Ethan Hunt Doesn’t Die in the New ‘Mission Impossible,’ But They Considered It

When the eighth Mission: Impossible film changed its title to “The Final Reckoning,” we all had the same thought: Tom Cruise’s character, Ethan Hunt, was going to die. It would have been the most obvious way to add some real finality to the franchise, but we now know that doesn’t happen. Instead, Ethan lives, as does his sworn enemy, the Entity. And, in a new interview, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie discussed those crucial decisions and many more.

In an extended, spoiler-filled conversation with Empire, McQuarrie admitted he toyed with the idea of killing his main character and even had an idea of how to do it. “Everything is on the table,” McQuarrie said. “There was a moment in the editing of the final sequence of the movie where Ethan goes spinning into that cloud bank where I thought, ‘If you cut to his grave right now, you’d feel the sacrifice was sufficient. Wow, that’s very, very effective’.”

Ultimately, though, he didn’t think killing Ethan would’ve served the story in the right way. “The idea of a conclusion of a story being the death of that character… they are not one and the same,” McQuarrie said. “When you fully tie off the story, the story ceases to be. And that’s not life. Stories go on, whether or not the movies do.”

Which, of course, leaves the door open for more Mission movies. “Do I think [Mission] is in my rear-view mirror? I want to say yes,” McQuarrie said, adding the caveat that “Tom Cruise is a force of nature, and a very, very tricky one.” And so, the director admits, he could one day return to the franchise, but only “if it was the movie I desperately wanted to make.”

Another fascinating decision made by McQuarrie at the end of Final Reckoning was the one to not defeat the unstoppable AI, the Entity. Fellow Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro said he wanted the Entity to scream when it was defeated (another revelation from the interview) but McQuarrie chose not to do that and chose not to kill it at all. Instead, it’s merely contained, a decision McQuarrie made as a commentary on AI at large

“You can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” McQuarrie said about AI. “Really experienced experts in this field, who have been with it since its infancy, were telling me the only way that you’ll ever be able to now combat AI is with AI. It’s never going to go away. Destroying the Entity was actually kind of a hollow and empty idea…. [Destroying the Entity is] not going to stop somebody else from making an Entity. And so the idea of Ethan keeping the Entity at the end was fully antithetical to everything we believed—and yet, there it was emotionally in the movie, and that’s how the ending came to be.”

Whether or not you agree with McQuarrie’s thought process here—and we mostly do—it’s refreshing to hear him explain why the decision was made. These are things he and his team clearly thought about at length, and no decision was made lightly.

Read more from McQuarrie over at Empire and listen to the full discussion at this link. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is now in theaters.

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