Tina Kakadelis
Few instrumental themes are as famous, instantly recognizable, and oft-parodied like that of the main titles from Mission: Impossible. The original film was released in 1996, but few remember that the Tom Cruise-led film was not the first to tell the story of Ethan Hunt. The classic theme goes back to the Mission: Impossible television series of the 1960s. That recognizable theme was composed by Lalo Schifrin and has been updated for every new iteration of the franchise. When it comes to Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, two new composers, Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey, were given their chance to make their mark on the Mission: Impossible legacy.
Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to discuss the duo’s shared experiences under Lorne Balfe (composer of two past Mission: Impossible installments), the pressure of tackling the iconic theme, and the odd instrument that unlocked a key sequence in the score. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Film Obsessive: What do the co-composing relationship and workflow look like for you? How do you score something together?
Max Aruj: Alfie and I come from the same camp. We both worked for Lorne Balfe for a bunch of years, so teaming up was an easy choice because we’re familiar with the workflow. We’re familiar with the software. We know how a session should look when we send each other music.
That makes all the difference because when you’re working with someone for so long, there has to be a smooth workflow. It’s not like you’re working on something for a week. When you’re passing pieces back and forth for a year, everything somehow matters because you might take one bar of music from one piece and one bar of music from another piece. If those things can’t communicate, then it takes longer.
From the very beginning, it was like hopping back in with an old friend. Also, at this level, you can’t be wasting time doing this and doing that. You just need to know that a bar of music here will work with a bar of music there, and it needs to be legible. It was quite smooth, because we had identical computer setups too. We put ourselves in a good situation from the start.
Alfie Godfrey: When we worked together in L.A. at the remote campus under Lorne Balfe, it was a very, very productive, fast-moving environment. We were very much in the trenches, helping along with deadlines and stuff like that, so it was a transferable environment into a film of this size.
Working together creatively, we’re both quite open-minded, and it’s incredibly valuable to have a second opinion at two in the morning (laughs). Like, what do you think of this? A little bit of fresh perspective from someone you know so well creatively was very, very valuable and could save a lot of time.
It sounds like there might have been a quick turnaround in terms of the score for this film.
Alfie Godfrey: McQ and Tom [Cruise], they’re very open and honest in their interviews. It’s fascinating when you listen to how they talk about all the films they’ve done. They shoot so much. The lengths of the scenes, in their primitive form, are very long. The film is very long and they shave off things more and more effectively until you have the finished product.
Until then, you kind of have to score every version of the film in that process. Even though they gave us a lot of time and a lot of space to explore things, which we really valued, we were still kind of like a dog chasing its tail, just trying to keep up with the flavor of the day and what was going on with McQ and Eddie [Hamilton]’s process with the edit.
The Mission: Impossible franchise is almost 30 years old, and the main theme is one of the most recognizable bits of music in the world. Do you remember hearing that when you were younger? How does it feel to have to reinvent it and be a part of this massive legacy?
Max Aruj: I think with the theme, like most people, you probably don’t remember not having known the theme. It’s that iconic.
While working on the film, there were multiple times where I’d been watching a TV show, even the show Somebody Feed Phil, and they mentioned Tom Cruise multiple times in one season. It felt like, wow, you really can’t escape it. It’s just a part of culture, basically.
Booking the job and then realizing, oh, wait a minute, we’re the people now who have to do this…like, yeah, we got to do it and go for it.
Alfie Godfrey: You know when you’re a kid and you watch a film over and over again, Mission: Impossible III was that for me. It was ingrained in my head at an early age.
As composers often do, we think about it quite academically. Sometimes you can think too academically about something like this. Toward the second half of the process, we would often get McQ saying, just give me Mission: Impossible. Just give me unadulterated Mission: Impossible, because as you say, it’s so ingrained in the psychology of filmgoers. It’s the sharpest tool in your toolkit really.
One of the main changes I noticed that you guys made was removing the Latin percussion. You switched to a more marching snare kind of feeling. Can you talk a little bit about that specific change or why you decided to go that route?
Max Aruj: Something you’re going to hear in this score is our use of Burundi drumming because part of the film does take place in South Africa. We wanted to tap into that region. Given that this is an adventure movie, there are a few other sonic colors you’re going to hear.
