Near a leafy square in this bustling capital, filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie sat in a screening room, tilting his head at scenes from the new movie "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation."
In one scene, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt slid a BMW, Formula One style, through narrow streets in Morocco and, in another, dangled shirtless while wryly absorbing a brutal beating. McQuarrie made mental notes as he contemplated his biggest movie yet and one of the splashiest of the summer when it opens July 31.
Centering on Hunt's IMF as it tracks a terrorist supergroup known as the Syndicate, "Rogue Nation" needed to land with the accumulated power of a July action-adventure while also satisfying the unwritten "Mission" mandate: slick storytelling, playful comedy and — this is key wherever "Mission" is concerned — episodic cliffhangers.