‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning’ Editor Talks Reshaping the Film’s Nearly Four-Hour First Cut
variety.comJazz Tangcay Artisans Editor SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” now playing in theaters. “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’s” jaw-dropping train sequence in the film’s third act features Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt fighting Esai Morales’ Gabriel on the roof of a locomotive as it hurtles down a track at 60 mph.
The set piece was originally supposed to be much longer. The scene climaxes with the train plunging off a bridge one carriage at a time during which Ethan and Grace (Hayley Atwell) cling on for dear life as they climb back up through the train.
The film’s editor, Eddie Hamilton, says he first built a version of that entire sequence back in 2022. That whole train sequence, he says, “was about an hour-and-a-half long in our first iteration.
We got it down to like 50 minutes in the finished movie.” The part where the carriages start falling into the ravine was originally over three minutes long.
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