venue now with streaming wherein you can abdicate certain burdens.

• 35:34Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  And I choose my words very carefully. It's not avoid, it is to abdicate those burdens. You're, yes, making a movie that has to compete on its opening weekend sucks. That's also an important part of why a movie has the quality that it does and lasts as long as it does. You've got to fight for those eyeballs. You don't have to do that in streaming.

• 36:00Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  You don't have to do that. The metric by which they measure success on that is completely different and has nothing to do with an opening weekend. I don't begrudge that. I think that's great. Just know that when you're doing that, you're not paying into the system. You're not paying into theatrical. You're getting to make the kind of movie you want to make and the way you want to make it. And that's great. That doesn't, that doesn't, that removes essential element, an essential element, from the creative process, which is the audience. They are your collaborators, whether you like it or not. You work for them, whether you like it or not.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  You never reach a place in your career. Tom Cruise, forty years in his business, as successful as any actor has ever been, should be in a position where he can do creatively whatever he wants. And can. And will not.

• 37:02Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise subscribes to the fact that we work for the audience and our job is to get them to come into theaters. It's why we test our movies, which a lot of people think is sacrilegious and a cop-out. And I would say the bigger cop out is not testing your movie. You don't have to change your movie, but don't you want to know?

• 37:22Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  Don't you want to know how your movie's going to be?

• 37:24Josh Horowitz?

  At least the movie that's intended to appeal to as many human beings as possible.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  And test audiences have told us many things where we've said, "Thank you, no."

• 37:31Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  And there are other things the test audiences show us and we say, "Thank God, because I couldn't see the forest for the trees." They're a very important collaborator and ultimately they are the people who reward us and allow us to go on.

• 37:46Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  They're also the people you have to dynamite out of their homes to come to a movie theater. And we believe in this medium. That's, that to us, the communal experience and the love of sitting in a theater with 500 people. You will never get the cheers that you got in Top Gun Maverick or in E.T. at home. You just, you, you won't. You'll, you won't have the same feelings. Watching The Godfather on the big screen, which I didn't see on the big screen until I was, you know, in my 40s. But watching that with an audience and seeing the reaction to certain scenes that, to me at home, were, "Ha, that's clever."

• 38:26Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  And feeling it actually play like a big summer tent ball movie.

• 38:30Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Watching John Frankenheimer's The Train recently at BFI.

• 38:33Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  And seeing it play as, as well as any summer blockbuster, the way they got the humor and the way they felt the triumph of those characters. And, and the devastation they felt at the loss of others. You only get that in a theater. The emotional experience is muted at home. It's something you can never truly replicate. Tom and I devoted our, quite literally devoted our lives to it and he quite literally risks his life for it.

• 39:00Josh Horowitz?

  Truly.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  While we're, while we're making these movies. I'll tell you something else about that recording with enough distance to get away from it. Just to give you a sense of reality. When you heard it and you read the associating copy, close your eyes and show me how you picture the event.

• 39:20Josh Horowitz?

  Oh, interesting.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. Just what do you picture? What do you imagine the event being?

• 39:27Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, these are obviously on set, surrounded by a dozen actors, extras, you, and a couple of folks who are getting too close to each other and...

• 39:38Speaker 03

  How many people total would you say was that, based on your mental picture?

• 39:42Josh Horowitz?

  This is a trap.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  No, no, it's not a trap. It's quite literally, what impression did it give you? There's no right or wrong answer.

• 39:49Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, no, I was like a dozen, 20, something like that, yeah.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. There were seven people in that conversation, and two of them were me and Tom.

• 39:56Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  And it was not in front of the crew. That's how it was reported.

• 40:01Josh Horowitz?

  Got it.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  And two of the people there were people who had specifically been tasked with the health and safety of our crew and had repeatedly...

• 40:15Josh Horowitz?

  Not lived up to that responsibility.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Not lived up to that responsibility. What you're also not hearing is the 30 minutes of audio that came before it, that led to that. When the number of times of trying to get one's point across

• 40:29Josh Horowitz?

  Got it.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  is not finally getting across.

• 40:30Josh Horowitz?

  The breaking point was reached, yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  So, context is very, very important, and it's not something you can ever add to something in the age of the internet in real time. But the truth of the matter was, there was a much greater context to that. And now factor into it the fact that the person who is raising his voice is quite literally going to work every day and risking his life for a very expressed...

