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Last summer, Tom Cruise was given credit for saving the theatrical experience with the widely beloved “ Top Gun: Maverick .” One of our last true movie stars returns over a year later as the blockbuster experience seems to be fading with high-budget Hollywood endeavors like " The Flash " and " Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny " falling short of expectations. Can he be Hollywood's savior again? I hope so because “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is a ridiculously good time. Once again, director Christopher McQuarrie , Cruise, and their team have crafted a deceptively simple thriller, a film that bounces good, bad, and in-between characters off each other for 163 minutes (an admittedly audacious runtime for a film with “Part One” in the title that somehow doesn’t feel long). Some of the overcooked dialogue about the importance of this particular mission gets repetitive, but then McQuarrie and his team will reveal some stunningly conceived action sequence that makes all the spy-speak tolerable. Hollywood is currently questioning the very state of their industry. Leave it to Ethan Hunt to accept the mission.

While this series essentially rebooted in its fourth chapter, changing tone and style significantly, this seventh film very cleverly ties back to the 1996 Brian De Palma original more than any other, almost as if it's uniting the two halves of the franchise. It’s not an origin story, but it does have the tenor of something like the excellent “Casino Royale” in how it unpacks the very purpose of a beloved character. “Dead Reckoning Part One” is about Ethan Hunt reconciling how he got to this point in his life, and McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen narratively recall De Palma’s film repeatedly. And with its sweaty, canted close-ups, Fraser Taggart ’s cinematography wants you to remember the first movie—how Ethan Hunt became an agent and the price he’s been paying from the beginning.

It’s not just visual nods. “Dead Reckoning” returns former IMF director Eugene Kittridge ( Henry Czerny ) to Ethan’s life with a new mission. Kittridge informs Hunt that there’s essentially a rogue A.I. in the world that superpowers are battling to control. The A.I. can be manipulated with a key split into two halves. One of those halves is about to be sold on the black market, and so Ethan and his team—including returning characters Luther ( Ving Rhames ) and Benji ( Simon Pegg )—have to not just intercept the key but discern its purpose. The key only matters if IMF can figure out where and how to use it.

After a desert shoot-out that ushers Ilsa Faust ( Rebecca Ferguson ) back into the series, the first major set piece in “Dead Reckoning Part One” takes place in the Dubai airport, where Hunt discovers that there are other players in this espionage chess game, including a familiar face in Gabriel ( Esai Morales ), a morally corrupt mercenary who is one of the reasons that Hunt is an agent in the first place. Gabriel is a chaos agent, someone who not only wants to watch the world burn but hopes the fire inflicts as much pain as possible. In many ways, Gabriel is the inverse of Ethan, whose weakness has been his empathy and personal connections—Gabriel has none of those, and he’s basically working for the A.I., trying to get the key so no one can control it.

At the airport, Ethan also crosses paths with a pickpocket named Grace ( Hayley Atwell ), who gets stuck in the middle of all of this world-changing insanity, along with a few agents trying to hunt down the rogue Ethan and are played by a wonderfully exasperated Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis . A silent assassin, memorably sketched by Pom Klementieff , is also essential to a few action scenes. And Vanessa Kirby returns as the arms dealer White Widow, and, well, if the ensemble has a weakness, it's Kirby's kind of lost performance. She has never quite been able to convey "power player" in these films as she should.

But that doesn't matter because people aren't here for the White Widow's backstory. They want to see Tom Cruise run. The image most people associate with “ Mission: Impossible ” is probably Mr. Cruise stretching those legs and swinging those arms. He does that more than once here, but it seems like the momentum of that image was the artistic force behind this entire film. “Dead Reckoning Part One” prioritizes movement—trains, cars, Ethan’s legs. It’s an action film that's about speed and urgency, something that has been so lost in the era of CGI’s diminished stakes. Runaway trains will always have more inherent visceral power than waves of animated bad guys, and McQuarrie knows how to use it sparingly to make an action film that both feels modern and old-fashioned at the same time. These films don’t over-rely on CGI, ensuring we know that it’s really Mr. Cruise jumping off that motorcycle. When punches connect, bodies fly, and cars crash into each other—we feel it instead of just passively observing it. The action here is so wonderfully choreographed that only “ John Wick: Chapter 4 ” compares for the best in the genre this year.

