Age: 57
male
Christopher McQuarrie (born October 25, 1968) is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. He received the BAFTA Award, Independent Spirit Award, and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the neo-noir mystery film The Usual Suspects (1995). He made his directorial debut with the crime thriller film The Way of the Gun (2000). McQuarrie is a frequent collaborator with Tom Cruise, having written and directed the action films Jack Reacher (2012), as well as four instalments of the Mission: Impossible film series: Rogue Nation (2015), Fallout (2018), Dead Reckoning (2023), and The Final Reckoning (2025). He was also a part of the writing and/or producing team on the Cruise films Valkyrie (2008), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016), The Mummy (2017), and Top Gun: Maverick (2022), the last of which received Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. Description above from the Wikipedia article about Christopher McQuarrie, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
William Mandella is a physics student conscripted for an elite task force in the United Nations Exploratory Force being assembled for a war against the Taurans, an alien species discovered when they apparently attacked human colonists' ships. The UNEF ground troops are sent out for reconnaissance and revenge. The elite recruits have IQs of 150 and above, are highly educated, healthy, and fit. Training is grueling – first on Earth and later on a planet called "Charon" beyond Pluto (written before the discovery of the actual planetoid). Several of the recruits die during training due to the extreme environments and the use of live weapons. The new soldiers complete training and immediately depart for action via interconnected "collapsars" that allow ships to cover thousands of light-years in a split second. However, crucially, traveling to and from the collapsars at near-lightspeed has enormous relativistic time effects.
