Tom Cruise - JJ Abrams Shanghai Skyscraper Press Conference

Speaker code

TC - Tom Cruise

JJ - J.J. Abrams

QUESTION What's your impression of Shanghai so far?

JJ Spectacular. Oh, it's unbelievable.

TC Spectacular. We started shooting in Shitang, has anyone been to Shitang? How many of you been there? Anyone? You've been there?! You? Anyone else? Laughs. No one else? Is this, is this, is anyone, is this anyone's first time in Shanghai?

TC Do you all live in Shanghai? Laughs . Everyone here?

JJ Laughs

TC Shitang, yeah, I suggest you go there, it's really beautiful, it's absolutely spectacular and its going to look extraordinary on film.

TC And first off I have to say the film crews and the people here have been absolutely extraordinary to us. We finished ahead of schedule here because of how well our company and the company we had here, how well they worked together enabled us to be able to work at a terrific speed without compromising the film in any way so I really have to thank you all very very much for that the crew and the people here were really extraordinary, worked very hard.

JJ Yeah, I have to say, we were…

TC Two days ahead of schedule!

JJ …we were warned before we came here, as we were when we went to Italy, that working with the crew, the local crew, because of the language barrier, it might slow…

TC We just think it could be a (unclear) little slower.

JJ …things down.

TC Same in Italy, they said it could be.

JJ And it was faster, faster here.

TC Yeah, it was excellent. I'm going to tell all our friends how terrific and skilled the workers are.

JJ I'd just like to say one more thing which is. It's very surreal to be here, when I first saw pictures of Shanghai honestly, I was unfamiliar with the city and I saw pictures and I couldn't believe it. Laughs. I couldn't believe it was real. I couldn't believe this city existed and I was very naïve and I started looking at more photographs and er, you know when we came here, this place is unbelievable.

ALL Laughter because of background cheering.

JJ Anyway, its incredible to be here. It really is amazing, and to have filmed here and have it go so well, it was fun, it was amazing.

QUESTION Was it dangerous filming in Shanghai / Shitang?

TC Ok, dangerous? Shitang was tricky, it was not obviously dangerous.

TC But there was a one shot, you wanna explain the shot?

JJ Yeah.

TC That I have to jump from building down.

JJ There's a lot of danger in this movie. There's more stunts in Mission Impossible 3 than probably the last two movies combined. And in Shitang he, Tom had to jump from building to building and jump onto a bridge and like every stunt Tom refused to have anyone do it for him.

TC Then there was a very long sprint along the canal that I had to go as fast I could possibly go on uneven ground. Its stuff like that , its very tricky. The locations that we shot in Shanghai were stunning actually. We shot er…

TC Oh sure!

JJ We shot there (pointing at buildings in the background).

TC Those building right there.

TC Those two buildings.

JJ Behind the TV tower back there.

TC Yeah, and behind the TV tower. And then we shot…

JJ I'm trying to find…

TC Where is it? It's back there.

TC It looks spectacular on film. The trailer is going to be released with King Kong.

TC We've just finished the trailer and it'll be released with King Kong and you'll see some beautiful shots of your country.

TC These stunts I train specifically for this movie. When I was doing War Of The Worlds, when I was shooting War Of The Worlds I was training for Mission 3.

TC Yeah, you had to. I've been training over a year for some of the stunts that I had to do. Even when you see the stunt in Shitang, there's a jump that I had to make, about, its about an eight foot jump onto a little railing and I had to land like that. And you know, if you turn an ankle or you could break your knee, you know. The fall in the water just wouldn't have been good. Yeah, you could see it's all one shot. But there are many, many, many, many stunts. Great action in this movie. Also a good love story and great characters, I think, you'll see what you think.

QUESTION Emailing pictures to someone?? What is `the Mission' this time?

TC That I was going to send pictures to…No, I sent photos to my mother and my children. They loved them, they get very excited. No, I always send, any time I'm travelling usually they are with me but this is such a short period of time so we always send photos back and forth to one another.

TC So they were very excited to see those photos, very very excited. I sent them of Shitang, Shanghai, everywhere I travel I always take lots of photos. But you want to know what this mission is? Did you say? Do you wanna hear the whole story? I can't tell you.

