Spoilers for Mission: Impossible - The Final ReckoningMission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning may very well be the end of an era. Franchise star Tom Cruise has stated that the 8th film in the Mission: Impossible franchise would be his last, which would make the movie the culmination of a 29-year journey for the actor. The movie honors that in many ways, putting the history of the franchise first both on- and off-screen through returning actors and creatives alike.

With so much emphasis on returning players in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, it’s somewhat surprising that musical duties for the box office darling were put into the hands of relative newcomers. Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey scored the movie, and although Aruj wrote additional music for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, they had never acted as lead composers for the franchise. The pair were tasked not only with honoring the work of Lorne Balfe, who composed the previous two films, but continuing a legacy that dates back to 1966 when Lalo Schifrin’s now-iconic Mission: Impossible theme debuted.

ScreenRant interviewed Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey about their work scoring Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. The composers discussed how they approached composing music for what ScreenRant’s Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review dubbed “the greatest action franchise of its time” and matching the energy of its biggest setpieces. Plus, Aruj and Godfrey explained their process of composing music for the death of a longtime fan favorite character.

How Max Aruj & Alfie Godfrey Continued A 59-Year Musical Legacy

“Thank Goodness We Have The Iconic Themes”

“It’s a huge amount of trust,” Max Aruj said at the top of the interview, when he revealed that not only was this the first time he and Alfie Godfrey headed up a Mission: Impossible score, but also that it was the first time the two composers had collaborated. And they were faced with an incredibly tall order in wrapping up the story of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One as well as honoring the musical legacy of the entire film franchise. But they had some help, revealed Aruj: “Thank goodness we have the iconic themes of Lalo Schifrin.”

That's not only the classic Mission: Impossible theme, but also “the plot theme,” Aruj said, “the lesser-known one, which is used for more of [the] planning and spy scenes. So, really, step one is we use some of the themes, but the music has to stand on its own.” But there was one key thing that drove most musical decisions, including that to reinterpret the Mission: Impossible theme “in a major chord sense.” The composer shared the guiding words given to them by director Christopher McQuarrie, who they refer to as “McQ”.

“From the beginning, McQ said, ‘This is an adventure movie,’ and one our first discoveries, about six weeks in, was that the film can and should have a positive tone.”

“That really helped open us up emotionally,” Aruj continued, “to write music that, I think, had a sense of warmth, adventure, and positivity that I think makes it stand out from the other Missions.” And, the composer said, “McQ helped guide us … he didn’t leave us out in the cold. He guided us, and he used his acumen to create music, and we created [a score] that worked for this particular story.”

Aruj and Godfrey also had another cheerleader in none other than Tom Cruise, who Alfie Godfrey revealed was very much rooting for them. “He was very, very encouraging and enthusiastic from day one,” Godfrey shared, “He just said, ‘I’m really excited for you guys. I know you’ve got this. I know how hard you’ve worked behind the scenes,’ on other films that he’s been in (both composers also worked on Top Gun: Maverick) and other films he hasn’t been in.”

“[Cruise] and McQ, over the years, [have] cast a lot of people, behind the camera and in front of the camera, that aren’t necessarily the biggest names of the biz, but someone thy have spotted and helped along the way,” Godfrey continued.

“I don’t think they flinch at not choosing huge names.”

Cruise even had a few notes on the music, Godfrey revealed: “He had some really good notes. There's a use of the Mission theme right at the end of the movie. Friends and family that have seen the film have all spoken to me about how much they love that moment, and that was an idea of his. He's so in tune with all the different departments. I was so impressed with him when we were making the trailer. He was talking about the grade, and he really knows his onions, as they say in England. It was really great.”

Christopher McQuarrie’s Experimental Filmmaking Required A Unique Musical Approach

“Nothing Is Safe”

Even outside of the franchise’s history, there are a number of reasons why working on a modern Mission: Impossible movie is a unique experience. One is the inimitable directorial style of Christopher McQuarrie. “With McQ,” Aruj shared, “there is no temp music–in other words, no temporary score from, let’s say, Jurassic Park or The Dark Knight–so when we watch the film, there’s no music. There’s dialogue and sound effects. We build everything from the ground up, and as we work, we see what McQ responds to.”

“If he really likes one melody or if he really doesn’t like one other percussion bit,” Aruj continued, “everything is up for grabs. Nothing is safe.” The composer praised this approach because, on one hand, “as an artist we feel creatively completely free,” but on the other, “it’s also very scary, because there are no guide rails.”

