In the same interview with Entertainment Weekly, Christopher McQuarrie revealed that the train sequence in “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” was always a part of his and Tom Cruise’s plan for the film. In specific, the filmmaker revealed that he and Cruise sat down and had a conversation before they began making “Dead Reckoning Part One” about the stunts that they’d each always wanted to do in a movie.

Cruise, for his part, apparently said right away that he’d always wanted to ride a motorcycle off of a cliff — a stunt that has since been spotlighted several times in the early marketing materials for “Dead Reckoning Part One.” McQuarrie, meanwhile, said that he’d always wanted to destroy a train on-screen. “We’re enormous fans of Buster Keaton, John Frankenheimer, David Lean, all of these filmmakers who at one time or another had a fabulous train wreck,” McQuarrie explained. “I thought, ‘I’ve earned that, I want to wreck one too.'”

McQuarrie faced a number of challenges while putting the sequence in question together. Not only did he, Cruise, and the rest of the “Dead Reckoning Part One” crew have to find a place where they could actually, practically destroy a train, but they also had to ensure that they could do it safely. In the end, McQuarrie and co. shot a majority of the sequence in the United Kingdom, where they managed to send a 70-ton train crashing into an English quarry. 

Now, fans can look forward to seeing exactly how McQuarrie chose to bring the set piece to life on-screen when “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” hits theaters this July.