• 40:59Speaker 03

  ...purpose of keeping the industry alive. That was not a guy pissed off because his latte was cold.

• 41:08Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  And...

• 41:09Josh Horowitz?

  Or even that's in my eye line, which is justifiable.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  Or your... Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. Other outbursts you've heard, which, by the way, you listen to, you listen to those things out of context and think, oh my god, you make one movie and you will totally understand.

• 41:29Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, no, I get it.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  When you understand the pressure, the pain, the risk, the time.

• 41:33Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  And the responsibility.

• 41:35Josh Horowitz?

  And add Covid and everything going on.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  And you add Covid and everything else going on.

• 41:39Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  And you can't respond to it.

• 41:41Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  You just, you can't respond to it. What I am grateful for is that people in the know, people who make movies for a living, understood, A, we've all been there, we've all lost our shit, every single person. Ye without sin cast the first stone. But that also, the, what he was saying was very, very sincere. There was, you know, he was, he was on the phone every night, fighting the good fight to keep things going, to keep things alive. And I was a fly on the wall for all of that. I watched him will that into existence. And then I, and I watched how long it took for people to change, for crews to adopt a

• 42:26Speaker 03

  different mode of behavior and to take seriously what it was. And it did not matter what you believed.

• 42:33Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 42:34Speaker 03

  These are the rules now. And if we want to keep working, we just, this is what we gotta do.

• 42:38Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  It's not really about what is true for you and what is not.

• 42:41Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  This is reality.

• 42:43Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Reality and truth are two very, very different things.

• 42:46Josh Horowitz?

  I want to look ahead a little bit. We alluded to some things.

• 42:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:51Josh Horowitz?

  Is Top Gun 3 harder to crack in some ways than Top Gun Maverick?

• 42:54Speaker 03

  No, it's already in the bag.

• 42:55Josh Horowitz?

  You've cracked it?

• 42:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I already know what it is.

• 42:59Josh Horowitz?

  Easy.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, wasn't hard. I thought it would be.

• 43:03Josh Horowitz?

  Really?

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I thought it would be. And I go, and that's a good place to go from, is you walk into the room going, come on, what are we gonna do? And Aaron Krueger pitched something, and I went...

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Actually, and we had one conversation about it. And the framework is there. So, no, it's not hard to crack. The truth of the matter is, none of these are hard to crack.

• 43:31Josh Horowitz?

  It's the execution.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  It's as you start to execute it and as you start to interrogate it, and as you start why these movies are made the way they are. It's not the action. It's not even the level of or intensity of or the scope and scale of the action. The engineering around the action. It's none of those things. It's the emotion.

• 43:55Josh Horowitz?

  I was gonna say, what I remember, I mean, I remember a lot of things from Maverick. But it's him and Rooster at the end. It's that moment.

• 44:03Speaker 03

  And getting to that place, finding the right emotional balance wherein you have a conflict between these two characters. They kept saying, "We want more scenes with them together." Because they wanted to recreate Maverick and Goose, which of course, we understood. And your desire is to rush right to what the audience wants. The minute their relationship is resolved, the movie is over.

• 44:30Josh Horowitz?

  Right. Tighten that through as much as possible.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Yes, and if they have too many conversations where they don't talk about their problem, you're just like, "Guys, just talk about your fucking problem already." You'd be frustrated with the characters. Tom and I inherently understood that balance and everyone else around us was pushing for what they wanted in the movie in the micro. And Tom and I were focused entirely on the macro. And the challenge of that became, of course, the fact that when you're making a movie, and you can reference other movies when I say this, if your character doesn't like the protagonist... No matter how much you want me to like that character, the rules of movie making say, "I don't like that character." Right.

• 45:17Speaker 03

  Even if I don't like the protagonist all that much. You're an antagonist. Rooster was always riding the edge of falling into being an antagonist. Right. You had to build an entire world around that character so that you liked him despite the fact that he didn't like the guy you're rooting for. That is the... That's the bones of the movie that we knew and were always after, were always pushing in terms of making sure in every scene, "I feel affinity for this character." I want to like both characters. Yeah. And I want to see them be friends. And that's the reward of the movie. It's not finishing the mission. Right. It's not Great Balls of Fire. It's not any of that.

