The first trailer for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One just officially dropped, arriving more than a year before the film’s scheduled premiere date after being leaked on Twitter over the weekend.
Tom Cruise is back as Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt, dodging sniper fire during a desert storm, speeding around Italian cities in a comically tiny yellow car, and engaging in a knife fight atop a moving train. He also throws some punches, runs as fast as he can, and—oh, of course—drives a motorcycle off a cliff, skydiving to the ground below. Casual behavior.
It’s the most action-y action movie trailer I’ve ever seen. It’s essentially two minutes and 15 seconds of Cruise, who famously does his own stunts, flexing that he is more physically fit at 59 years old than most twenty-somethings could ever dream of being. I needed a nap after watching it.
The trailer does not offer much in terms of plot, but it does feature a notable appearance from Henry Czerny as Kittridge, a character we haven’t seen since the original Mission: Impossible film in 1996. “Your days of fighting for the so-called ‘greater good’ are over,” Czerny warns ominously (read: vaguely). “This is our chance to control the truth, the concepts of right and wrong for everyone for centuries to come. You’re fighting to save an ideal that doesn’t exist. It never did. You need to pick a side.”
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Dead Reckoning Part One will be the seventh installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise. McQuarrie also helmed the previous two sequels, Rogue Nation and Fallout. Dead Reckoning Part Two is set to debut a year after the first and is expected to be Cruise’s final motorcycle ride as Ethan Hunt. (As if we believe that…)
Cruise and Czerny are joined in the trailer by series regulars Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, and Simon Pegg. The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby is reprising her role from Fallout. Newcomers Hayley Atwell and Esai Morales round out the cast.
The teaser for Dead Reckoning Part One was first unveiled last month at CinemaCon, and then released again this past weekend at the European premiere of Cruise’s other new blockbuster franchise film, Top Gun: Maverick. However, internet sleuths also got their hands on the widely unseen footage, posting it to Twitter. The tweet from Saturday leaking the trailer has since been taken down due to copyright infringement.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is slated to hit theaters on July 14, 2023 after being rescheduled four times due to multiple COVID-19 filming shutdowns.
Back in December 2020, as you may recall, leaked audio of Cruise berating crew members for disregarding COVID safety protocols went viral. He was perplexingly praised for the unhinged rant, because I guess it’s OK to scream at your subordinates at work as long as it’s in the name of public health?
Anyway, just something to keep in mind when we all go see this 300-million-dollar superspreader project, uh, I mean...fun action movie next summer.
