Brad Bird drawn to a fresh challenge

DIRECTOR Brad Bird balances larger-than-life action with comedy in the fourth Mission Impossible film.

Brad Bird

BRAD Bird is used to directing muscle-bound action heroes who effortlessly scale buildings, hunt down terrorists and save the world from imminent disaster. He's just not so familiar with directing people: real people.

The 54-year-old American animator turned director, who has won two best animated feature Oscars - in 2004 for his superhero film The Incredibles and in 2008 for children's comedy Ratatouille - has released his first big live-action film. And they don't come much bigger than Mission Impossible.

When the opportunity arose to tackle The Ghost Protocol, the fourth instalment in the film series starring Tom Cruise, Bird didn't ruminate on it too long.

"Work with Tom Cruise and (producer) J.J. Abrams on one of the biggest action films ever?

It was a no-brainer," he tells The Australian at a Sydney hotel.

The film, released nationally tomorrow, had its world premiere last week in Dubai, one of several exotic locations in which the film was shot.

Cruise reprises his role as the unflappable Ethan Hunt, a secret agent tracking would-be nuclear terrorists across the globe.

"It's a very large serving of popcorn," Bird says, laughing.

"And Tom really brings it to this movie. He's got this amazing energy; the cast just feeds off it."

Without the aid of a stuntman, Cruise, 49, is at his age-defying best, scaling a portion of the world's tallest structure, the 829m Burj Khalifa in Dubai, before sprinting - attached, of course, to a wire - down its vertical face in the film's most nail-biting sequence.

"That move where Cruise runs down the building's facade is actually called an Australian rappel," Bird says. "One of the stuntmen brought that up. He said, 'So, Tom needs to get several floors down in a hurry? This would be cool'."

Bird is effusive in his praise of Cruise's work ethic.

"Here you have a world-famous star who is willing to swing around on the upper half of the world's tallest building on a tiny wire . . . that doesn't happen every day," he says.

"If a 20-year-old did what Tom did, I'd be impressed. He pushes hard. He's an aggressive guy. He wants the film to be great and he really does his homework.

"I like to work that way, too. So we got along very well."

Bird is unwilling to talk about the cost of the film, produced by Cruise, Abrams and Bryan Burk, but concedes "it's up there".

He says there were at times 400 people working on the film, which took 18 months from conception to rollout.

"The credits seem to roll forever on these movies," he says.

"It's the biggest of the four MI films, but we had to be careful with how we spent our resources, and had a really tight schedule."

Shot on location in Dubai, Budapest, Moscow and Mumbai, The Ghost Protocol follows the travails of Hunt and fellow agents (played by British comedy actor Simon Pegg and American Paula Patton). The team is forced to fend for itself when an attack on the Kremlin and the theft of Russia's nuclear codes lead the CIA to invoke the so-called Ghost Protocol, leaving the agents without official government support. The agents befriend a US government adviser (Jeremy Renner), who accompanies them on their action-packed quest to avert nuclear disaster.

It's the kind of "massive production" Bird wanted to get right. At his insistence, a third of the production was filmed in high-definition for IMAX ("like 3D without the glasses").

"When I was discussing the film with JJ, Bryan Burk and Tom, I pitched the idea of shooting at least a portion of the film in IMAX, because I thought it was a great way to 'eventise' it, and really play off some of the big set-pieces to their best advantage. I think it really works."

Bird says cinematographer Robert Elswit, whose cityscape pan-zooms introduce each new location, was a great fit. "The immersive style of filmmaking is so important to a film like this," he says. "I pay a lot of attention to cinematographers and their craft. It can make or break a film.

"I think people underestimate the power of a really big screen and a really bright image.

"Gradually multiplexes have shrunken auditorium sizes and screen sizes, but IMAX is decidedly in the other direction, taking the films to the events they used to be. I'm all for it."

While exotic locations make for great cinema, Bird says the crew faced myriad challenges. "Mumbai, especially, was . . . interesting," he says, laughing. "India is kind of the Wild West for filmmaking. There are a lot of people around, and your ability to control the set is fairly limited."

Bird, who also directed 1999's critically acclaimed animated film The Iron Giant, made his name as an animator at Walt Disney Studios. Mentored from age 14 by Milt Kahl, one of Disney's famous Nine Old Men, Bird began work with the company when he finished school. He would later branch out on his own, eventually teaming with Pixar for The Incredibles, the film that made his name. He was also one of the animators responsible for transposing The Simpsons from one-minute shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show into the 23-minute, endlessly repeated program we know today.

And there is more than a hint of cartoon to The Ghost Protocol, with Cruise's Hunt in all his larger-than-life, immortal glory.

"I don't use that animated style consciously," Bird says. "I don't sit outside my 'style' and look at it.

I just gravitate to what I like. Other people are better at identifying any patterns, but I just try to tell a story the way I like to hear it, with action and few laughs."

The laughs come courtesy of Pegg, who brings a welcome dose of levity to Bird's thrill-a-second action. "There's a lot of humour in tension," Bird says. "Sometimes people don't take advantage of that. Simon had a small role in the last film. I wanted him to take on a larger role in this film."

Each of the four MI films has had a different director - Brian De Palma, John Woo, Abrams and Bird - and Bird is non-committal about tackling another one. So does he pine for the pencil and other tools of the animator's art?

"No, I don't," he says, breaking a lengthy pause. "But I do have other ideas I'd love to do in animation. I have more live-action film ideas, and I have other ideas in animations. I just hope I get a chance to make them."

Mission Impossible IV: The Ghost Protocol is released nationally tomorrow.