In 2000, when Tom Cruise was still married to Nicole Kidman and still making movies without explosions in them, he sat down for an interview with Vanity Fair. He still did interviews back then, too. His latest film, that summer’s Mission: Impossible 2, was a curious prospect. Cruise didn’t do sequels. Only a handful of giant stars were at the turn of the millennium. But Cruise didn’t necessarily see Mission: Impossible 2 as a conventional follow-up. These spy movies of his – merely a whisper of a franchise at that point – were, to be clear, singular visions defined by whoever was behind the camera.
“I never looked at it as a sequel in making it,” he explained. “I never wanted it to hinge on anything.” The first film, released four years earlier, was very much cast in the image of its director, Brian De Palma. It’s paranoid and sensual, with Cruise captured in repeated Dutch angles. John Woo, the Hong Kong maximalist behind Face/Off and Hard Boiled, took over for M:I 2, and brought with him his usual bag of tricks: balletic violence, slo-mo, lots and lots of doves. “[John] wanted to do it as a mythic adventure picture,” Cruise continued. “All the colour tones in the picture are earth, wind, and fire. That’s what got me excited. It’s not going to be a direct sequel. You don’t have to do that with Mission: Impossible, because every time it’s a different adventure. The director dictates the style.”