• 46:01Speaker 03

  It's the ultimate emotional payoff. Much like in the first movie, his relationship with Iceman. Yeah. Yeah, he had his relationship with Rooster, but his relationship with Iceman, as much as Iceman was antagonizing Maverick, he was cool and he was a better pilot. And he was right about everything that he was saying. You want to see them be friends. Why the sword fight in Princess Bride works? As good as the choreography is, yes, it's great choreography. What really makes it great is they're two great characters and you don't want to see either of them lose. Right. And you want those characters to be friends. Yeah. And that's why that ending is so utterly satisfying. Understanding those things,

• 46:46Speaker 03

  there is no cookie cutter version of that. You have to strive for and fight for and push for that dynamic. I can write it and we can shoot it. That doesn't mean you'll feel it. And we look at it all the time and go, "I ain't buying it." Rooster and... Maverick and Penny's relationship ultimately worked.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  When we shot Jen Connelly for a fourth time on a little piece of a bar in front of a green screen, and she improvised a line in the middle of a newly-written version of the scene where she said, "It always ends the same way with this beat. Let's not start this time." When she said that, I suddenly knew how to structure the rest of their relationship. Because it's really hard to create conflict between a man and a woman in a movie in which the man desperately needs to go and do what he needs to do.

• 47:36Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  How can that character be saying to him, "What about me?" Same thing with Grace in these movies. How do you create tension in the relationship without having one of the characters be completely ignoring how important the stakes of the movie are? Those are big challenges, and they take forever. Hailey's first scene in the movie, we shot two months ago. And we shot it after we tested it the first time and looked at it and went, "Oh, of course. I know exactly what I need to do with this character, and I need to do it in two and a half minutes." And I am very fortunate in that I work with a leading man to whom I can say,

• 48:14Josh Horowitz?

  We need to do this again.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  "We have to do this scene, and you've got to give everything to Hailey. You've just got to give it all to Hailey, and that's going to make her essential to the story." That's how those movies are engineered. You do it by sense of feel. There's no roadmap.

• 48:27Josh Horowitz?

  Are you going to end up directing the next Top Gun? Is that a chance? Is that a real possibility? Because Joe's got a full slate, too.

• 48:33Speaker 03

  Joe, to me, I have given that absolutely no thought whatsoever. I do, however, I have done a lot of research into how to make a Tony Scott movie, so.

• 48:45Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  I'm not the sort of director who would be squeamish about, "Yeah, I get it. I'm making a sequel to a Tony Scott movie." Do your Tony Scott.

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• 50:06Josh Horowitz?

  Let me just throw out a bunch of these other potential Tom Cruise projects. You tell me which of these are priorities that are likely to happen? The musical? Is that something you guys have really?

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Everything is a priority. Everything will, in one way or another, happen. It will not necessarily happen in the time or place you think it will.

• 50:25Josh Horowitz?

  Okay.

• 50:27Speaker 03

  They're all things we're talking about. They're all things we have ideas about. The conversations we've had about Les Grossman are so fucking funny.

• 50:37Josh Horowitz?

  That's real? I mean...

• 50:40Speaker 03

  We're talking about it, man. We're having very serious conversations about it and how best to do it and where, you know, what... It ultimately comes down to what that character is. Les Grossman. Tom will be the first one.

• 50:53Josh Horowitz?

  And Ken, is that the lead? Because he obviously worked as such a side character.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  You hit the nail right on the head that I was going to. A leading man, Tom Cruise will tell you, a leading man has different responsibilities.

• 51:06Josh Horowitz?

  100%. No one knows it better than him.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  And everybody's going, "Oh, why doesn't he do more Magnolias?" It's like, well, you're a supporting character in that movie. You are allowed to say the things he says in that movie.

• 51:16Josh Horowitz?

  Yes.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  Because he's not the protagonist to that film. He doesn't have the same burden. He doesn't have the same responsibility. Ethan Hunt, a character of whom people can be critical...

• 51:27Speaker 03

  Is on rails. There's so little that he is able to do outside of his responsibilities as a leading man.

• 51:35Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  And when you try to push those boundaries, mission instantaneously ceases to become mission.

• 51:41Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  That's the line we're always walking is the difference between a leading man and a supporting man, a character role versus a more traditional matinee protagonist.

