The death scene he filmed was totally different than the one moviegoers saw, reveals a former Mission: Impossible actor. The fourth entry in the long-running spy movie series will forever be remembered as the one where Tom Cruise filmed an action scene while dangling from the exterior of the soaring Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai. But Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol almost featured another scene that would have been memorable for a completely different kind of craziness, had it not been cut for being too extreme.

Josh Holloway just gave the details on this altered Ghost Protocol scene, which would have added several layers of wrong to his character’s already-shocking death, had the version they originally filmed been used in full (via The Julia Cunningham Show on SiriusXM):

“In the original script, Paula Patton comes out and finds me dying, but I’m not ᴅᴇᴀᴅ yet. And then I start to whisper her the codes and I die. So she has to cut me open, put her hand up in my heart, re-pump my heart, and make me come back alive. Then I tell her the codes, and she lets me die again.”

Holloway then recalled the completely reasonable explanation behind producers’ decision to tone this scene way down, giving Holloway’s character a less-gruesome demise:

“We filmed it. We did that and, after they watched it, they said, ‘It’s just too harsh,’ and, ‘The audience is going to hate Paula because she revives you to get information, and then lets you die again, and you’re supposed to be in love.’”

What Holloway’s Altered Death Scene Meant For Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

It Saved One Of The Film’s Major Storylines

In keeping with the series’ tradition of throwing moviegoers early curveballs, Holloway’s Trevor Hanaway and not Cruise’s Ethan Hunt gets the first Ghost Protocol action scene, which sees Hanaway engaged in a rooftop chase that ends when he leaps from the building, shooting at his pursuers as he falls. Saved from breaking all his bones by some brilliant IMF gadgetry, Hanaway continues on his way, but his escape is thwarted when, out of nowhere, a chic-looking woman armed with a silenced pistol shoots him ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.

It’s only later on that Ghost Protocol interrupts the action to loop back and reveal the full details of Hanaway’s mission. The ᴅᴇᴀᴅ agent’s handler Jane Parker (Patton) recounts their ill-fated Budapest op, involving the interception of nuclear codes. In the flashback, Jane gets to a dying Hanaway seconds after his mysterious killer strides away, and by her reaction, it’s clear they’ve been engaged in a romantic relationship.

Jane’s desire for revenge on the woman who killed her lover adds extra juice to a later scene when she finally comes face-to-face with the ᴀssᴀssin, Sabine Moreau (Lea Seydoux), and succeeds in killing her by ejecting her from the Burj Khalifa. The movie as released gets across Jane’s motivation, putting enough weight on Hanaway’s death to boost her storyline, which pays off when she dispenses with Moreau.

Our Take On Holloway’s Original Death Scene

Mission: Impossible Is Always Action-Packed, But Seldom Gory

Mission: Impossible loves a good dramatic scene where a character has to be brought back from the brink of death (Hunt is saved not once but twice in the series via defibrillation), but the moment described by Holloway would’ve taken things to another level, bringing an atypically big gross-out factor to the series.

Cooler heads prevailed, however, rescuing Ghost Protocol from a scene that might have thrown off not only the tone, but Jane’s entire character. Still, it would be amazing to see the scene that was originally sH๏τ, which sounds like something from a horror movie, and not a Mission: Impossible film.

Source: The Julia Cunningham Show/SiriusXM