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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One trailer teases Tom Cruise’s last hurrah

Blair Marnell
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It’s been so long since the first Mission: Impossible movie debuted that it’s easy to forget that the franchise began on television. So it’s fitting that the upcoming seventh and eighth movies will be an epic two-part story. They may also mark the end of the road for Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. But as you can see in the amazing trailer for Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1, if Ethan is going out, he’s going out with a bang!

The trailer doesn’t show off much in the way of story, but it’s not shy about offering a glimpse of the stunning visuals and impressive stunt work. It’s become a hallmark of the film series to feature realistic stunts and practical effects and locations whenever possible. The results speak for themselves, and this already looks like the action film to beat in 2023.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One | Official Teaser Trailer

Naturally, Ethan’s IMF team will once again be joining him on a mission that will take them around the world. Ving Rhames co-stars as Luther Stickell, with Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn, and Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust. One of the more intriguing returns is Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge. In the first Mission: Impossible, Kittridge was the former director of the IMF. This raises a question: What could possibly bring Kittridge out of retirement?

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The trailer does feature a glimpse of Haley Atwell’s Grace as well as an unnamed character played by Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Pom Klementieff.  The film will also star Vanessa Kirby as Alanna Mitsopolis, with Esai Morales, Frederick Schmidt, Shea Whigham, Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss, Cary Elwes, Lampros Kalfuntzos, and Greg Tarzan Davis.

The cast of Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Christopher McQuarrie wrote and directed Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which will hit theaters on July 14, 2023. Part Two will follow on June 28, 2024.

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Blair Marnell
Blair Marnell
Blair Marnell has been an entertainment journalist for over 15 years. His bylines have appeared in Wizard Magazine, Geek…
The 7 best Tom Cruise action movies, ranked
Tom Cruise holds onto a cargo plane in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.

Very few movie stars have been at the center of more well-regarded action movies than Tom Cruise. It’s not hard to see why, either. Over the course of his career, Cruise has developed an obsessive devotion to practical action sequences, the kind that make audiences gasp and cheer when they’re brought to life on the big screen. His desire to wow and thrill has resulted in him putting himself in some serious danger over the years. It’s also led to some of the greatest action movies ever made.

With Cruise’s latest film, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, hitting theaters this week, now seems like as good a time as any to look back at his career and celebrate some of his biggest achievements. So, without any further ado, here are the seven best action movies that Tom Cruise has ever starred in. (Dead Reckoning Part One notwithstanding.)
7. Minority Report (2002)

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Why the first Mission: Impossible movie is still the best one
A man looks out from the shadows in Mission: Impossible.

Everyone loves the Mission: Impossible movies. There are a variety of reasons why: they offer old-fashioned cinematic thrills; they are a form of escapism akin to the James Bond movies, but tougher and more American; they feature one of the last truly great movie stars, Tom Cruise. Ever since the fourth installment, Ghost Protocol, resurrected the genre from pop culture oblivion, the conventional wisdom is that the modern M: I films just keep getting better and better, and are the series' best entries.

Well, nuts to that. I'm not going to defend the much-maligned M: I 2, which doesn't really deserve reconsideration (seriously, what's with all those doves?), but the original Mission: Impossible, in my eyes, is perfection, and hasn't been topped by any other M: I film ... or any action movie, for that matter. The peak of '90s Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking, Mission: Impossible delivers two cinematic giants, Cruise and director Brian De Palma, at the height of their powers, and is perhaps the most fun mainstream movie Hollywood ever produced. Here are just a few reasons why the original M: I still holds up today.
The opening titles
Mission: Impossible (1996) Opening Title Sequence

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The best action scenes in the Mission: Impossible movies, ranked
mission impossible movies best action heist scenes ranked fallout halo sequence

Since it first arrived on the big screen in 1996, the Mission: Impossible film franchise has thrilled audiences with increasingly ambitious practical stunts. Star and producer Tom Cruise won’t be satisfied until he’s shown gravity who’s boss once and for all, diving off of increasingly high platforms at increasingly deadly speeds. The daredevil feats have become such essential parts of the Mission: Impossible films and their marketing that one could almost forget the stories that these stunts are meant to service.
In most M: I movies, at least one of those miraculous action set pieces is attached to some sort of heist or caper. Ethan Hunt is a spy, after all, and his quests typically require that he infiltrate a highly secure location and intercept an important item, person, or piece of information. With respect to the remarkable craft put into each of the daredevil actions, how often is the payoff equal to the setup? Is there a correlation between the magnitude of the danger to Tom Cruise and the stakes to Ethan Hunt? On the occasion of Dead Reckoning Part One’s theatrical release, we’re ranking the action scenes in the Mission: Impossible series and our preferences might surprise you.

7. Stealing the Rabbit’s Foot (Mission: Impossible III)
Mission: Impossible III: Daring Leap (HD CLIP)
Mission: Impossible III gets a bit of a bad rap for its efforts to ground the series in something approaching reality, and it can definitely be argued that director J.J. Abrams’ more TV-style aesthetic was an overcorrection from John Woo’s unrestrained bombast. We’ll stand behind M:I-3’s more human and emotional characterization of Ethan Hunt, the romance subplot, and of course, the outstanding performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, but we do have to admit that the choice to essentially skip this movie’s main heist sequence is pretty disappointing.
In the second act of M:I-3, Ethan’s wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) has been kidnapped by terrorist Owen Davian (Hoffman), who promises to kill her unless Hunt retrieves the mysterious “Rabbit’s Foot” weapon from a secure facility in Shanghai. Hunt goes rogue and, with the help of his team, plans a daring swing between two skyscrapers, using a third, taller building as a fulcrum.
However, while we see Ethan’s leap and his tricky landing on the roof of the facility, we don’t follow him inside for the rest of the heist. Instead, we remain with his teammates Zhen (Maggie Q) and Gorley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) as they wait to hear whether or not he’s acquired the Rabbits Foot. We only catch up with Ethan once the mission has gone sideways, and Zhen, Gorley, and trusty tech wizard Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) participate in a wild, shaky-cam car chase away from the building’s facility. It’s a cute subversion of the franchise’s usual structure and it allows the plot to continue at an even clip, but for the purposes of this list, we can’t put it anywhere but dead last.

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