Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning Director on His Superman Movie Pitch: 'In 5 Minutes the Scale of the Movie Would’ve Been Absolutely Extraordinary'

It’s been a while, but Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning manager Christopher McQuarrie is inactive a small earthy astir his now-legendary Superman pitch. The filmmaker, who is possibly champion known for his enactment successful the M:I franchise arsenic good arsenic penning 1995’s The Usual Suspects and directing 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, opened up astir what his post-Man of Steel transportation was. Well, somewhat.

“I’ll ne'er tell. But boy, it was f—king good. Green Lantern is what had travel to me. Green Lantern’s a pugnacious one. The powerfulness is precise challenging,” McQuarrie told Josh Horowitz successful a caller interrogation for his podcast Happy Sad Confused.

“And I cracked it, and it was fun. And watching him larn however to usage that powerfulness — and giving that powerfulness a flaw, truthful it was not conscionable axenic invincibility... The full conception of Green Lantern is the ringing has to beryllium recharged. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. ‘Yes, you person infinite power, but you lone person truthful overmuch artillery life.’ That tin tally retired astatine inconvenient times. That, for me, solved the full Green Lantern problem.”

McQuarrie past joked, “The costume is different thing. And you tin fig that out.”

Ultimately, though, the writer-director is each astir coming astatine the communicative done the lens of axenic quality development.

“Here’s the thing. I look astatine immoderate superhero, and increasing up if you had told maine that determination would ever beryllium a Captain America oregon Thor that did not person maine laughing hysterically astatine the character. And that is proof, conscionable cheque your certainty man,” helium explained during the chat.

“When you disregard an idea, you’re not dismissing my idea, you’re dismissing yours. You’re dismissing your conception of it, the aforesaid mode I was dismissing mine. So I realized, don’t interest astir the costume, interest astir the character, and however bash you springiness that quality hostility and stakes and besides however bash you bash it with Superman.”

McQuarrie went connected to uncover that Henry Cavill, who was DC’s Superman astatine the time, had a instrumentality connected that conception and it opened up McQuarrie’s eyes connected what a Man of Steel sequel could be. “I abruptly realized however these 2 characters had astonishing similarities,” helium told Horowitz. “Which besides allowed for astonishing struggle and an astonishing universe-expanding resolution.”

The filmmaker adjacent gave a spot of penetration connected what the opening of the movie might’ve looked like. “I volition archer you, the archetypal 5 minutes of my Superman movie, which was — ideate Pixar’s Up, a series with nary dialog that covered that character’s [story],” McQuarrie acceptable the scene.

“The archetypal 5 minutes of the movie was a set-up aft which you knew precisely what made Superman tick and precisely what Superman was astir acrophobic of and wherefore Superman made the choices helium made. And it would’ve been epic, successful 5 minutes the standard of the movie would’ve been perfectly extraordinary.”

McQuarrie is decidedly a superhero diehard, but helium inactive has not directed a diagnostic successful either the MCU oregon DCU. That said, helium supposedly did immoderate uncredited penning enactment connected 1997’s Batman & Robin, arsenic good arsenic 2000’s X-Men, truthful he’s not a implicit newbie to the satellite of comic heroes. If lone we could’ve seen his instrumentality connected the antheral of alloy himself.

James Gunn's rebooted DCU is of people going successful an wholly antithetic absorption with this July's Superman movie.

Lex Briscuso is simply a movie and tv professional and a freelance amusement writer for IGN. You tin travel her connected Twitter astatine @nikonamerica.