“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” does something no other “Mission: Impossible” movie has ever done before: It shows us a quick glimpse into what Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)’s life was like before he joined the Impossible Mission Force (IMF). As seen in the movie, that peek into Ethan’s past takes the form of some brief black and white flashbacks revealing how Esai Morales’ antagonist character, Gabriel, shares a history with Ethan. We learn Gabriel murdered a brunette woman named Marie and seemingly framed Ethan for her death, presumably leading to Ethan being presented with a choice: Go to prison, or put his skills to use for the U.S. government. (My man certainly has bad luck with brunette women, doesn’t he?)
In the final cut of the movie, Marie is played by an actress named Mariela Garriga. But according to “Dead Reckoning” director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie, he originally considered casting a superstar in that part: Julia Roberts.
In the first part of Empire’s “Dead Reckoning” Spoiler Special podcast interview, McQuarrie spoke about doing a deep dive into digital de-aging to see if that would be a viable option for the Marie flashbacks in the film. Overall, he didn’t seem convinced it would work. “The best de-aging I’ve ever looked at, all I kept thinking is, ‘Wow, this de-aging is really good.’ I’m in no way, shape, or form connecting to the story,” he said. But he went down the research path anyway, which briefly had him considering reaching out to Julia Roberts to play Marie.
“If you hire Esai Morales and Tom Cruise and de-age them, and then hire some 23-year-old woman to be their confidant in Berlin in 1989, that’s bull***,” McQuarrie said. “So now we started looking at it and saying, ‘Who’s Marie going to be? Who from that era would Marie have been?'”
‘Who was the ingenue, who was the breakout star in 1989?’
McQuarrie continued:
“I said, ‘OK, if I were doing this sequence, it would be Tom in, say, 1989. It would be Tony Scott’s ‘Mission: Impossible.’ That’s who would have been directing the movie before Brian De Palma, you know, in that era. We looked at ‘Days of Thunder’ and we looked at the style of it, and we started thinking what would it look like if Tony Scott had shot this, and who would it have been? I looked back at who was the ingenue, who was the breakout star in 1989? And right around then was ‘Mystic Pizza.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God. Julia Roberts, a then-pre-“Pretty Woman” Julia Roberts, as this young woman.’
The only way I could have seen doing the sequence justice [using de-aging] was to somehow convince Julia Roberts to come in and be this small role at the beginning of this story,” he said. “And of course, as you’re conceptually going through it, you’re like, ‘Now all anybody’s going to be doing is thinking about the de-aging of Julia Roberts, and Esai, and Tom, and Henry Czerny.’ And then I got the bill for de-aging those people before their salaries were even factored into it. And if you put two of them in a shot together, or three of them in a shot together, it would have been as expensive as the train by the time we were done. It was so … the force multiplier of — and the way we shoot scenes, and the fluidity, and the camera movement. And of course, that wouldn’t be the style of the movie in 1989. That wouldn’t make sense if you were shooting an ’89 ‘Mission’ like a 2023 ‘Mission.'”
Good call, McQ
The hefty price tag and stylistic inconsistencies ended up being too great to overcome — especially for a production that was already going significantly over budget due to its multiple Covid-related production shutdowns as it was filming throughout the true height of the pandemic. (His explanation of the visual effects costs also helps underline why “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” ended up with such a gargantuan budget.)
Ultimately, I think McQuarrie made the correct choice here. Seeing a de-aged Julia Roberts almost certainly would have yanked audiences right out of the experience of watching this movie, sending their minds reeling at not only the surprise of seeing her, but, as McQuarrie explained, the logistics of what the shoot must have been like. And since the Marie character dies in those flashbacks, audiences wouldn’t even have the excitement of knowing they might see current-era Julia Roberts pop up in “Dead Reckoning Part Two.”
Thankfully, this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Marie. McQuarrie made it clear on the podcast that more of her character and the backstory she shares with Ethan Hunt will be explored in the upcoming sequel. I will be eagerly awaiting Julia Roberts’ review of “Dead Reckoning Part Two” whenever it arrives.