Director Joe Carnahan is getting plenty of appreciation for his cop thriller The Rip, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, among others. However, there was a time in Carnahan's career when he found it difficult to work on projects, featuring big stars. He famously exited Mission: Impossible III, considering the sheer enormity of taking on such a project, featuring a superstar such as Tom Cruise, at that stage of his career. In a 2005 interview with David Letterman, Tom Cruise jokingly said that Carnahan quit the project "because it is not mission difficult; it is Mission: Impossible." Speaking of which, reportedly, Carnahan said something similar to Cruise when informed the latter of his decision to move on from the project.

Carnahan recently said that he made the decision back then after considering his experience. “You’re dealing with, and I’ve done this a couple times, you’re dealing with a big movie star. It’s their face on the poster. It’s their name on the poster. At the end of the day, that’s how things are going to get done,” Carnahan told in his promotional interview for The Rip with The Playlist.

When he received the offer for Mission: Impossible III, Carnahan had only directed two films: Blood Guts Bullets and Octane and Narc. Speaking of which, the filmmaker recently acknowledged Cruise's support for his indipendent crime thriller. Expressing his gratitude to Cruise for supporting the film, the filmmaker said, “I owe to this day, Cruise gave Narc a shot that it never would have gotten. It is a Cruise Wagner production. Tom did that movie. He got Paramount to back a little $3 million indie crime film."

Back in the day, Cruise called Carnahan "a good guy" and "a very good filmmaker".

While JJ Abrams would go on to direct the third Mission: Impossible film, Carnahan also made some critically appreciated films subsequently in his career, such as The Grey, starring Liam Neeson and Copshop, featuring actor Gerard Butler, to name two.