Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One nearly gave us a de-aged Tom Cruise, but the idea was eventually cut after director Chris McQuarrie found it to be too distracting.
"Originally, there had been a whole sequence at the beginning of the movie that was going to take place in 1989," McQuarrie told GamesRadar. "We talked about it as a cold open, we talked about it as flashbacks in the movie, we looked at de-aging. One of the big things about [de-aging] I was looking at while researching," he continued. "I kept saying, 'Boy, this de-aging is really good' or 'This de-aging is not so good.' Never did I find myself actually following the story."
And so, the idea was removed. To be honest, considering how young Tom Cruise looks for a man of 61, we're surprised that the movie even considered de-aging in the first place. However, it appears that the technology could be back for a future film.
"I cracked the code - I think - on how best to approach it," McQuarrie says. But, "by then, we had kind of moved away from it. We may still play with it. We never say never."
Do you think Mission: Impossible should de-age Tom Cruise?