Mission: Impossible 7 has an incredible cast. Yet, the character I am most interest to see return is Eugene Kittridge. We haven’t seen actor Henry Czerny in the franchise since the first Mission: Impossible film 25 years ago.
Kittridge was tasked with hunting down Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) in Mission: Impossible because he assumed he was the mole in the IMF. Upon learning they were on the same side, they squashed their beef. Meanwhile, Hunt has continued to save the world. So, what has Kittridge been up to, and why is he coming back into Hunt’s life now in Mission: Impossible 7?
Though writer/director Christopher McQuarrie didn’t give him any information outside the script, Czerny has his character’s backstory in his head and has used it towards Kittridge’s motivation.
Czerny told /Film:
I decided that he’d been to all the agencies on some level or other, had a good idea now of how the game is played and what his place is in this mechanism of national intelligence. I figured he’d been through all of them at this point, and he’d been schooled by Ethan 25 years ago. He’s known Ethan, he’s known he’s done these things, and he knows that Ethan is someone to go to, but he also feels that it’s not ever good to have one person controlling anything.
This actually is a little telling of how the two formal rivals will interact in Mission: Impossible 7. It doesn’t sound like Kittridge is a believer.
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Czerny added onto his first statement:
There’s a respect, but at the same time, it’s like fire. We need fire because we’ve got to cook, but you got to be careful with it. If you let fire do what it wants, you’re in trouble. The relationship that they had in the first one, Ethan schooling Kittridge on who the mole really was and catching the mole, was the springboard to 25 years of Kittridge going through different agencies so he wouldn’t be schooled again.
This seems in line with the character. Though Hunt was able to clear himself in the first film, the two still seemed at odds with each other. I just can’t wait to see how the two interact in Mission: Impossible 7.