• 51:53Josh Horowitz?

  So that's figuring out, on the Les Grossman side, maybe how he reacts to something else, what you...

• 51:59Speaker 03

  Well, all we do, we don't even think about the structure, we play with scenes.

• 52:03Josh Horowitz?

  Okay.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  And Tom is so, just to be sitting at a breakfast table, not talking about the movie we're making for a minute is such decompression.

• 52:12Josh Horowitz?

  Right, right.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  And just riffing with Tom, playing Les Grossman at the table is just, it was one of the real joys of making this movie. It was all the stuff we were doing, planning the future while slugging out the present.

• 52:26Josh Horowitz?

  How much work has been done on the Days of Thunder idea of trying to figure out where Cole Trickle is now and the best named character in the history of cinema?

• 52:34Speaker 03

  Again, totally know what the premise of the movie would be. In five seconds, I knew what the premise would be. And I looked at the response to Top Gun Maverick and immediately turned to Tom and said, "Days of Thunder."

• 52:51Josh Horowitz?

  But not the same, not mirroring what you did on Maverick?

• 52:56Speaker 03

  It would be the, you, no, because it's a completely different character, it's a different movie. It has a different cultural impact than that movie. And all those things go into figuring out how to make the story. All these stories now, everything I'm talking about post Fallout, Fallout, the big thing for me in Fallout was the discovery of just how important emotion was in narratives like this, which normally aren't really a priority. Emotion is something you inject into those movies. With Fallout, emotion was baked into every frame. I did not call action on a shot until it was somehow framed emotionally.

• 53:39Speaker 03

  It didn't matter if it was, you're looking at Ethan Hunt or you're looking at a set of car keys. When we did Maverick, in that earliest conversation with Tony and Jerry and Tom, was understanding what was the audience feeling about the world around them when they made Top Gun the first movie. I was the only person in that room that hadn't worked on the first film. My only qualification, I felt, in that room was, I remembered vividly what it was to be a seventeen-year-old kid paying to see that movie.

• 54:21Josh Horowitz?

  Let me tell you actually what it was like in the real world, watching your crazy-

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, I know what you guys all meant as artists. I was the focus group in that first meeting. And with, you know, many years of distance, and thirty years working in movies, at that point twenty-five years of working in movies, I was able to articulate what it was I was feeling. And said that unless we can isolate what that is for an audience now, in two thousand, at this point it was like, two thousand-

• 54:52Josh Horowitz?

  Eighteen, nineteen.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  Two thousand nine, and then late, and then, no, two thousand eleven. And then, when I came back to it in two thousand nineteen, it wasn't until I read the draft, the first draft of Top Gun Maverick, in two thousand nineteen, that I was able to call Tom and go, "I know what it is. I know what it is, I know what the essence of the movie is. And I know what everyone thinks, will think the essence of the movie is." And I told Tom, "Everybody's going to think that this movie's about Tom Cruise, the movie star, and Maverick, the pilot-

• 55:26Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  -and the end of F-18s, and the end of cinema, you know, the end of manned flight, and the end of cinema, and they're never gonna know what it's really about, and I'm never gonna tell 'em. But here's what it is." And Tom said, "I totally agree." In the wake of that movie, I then turned to Tom and said, "Now we gotta do that for Mission." And here's-

• 55:48Josh Horowitz?

  You mean Days of Thunder or Mission? You're saying Mission or Days of Thunder?

• 55:52Speaker 03

  For Mission.

• 55:52Josh Horowitz?

  Oh, Mission, sorry.

• 55:53Speaker 03

  And that's how Dead Reckoning came to be, and that's how the entity came to be.

• 55:58Josh Horowitz?

  Got it.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  This concept of information technology is something we've been talking about for a long, long time. But it was an intellectual idea that you had to explain its threat to the audience. You had to explain its influence-

• 56:09Josh Horowitz?

  But now the world was ready for it, like caught up to this idea.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  By 2019, people were aware of the algorithm and they were aware of the effect it was having on their lives. And you could very clearly feel they were beginning to develop an anxiety about it. That replaces the Cold War-

• 56:25Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  Because in Top Gun, Maverick, you had the Cold War. Or, sorry, in Top Gun, you had the Cold War, in Maverick, you didn't. You had to find a different anxiety. In Mission: Impossible, the first Mission: Impossible is a spy movie just a few years after the Cold War ended. And you could feel spy movies are going, "Well, what the fuck are spy movies even about?" The essence of what I do now, post-Maverick, post-Dead Reckoning, is to look at a movie and go, "Why now?" And what itch does this scratch? What anxiety does this soothe? And that's what this movie, Final Reckoning, was engineered entirely for.

