Mission: Impossible fans were left on the edges of their seats when the latest instalment of the smash hit spy franchise arrived on screens last year.
And it wasn’t just fans who were impressed by Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One as it has also been recognised at the Academy Awards for the first time.
After seven films and almost 30 years, the Mission: Impossible series has finally secured its first ever Oscar nominations for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.
The movie’s special effects supervisor Neil Corbould is overjoyed to be nominated for his hard work, and spoke exclusively to MailOnline about what it was really like working with Tom Cruise and pulling off those daring stunts.
Neil, 61, has worked on a whole host of huge Hollywood films and joined the Mission: Impossible franchise for 2018’s Fallout before returning to work on the visual effects for Dead Reckoning: Part One.
Mission: Impossible fans were left on the edges of their seats while watching Dead Reckoning Part One, and the movie has been recognised for the first time at the 2024 Academy Awards
After seven films and almost 30 years, the Mission: Impossible series has finally secured its first Oscar nominations for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound (pictured: Tom Cruise)
The movie’s special effects supervisor Neil Corbould (pictured) is overjoyed to be nominated and spoke exclusively to MailOnline about what it was really like working with Tom
Leading star Tom, 61, is known for taking on terrifying stunts for the films – including riding a motorbike off a cliff and hanging upside down from a plane – and Neil has given an insight into what it was like working with ‘hands-on’ actor Tom.
He told MailOnline: ‘Tom is very hands-on, he knows everybody’s job, and really does know it. You can’t bluff him, you have to be on your game with Tom. They value my input into the process about how we get the shots.
‘Even through Covid, Tom kept us all working, we used to travel up to his place in town and basically carry on planning – all social distancing – but he’s a perfectionist and it has to be right.’
Neil also gave an insight into how they filmed Dead Reckoning’s memorable death-defying and nail-biting stunts, revealing they had to build a full-sized steam train to drive it off a cliff.
He explained: ‘For me, it was the biggest show I’ve ever worked on, only because of the amount of rigs we had to build.
‘We built a full-sized steam train that weighed 80 ton, and then we built a bridge and a railway track to drive the train off into a quarry in Stoney Middleton. Then we took the train to Norway to run on a public railway.’
‘For the train rig, there was probably seven huge hydraulic rigs to get the sequence, it wasn’t just one or two – that would be a normal movie. Every frame we had to try and match and build a rig for, that was the biggest challenge on Mission,’ he added.
One scene sees Tom (Ethan Hunt) and Hayley Atwell (Grace) driving at breakneck speed in an almost cartoon-like yellow Fiat 500 during a Paris car chase, and Neil shared how the tiny vehicle became a star in its own right.
He said: ‘We built a Fiat 500 with a 500 brake horsepower Tesla engineered in that then became a star of the film. It didn’t start off that way at all, it started as a car for an escape and then when Tom saw the car, he said “oh this is amazing”. They started writing the script around the car almost.’
Tom (pictured), 61, is known for taking on terrifying stunts for the films – including riding a motorbike off a cliff – and Neil has shared how they nailed the iconic stunts
Neil gave an insight into how they filmed Dead Reckoning’s memorable death-defying and nail-biting scenes, revealing they had to build a full-sized steam train to drive it off a cliff
One scene sees Tom (Ethan Hunt) and Hayley Atwell (Grace) driving a tiny yellow Fiat 500 during a Paris car chase, and Neil shared how the car became a movie star in its own right
As well as being recognised for Mission: Impossible, Neil is up for two more Oscars at the 2024 Academy Awards as he has also been nominated for his work on Napoleon and The Creator
Neil also shared his pride that Mission: Impossible has finally been nominated for an Oscar and said Tom and filmmaker Chris McQuarrie have been setting movie ‘standards’ for years with the franchise.
‘Mission: Impossible, I was so pleased that it got recognised for special visual effects because they set the standards over years and years, and I’ve been very lucky to work on two of them,’ he said.
‘For it to get a nomination, I’m so happy for Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie that it’s finally been recognised for the special effects and visual effects, and as a movie in general. It’s such a great franchise and it has set the bar for many years.’
As well as being recognised for his impressive work on Mission: Impossible, Neil is also up for two more Oscars at the 2024 Academy Awards as he has also been nominated for his work on Napoleon and The Creator.
