Joining the Mission: Impossible saga is no joke, a lesson Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis learned quickly on the set of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. The duo board the franchise with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie and actor-producer Tom Cruise and get a crash course in the kind of “intense, beautiful” spectacle that McQuarrie and Cruise have come to be known for.

In Dead Reckoning, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is tasked with saving the world yet again, but this time from a sinister technological threat. In their interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, which you can watch or read below, Davis and Whigham touch on how ahead of their time McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen were when working on the screenplay years ago. They also discuss McQuarrie and Cruise’s symbiotic partnership and their commitment to the story and characters, including familiar faces like Mission: Impossible’s Henry Czerny and other newcomers like themselves, with Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff.

Davis, who previously worked with the two creatives on last year’s summer blockbuster, Top Gun: Maverick, discusses how this team-up differed from that ‘80s sequel and why. We also find out which scenes had them questioning how much more they had in them to give and what it was like watching the finished product for the first time at the premiere in Rome.

COLLIDER: I love this movie. You guys are both newbies to the franchise, so what actually surprised you about joining a franchise like this in the way Chris [McQuarrie] and Tom [Cruise] work because the way they collaborate is unique amongst a lot of filmmakers and actors?

SHEA WHIGHAM: Go ahead, you take this. You collaborated with them on Top Gun [Maverick].

GREG TARZAN DAVIS: This was very different from Top Gun in filming. I think since they’ve done Mission: Impossible two or three times before, they had this type of rapport, and they know each other like the back of their hands. It’s very interesting to see when McQ is saying something, like, “Hey, Tom, I need you,” and Tom is already like, “Yeah, I got it,” and he does it. It’s just like, “Wait, did he say…? No, he didn’t.” Or Tom is like, “Hey, McQ, I think—” and he says, “Already on it. I told him to put the camera right there.” He’s like, “Thank you, McQ, got it.” They just know what they’re doing, you know?

WHIGHAM: [To Weintraub] I mean, you and I have known each other from small films, independent films, and you come on something like this, but it’s huge, these things. The tapestry is huge, but they love story and they love character. So you get in there, and I was shocked how much we delved into character and story, and they give each character a moment in this piece. I love that aspect of it.

Image via Paramount Pictures

I love that Tom embraces the fact that he’s been running in movies since, like, ‘86 or ‘96, whatever it is. You guys get to run in this movie. You have the train sequence, which is insane, and then you also have the Abu Dhabi airport sequence, which is incredible. For both of you, which one were you more nervous to film or more excited to film because both are memorable?

DAVIS: Probably the train sequence because that was the first thing we shot, was on top of the train. You know, you come in for the first day of filming for both of us, and it’s like, “Hey guys, go on top of a train.” It’s like, “Oh, okay. We signed up for this, of course.”

WHIGHAM: Yeah, I mean that, but you left out Venice. Venice is where we did the most running, although we hoofed it pretty hard through the airport there in Abu Dhabi. But that was the one, because we were shooting nights, I remember, and we were running all night from, like, 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. That was the one where I pulled something on the last night of a weekday shoot, pulled a calf muscle. You remember that? I said to Tarzan, “I don’t have another one in me,” and McQ comes up, and he says, “Listen, so I didn’t get that. You got another one in you?” This is not Hollywood speak, I really had popped it, and [to Davis] you said, “Yeah, let’s just try to get it,” and we went again. I saw that sequence the other night in the movie, and it was intense. It’s really intense, beautiful stuff.

Also, this wasn’t involving the two of you, but that fight sequence in Venice with Tom and the two of them in that little alley is, oh my god, you know what I mean? I have to ask the two of you, what actually was your reaction watching the finished film being inside or making something like this because the spectacle is insane?

DAVIS: It’s huge. When you’re in it, you’re so focused, and you have that laser beam focus on what you’re doing. You don’t really know what everybody else is doing, and you start questioning, asking McQ, like, “How is this all gonna tie together? I don’t get it, it’s not making sense to me, this big thing. You have the old characters, you have the new characters coming in. How do you make it all come together?” And you watch, and it’s like, “Oh, this is what you were doing. Oh, this is the genius that you put on the screen for the audience to watch and be entertained.” And he did a fantastic job with it.

WHIGHAM: I walked out, and I texted McQ and Tom and him, and I went, “Proud,” like I’m proud of this piece. The last 40 minutes, I couldn’t– I held my breath, and I knew what was gonna happen. And I was still, you know… I think it’s a brilliant action film with characters you care about.

Image via Paramount

I was saying to people when the movie ended that this might have been the fastest 2.5-hour movie I’ve seen in forever. It just never slows down.

DAVIS: And you want more after.

Speaking of more, what are you allowed to tease about a certain Part Two?

DAVIS: There’s a part two?!

I believe there might be, actually.

DAVIS: Oh, well, somebody needs to get my agents on that, then! Goddang. I don’t know, I’m just finding out about this. I thought it was only a part one.

I had a long interview with McQ this morning, and he said that you guys are going to be filming until early next year. And yeah, I heard rumors, although I don’t know how big your characters’ involvement is in the sequel, obviously.

DAVIS: Are we? Well, that’s news to me. Early next year? That is news to me.

[Laughs] Okay, I’ll move on. One of the things that I think is crazy is when McQ and Erik [Jendresen] were working on the screenplay years ago, they couldn’t have known how much AI would be talked about when this movie is coming out. It’s a little Nostradamus-esque because he wrote this four years ago or so. Talk a little bit about that aspect and how it’s exactly in the moment, this movie.

WHIGHAM: Yeah, it was pretty prescient when you look back. I mean, we didn’t know, you know what I mean? But the thing with those guys is, it’s story. They hooked into a story, but I don’t wanna get too caught up even in the AI of it all because these guys want to entertain at the end of the day. They want you to come into the theater and to watch this and be entertained, and then that happens to be something that they latched on to, and it just happens to now be in the forefront.

DAVIS: Agreed [laughs]. Look, I think it’s interesting. Maybe they can see it in the future.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is in theaters on July 12. Check out what McQuarrie had to say about Part Two below.