“It forces us to do what we always wanted to do, which was write a score unencumbered [by] any rules.”

“That means,” Aruj continued, “when McQ has an idea, we roll with it. It doesn’t matter what it is–any scene, any style, whether it is 2:00 pm, whether it’s 11:00 pm… we have to go for it. And it’s very exciting.”

“He’s very experimental,” Godfrey added, comparing the filmmaker’s work to how a “theater piece would be with improvisation and experimentation … but he’s doing it while shooting the biggest blockbuster ever.” While Godfrey praised the approach and said he’s “a nerd about all the stuff they’ve shot that doesn’t end up in the film,” he added that “it can be quite unforgiving for our process, because it demands so much material out of you.”

So how did the composers navigate working on a film that was constantly changing? “What McQ forces us to do is write pieces away from picture first,” Aruj said, “to make sure they have their own emotion and their own opinion. Because if they can make someone emote independent of picture, that means it’s emotionally clear what the music is.” With help from score producer Cécile Tournesac, the composers found ways to incorporate those pieces into the movie, sometimes even doing so with “surgical” tempo changes to subtly hit key moments.

“McQ is always looking for a piece [that] feels like it’s perfectly natural, [where] there are not any edits to it,” Aruj added, saying, “like you listen to a song on the radio–you would never question the structure of it. The same must exist with every single piece of music in the movie, which is so difficult. It’s crazy hard.”

The Final Reckoning’s Complicated First Act Was Guided Along By Its Music

“It Was So Difficult For Them To Get That Flowing”

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning has an intricately constructed first act that tied the events of the movie to past franchise entries, especially Mission: Impossible and Mission: Impossible III. In scoring it, Godfrey and Aruj had to not only subtly keep audiences invested through a number of exposition-heavy scenes and flashbacks, but also do so while connecting them to the movie’s emotional core. “It was so difficult,” Aruj said. “It took many months.”

Aruj cited a conversation between Shea Whigham’s Briggs and Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, (the one that took place on an airplane), as an example of a scene where music secretly guided things along. “The music and the chords and the melody were placed so specifically that, when someone starts a sentence or a thought, we start you on a chord progression, and then, a few seconds in, we might introduce a slow melody.”

“Then, when it’s back to [the other person], we’re going to go into some darker chords,” Aruj continued, adding, “... and once the flashbacks start, we had to do it so carefully that maybe a chord or one melody note might start on the flashback.” But even that wans’t always the key. “If that didn’t work,” Aruj said, the composers would also add in other elements to change things up like “our very special electric violin.”

And the composers weren’t the only ones facing a challenge for that section of the film. “Act one was, I think, the hardest part for everyone,” Godfrey added, continuing, “All the flashbacks and the structure–it was so difficult for them to get that flowing. I think in the previews that was always the most difficult part.”

Max Aruj & Alfie Godfrey Reflect On Saying Goodbye To A Franchise Legend

“We Were Obviously Worried About It”

One of the most emotional moments of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning was no doubt the death of Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell, who is the only character other than Ethan Hunt to appear in every Mission: Impossible film. “We were obviously worried about it,” Godfrey said, “but McQ and Eddie (Hamilton, the movie’s editor) were also terribly worried about giving him the best sendoff.”

Musically speaking, that scene was something of a moving target for the composers. “That scene was in various different locations and parts [of the movie],” Godfrey continued, “[which] affects the tone of the cue that is being used.” In the end, the composers wrote something that floated above the events on screen rather than tying into actions: “It’s not tied to the cut. It’s not tied to specific beats. It just plays, and therefore hits the emotional beats inherently. It’s a piece of music in its own right.”

“It doesn’t tell the audience what to feel. It makes them feel it.”

The Final Reckoning’s Underwater Setpiece Featured A Crazy Instrument

And It Was Christopher McQuarrie’s Idea

Look up “Constance Demby Space Bass” to meet the instrument that brought one of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning’s standout sequences to life. Created by multi-hyphenate and composer Constance Demby, the Space Bass is a sheet metal instrument that is bowed to create powerful tones–and it’s exactly what Christopher McQuarrie wanted Aruj and Godfrey to use during Ethan’s mission aboard the sunken Russian submarine The Sevastapol.

“He showed us the video and [was] like, ‘This is cool,’” Godfrey said. “While we were very excited to go pursue that,” he continued, “we also offered our own metallic sounds. It became very apparent that we couldn’t really beat the Space Bass.” Of course, the Space Bass was accompanied by other instruments, but it “became this kind of grounding ambience, and it gave a voice to that whole sequence.”