There’s also something fascinating thematically here about a movie star battling A.I. and questioning the purpose of his job. Blockbusters have been cautionary tech tales for generations but think about the meta aspect of a spy movie in which the world could collapse if the espionage game is overtaken by a sentient computer that stars an actor who has been at the center of controversy regarding his own deepfakes. There’s also a definite edge to the plotting here that plays into the actor’s age in that Ethan is forced to answer questions about what matters to him regarding his very unusual work/life balance, a reflection of what a performer like Cruise must face as he reaches the end of an action movie rope that’s been much longer than anyone could have even optimistically expected. Cruise may or may not intend that reading—although I suspect he does—but it adds another layer to the action.

Of course, the most important thing is this: “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is just incredibly fun. It feels half its length and contains enough memorable action sequences for some entire franchises. Will Cruise save the blockbuster experience again? Maybe. And he might do it again next summer too.

In theaters on July 12 th .

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some language and suggestive material.

163 minutes

Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt

Hayley Atwell as Grace

Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell

Simon Pegg as Benjamin 'Benji' Dunn

Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust

Vanessa Kirby as The White Widow

Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge

Esai Morales as Gabriel

Pom Klementieff as Paris

Cary Elwes as Denlinger

Shea Whigham as Jasper Briggs

• Christopher McQuarrie
• Erik Jendresen

Cinematographer

• Fraser Taggart
• Eddie Hamilton
• Lorne Balfe

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‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One’ Review: Still Running

In this franchise’s seventh entry, Tom Cruise’s mission includes increasingly improbable leaps, chases and stunts. Luckily for us, he chooses to accept it.

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By Manohla Dargis

I don’t know if anyone has ever clocked whether Tom Cruise is faster than a speeding bullet. The guy has legs, and guts. His sprints into the near-void have defined and sustained his stardom, becoming his singular superpower. He racks up more miles in “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” the seventh entry in a 27-year-old franchise that repeatedly affirms a movie truism. That is, there are few sights more cinematic than a human being outracing danger and even death onscreen — it’s the ultimate wish fulfillment!

Much remains the same in this latest adventure, including the series’ reliable entertainment quotient and Cruise’s stamina. Once again, he plays Ethan Hunt, the leader of a hush-hush American spy agency, the Impossible Mission Force. Alongside a rotating roster of beautiful kick-ass women (most recently Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby) and loyal handymen (Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames), Ethan has been sprinting, flying, diving and speed-racing across the globe while battling enemy agents, rogue operatives, garden-variety terrorists and armies of minions. Along the way, he has regularly delivered a number of stomach-churning wows, like jumping out a window and climbing the world’s tallest building .

This time, the villain is the very au courant artificial intelligence, here called the Entity. The whole thing is complicated, as these stories tend to be, with stakes as catastrophic as recent news headlines have trumpeted. Or, as an open letter signed by 350 A.I. authorities put it last month: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.” In the face of such calamity, who you gonna call? Analog Man, that’s who, a.k.a. Mr. Hunt, who receives his usual mysterious directives that, this time, have been recorded on a cassette tape, an amusing touch for a movie about the threat poised to the material world by a godlike digital power.

That’s all fine and good, even if the most memorable villain proves to be a Harley Quinn-esque agent of chaos, Paris (Pom Klementieff), who races after Ethan in a Hummer and seems ready to spin off into her own franchise. She tries flattening him during a seamlessly choreographed chase sequence in Rome — the stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood, is also a racecar driver — that mixes excellent wheel skills with scares, laughs, thoughtful geometry and precision timing. At one point, Ethan ends up behind the wheel while handcuffed to a new love interest, Grace (Hayley Atwell, another welcome addition), driving and drifting, flirting and burning rubber in what is effectively the action-movie equivalent of a sex scene.

