Director Bruce Straley has called out Mission Impossible for copying a train scene straight out of Uncharted 2. The newest mission impossible is making original content, apparently
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" they say. Not only theysay that, but lately Bruce Straley, co-director of Uncharted 2, who noticed a very familiar scene in Mission Impossible 7.
It doesn't seem like there's actual bad blood between the two franchises and after seven movies and three games, they were bound to have some similarities – there's only so many different action scenes to possibly produce, after all.
Mission Impossible Was Not Influenced By Uncharted - Or Was It?
We don't really know whether Christopher McQuarrie was influenced by the Uncharted series when working on Mission Impossible. There are two different stories floating around at the moment.
On one hand, we apparently have McQuarrie tell Twitter user @thawhid_k that he has no clue about the world of Uncharted and that no inspiration was taken from there:
In case anyone wants to know, it wasn't intentional sadly pic.twitter.com/RryXMOvBD2
— tao-hid (@thawhid.bsky.social) (@thawhid_k) July 15, 2023
And that honestly isn't even that hard to believe. Navigating a train wreck isn't something Uncharted 2 invented, so it could very well be just a coincidence.
On the other hand though, according to Eurogamer, McQuarrie stated that for the fifth Mission Impossible (Rogue Nation), Uncharted (3) had been an inspiration for the airplane scene. So what is it, Mr. McQuarrie: no clue of Uncharted or inspiration?
Interestingly, he seems to have quoted Uncharted (as well as "group effort", so maybe his colleagues were the ones to play it and come up with the airplane scene) in a tweet that has since been deleted. The reply to that of Justin Richmind himself, the co-director of Uncharted 3, is still available though:
@chrismcquarrie @NickFromHamburg you just made my month.
— Justin Richmond (@wildspeculation) July 13, 2015
We're not accusing anyone of anything, just to be clear. Just pointing out a little mystery! Point still stands, action on a train is not something patented by Uncharted – just enjoy both the movie and the games!