Why Mission: Impossible 7's Director Scrapped A Digitally De-Aged Tom Cruise Scene

"Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One" and "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" have a big plot point in common — both heroes are searching for two halves a device that when assembled, could yield dangerous results.

In "Dead Reckoning – Part One" Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) searches for two parts of a key that will control an artificial intelligence program run amok, while Indy (Harrison Ford) is searching for the missing half of Archimedes' Antikythera, which can find a rift in time that can take people to the past. Interestingly enough, if director Christopher McQuarrie hadn't scrapped the idea, "M:I 7" and "The Dial of Destiny" could have had another big similarity.

McQuarrie told Deadline recently that he was thinking about digitally de-aging Cruise, 61, in a scene at the beginning of the film. Ford, of course, was de-aged 25 years to begin his final "Indiana Jones" adventure, which was combined with decades-old footage of Ford we never got to see.

"Originally, there had been a whole sequence at the beginning of the movie that was going to take place in 1989," McQuarrie told Deadline. "We talked about it as a cold open. We talked about it as flashbacks in the movie. We looked at de-aging."

During his research, McQuarrie said, he felt indecisive: "I kept saying, 'Boy, this de-aging is really good' or 'This de-aging is not so good.' Never did I find myself actually following the story. I was so distracted by an actor that I had known for however long was now suddenly this young person."

In "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One," Ethan Hunt and his team of Impossible Mission Force operatives are desperately trying to recover the entire key that will disable The Entity — an AI device that has become self-aware and is threatening the stability of the globe. Also in search of the key is Gabriel (Esai Morales), who serves The Entity as well as different governments around the world who would like to seize control of the AI program for their own nefarious purposes.

Hayley Atwell — whose "Mission: Impossible 7" role had been in the works for 10 years — also stars in a lead role as Grace, a mysterious thief caught in the middle of Ethan and Gabriel's dangerous battle.

Christopher McQuarrie, who followed through on his longtime promise to cast Atwell, isn't so sure that the timing will ever be right to use de-aging technology with Tome Cruise. He did admit to Deadline, however, that the technology he considered but ultimately scrapped for "Dead Reckoning Part One" intrigues him.

"I cracked the code — I think — on how best to approach it," McQuarrie told the publication. "By then, we had kind of moved away from it. We may still play with it. We never say never."

Also starring Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, and Simon Pegg, "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One" is playing in theaters.