Julia Roberts Was Almost in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Movies

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One almost had even more star power – one of the biggest movie stars of all time, in fact. In an interview on Empire’s podcast The Empire Spoiler Special (which is only for paid subscribers, but Slash Film has the details), director Christopher McQuarrie reveals that he intended to cast Julia Roberts in a small role in the film, but it would necessitate digitally de-aging her. As the title of the podcast suggests, this will get into spoiler territory, so if you haven’t seen Dead Reckoning yet, proceed with caution.

*SPOILERS*

In the film, there’s a flashback sequence that’s said to be what brought Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt to the IMF and a life of spying via death-defying stunts. It involves a woman named Marie – presumably someone he loved – being murdered by Gabriel, the villain played by Esai Morales. Roberts would have played Marie, with de-aging technology making her, Cruise, and Morales look younger. Below, McQuarrie explains his thinking on this and his decision not to go through with it:

“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. 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.”

I’m a bit torn on this one. I like the thinking behind this, casting the scene like it took place in a big movie in the late 80s. And seeing Julia Roberts in the cameo would have instantly made Marie important; in Dead Reckoning, she feels kind of superfluous, a fact we’re supposed to attach meaning to because the film is too busy. I imagine she’ll be expanded upon in the next one, but for now, she’s a cipher. But if we see that Julia Roberts was killed in Tom Cruise’s arms, we feel in our guts that something big just happened. (Also, and this is just me, but McQuarrie mentions Mystic Pizza, and I love that movie.) On the other hand, it does feel like a waste, and not just because it would be a cameo. Julia Roberts appearing on a movie screen is a big deal; I don’t know if anyone ever had star quality as effortless as hers, and she instantly consumes the screen. To use computers to de-age her feels wrong; she should be there without a digital crutch, Hollywood royalty from a time when that still mattered. Plus, as McQuarrie says, it would’ve been extremely expensive, and the movie doesn’t need another financial hurdle right now. Ultimately, I think this was the right way to go, but now I want to see her in a better role down the line.