It’s not easy to please one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, but Alfie Godfrey and Max Aruj accomplished just that with their score for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (now playing in theaters everywhere; click here for tickets).
The composing duo knew they’d succeeded when Tom Cruise himself became visibly hyped during an early screening of the film for friends and family of the production. “He started dancing away in his seat straight away,” Godfrey recalls over Zoom. “I remember Max and I high-fiving each other in that moment, because we thought, ‘Yes, this is definitely working!’”
Cruise was responding to the very first cue on the soundtrack – “We Live and Die in the Shadows” — which plays over the Paramount and Skydance logos, perfectly setting up the movie’s pulse-pounding action with some East African Burundian drumming (rather than the customary bongos) and the opening bars of Lalo Schifrin’s iconic Mission: Impossible theme from the original TV show. “It gives you permission as an audience member to go, ‘Okay, this film’s gonna be a wild ride, let’s enjoy it,’” Godfrey explains.