It is no secret that director Christopher McQuarrie of "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" was forced to change the movie's ending midway while filming the movie because the release date was bumped into an earlier date, but he still managed to pull off a very satisfying end for the movie.
The scene where Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) squared off with Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) while Benji (Simon Pegg) and Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) waited with bated breath at a cafe in London was actually not part of the original script, but the entire cast did not know what the original ending was anyway, since the director preferred to keep in under wraps.
Pegg told Cinema Blend that he does not mind not knowing, since it helps the actors "evolve" with their characters and storylines.
"We always had the ending of the film as a kind of moveable feast when we were making it. We got the script initially, and Chris being Chris McQuarrie 'The Writer' as opposed to Chris McQuarrie 'The Director' wanted to keep the ending as something we would find on the way," he said. "So the meat of the ending didn't appear until after we were well into the shoot. It wasn't in the script, that scene. But it was something we'd all agreed to do, to have that sort of evolve organically rather than just sort of have it all on the page before we started."
Not knowing the outcome of the film is not something that actors like to contend with, but in certain instances, it can really help, and this is what happened in "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation."
"It's a scary way to work, but it really helped the movie, I think. It means a sort of, a different kind of movie, then just like building to the biggest action set piece. Which is often the case. It's like a video game, some films. You get bosses that increase in size, whereas this is something else," Pegg added.
Even though McQuarrie is responsible for writing the film, Cruise also had a hand in some of the film's movements. One of these is the extremely difficult underwater sequence where Hunt dies attempting to change the chips that would help Benji pass facial and body recognition. It was actually Cruise's idea to have Hunt drown and die and be saved by Ilsa Faust at the last minute.
