Mission Impossible: Convincing a Polish Town to Let Tom Cruise Destroy Its Bridge

Makers of the seventh ‘Mission: Impossible’ want crossing for a stunt, but locals say it’s a landmark 

By Drew Hinshaw and Natalia Ojewska, The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 27, 2020 2:08 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mission-impossible-convincing-a-polish-town-to-let-tom-cruise-destroy-its-bridge-11598551736?mod=hp_featst_pos5
  

WLEŃ, Poland–The mission seemed improbable, if not impossible: Convince the residents of a Polish town to let Tom Cruise blow up their bridge.

It was January, and a Hollywood location scout had slipped into the town of Wleń (population: 1,759) on an assignment to secure Mr. Cruise an explodable structure for his next and seventh “Mission: Impossible.” The scene would involve tossing a train going 60 miles an hour into a lake.

An abandoned rail crossing on the town’s edge fit the specifications. Paramount Pictures would repair it, then blow it up. Afterward, it would help finance a new bridge, whose trains would bring in cinema fans, the scout, Robert Golba, told the town’s mayor.

“Billions of people will watch this film,” Mr. Golba said.

This summer, the situation exploded.

Tom Cruise, as Ethan Hunt, climbing Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, in the fourth installment of ‘Mission: Impossible,’ in 2011.

PHOTO: PARAMOUNT PICTURES/EVERETT COLLECTION 

As word filtered out, first through the small town and then Poland, residents erupted in anger, suddenly protective of their hitherto little-noticed antique bridge. The Pilchowice Bridge is a century old and rust-coated, its wooden floorboards loose and its rails crooked. It is littered with paper cups, officially roped off to pedestrians and too rundown to carry trains.

But to its town, and a niche community of railroad conservationists, the bridge must be saved at all costs.

“This particular bridge is an extraordinary monument: It’s the highest train bridge in Poland,” said Marcin Drews, a local video blogger specializing in documenting abandoned structures. “Let’s say the most famous European movie director wanted to shoot a super-famous movie in New York, and for the purpose of this film he needed to blow up the head of the Statue of Liberty. Would Americans say ‘OK, cool, this is how we are going to promote our culture in Europe?’ ”

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The bridge has lately become a summer attraction, drawing twice its ordinarily slow tourist volumes, as aficionados come to see it for perhaps the last time. Some 15,000 people signed a petition asking the government to intervene.

In a letter to Poland’s culture ministry, the U.S. Embassy has asked the government to work with some of the producers involved, though it hasn’t expressed America’s position on the explosion idea. Polish government officials have taken conflicting stances.

Mr. Golba, the location scout, who heads the film-production services company Alex Stern, is worried his task is becoming more difficult: “Nobody cared about this bridge until now,” he said.

An assistant to Mr. Cruise didn’t return requests for comment.

In a statement, Christopher McQuarrie, the film’s writer and director, said he was only looking to blow up a middle section of the bridge. It needed to be destroyed and rebuilt to restore railway service, he said. “Bottom line: to open up the area to tourism, the bridge needed to go,” he wrote. “And Mission: Impossible (spoiler alert) would get to blow up part of a bridge.”

“To respect and celebrate the places we film is our prime directive,” he wrote, adding “our production will never do anything to harm a significant landmark.” 

The bridge doesn’t necessarily need to be destroyed to be repaired, said Daniel Gibski, Deputy to the Regional Conservator of Historical Monuments in the nearby city of Wrocław. He is opposed to the shoot: “I would not even like to talk about this neocolonial attitude towards Poland.”

Live-action stunt work is how Mr. Cruise markets his “Mission: Impossible” series.

Tom Cruise in ‘Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation,’ the fifth in the series, 2015.

PHOTO: PARAMOUNT PICTURES

The 58-year-old plays Ethan Hunt of America’s Impossible Missions Force, tracking various villains around the globe. The thrill comes from watching Mr. Cruise—not a stunt double—climb Dubai’s Burj Khalifa (“Mission: Impossible” No. 4), cling to a military cargo plane in midflight (No. 5), or pilot a helicopter over the Himalayas (No. 6). They are some of the Paramount’s most profitable and critically acclaimed films.

“We’ve got to push the boundaries,” said “Mission: Impossible” stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood.

The planned bridge scene is a nod to what is considered the Silent Film era’s most expensive shot: the climax of 1926’s “The General,” in which an Oregon bridge collapses under a speeding train. That crew left behind a wreck.

In Wleń, many residents are skeptical. “I’ve lived for too long to believe that once a bridge is blown up they will repair it,” said Teresa Marianna, 76. 

A bridge carrying a steam locomotive collapses in 1926’s “The General.”

PHOTO: HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES

The Pilchowice Bridge was among the last great accomplishments of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, who paraded across it in 1912 shortly before World War I. Later, Nazi soldiers fleeing Soviet troops tried to blow it up, but only lightly damaged it.

As Germany retreated, Churchill and Stalin gave the area to newly liberated Poland. Its Communist regime ran the trains until a capitalist government built new highways in the 1990s and 2000s that consigned the rail bridge to decay. The last train crawled across in 2016.

Then word reached Polish film producer Andrew Eksner that Mr. Cruise needed a bridge.

U.S. Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher had written in September to the culture ministry to help Mr. Eksner bring Hollywood productions to Poland. “I would appreciate it very much if you were to offer Mr. Eksner and the executives your support,” she wrote.

On Nov. 20, a “Mission: Impossible” production manager emailed Mr. Eksner specifications: “We want to shoot an in camera, full-scale, train crash.”

Within 24 hours, the Polish State Railways had proposed Mr. Eksner try the Pilchowice Bridge.

The Pilchowice Bridge in Poland.

PHOTO: KRZYSZTOF ZATYCKI/NURPHOTO/ZUMA PRESS

The film’s location manager loved it. In a typo-ridden email to Mr. Eksner, he asked: “Can you make calls / enquiries and see how definitely it is the possibility of us blowing up the bridge and also what the [authorities] concerns are regarding the train crashing into the water?”

While Mr. Eksner was on the case, a rival came in. By December, Mr. Golba had been hired to do the job Mr. Eksner hoped Paramount would assign him.

Mr. Golba had a relevant résumé: “Bridge of Spies” was his last project, though he wasn’t involved in procuring the Steven Spielberg movie’s eponymous bridge. His job was to find the director a Soviet-era T-55A tank.

Spurned, Mr. Eksner told friends about the plans to blow up the bridge for the movie. By March, word reached a local preservationist community that began a drive to list the bridge as a historical monument. The issue simmered until a petition went viral on social media in late July. The bridge became national news in Poland. 

“The situation with the bridge in Pilchowice has become a bit complicated,” an official from the state railway company emailed producers this month, proposing alternatives.

Mr. Cruise is still looking for a bridge.

On a recent afternoon, tourists were streaming onto the once-empty Pilchowice bridge: families, teenagers, an amateur photographer, and a Polish film crew, shooting a kids’ movie.

“What they don’t know,” joked a member of the crew, “is that we are going to blow it up and blame it on the Americans.”

Tom Cruise is making his seventh ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie.