Ronald Moore, co-screenwriter on MI2, on Kittridge, franchise continuity, and bonus Luther:
Charles: So, it looks like in a couple of your early drafts, or at least outlines, Kittridge returned for MI2, and there was another situation of whether or not, you didn’t know if you could trust Kittridge. Do you remember having him in your drafts?
Ronald: Yeah, definitely. And there was uh, and I think he went in and out of the conversation because Tom wasn’t sure if he wanted to have the character continue in the movie franchises or not. He sometimes went ‘I love him, he’s a great character!’ and then other times he’d kinda steer away and go ‘nah, I think we should just leave that character in the first one,’ so, it kinda went in and out.
There was a lot of conversation about how to—you know, in the second movie, how much continuity was there with the first one. You know, how much was Magnificent 7 putting the team together, how much of it was just Luther, you know, how much of it was trying to pick up some of the threads of the betrayal of the first one, how much of it was just letting it go completely and making the film franchise a little bit more episodic.
And it was just him, you could just see, every day he was just kind of musing out loud about the different ways you could go, and you know, what was the best route, and what was good for the audience, and what was most fun, and yeah. There was lot of that, kinda starting and stopping with those characters from the first film.
Charles: But was the thought to always include Luther?
Ronald: It seemed like Luther was always there. I think he really liked the character and he was in every—I think he was always in the story in some way.