JJ How much can we reveal?

TC How much?

JJ The mission it's fairly straightforward. It begins as a rescue and it explodes and becomes more than Tom's character bargained for and er, the stakes of the movie are very high, the movie's very emotional. It's er, one thing we wanted to do was to make a film where you know, it was exciting, there were stunts, all that stuff you'd come to expect but it was also emotional and scary and at the end made you feel better at the end of the movie than when you first came to the theatres. So I think that's the goal, but the mission begins as a rescue and it goes at a very unexpected direction from there.

TC And you'll see the way the film is made. It's a really, an epic action movie. It's er, the largest scale film I've been involved in, it's huge, the stuff we have is huge.

QUESTION What was the original idea for this sequel?

JJ Well, originally the idea was, we were talking about you know, we were looking at the world and saying where shall we go, what hasn't been explored really in Western film yet the way it should be and we looked at a number of cities you know and quite honestly I felt that Tokyo and Hong Kong, they were very, they were more familiar to me. Shanghai was a city that the scale of the city and the majesty of it was something that I think is really unfamiliar to so many people and as silly as that might sound to those of you who live here it is the truth and I feel like when I saw these photographs and started to look into what the city was it was hard to deny it, and it called to us and we came here to location scout and I was blown away and I knew we had to shoot here.

TC Yeah. I've always wanted to come here and travel through. I've been to Hong Kong and I've always wanted to come to Shanghai and actually I know I'm going to come back and travel through er I wanna go to Beijing and just travel around China. Yeah, it holds a great fascination for me and I hope you'll be pleased the way the city looks - it really looks spectacular.

QUESTION Everybody has been talking about the wedding coming up, if you can give us any details on dates, places, all that stuff…

TC Where we're going to get married and when? Do you want the exact date and the exact place, the colour dress, the designer?! You know we haven't set a date yet, but it'll happen this year, no no no, next year, that's right what month are we in now, are we November, December? Yeah, next year thank you.

QUESTION How much of the story takes place in Shanghai? Something about Maggie Q???

TC I'd say close to 20% of the movie. It's a large part of the movie. Italy, here, a little piece in Berlin and er Shanghai. Virginia but a large portion of it is grounded here in Shanghai.

TC Maggie Q is on the team. And she's terrific in the picture.

QUESTION Is this the first time that a Hollywood blockbuster has such a heavy percentage of China scenes or stories in it and when you go back to Hollywood will you tell your Hollywood other actors and star friends about your new impression of China - what will you say?

TC Yeah, it is. This is, I think this is the largest Western picture of this nature to be shot here. I know and I'll just go back and tell them the truth and tell them how magnificent it is. You know they're all, everyone's curious and very excited about it and I will just tell them absolutely the truth. That's why, its significant and important because that we finished the way we did here. I think that its something very positive for the film community here in Shanghai and for China. It gives me, I wanna know about other cultures and other people, I'm very interested.

This film and Mission Impossible gives me that opportunity to travel to different places and photograph them and represent them I think in the way that I or we see it and so I think its very positive and very exciting. My friends and everyone are going what's it like, what's it like you know. When I was shooting here I said “you've gotta come” come on over, I was trying to get them to come on over, but they are working. I know a lot of my friends are going to be travelling here over the next 6-8 months.

TC I can't wait to come back, I hope they have the premiere here!

JJ I just can't wait to come back. And that's what I'll tell them. It's been wonderful, actually it's a very bittersweet thing to finish two days early because shooting here was such a pleasure.

TC Yeah, truly.

QUESTION Why did you decide to shoot?

TC Why did we shoot there? Yes, yes. You'll see it's a terrific sequence. Very, very exciting. Yes, looks magnificent at night too.

JJ Yes, spectacular. We wanted to make sure we shot the city at night. We actually shot some of these scenes digitally instead of on film so that all the light would read so you could really get the sense of what it really looked like at night. We didn't want to fake it, the city is so spectacular we didn't want to pretend and put you know, and have special effects to do it. We wanted, the city is a special effect and we wanted to show it the way it really exists.