Mission: Impossible 2 Director Clarifies Rumors Of Tom Cruise’s Editing Overhaul

Mission: Impossible 2 director John Woo clarifies rumors that Tom Cruise took over editing the 2000 action hit. Cruise had a smash with 1996’s Brian De Palma-directed adaptation of the classic 1960s super-spy TV show. For the 2000 sequel, the star and producer enlisted famed Face/Off director Woo to take the helm, and lend the film some of his signature style. The resulting movie grossed $546 million worldwide, guaranteeing the Mission: Impossible franchise would continue to live on (as it does to this day).

Woo is now back himself with Silent Night, his first American movie in 20 years, but a recent interview saw the conversation turning to his experience on Mission: Impossible 2, and rumors that Cruise overhauled the movie in editing. According to Woo, it’s not accurate that Cruise locked him out of the editing room, though the star did try to exert his influence over the cutting process, in a completely bizarre and very Cruise way. Check out Woo’s remarks below (via Rolling Stone):

Actually, he couldn’t do that. But after the movie finished, he went to Australia for vacation and then he wanted to put a camera in the cutting room to see our work because he wanted to know what we were doing, and we didn’t allow him to do that. He changed his mind. I said I needed to cut my film without any interference, and he understood.

John Woo’s Style Made Mission: Impossible 2 a Distinctive Entry In the Series

A legend of Hong Kong action cinema thanks to films like The Killer and Bullet in the Head, Woo brought his signature over-the-top style to Hollywood in the 1990s through movies like Hard Target, Broken Arrow and the classic Face/Off. His action background made Woo, at least on the surface, a solid choice to helm the second Mission: Impossible movie, but the director’s auteurist approach may have caused concerns for Cruise, who is known for exerting a lot of control over his productions.

Mission: Impossible 2, to this day, remains a somewhat divisive entry in the long-running action series, thanks in large part to Woo, whose stylistic flourishes are not to everyone’s taste. The film may not work for all fans of the franchise, but the Woo touch does make the movie stand out from all the other Mission: Impossible films. That Cruise would try to install a camera in the editing room to supervise Woo from afar is bizarre, but thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and the filmmaker was allowed to make the movie his way.