Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning Director on His Superman Movie Pitch: 'In 5 Minutes the Scale of the Movie Would’ve Been Absolutely Extraordinary'

It’s been a while, but Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning director Christopher McQuarrie is still a little raw about his now-legendary Superman pitch. The filmmaker, who is perhaps best known for his work in the M:I franchise as well as writing 1995’s The Usual Suspects and directing 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, opened up about what his post-Man of Steel pitch was. Well, somewhat.

“I’ll never tell. But boy, it was f—king good. Green Lantern is what had come to me. Green Lantern’s a tough one. The power is very challenging,” McQuarrie told Josh Horowitz in a recent interview for his podcast Happy Sad Confused.

“And I cracked it, and it was fun. And watching him learn how to use that power — and giving that power a flaw, so it was not just pure invincibility... The whole concept of Green Lantern is the ring has to be recharged. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. ‘Yes, you have infinite power, but you only have so much battery life.’ That can run out at inconvenient times. That, for me, solved the whole Green Lantern problem.”

McQuarrie then joked, “The costume is another thing. And you can figure that out.”

Ultimately, though, the writer-director is all about coming at the story through the lens of pure character development.

“Here’s the thing. I look at any superhero, and growing up if you had told me that there would ever be a Captain America or Thor that did not have me laughing hysterically at the character. And that is proof, just check your certainty man,” he explained during the chat.

“When you dismiss an idea, you’re not dismissing my idea, you’re dismissing yours. You’re dismissing your concept of it, the same way I was dismissing mine. So I realized, don’t worry about the costume, worry about the character, and how do you give that character tension and stakes and also how do you do it with Superman.”

McQuarrie went on to reveal that Henry Cavill, who was DC’s Superman at the time, had a take on that concept and it opened up McQuarrie’s eyes on what a Man of Steel sequel could be. “I suddenly realized how these two characters had amazing similarities,” he told Horowitz. “Which also allowed for amazing conflict and an amazing universe-expanding resolution.”

The filmmaker even gave a bit of insight on what the opening of the film might’ve looked like. “I will tell you, the first five minutes of my Superman movie, which was — imagine Pixar’s Up, a sequence with no dialogue that covered that character’s [story],” McQuarrie set the scene.

“The first five minutes of the movie was a set-up after which you knew exactly what made Superman tick and exactly what Superman was most afraid of and why Superman made the choices he made. And it would’ve been epic, in five minutes the scale of the movie would’ve been absolutely extraordinary.”

McQuarrie is definitely a superhero diehard, but he still has not directed a feature in either the MCU or DCU. That said, he supposedly did some uncredited writing work on 1997’s Batman & Robin, as well as 2000’s X-Men, so he’s not a complete newbie to the world of comic heroes. If only we could’ve seen his take on the man of steel himself.

James Gunn's rebooted DCU is of course going in an entirely different direction with this July's Superman movie.

Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.