American director and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie says, "Every time we finish an Impossible Mission movie, the first thing Tom Cruise, the action movie star, says to me is we can do better."

There are, as a general rule, many places you can go to watch an action movie where you see Tom Cruise clinging to the side of an Airbus or jumping from a cargo plane at 25,000 feet. In the kinetic and reckless world of Mission Impossible, the pressure to keep raising the stakes, like the hardworking movie star, never stops.

McQuarrie, the writer and partial director of the 2015 and 2018 films, was working with Cruise during the film "Top Gun Maverick," which he also co-wrote, when they began talking about their ambitions for the next iteration of Mission Impossible.

Their plan was to produce not just one but two consecutive films featuring bigger adventures, depicting Cruise skydiving on a motorcycle—and a massive train sequence that McQuarrie was keen to achieve. The strong experience on "Maverick," which earned nearly $1.5 billion worldwide, boosted their aspirations.

McQuarrie said in a recent interview, "The 'Maverick' film taught us a lot in terms of character dynamics and the emotional rewards of the film in general. To make movies of this scale, you really need to think, more than anything else, about the feeling the audience leaves with."

A year after "Maverick" dominated the box office, Cruise and McQuarrie returned with another highly daring scene, similar to "Maverick." The first part of Mission Impossible is the latest thrilling action film from old-school techniques, made of star power, practical effects, and hard work designed to inspire awe.

It was also their most nearly impossible mission yet, not only because of 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps performed by Cruise in preparation for his thrilling adventure. The film was days away from starting production in Venice when coronavirus cases started skyrocketing in Italy, an early epicenter of the outbreak, making Mission Impossible one of the first major productions shut down by the pandemic.

McQuarrie says, "We kept going because if you stop, and you try to find the end of the tunnel, you arrive at a place dominated by despair."

McQuarrie and Cruise first collaborated in the 2008 Hitler assassination drama "Valkyrie," and McQuarrie says, "When I met Tom in 2006, I hadn’t directed a film in seven years, and I wouldn’t direct another film for another five years. I had already put aside any ambitions I had to direct, and I certainly never imagined becoming a director of work, let alone directing four action films."

McQuarrie confirmed that the usual challenge is hiding the fact that the actor isn’t the one doing it, but with Cruise, it’s the opposite; you’re actually doing your best to show that Tom is really doing it."