I’m glad you picked up on that in the theme because really, I think we feel like the theme that’s been released, the main titles, it’s really the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much variety in this score. As the team goes to all these different locations, one of the things we really wanted was that all these different places should have a different sound. Finding these musical references, workshopping them, and working them in tastefully and artfully took so long.
You guys used something called a space bass. What is that? How does it work in the score?
Alfie Godfrey: The best way to know what it is is to look it up and look at it. I can’t describe it. I mean, it looks like scrap metal manufactured into something. I suppose it looks a bit like a huge metallic marimba with pods, springs, and screws coming out. It’s very kind of modern-art looking.
Max Aruj: The woman who created it is Constance Demby. She passed away a few years ago, but she made this fantastic instrument that vibrates in this completely fresh sonic world you’ve never heard before. It was the perfect way to personify the submarine sequence. When you see the movie, it could be a movie climax within itself. The score for this whole sequence, McQ wanted it to be special and boy, did he get that.
Alfie Godfrey: We’ve got all these tricks and sounds that we tried to offer instead of the space bass. McQ was very clear that the space base has a depth and realness that we cannot create. We need the space bass. We went on a hunt to get those sounds and to incorporate them in the score. It gives an atmosphere that is so unique to that whole section of the movie. It’s brilliant.
Max Aruj: What we had to do was we used the space bass and got further into the sequence, we realized that there did need to be variation. We got to work with this very special instrumentalist named Louie Perez. He recorded some fantastic sounds that we were weaving into our suites.
The best part was that these sounds started to talk to each other. Not only that, but we were working hand in hand with the sound design team, not in the same room, but once we realized what each other were doing, there was this fantastic synergy that started to occur. Especially with our music editors, Cecile [Tournesac] and Timeri [Duplat], because the sequence was so complicated and so long that it became this really great team effort to create a unique world.
Alfie Godfrey: I think when they started mixing the sequence together, McQ would go, what is that? He’d pick out Louie’s sound to be like, let’s get more of that. It clearly had a connection off the bat.
All Mission: Impossible movies are a series of, like you were saying, climactic moments that have to continue to outdo themselves. Your score also has to do that. What did that look like in terms of creating that final climactic moment musically?
Max Aruj: It was just so difficult. There was no other way other than to continue writing and keep practicing. How do we make this even more emotional, more intense? There’s no other answer other than just hard work again and again. When we would get feedback, we’d have to process it and think, oh, God, what am I doing wrong here?
Or it’s not, what am I doing wrong? It’s more, how could it be even more impactful for the audience? As a composer you think, harmonically, how could I be more intense? What can I do melodically to make it more expressive rhythmically? Am I blocked somehow? You just look at what you’re doing and try to make it better.
Alfie Godfrey: Because I’m a nerd and I listen to a lot of podcasts with Eddie [Hamilton] where he talks about how he had this problem on Top Gun: Maverick. You can have the most incredible show action, but if it’s too long or if it doesn’t have the pace or the trajectory that gives the audience the kind of stress they need to really follow an action sequence, then you lose them.
We have our own version of that problem. The music is obviously so tied to the edit in these situations. Sometimes the scene’s too long, so it isn’t ready for a huge driving score yet, but it might be ready for that toward the end of the process. It can be quite cruel, because you don’t actually know what the intensity of a key will be for a long time.
With the release of the film right around the corner, what are you most proud of? You guys have put in so many hours and so many different iterations of this score. What is a small section that you’re just absolutely thrilled for people to hear?
Max Aruj: I would say my answer has to be the biplane sequence. How that developed and how difficult it was to get it right. As Alfie was saying, you don’t know sometimes how it’s going to shake down until maybe they trim one bit and then that unlocks a piece of music. Something that didn’t work for a three-minute scene now could work.
Then that answers the question of what happens after. How does it resolve? Having that come together at the very end of the process was really thrilling and so satisfying because it was just so difficult.
Alfie Godfrey: Sometimes one of these scenes feels like scoring a movie in itself. The journey this scene has gone on and the frustration and the highs and lows you’ve gone to just to get it perfect. There are a few emotional moments in the film I’m very, very proud of too. There are some very fun fight scenes. That isn’t a spoiler to say there’ll be a fight scene (laughs). It’s Mission: Impossible after all.
Sadly, it’s not a very good score