Despite the new faces, there are, unsurprisingly, no real surprises in “Dead Reckoning Part One,” which features a number of dependably showstopping stunts, hits every narrative beat hard and, shrewdly, has just enough winking humor to keep the whole thing from sagging into self-seriousness. This is the third movie in the series that Cruise and the director Christopher McQuarrie have made together, and they have settled into a mutually beneficial groove. On his end, McQuarrie has assembled a fully loaded blockbuster machine that briskly recaps the series’ foundational parameters, adds the requisite twists and, most importantly, showcases his star. For his part, Cruise has once again cranked the superspy dial up to 11.

Over the years, McQuarrie has loosened up the star, who generally seems to be having a pretty good time. Still, it must be exhausting to be Tom Cruise, who famously performs his own stunts. A smattering of creases now radiate around his smile, but time doesn’t seem to have slowed his relentless roll. The most arresting set piece here finds Ethan smoothly sailing off a cliff via a motorbike and a parachute. Improbable, yes? Impossible? Nah. Like the other large-scale, stunt-driven sequences, this showy leap at once underscores Cruise’s skills and reminds you that a real person in a real location on a real motorbike did this lunatic stunt.

Nothing if not a classicist, Ethan also goes one to one with a baddie (Esai Morales) atop a speeding train, perhaps in homage to his cliffhanger moves on another train in the first “ Mission: Impossible ” (1996). In his review, the New York Times critic Stephen Holden observed that with this film Cruise had “found the perfect superhero character.” It’s worth noting that, in 1996, the top 10 movies released in the United States were largely high-concept thrillers and comedies; in 2022, half the top 10 releases were from Marvel or DC. Yet the film that connected most strongly with audiences was Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Although “Maverick” featured plenty of digital whiz-bangery, its most spectacular draw of course was Cruise, who has also remained the single greatest attraction in the “Mission” movies. To that point, while there’s little of substance that I remember about the first film other than it was directed by Brian De Palma, I can vividly picture — with the crystalline recall that only some movies instill — two distinct images of Cruise-Ethan from it. In one, he races away from a tsunami of water and shattered glass; in the second, he hovers inches above a gleaming white floor, his black-clad body stretched head to toe in a near-perfect horizontal line. The filmmakers imprinted those images on my memory; so did Cruise.

Early in the “Mission: Impossible” series, the outlandishness of the movies’ plots and Cruise’s equally fantastical stunts started to make him seem less than human. By the second movie, I wondered if he were disappearing altogether, turning himself into little more than a special effect. Since then, the plots and the stunts have remained impossibly absurd, sometimes enjoyably so, as here. Yet over the years, the series has unexpectedly made Cruise seem more poignantly human than he has sometimes seemed elsewhere. One reason is that the “Mission” movies were instrumental in shifting the locus of his star persona from his easygoing smile — the toothy gleam of “Risky Business” and “Jerry Maguire” — to his hardworking body.

The obvious effort that Cruise puts into his “Mission” stunts and the physical punishment he endures to execute them — signaled by his grimaces and popping muscles — have had a salutary impact on that persona, as has the naked ferocity with which he’s held onto stardom. It’s touching. It’s also difficult to imagine any actor today starting out in a superhero flick reaching a commensurate fame, not only because the movies, Hollywood’s at least, no longer retain the hold on the popular imagination that they once did, but also because the corporately branded superhero suit will always be more important than whoever wears it. Tom Cruise doesn’t need a suit; he was, after all, built for speed. He just needs to keep running.

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One Rated PG-13 for thriller violence. Running time: 2 hours 43 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic of The Times, which she joined in 2004. She has an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands.

