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''There are certain Mission: Impossible elements that you need,'' Cruise says. ''But I figured, What's the point in doing a sequel if you aren't going to make it completely different? And that's what I told John Woo. I told him to forget everything from the first film and make it totally his own. I told him to do whatever he wanted.''

At this point, Cruise has given up pushing buttons on the parking ticket dispenser. Instead, he's fished a few crumpled bills from his pocket and stuffed them into a rusty canister next to the entrance. ''There,'' he announces, flashing those famous $20 million-a-picture choppers before heading into the park. ''That should cover it.''

Mission accomplished — finally. No cable dangling or bungee jumping required.

''I have never wanted to make a sequel,'' says the director of Face/Off, Broken Arrow, Hard Target, and such Hong Kong action classics as The Killer and Hard-Boiled. ''There is nothing creative about it. You have to follow the first. You have to follow the same characters. But when Tom came to me, he said he wanted it to be different. He set me free. I was pretty shocked.''

It's the day after M:I-2's May 18 Hollywood premiere, and Woo is reminiscing about the two years it took to make Mission possible. ''So I suggest to Tom that we make it a romantic-style movie, a love story, with a great human heart,'' he goes on in his still-shaky English (he's been making movies in Hollywood only since 1993). ''I liked the first film, but it seemed a little cold to me. I wanted to see a new Tom Cruise, who really cares about people and is passionate. And Tom thought that was a great idea.''

Many writers were called upon to create a new, passionate Cruise — Michael Tolkin and William Goldman took early whacks at the script; Star Trek's Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga get story credit — but it was Robert Towne (Chinatown) who ultimately cooked up the winning plotline: Cruise saving the world from a genetically engineered killer virus. He's also the one who fleshed out Woo's idea for a more romantic Ethan Hunt, giving the secret agent a couple of steamy love scenes with a new jewel-thief gal pal. (''It was all very technical'' is the way Newton describes her smooches with Cruise. ''You can't really give a deep kiss on film because it doesn't look very nice to see two faces squashed together that closely. Seeing people going at it like scissors just isn't pretty to look at.'')

About the only thing Towne didn't write was the action sequences. Most of those were whipped up by Cruise and Woo during their early meetings and were well into preproduction even before the screenwriter tapped out his first lines. ''It was a very unusual experience,'' Towne says. ''I had to write the story around the action instead of the action around the story. It was like doing a puzzle. Or like writing backwards. I'd never done anything like it before.''

''I came up with the motorcycle chase,'' Woo volunteers. ''I wanted something really fast because Tom has such great energy. The airplane crash was Tom's idea. And we both liked the rock-climbing idea.''

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