Summary

Pom Klementieff, Greg Tarzan Davis, and Simon Pegg discuss Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning with Collider’s Steve Weintraub.

Pegg says watching the finished film with his daughter was overwhelming — in a good way. She described it as “like having a heart attack.”

All three cast members felt the weight of continuing the franchise. Davis summed it up: “I’m just glad we didn’t fuck it up.”

With nearly three decades on the big screen, the Mission: Impossible franchise is coming to a close later this month with the release of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Returning to the eighth installment in the saga from Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One are Greg Tarzan Davis and Pom Klementieff, alongside Simon Pegg, who has been part of the franchise since Mission: Impossible 3.
In the upcoming film, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the IMF team race against time to track down and put an end to the Entity, an artificial intelligence threatening all of humanity.
In an interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Davis, Klementieff, and Pegg discuss the culmination of the franchise with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. In the conversation, the trio discusses the Mission: Impossible stunts they think they could pull off, including Klementieff revealing what new skill Cruise inspired her to learn (and how he’s helped her do so), and the weight of continuing the franchise and giving it a proper closing.
This ‘The Final Reckoning’ Trio Suggests Where to Catch This Franchise Finale

Pegg wants to know if they’re saving the Cinerama Dome.

COLLIDER: I really want to start with congratulations on the movie. You guys didn’t fuck it up. So, I’m obsessed with getting more people to see movies in movie theaters, whatever we can do to make that happen. I’ve been asking everybody: do you have a favorite movie theater?
SIMON PEGG: Oh, that’s a good question.
POM KLEMENTIEFF: Ooh, it depends where.
PEGG: The Everyman Group, which is a movie theater group in the UK who do really lovely, kind of super-comfortable tables, chairs, servers. There’s one at the Soho farmhouse in Oxfordshire, and it is my favorite cinema on earth. Sometimes they’ll put a film on just for you. I was there recently, and they screened Jaws for me and my daughter, and it was just wonderful to see Jaws on the big screen again.
GREG TARZAN DAVIS: That’s cool. I’m an AMC Movie Lister, so I’m going to two movies, like three, four times a week, because the window starts over. So I’m like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. That’s my four days. My favorite will probably be Century City in LA. That’s the one I like to frequent, or the one in Burbank.
You’re preaching my language, both of those.
DAVIS: We’ll go on a date together to one of those.
KLEMENTIEFF: I used to love the ArcLight, but I don’t think it’s open anymore.
PEGG: They’re saving the Cinerama Dome, right?
That’s a whole conversation.
KLEMENTIEFF: In New York, there’s a theater called Paris Theater, and it’s also the name of the character. That’s cool. IFC Center, too, in New York. Angelika Theater in New York — amazing. Amazing selection. And in Paris, I used to go to the Max Linder. It’s a big screen. I remember watching Pulp Fiction by myself, front row, mezzanine. It was amazing.
‘The Final Reckoning’ Team Look Back on Tom Cruise’s Jaw-Dropping Stunts

“You’re such a daredevil.”

Image via Paramount Pictures

Jumping into the film, one of the things about Tom Cruise is that he does, in every one of these movies, insane, jaw-dropping, death-defying stunts. No one else can do these things. But I am curious, in an emergency, if you had to do one of the stunts from the eight movies, which one do you think you could pull off in an emergency?
PEGG: I could run away from an exploding fish tank.
KLEMENTIEFF: I could do the Fallout skydiving, because I learned how to skydive. I was inspired by Tom, and he gifted me the skydiving lessons. I’ve been jumping with Craig O’Brien, who actually shot the skydiving scene. He’s a skydiver, and he shoots at the same time.
PEGG: You can probably do any of them.
DAVIS: You most likely can.
KLEMENTIEFF: I mean…
PEGG: You’re such a daredevil.
KLEMENTIEFF: I don’t know.
DAVIS: The one I want to do is the one on the Burj Khalifa when he’s hanging outside the thing, doing his little Spider-Man.
KLEMENTIEFF: I would do the one with horses, too, in the previous movie.
PEGG: She’s a horse nut.
DAVIS: She loves horses.
Do you think you could actually do it on the side of the building, or do you think you’d freak out?
DAVIS: Let me tell you something. I would practice until I’m competent enough to do it outside the building. How about that?
Sure.

Image via Paramount Pictures

PEGG: When I look back at the stunts, that one I think was the easiest for Tom, because it was so well-curated. All the stunt guys were holding on to all the wires and stuff. He was having the most fun. He was running up and down the building. He was waving at tourists. I looked over the edge…
KLEMENTIEFF: He was cleaning the windows.
PEGG: He was cleaning the windows. He looked up at me with this big grin on his face. That was the time I think he felt the most secure. Subsequent stunts, I’ve seen him look more serious, more concentrated, and more nervous. The Burj Khalifa was just a holiday.

Related

‘Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning’ Review: Tom Cruise Gives a Fitting Conclusion to One of the Greatest Action Franchises Ever Made

If they choose to make this their final mission, this would be a solid note to go out on.

Bringing the Franchise Together One More Time

Davis gets a reminder from Pegg: colorful language is okay on Collider.

Image via Paramount Pictures

The submarine sequence alone is like, “Holy F.” Yeah, the plane sequence is beyond, “Holy f.” For all three of you, what was it like watching this possibly final Mission movie and watching how it all came together, and having all the movies be brought together? Because that’s what this film does so amazingly, is it brings all the movies together.
PEGG: It was crazy. I’ve seen it twice. I took my daughter to see a cast and crew screening at the IMAX in London the other night. The first time, because we’re in the movie, we were talking about this earlier, you tend to be watching yourself, seeing that you’ve not “fucked it up,” as you said. And so you’re not really concentrating on everything. It’s such a barrage of information. When I watched it the second time, then it all opened up to me and I realized what a beautifully crafted, well-put-together piece of cinema this is. I kept checking on my kid, who was literally just like that [making a surprised face] for most of the film, and at the end of it said, “Dad, that was like having a heart attack.” And I felt like, “What a compliment.”
KLEMENTIEFF: It was amazing to get to share scenes with characters from previous movies as well. Being a fan of the franchise even before joining the franchise, I was just like, “Ah!” That’s so cool.
DAVIS: I’m just glad we didn’t mess it up. This could have went wrong.
PEGG: You can say “fuck”, this is Collider.
DAVIS: I’m just glad we didn’t fuck it up. It could’ve went left so, so fast, but I think we went in the right direction, so I’m happy with what we did. I’m very, very happy. And I can’t wait for the world to see it.
I know people are going to love it.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning releases in theaters on May 23.

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