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• 81 Metascore
• 17 wins & 64 nominations total

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• Trivia The frequent delays caused by COVID-19 ballooned the budget to $291 million, making it the most expensive Mission: Impossible film (surpassing Fallout, $178 million), the most expensive film of Tom Cruise 's career (again surpassing Fallout), and the most expensive film ever produced by Paramount (surpassing Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) , $217 million). The insurance company Chubb originally gave Paramount only £4.4 million (about $5.4 million) for the delays, arguing that the cast and crew could still fulfill their duties to the production despite being infected with COVID-19. Paramount sued Chubb in 2021, and the two companies settled in 2022. In 2023, Chubb gave Paramount a £57 million (about $71 million) payout for the COVID-caused delays, reducing the film's budget to about $220 million, which still makes it the most expensive film for Cruise, Paramount, and the franchise.
• Goofs Steam trains, especially moving at high speeds, need to be continuously provided with fuel, in this case coal. With the engineers killed and the controls opened all the way, the locomotive would have gradually slowed down and come to a halt as the pressure in the boiler dropped. That train would never have reached the bridge for that distance with no coal provided. Since the early 1900s, when firebox coal consumption exceeded the efforts of two men, the trains have used mechanical stokers. The coal would continue feeding without one missing coal shoveler.

[from trailer]

Eugene Kittridge : Your days of fighting for the so-called greater good are over. 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. Never did. You need to pick a side.

• Crazy credits Disclaimer as one of the last entries in the end titles scroll: "The production company would like to make it clear that at no point were vehicles driving on the Spanish Steps. These sequences were filmed at a set on a studio backlot."
• Connections Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Most Anticipated Franchises Returning in 2023 (2023)
• Soundtracks The Mission: Impossible Theme Written by Lalo Schifrin

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• Jul 8, 2023
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• July 12, 2023 (United States)
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• $291,000,000 (estimated)
• $172,135,383
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• Jul 16, 2023
• $567,535,383

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The scary question at the heart of the Mission: Impossible movies

In Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, Tom Cruise once again leads a franchise that’s all about trickery, subterfuge, and the nature of reality itself.

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In the very first scene of the very first Mission: Impossible film, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is interrogating a Russian guy. We don’t know it’s Hunt, though, because — in perhaps the most iconic running bit in the M:I universe — he’s wearing an extremely lifelike rubber mask. Two minutes into the scene, he walks over to the Russian, drugs him till he passes out, and then pulls off the mask, dramatically revealing the face of a slightly flushed and rumpled Cruise. (It’s hot under all that latex.)

Shortly after that first reveal, the walls of the room fall outward into a warehouse, which makes for a bigger reveal: The whole scene was faked. Not only was the now-immobilized Russian hoodwinked, but the audience was tricked into believing their senses. For us, the moment is delightful; for the laid-out man, not so much.

That opening parry for Mission: Impossible, created and produced by Cruise as a spy-action franchise for himself, showed up in movie theaters in May 1996, with Brian De Palma (of Carrie and Scarface ) in the director’s chair. Compared to the latest installment in the franchise, frequent Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One , the 1996 version is much sweatier, darker, and kind of erotic. (A Brian De Palma movie indeed.)

The omnipresent unmaskings , of which there have been at least 15 or 20 by now, are still a mainstay of the films. What’s so great about those reveals, in particular, is that you’re rarely actually expecting them. Dead Reckoning Part One plays with this a little, but for the most part, through all the films, any guy at any time could rip his face off and you’d still be like, “Wow, I did not see that coming.”

The new version is like its predecessors, employing a trope borrowed from the TV show that spawned the film: trickery around every corner, a sense that you can’t quite believe what you see. Dead people turn out to be not-dead people. Walls of rooms keep falling apart to reveal they’re constructed in some warehouse somewhere. Everyone could be a rogue agent or maybe not, and the movie sure isn’t going to wink at you about it till it’s good and ready.

That those twists and turns keep surprising us seven movies in points to what’s truly delightful about the Mission: Impossible franchise, and what makes it, in my opinion, both the most inventive and the most satisfying long-running franchise in Hollywood. On one level, M:I is wonderful because the convoluted plots are pretty much beside the point; if they can be said to have a consistent theme, it is “Tom Cruise likes almost dying on camera.”

And yet once you’ve watched them all, you can detect a kind of meta-theme to the M:I movies. It stems from a simple moviegoing fact: Most of us believe that what we are seeing in a movie is how things actually happened in the world of the movie. It’s why a movie like A Beautiful Mind or Big Fish or The Irishman is so memorably affecting; we are trained to believe our narrators, and when it turns out that what we’ve been watching is not quite what actually happened, it’s thrilling. New meaning emerges from the mismatch.

