SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from Mission: Impossible: Deadly Reckoning Part One, in theaters now.
There’s no shortage of death-defying stunts in the Mission: Impossible films, but the Tom Cruise-starring action movie is known for another iconic trick: the mask being revealed.
“Dead Reckoning Part One” features two mask reveals: in the first, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt uses the mask to infiltrate a meeting between CIA Director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and representatives from various intelligence agencies regarding a rogue artificial intelligence system known as the Entity. . The other is a face-swap between Hayley Atwell’s Grace, a pickpocket who becomes embroiled in the IMF’s hunt for the Entity, and Vanessa Kirby’s black market arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis, aka the White Widow.
“It was so fun. It was the first time two women had done it,” Kirby said. Diversity on the red carpet at the film’s premiere in New York.
“It was such an amazing gift—because I love Hayley—to direct her and play with her a little bit and play someone who is completely out of control,” she continued. “My personality is usually so reserved, collected and in control; it was really, really fun to play someone a little more messy and messy. I’m naturally messier in real life, so in that sense I felt at home.”
In a separate interview, Atwell echoed Kirby’s excitement, revealing that the two became especially close while preparing for the film together amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “We both have a background in theater, we’re both British, and we had mutual friends,” Atwell said.
There’s something deeply satisfying about watching Ethan or another character (like Simon Pegg’s IMF field agent Benji or villain Dougray Scott posing as Ethan) tear off their prosthetic disguise to appear before the shocked group. But creating these scenes requires filmmakers not only to have technical skills, but also to demonstrate the actor’s versatility. (The late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s take on Cruise’s super-spy Ethan Hunt when they switch during Mission: Impossible III is an absolute masterclass.)
“We’re always trying to come up with new and original ways to do it because that’s the signature move of ‘Mission: Impossible,'” said Oscar-winning editor Eddie Hamilton, who joined the franchise with 2015’s “Mission: Impossible: Rogue.” Nation” and continued with 2018’s “Fallout” and the two-part “Dead Reckoning.”
Hamilton teased that there was a third mask that fell to the cutting room floor “because it no longer mattered” in the larger story. The scene was near the beginning of the film and was left out because it undermined Ethan’s big moment.
“Ultimately it was the right decision,” Hamilton said of canceling the scene. “There are quite a lot of people who have never seen the Mission: Impossible movie but might come see it because of the goodwill of Top Gun: Maverick, so (the first scene) is a great moment to let the mask come out , because you’re like, “What the hell is going on?”
Hayley Atwell and Vanessa Kirby at the UK premiere of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
The mask moment between Grace and Alanna is part of the complex final scheme of “Dead Reckoning”, where Ethan and Grace must infiltrate a meeting between the White Widow and her mysterious buyer aboard the Orient Express as a last-ditch attempt to obtain the key. to access the entity source code.
Plan: Grace will go to the meeting disguised as Alanna, and Ethan will assume the identity of her brother Zola. To do this, they must board the train undetected, calm down Alanna and Zola, meet the buyer, get the key ready, and exit the train undetected. It’s a rush that requires everything to go perfectly to succeed, but when the mask machine breaks down, the team is forced to improvise: Grace goes alone and Ethan boards the train while the train is in motion.
Some cinematic techniques were required to create this scene. The reason Alanna’s face looks so perfect when created by the mask machine is because it is actually Kirby’s face and her body is hidden off-screen.
“Her body is there,” Hamilton said, pointing underneath the frame of his Zoom camera. “She’s paying close attention to her vision, and the visual effects team put the edge of the briefcase against her neck and took her out of the frame.”
Then there’s the hidden wipe between Atwell donning the White Widow mask and Kirby standing in the mirror as the “Grey Widow” (the nickname the filmmakers gave the disguised character).
“What’s elegant about it is that it has two seams,” Hamilton said. “But you don’t realize what you’re seeing until (Grace) goes to the mirror and goes, ‘Wait, what?’ How did this happen? It was completely unnoticeable.”
The trick to this scene, Hamilton explained, is to make moviegoers feel like they’re beginning their journey into the film’s third act, but it’s a rush. “We’re having fun with the audience’s anticipation of how these films will go, which is great,” he adds.
Aside from the mechanics of the scene, the moment with the White Widow mask allowed Kirby to show off his acting skills. When discussing the scene, Atwell praised Kirby for emulating her mannerisms and pointed out a small moment in her co-star’s performance that differentiated the transition from Alanna to Grace.
“She does the echo gesture of when I fall back onto the tracks in the little Fiat 500, I kind of blow the hair out of my face, (Vanessa) then does it when she comes out of the cab when Grace plays the White Widow,” Atwell explained. “She sees her brother there and does the same thing, and there’s this kind of manic energy in her eyes. That’s it, Vanessa explores me a little and has a great time. This is amazing”.
Besides being a fun visual gag, this episode is also part of Grace’s redemption arc. (The original version of this scene was where Grace tranquilized Ethan, Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji and boarded the train herself to “try to get money from the buyer and maybe negotiate her way out of the situation she was in.” said Hamilton: “But the test audience didn’t really like the idea, so we came up with this idea.”)
Grace’s decision not to take the money was a “moment of reckoning,” Atwell said, crediting Kirby for pulling off the climactic twist that shapes the character’s future in the second installment. “I love that moment,” Atwell said of her fellow actor’s performance of the scene. “Vanessa is amazing and able to show off her range.”
And the mask itself was also a useful prop for Atwell to demonstrate Grace’s new state of mind. In fact, the way Grace takes off the Gray Widow mask at the end of the scene was meant to feel a little like an “exorcism.”
“It’s like I’m throwing (it) away. It’s like I just don’t like the version of myself that I was when I had the mask on and I’m getting it out of my system,” Atwell explained. “I give up Grace’s old personality from the first half of the movie when she realizes, ‘If I took the money, it would be more than just the key I was giving away.’
These interviews were conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike began.