This article contains spoilers
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One director Christopher McQuarrie has explained why a certain member of Ethan Hunt's team was killed off.
In the latest Mission: Impossible movie, there is a flashback sequence in which we see a young Ethan Hunt trying to save a woman who has been shot by villain Gabriel, who in the present day represents a major threat against humanity - a hostile Artificial Intelligence known as 'The Entity'.
Before the final act of Dead Reckoning Part One, Gabriel murders Ilsa Faust on a bridge in Venice.
Rebecca Ferguson has played Ilsa since Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, and the character subsequently developed a very close relationship with Hunt and the rest of the IMF team.
McQuarrie says Ilsa was killed off to show that real stakes were present in Dead Reckoning.
READ MORE: Julia Roberts was ALMOST cast in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
“We knew that that emotional arc was of a certain emotional tone… Ilsa is a wonderful character, and a character of which I am enormously proud, and Rebecca is an actor of such unmitigated power and presence,” the director told Empire.
“And yet, where we had gone with the character from Rogue to Fallout… place you took that character would either make less of her, it would suddenly become frivolous. Or she would just become a romantic interest, and it was never about creating a character who was defined by her love story with Ethan Hunt.
“Their relationship transcends a traditional loving story… They’re doomed to be together and yet doomed never to be together… It felt like that story was looking for its resolution and so we said this has got to happen.”
“What really needs to happen in the story is the stakes have to be real, they can’t be implied,” he added. “We have to have the courage to let fail and it has to cost, the mission has to cost, and without that, the villain simply will not have a threat…what you’re seeing in the escalation of the story is what it costs Ethan personally in Venice.”
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One received hugely positive reviews from critics and earned $522 million at the box office. Part Two will be released in June of 2024.
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