“No one was really expecting that to be in a Mission: Impossible film. It’s a very peculiar, amazing thing.”

Most notably, the music for Ethan’s death-defying trip through the sunken submarine is light on traditional action movie tropes. “You’ll notice that we did not employ the use of lots and lots of percussion,” Aruj said. Instead, the composers took an approach that began with a look at the scene’s sound effects. “There’s the spinning of the submarine,” Aruj continued, “so there’s the groaning of the submarine–and a lot of that is thanks to Louis Perez, an amazing percussionist. He made some fantastic unusual sounds that are cousins to the Space Bass that feel like these undulating underwater beasts.”

“Additionally, we had some bowed metal stuff that we created,” the composer said, “and altogether, you’re not sure if it’s sound effects or music, but what’s important is that, as an audience member, you’re getting more and more stressed. I’d say it took five months to do that sequence. And that’s not an exaggeration at all.”

And for those wondering how the submarine sequence was made, Godfrey had eyes on the actual set: “One of the first times we visited the set, they were shooting this, and it's almost better to see that stuff in the flesh than it is in the film. It really is a kind of submarine chopped in half so they could shoot it submerged in a water tank the size of a football pitch. Tom Cruise is really in there hanging off the rail as it's rotating, with the water going everywhere.”

“[We] stood there in disbelief. It definitely put a fire under our belly for the next day of work.”

Tom Cruise’s Biggest Challenge Was Also The Composers’ Tallest Hurdle

The Airplane Sequence Was “The Most Difficult Thing To Solve In The Whole Movie”

As many moviegoers knew even before they walked into the theater, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning features a stunning airplane chase sequence that had Tom Cruise climbing all over a speeding biplane in midair. It was a notoriously difficult sequence for Cruise to shoot and, in Max Aruj’s words, it was “the most difficult thing to solve in the whole movie, period.” For a long time, whether the sequence would even have music was up for debate.

“Even getting one piece to generate interest [from] McQ was a Herculean task. After seven versions, we got him interested.”

The piece that sold McQuarrie on the idea of music for the sequence was written for when Ethan first gets onto his biplane. But that was just the start. “We had written many epic pieces that covered big swaths of that whole sequence,” Aruj shared, “and it took us literally months to learn that pieces that were too long were too overwhelming.”

The approach became much more targeted. “As the audience, we need to know the level of peril in the sequence that Ethan is at … ‘Can he relax for a second when he gets in the other cockpit, or is he about to fall off?’” said Aruj. He also revealed how intuitive choices helped create maximum impact:

“The key was [that] … when the camera is on Ethan and we are right in there with him, we hear the propeller and the punishing aspect of the wind.”

“Then, when we go out on the wide shot,” Aruj added, “that’s when we can bring in these wild choir swells and these wild brass swells that take us from the beginning of the wide shot to the end of the wide shot.” What’s more, the composer shared, “that sequence is 15 to 20 minutes. We have to score ever bit slightly differently so that the audience stays engaged. We can’t use the same trick every time.”

Tom Cruise himself gave Aruj and Godfrey a key bit of direction, the composer shared: “That's something Tom said to us when we spoke to him. He said, ‘I want the audience to feel what I felt–I had this crazy weight workout, and it is not fun, and I'm in pain.’”

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning’s Ending Was Designed To Inspire You

“People Should Leave The Theater Feeling Excited About Life”

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is supposed to be the end of Ethan Hunt’s story, but the filmmakers didn’t want audiences walking out of the theater feeling melancholy. Aruj revealed the guiding principles behind the movie’s ending, saying, “The goal of ending the film the way it ends, and this was McQ’s and Tom’s idea as well, is that people should leave the theater feeling excited about life. They should be excited to go on an adventure, and they should be inspired. And I think that’s what people feel when they leave the movie.”

“It seems like culture goes through these phases where media is very dark and edgy and moody, and then people need a break from that.”

What’s next for Mission: Impossible and Tom Cruise? Only McQuarrie and Cruise have any real ideas, but in Godfrey’s words, “Whatever [Cruise] is going to do next, it will definitely be the correct option. I mean, look at Top Gun: Maverick–that is a perfect movie. It carried on that story perfectly. Whatever Tom will do next will be, definitely, the right option. I think that’s kind of [his] superpower: really knowing what audiences want, and delivering it in such a spectacular way.”

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is in theaters now.