• 57:07Josh Horowitz?

  Is there any other character? Because this is the luxury of Tom, is he has this amazing pantheon of great characters. I'm curious where Vincent from Color of Money is, or Daniel Caffey, or Joel Goodson. Are any of those other ones, you must, all the time with Tom, go through the filmography like-

• 57:23Speaker 03

  Oh, at post-Maverick, I think about all of them. I mean, I think about all of them. I think about who would Joel Goodson be? Who would- Who would, uh, yes, and of course, people are suggesting all the time, "Oh, you do The Color of Money", and he's the...

• 57:39Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 57:40Speaker 03

  The difference being where Paul Newman was in The Color of Money versus where Tom Cruise isn't.

• 57:48Josh Horowitz?

  Yes.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  You know...

• 57:49Josh Horowitz?

  His 62 is a little different than where Paul Newman is.

• 57:51Speaker 03

  His 62 is way different. The guy is in his fifth decade of making movies, and he just made Final Reckon.

• 57:58Josh Horowitz?

  I know. He's not quite ready for that kind of thing.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  No, no, no. And if you look at John Wayne when he was 52, you know, and everybody loves to compare 62. Everybody loves to compare Tom to how old he was.

• 58:10Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  And Wilford Brimley.

• 58:11Josh Horowitz?

  John Boylan, John Wilford Brimley, the whole thing, yeah, all of it.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  Yes, the whole thing. Tom's a very, a very unique specimen, and so it's not an apples-to-apples, any more than, I hate to say it, gender switching is not apples-to-apples.

• 58:23Josh Horowitz?

  Sure.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  When you take that, you take that movie and you just, you know, you, you put a man in a, in a woman's role, and the woman in a man's role.

• 58:30Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  It, it just, it has a different vibe, and you've gotta, and you gotta lean into that. You have to acknowledge that, and you have to go, "Okay, well, who am I really making it for?"

• 58:39Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 58:39Speaker 03

  And it's also the actor. It's, there, there are no arbitrary choices. You have to put it there, and you have to look at how it resonates emotionally, and you have to acknowledge when, "Well, it's, it's not working that way. How do we serve it? How do we serve it so that it does?" And that's, um, and so, i-if I was going to make a movie about, say, Joel Goodson, in his, as, as a 62-year-old man, in this modern reality, what itch is that movie scratching?

• 59:09Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  And who is that character? And one of the things that Tom was very particular about with Maverick, and which we talk about all the time with, with why Ethan is a challenging character. Tom's only big note, his only rule for Top Gun Maverick was, "I don't want sad Mav. I don't want to meet a guy at the beginning of the movie who used to be Mav, and he's gotta spend the movie getting his Mav back."

• 59:34Josh Horowitz?

  Kidding.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  For the simple fact that that totally taints the first movie. I know at the end of the movie, he went off to become sad Mav.

• 59:40Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  And, and it's, that's why when you look at these franchises and how they resolve characters, you gotta be very, very careful, because it's going to change the way you watch those other movies. And we were very conscious about it with this, that there was... Every decision we make represents the conclusion of that character's arc.

• 1:00:00Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  Not just Ethan, but Benji.

• 1:00:03Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  Luther, William Donlow, Kittridge, and even, you know, the characters like Pom and Haley, who are in it just for these two movies. They all had to have resolutions that had equal weight and resonance. And now, I hope, when people go back and watch Dead Reckoning.

• 1:00:23Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  See, when Haley first walks on screen, knowing what her character's arc is. When Pom Clement T F first comes on screen, what her character's arc is. When Daegah is on the train, talking to Shay Wiggum about whose side are you on? Following what his arc is. Those were all things we knew from the very, very beginning of this. And when, and when people were projecting onto those characters where they thought they were going, or where they wanted them to go.

• 1:00:54Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 1:00:55Speaker 03

  We had to play the long game and say, just wait for it.

• 1:00:58Josh Horowitz?

