Professional stuntman Tom Cruise lives long enough to give Mission: Impossible 7 its title
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One couldn’t afford an extra colon, we presume
Aux News Tom Cruise
Ethan Hunt is back on the move, and this time he’s looking for a reckoning, a Dead Reckoning Part One, if you will.
Tom Cruise, the death-defying actor-turned-stuntman, has survived his latest series of daredevil antics to deliver us the title of his new movie. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, the first of two Dead Reckonings, is the title of the next outing for the Impossible Mission Force.
Now, we didn’t get much in the way of plot. But we presume that the IMF, once again, has betrayed Hunt (Cruise). To clear his name and save the world from global catastrophe via a nano nuclear bot that swarms the body with tiny nuclear explosions with enough firepower to kill every man, woman, and child on the planet, Hunt must stop an evil army of zombies hellbent on reckoning. That’s just what we expect, anyway.
Cruise announced the title at this year’s CinemaCon, an annual trade show in which studios promise theater owners that new movies will come to multiplexes. In case you didn’t hear, movie theaters are in trouble. As studios dump all new movies on their proprietary streaming apps that don’t work, look like shit, but allow you to watch The Batman over the course of a week, just as the artists, craftspeople, and filmmakers intended, movie theaters have become increasingly concerned about obsolesce. Obviously, this sucks because going to the movies is practically the best thing any human can do.
Meanwhile, Cruise assured theater owners that he risked his life for the movie. One much-discussed stunt, for instance, included Cruise driving a motorcycle off a cliff. Cruise called it “far and away the most dangerous thing I’ve attempted.”
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One opens July 14, 2023, and Dead Reckoning Part Two opens June 28, 2024.
[via Variety]
48 Comments
“Dead Reckoning” is a navigational term for when you have no guidance (GPS, TACAN, visuals, etc). You essentially take a known position, travel at a known speed, and assume perfect conditions in order to estimate where you might be at any given time. Of course, if the wind is slightly different than what you expect, you may wind up far away from where you meant to go.My guess is, IMF headquarters or perhaps the US government itself is taken out of communication, if not entirely out of commission. Hunt isn’t betrayed, he simply has no choice but to operate autonomously and hope that what he’s doing works with whatever plans the remainder of his leadership are making. By the end of part one, it’s not working out great.
“Dead Reckoning” is also a Grateful Dead live album.
*SPOILER ALERT* The whole movie was just a dream. *SPOILER ALERT*
And a terrific 1947 Humphrey Bogart / Lisabeth Scott film noir.
I just hope it doesn’t involve IMF being compromised and Hunt et. al. having to go it alone, which is the plot of, like… four of the M:I movies?
Ghost Protocol was the best though.
I liked it the best for a long time but in retrospect I think I like Rogue Nation better, although I’ve seen it more recently. They’re both pretty great though… I just don’t think we need another “the IMF is disavowed! you’re on your own!” plot.
MI3’s Philip Seymour Hoffman, however, remains the best of the villains by a comfortable margin.
He nailed it. It was great to see them bounce back from the wet fart that was MI2 (fite me IRL, that movie’s plot made no sense).
You’re absolutely right – John Woo, for all his virtues (and MI2’s action was solid fun, even if it was very, very narratively stupid), was simply the wrong director for a franchise that’s all about precisely executed, logistically complex plans.And it never fails to infuriate me that at various points in the film, Tom wears a Dougray mask, and Dougray wears a Tom mask. One of them must have a larger head than the other, so why doesn’t he look ridiculous wearing the other’s face?
Still a better plot than “Analyst we’ve never seen before is absolutely confident he’s gone rogue this time because we pissed him off for treating him like he went rogue in the last movie”.
it also sounds badass because it’s got “dead” in it and also implies that there’s a reckoning
They missed a great opportunity to simply name the last movie as MI:6 and set it in England.
When Tom Cruise dies doing a stunt for Mission Impossible 27: Spies on the Moon, cinema will be complete.And I’ll happily watch every MI until that day.
What happens to the crew when he gets hurt and they have to shut down filming until he heals? Do they get paid, or are they just out of work for a little while because of his ego?
They got paid during the 8 week shut down after he shattered his ankle on Fallout.https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/mission-impossible-fallout-budget-hits-series-high-tom-cruise-injury-1129554/
Thank you, that’s good to know. As long as it isn’t hurting anybody financially (other than the studios) let him wreck himself for his art.
also, is there ANY insurance company in the world that will cover him at this point? He almost has a…contempt for his personal safety, and he’s pushing 60. I mean it’s exciting to watch and I admire his passion to put something on film pretty unforgettable and exciting (seeing him on the side of a plane taking off was pretty jaw-dropping even knowing all the straps and shit keeping him affixed to the side of that plane), but come on man.
is there ANY insurance company in the world that will cover him at this point?Cruise? Yes. Anyone else? Probably not.
