"Tom [Cruise] said, 'I want to drive a motorcycle off a cliff.' And I said, 'OK, I wanna wreck a train,' " says "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" director, co-writer and producer Christopher McQuarrie. "We'll figure out what the emotional story is later for each character. These are the big action beats."
So the production built a working replica of the luxurious Orient Express — three of them, actually — with the 70-ton locomotive's ultimate destination being the bottom of a gorge. For the film's gripping final sequence, the biggest in one of Hollywood's biggest action franchises, that spectacular crash is just the beginning.
"Watching it with an audience, I love it, because when the first carriage goes off the cliff, they give it a round of applause like they think that's it," says co-star Hayley Atwell in an interview conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike. "My joy is knowing, 'Oh, just you wait.' "