  It's been some distance now. What was your Superman pitch? You pitched a, another story after Man of Steel.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  I'll never tell. I'll never tell, but boy, it was fucking good. It was fucking good. And it, and it, and it was, you know, Green Lantern was what had come to me. And Green Lantern's a tough one.

• 1:01:17Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  Very tough.

• 1:01:18Josh Horowitz?

  That power that...

• 1:01:19Speaker 03

  It's a very, the power is very...

• 1:01:21Josh Horowitz?

  The weakness is tough.

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  Yep. And I, and I, and I cracked it, and it was, and it was fun. And watching him learn how to use that power and what the, and giving that power a flaw.

• 1:01:37Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 1:01:37Speaker 03

  So that there, so that it was not pure invincibility.

• 1:01:40Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 03

  Uh, there was a, you know, and it's all there.

• 1:01:43Josh Horowitz?

  Wasn't just yellow? Like, that was like, you're talking about Green Lantern?

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  No, no, no. Well, the whole, the whole concept of Green Lantern is, the ring has to be recharged.

• 1:01:52Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  The ring has to be recharged. And the more, and that, that's not a bug, that's a feature. That's the thing that made it, yes, you have infinite power, but you only have so much...

• 1:02:01Josh Horowitz?

  On the clock.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  You only have so much battery life.

• 1:02:03Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  And that can run out at inconvenient times.

• 1:02:06Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  That, for me, solved the whole Green Lantern problem. The costume is another thing, and you can figure that out. But here's the thing, I look at any superhero. And growing up, if you had told me that there would ever be a Captain America or a Thor that did not have me laughing hysterically at the character. And that is proof, just check your certainty, man. When you dismiss an idea, you're not dismissing my idea, you're dismissing yours, you're dismissing your concept of it. In the same way, I was dismissing mine. So I realized, don't worry about the costume, worry about the character.

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  And how do you give that character tension and stakes? And also, how do you do it with Superman? And Henry had a take on that. And I suddenly realized how these two characters had how these two characters had amazing similarities, which also allowed for amazing conflict and an amazing, universe-expanding resolution.

• 1:03:18Josh Horowitz?

  Now I'm just getting upset.

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I will tell you, I will tell you, the first five minutes of my Superman movie, which was a imagine a you remember Pixar's Up?

• 1:03:42Josh Horowitz?

  Sure.

• 1:03:43Speaker 03

  A sequence with no dialogue that covered that character's

• 1:03:50Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  Okay. The first five minutes of the movie was a setup after which you knew exactly what made Superman tick? And exactly what Superman was most afraid of? And why Superman made the choices that he made? And it would have been epic, it would have been epic. In five minutes, the scale of the movie would have been absolutely extraordinary. And the other thing, and I think, I hope that anybody who watches this movie, that enjoys the end of this movie, walking away, that's the feeling I would want you to walk away from, because that's really what Superman is about.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  It's about hope, and it's about it being inspiring. And it's

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  And the joy that that character created. I don't think you need to live in the shadow of Donner's Superman.

• 1:04:47Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  I don't think you need to live in the shadow of John Williams' score. But you do need to recognize that that movie captured better than any other with respect to everyone that has followed. It captured better than any other the heart of that character.

• 1:05:10Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  The problem with Superman is that when they constantly are trying to create bigger and bigger and bigger obstacles for a character with infinite power. Donner understood. And all the best sequences in Superman understand that Superman's greatest obstacle is himself. Followed potentially by Greenland.

• 1:05:46Josh Horowitz?

  All right. To be continued.

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  It's all right there, guys. It's all right there, just sitting there waiting for somebody to make it.

• 1:05:55Josh Horowitz?

  I appreciate the time, man. I'm glad this happened at the right time for Final Reckoning. Congratulations. It is like all four of these movies, but this one especially, the degree of difficulty, how you guys approached it, what you're trying to do with these. This is an audience movie. I saw it in IMAX last night. I've seen it twice. See this movie.

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:06:15Josh Horowitz?

  Thank you for the time, man.

• 1:06:16Speaker 03

  Really, I appreciate it.

• 1:06:17Josh Horowitz?

  Totally appreciate it.

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  It's great talking to you.

• 1:06:20Speaker 04

  And so ends another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't pressured to do this by Josh.

• 1:06:39Speaker 04

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