Mission Impossible 7 Director addresses 'critical' flaw in Tom Cruise starrer

Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One made its theatrical debut on July 12. The Tom Cruise starrer spy thriller witnessed a decent start at the box office but couldn’t survive the Barbenheimer euphoria, wrapping up its run with around $500 million. The director of the movie, Christopher McQuarrie recently addressed the biggest criticism about MI7. 

2 things you need to know

• Mission: Impossible franchise is headlined by Hollywood star Tom Cruise. 
• The seventh installment of the series also stars Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Nicholas Hoult, and Simon Pegg in major roles. 

Christopher McQuarrie lashes out at film's criticism 

During his appearance at the Empire Spoiler Specials podcast, McQuarrie discussed complaints that the exposition in the most recent Mission: Impossible movie dragged the film out for some viewers. A significant portion of that exposition focussed on the movie's AI antagonist Entity and human ambassador, with explanations of the AI's operation occurring frequently. McQuarrie thought the exposition was vital to the film's narrative. 

The filmmaker said, “Yes, I know for a lot of people there’s too much exposition in the movie. You wouldn’t feel so if I took it all out. You would trade exposition for confusion. And people who feel things are explained too many times, I congratulate you. You are the sharpest student in the class. You’re paying very close attention, and you’re listening to all the dialogue. I assure you not everyone is, not all the time.”

(Mission Impossible 7 stars Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, and Hayley Atwell in lead roles | Image: IMDb)

McQuarrie also revealed that he and Tom Cruise had considered almost every option for a villain before settling on AI for the seventh film, taking into account the rising use of tech in modern society. 

Mission: Impossible 7 suffers from exposition?

Mission: Impossible 7 has a lot of heavy lifting to do in terms of building up its story, characters, motivations and payoffs, possibly more so than any prior Mission: Impossible movies. The main focus of this exposition is the AI antagonist in the movie, with several individuals needing to describe what it is, where it came from, what it wants and what it is capable of. Importantly, much of the exposition also deals with how to halt it, and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) spends the majority of the movie hunting two mainframe access keys.