I guess the more appropriate question is: at what point do the studios say “we are not going to fund these enormous insurance premiums that insurance company X wants to indemnify these movies” because his risk of injury probably doubles with each movie as he feels compelled to not only up the ante from the last insane stunt, but also as he ages his ability to rebound from injuries decreases (no matter what Xenu does for him these days LOL).
I have a feeling it’s tied to his box office numbers. Once his movies stop bringing in truckloads of cash, they’ll stop insuring him to this degree.
Probably after the next injury, but what’s it to you?
Despite being crazy, he seems like a pretty legit dude to work for. I’d say better than 90% of Hollywood that I’ve heard of.
Cruise is turning 60 in July and I very briefly imagined him dating a woman his own age and I ‘went’ hahahahahahahaaaa!Something tells me that if he actually did it, men everywhere would be outraged on his behalf. “Eeew, how could you do that, my dude?”
If he dated a woman his own age in a movie I might actually pay for a movie ticket to see it.
I suspect men everywhere fall into a number of other categories like not caring, believing his public relationships are for PR, or finding the idea of having to deal with both this particular nut and his cult to be a hefty counterbalance to all the money one could hope to get from him.
TBF he looks like a regular human’s 47.
Dude looks fantastic for 60. Maybe there really is something to say about spilling your secrets to a billion-dollar organization who then uses them as blackmail.It’s a wonder that Catholics don’t look as good.
You’ve swapped cause and effect: it wasn’t that Scientology made him an aggressive, ambitious, talented nutjob. It’s that being an aggressive, ambitious, talented nutjob made him an ideal candidate to join Scientology.
I was more focused on his appearance, but yeah everyone who worked with him pre-scientology said he was a douche then too.
You seriously overestimate how much men care about who stars fuck.
Here is what I want from Tom Cruise: A fun two+ hours for my money.
I don’t want to have dinner with him. I don’t want to hear his thoughts on religion and psychotherapy. I don’t need to know who he votes for. I don’t care if he’s gay, straight, bi or anywhere else on the spectrum.
My relationship with Cruise is the same relationship I have with my coffee maker. Deliver what I need.
“imagined him dating a woman his own age”Mimi Rogers is 6 years older than him, and they were married.
It’s batshit crazy to me this franchise is still going and somehow it’s gotten better in the middle!Like if I had to rank them (okay I want to rank them, sue me!)1. Part 42. Part 53. Part 64. Part 35. Part 16. Part 2After Part 3 I never thought we would see another one of these movies.
I definitely have to agree with you, I was SHOCKED that Ghost Protocol was so good…at the time, I considered it the best, but in all honesty, haven’t dug through recaps on IMdB to confirm
I say De Palma’s is the best, afterward it became just the sort of stupid James Bond superspy knockoff he’d veered away from.
Part 3 is the best one!
Ghost Protocol,
1,
Rogue Nation,
Fallout (saw Waluigi…erm Cavill’s twist a mile away and the final act dragged. the entire Paris sequence was beautifully shot),
2,
3 (plot wise, it’s miles ahead of 2 but has to be at the bottom due to the plot being concocted by Orci a 9-11 truther and made the twist into a thinly veiled allegory for said conspiracy. F him and JJ for that)
One of my pop culture hills that I die on is that MI:2 actually is an awesome movie.Great action. Killer fight scenes. Incredible leading lady who is crucial to the plot. Ludicrous and fun.
The second one isn’t great, but the fact that it’s so different made the rest of the franchise seem fresh. They made six movies and five of them are mostly all the same, and that doesn’t get me excited to see the 7th one. Now, if #7 were really off model, even if it weren’t as good, it means the series can still surprise.
Cruise called it “far and away the most dangerous thing I’ve attempted.” Missing out on the opportunity to say it was “far and away the most risky business I’ve ever done and I kept my eyes wide shut. Plus I did it in the rain, man.”
One edit here: “…ever done, in all my days of thunder…”
days of Tropic Thunder.
Cocktail of puns you got there.
They’ve spent so much money on this flick that adding the colon would have increased the prince of ink spent to add that colon so damn well better leave it out. it’s like that pizza company on Breaking Bad that didn’t slice the pie so they could pass the savings onto you!
The only reason I’m even remotely looking forward to this is because hopefully it means the prophecy of Karl Pilkington writing and directing “Bryan’s Brain” can finally be fulfilled.
I’m writing this comment from my home, where I will watch this movie.
The real Dead Reckoning
Part 2: Deads Reckoning