Arts & Entertainment

Tom Cruise paralyzes Rome with debut of 7th “Mission: Impossible” flick

Rome, Jun 19 (EFE).- US actor Tom Cruise once again demonstrated his huge popularity around the world with the presentation of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One” the seventh film in the ongoing action saga and the debut of which completely paralyzed the downtown zone of the Italian capital.

The iconic Spanish Steps on the iconic Piazza di Spagne was the spot selected by the actor to present the long-awaited film, which was filmed in Rome during the coronavirus pandemic under strict security measures and which will finally hit theaters on July 12.

Cruise and the film’s director and co-writer, Christopher McQuarrie, kicked off the world premiere of the Paramount/Skydance project on Monday evening, taking the stage in the Auditorium della Conciliazione to thank “the people of Rome” and the local governments in Rome and Venice for their help in bringing the project to fruition.

Cruise said it was an “honor and a dream” to shoot the movie in Rome during the “difficult” times of the pandemic.

Hundreds of tourists and curious onlookers had jammed the nearby streets for hours under a blazing sun to get a glimpse of the Hollywood megastar.

Cruise has been in Rome since last Friday, to the delight of the local populace, and it was perhaps inevitable that flocks of people would be on hand to watch his every move, whether he was leaving his hotel or going to a local restaurant to get a bite to eat.

The actor also thanked the Romans for their “patience” with him and the film crew during the moviemaking, for which several streets were blocked off.

Some of the most impressive scenes in the film take place in Rome, with Cruise tantalizing his audience by mentioning a hectic chase in a Fiat 500 past or through the Colosseum and the Trinita dei Monti church.

Also playing a prominent role in the plot of the film is the city of Venice, Cruise said, as well as Norway, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates, specifically Abu Dhabi.

“I’m very grateful to be here,” Cruise said, speaking of Rome. “And to be part of this, this whole time period, had we not had the community here to say we will support you in making what we wanted to do. Because I want to make movies, I make movies for the big screen, that is what I do.”

The actor devoted more than an hour to mixing with the public on the Spanish Steps, greeting his fans along with most of the rest of the film’s cast, including Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Esai Morales, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff and Henry Czerny.

Pegg – who has played the popular character of Benji Dunn in several of the franchise’s films – told EFE cheerfully that he and the rest of the cast knew that the public was on hand primarily to see Cruise.

“You know, I’m lucky because Benji just kind of stays behind the computer and he … he does his thing. Tom is jumping off cliffs on a motorbike he’s hanging his you know, hanging off trains – it’s genuinely dangerous stuff,” he said.

McQuarrie – who took the reins of the franchise for the fifth and sixth films – also made the same comment about the public being on hand for Cruise, telling EFE that they try to gather together everything they’ve learned and improve upon it for each new film.

On his new Mission: Impossible, Cruise’s character – Ethan Hunt – must track down a new computer weapon that is threatening humanity before it falls into the wrong hands and he races against the clock around the world to keep mankind safe from a mysterious and all-powerful enemy.

The budget for the film is estimated to have been almost $300 million, with a sequel already in production and McQuarrie saying that the team would certainly be back with another international thriller in the near future.

EFE

–/bp

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