Art & Entertainment

Simon Pegg Says Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie Are Like 'Lennon And McCartney'

Since 'Mission: Impossible III' in 2006, Simon Pegg has been part of the core ensemble of the 'Mission: Impossible' franchise, playing hacker and sometime field agent Benji Dunn opposite its stalwart star Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt

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Simon Pegg
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Since 'Mission: Impossible III' in 2006, Simon Pegg has been part of the core ensemble of the 'Mission: Impossible' franchise, playing hacker and sometime field agent Benji Dunn opposite its stalwart star Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt.

Recently, Pegg discussed what makes director Christopher McQuarrie's creativity so special, and his collaboration with Cruise et al so unique, reports Variety.

He also spoke about new details he discovered about Benji, explored the challenges of being self-referential in a franchise like this without undermining emotional stakes, and hinted at what is yet to come as he and the rest of the filmmaking team move on to 'Dead Reckoning - Part Two'.

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The actor said that "in Tom Cruise, director Christopher McQuarrie just found such a perfect creative partner".

He said that Tom can facilitate McQuarrie's way of working, and can allow him to practise this extreme method of filmmaking.

Pegg told Variety: "I remember when we were making 'Ghost Protocol' and the script on that just wasn't very focused, and Tom brought in McQ, a sort of master plumber to re-wriggle the pipes. And it was on that that their creative romance really took off. They're both eternal students of film and just methods of filmmaking, methods of storytelling, certain camera rigs. I remember when we shot 'Rogue Nation' we were still using film."

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"The cameras were quite cumbersome. Now, you can put a camera on a motorbike and just send it off a cliff and go down and pick it out of the undergrowth. And they’re forever absorbing these new methods of telling the story. So I just think they found each other - in a way that Lennon and McCartney (John Lennon and Paul McCartney of The Beatles) found each other, if I could really hyperbolise," he added.

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