HOLLYWOOD -- Tom Cruise seemed to be out of control. His movie universe was not unfolding like it should.
At some stalled point, the always optimistic Cruise was cynically wondering if another Mission was, indeed, possible.
After the incredible success of the first movie version of the 1960s TV show, Cruise was full of enthusiasm for Mission: Impossible 2.
Despite some critical railing against the confusing plot, Brian DePalma's Mission: Impossible earned US$465 million worldwide and established a lucrative franchise for Cruise and Paramount Pictures.
One delay led to another setback, however, and before Cruise could say "green light," he was made an offer he couldn't refuse from legendary director Stanley Kubrick. Cruise and his wife, Nicole Kidman, ended up shooting Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut "forever and a day" in London, which created ulcers at Paramount and frustration among fans waiting for another Mission.
Then, the March 1999 start date in Sydney, Australia, was put back again so Cruise and Robert Towne could fine-tune the screenplay for high-concept action director John Woo.
A month later, the cast and crew were in place, ready to take on the US$100-million-plus sequel, which opens Friday to great expectations.
Bigger and bolder
In the latest incarnation, Cruise is Ethan Hunt -- again. His hair is a little longer, his expressions less grim, and the picture is bigger and bolder and less dark.
As Woo says: "Tom isn't trying to save the world, he is trying to save the girl."
In M:i-2, special agent Hunt is assigned to track down a globe-trotting villain (Dougray Scott) trying to get his hands on a deadly virus. Thandie Newton plays a jewel thief and a Cruise love interest. Ving Rhames returns from the first movie as the computer expert, Luther.
What you won't see in the sequel is a hard-to-follow plot line like the one that pervaded the first film.
"I didn't get the first story either," admits Woo, the former Hong Kong director who made his mark stateside with star vehicle hits Broken Arrow and Face/Off.
"I thought it might be me," adds Woo, whose English is as halting as his comprehension of it. "So I got the first one with Chinese subtitles and I didn't understand that either."
"He's taken Mission: Impossible and turned it into mythology," Cruise has suggested of Woo. "His action has a combination of reality and surrealism that makes the emotion in his pictures very real."
"It's all about humanity," Woo says. "And Tom said to me, 'That's why we need you.' "
All was not sunshine and happiness once the production got rolling -- torrential rains greeted their shoot. "Tennis-ball-sized hail some days," recalls Aussie actor John Polson, who plays a good-guy assistant to Cruise's Hunt.
There were other hassles during the seven-month shoot -- hovering fans were distracting and the always present paparazzi proved to be annoying.
"Being from Australia," Polson says, "the paparazzi especially were a daily embarrassment to me."
Then, rumours of "creative differences" between Woo and Cruise created some tension for the pro-Woo production team.
Exaggerated
Towne says those problems were blown out of proportion, and that disagreements were usually cordial. "Woo and Cruise developed the action sequences together and in harmony," says the screenwriter of Chinatown and The Last Detail.
Woo says most of the clashes with Cruise involved the actor insisting he do his own motorcycle, car driving and jumping stunts. The most heated debate came when Cruise demanded he be allowed to climb a 1,600-foot cliff in Utah for the film's opening sequence.
"I couldn't watch the monitor when he was doing the scene," says Woo, who reluctantly gave in.
So what gives? Is it a Cruise death wish?
"Tom has a real passion for filmmaking," Woo explains.
"Sometimes," continues Woo, smiling, "he is like a kid who wants more candy."
Newton agrees. She says Cruise's boyish charm is matched by his single-minded focus.
"When they asked me to be in the picture," says Newton, a friend of Kidman's, "I remember thinking, 'Woo and Cruise making a film together? How fantastic.' "
So, apparently, was "the sexy and suggestive stuff" Newton does with Cruise in a bathtub. It was all in fun, some of it impromptu.
"And his enthusiasm makes it so easy to do that business," Newton says. "He has amazing amounts of energy."
Not much has changed from a decade ago, when Towne remembers a fresh-faced, incredibly forthright actor on the set of Days Of Thunder, the followup to Top Gun.
"I remember clearly," Towne says. "He came into my trailer and called me sir."
Cruise doesn't do that anymore, "although he still has the directness and intensity" he had then. "In those days, he also used to carry a dictionary with him, too, in case he heard something he didn't understand," Towne says. Not now.
What else is different?
"Tom has a self-assurance in knowing when things work."
And, apparently, when he doesn't need a stunt man.
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