Mission: Impossible 7 Almost Opened With a De-aged Tom Cruise

Audiences were almost treated to (or should that by punished with?) the sight of a de-aged Tom Cruise in the opening sequence of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Speaking with GamesRadar+, director Christopher McQuarrie revealed plans for the Mission: Impossible to walk the same path as another recent sequel, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and begin with a de-aged version of its lead star.

“Originally, there had been a whole sequence at the beginning of the movie that was going to take place in 1989. We talked about it as a cold open, we talked about it as flashbacks in the movie, we looked at de-aging.”

However, while McQuarrie toyed with the idea of somehow making the near-ageless Tom Cruise even younger, the filmmaker was ultimately dissatisfied with the way that the de-aging effect often yields mixed results. And how distracting it can be.

“One of the big things about [the de-aging] I was looking at while researching, I kept saying, ‘Boy, this de-aging is really good’ or ‘This de-aging is not so good.’ Never did I find myself actually following the story. I was so distracted by an actor that I had known for however long was now suddenly this young person.”

While this sequence never made it into Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the experiments have resulted in McQuarrie growing more confident in the de-aging process, with the director now confident he knows how to use it properly. Suggesting we could see it in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two…

“In researching that, I cracked the code – I think – on how best to approach it. By then, we had kind of moved away from it. We may still play with it. We never say never.”

RELATED: Tom Cruise Has Been Popping Up at Different Screenings of Mission: Impossible 7

Aged Tom Cruise Returns in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

While we wait and see whether a de-aged Tom Cruise ever makes his way onto the big screen, aged Tom Cruise returns to lead Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, and dark forces from Ethan’s past closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than his mission – not even the lives of those he cares about most.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is another win for the long-running franchise, with critics heaping praise on the action sequel. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One now sits at a near-perfect 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, with MovieWeb’s own Julian Roman concluding that “Tom Cruise is a guaranteed commodity in delivering blockbuster popcorn cinema.”

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie from a screenplay he co-wrote with Erik Jendresen, and starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Esai Morales, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, and Henry Czerny, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is out now in theaters. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two, is currently set to be released on June 28, 2024.