Mission: Impossible plays on this expectation, though there’s no specific perspectival narrator. The thrill comes from occasionally discovering that what we’ve been watching is an elaborate fake-out. Sleight of hand is everywhere. Don’t trust your senses, Mission: Impossible exhorts us — they’re easily manipulated.

This is underlined, in another meta-heavy way, by what makes the films so distinctive: Cruise’s incredible, literally death-defying stunts, every film seeming to take them to a new level. He climbs up sheer rock walls , leaps across rooftops , fights cliffside , and hangs off the side of a flying Airbus A400M . Each time a new Mission: Impossible movie is released, it’s accompanied with marketing material that mainly leans on explaining that yes, Tom Cruise did actually climb the Burj Khalifa . Personally I, and I suspect Cruise, will not be satisfied until Ethan Hunt is in outer space. (Oh, he’s doing it .)

Why emphasize that he’s actually doing these stunts (albeit with cables and nets — you could never afford to insure the production otherwise) as the lynchpin of the M:I marketing? First, of course, because it is pretty badass. But the second reason is obvious: While action is a mainstay of American cinema, particularly in superhero movies, we all know they’re flying around on soundstages and are CGI’d within an inch of their lives. It’s all spectacle, but with no reality.

With Mission: Impossible , however, our deceiving eyes don’t quite extend to the stunts. Yes, there are tricks of the camera and computer going on. But Tom Cruise is actually driving a motorcycle off a cliff and then plummeting down . That’s real — real enough to gasp and hold your breath and get a little shaky. It’s as much a mainstay of the movie as the mask trickery, and that subtle play with what we’re seeing, with the real and the unreal, suggests the movies might be doing this very much on purpose.

I’d already formed that thought and pitched it to my editor before going into Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One , and about 10 minutes in, I started silently fist-pumping. This movie’s Big Bad is something everyone calls “the Entity,” which is not a person, or even a shadowy cabal of persons, but an AI that’s become sentient and is out to take down humanity.

There’s arguably a tad too much explanation about the Entity throughout the movie that bogs it down a little, but the irony is so bold you sort of have to respect it. At the same time that Hollywood’s workers are battling to make sure their bosses don’t replace them with AI to cut costs and please shareholders, one of the summer’s biggest movies is about how AI wants to wipe us all out. It’s of a piece with recent blockbusters that are straightforwardly about how our digital doppelgangers want to kill us, algorithms are out to destroy originality , and continually repurposing nostalgia IP is how a culture dies . The call is coming from inside the house, et cetera.

But the reason I loved the Entity plotline — which, like most of the characters, will clearly be developed and wrapped up in Part Two (due out next June) — so much is that it shows what Mission: Impossible has been about all along.

Thus the Entity’s greatest threat is its ability to change reality — well, in a manner of speaking. It’s not that the digital threat can change the physical bones of reality. The Entity’s danger to humanity lies chiefly in the fact that the world is fully networked, everyone passing currency and information and even warfare along digital pathways that a sentient AI would have no trouble hacking and manipulating. In a highly mediated world, where we encounter everything and everyone through screens, the way reality is represented to us suddenly becomes, effectively, reality. If a story or a myth is floated around the internet and people come to believe it, does it even really matter, in a practical matter, if it’s true? If, as in the 1964 film Fail Safe , a country’s government thinks it’s under attack and launches a missile back at the supposed aggressor who then counterattacks, how much does it matter to the civilians on the ground that there was never an attack in the first place?

This is exactly what the humans of Dead Reckoning fear: that the entity will create reality by manipulating it, and we’ll just wipe ourselves out as a result. It’s a problem that humanity caused, of course, by getting itself so digitally intertwined and creating an AI in the first place. But now it’s out of our hands, and whoever controls it — if it can be controlled at all — is, in effect, God.

All of which weaves seamlessly into the broader Mission: Impossible narrative. What’s impossible about these missions? They’re famously difficult to pull off, with death-defying stunts that require Hunt and his buddies to precisely understand their surroundings, down to the millimeter and the temperature and pull of gravity. It’s thrilling to watch, and thrilling to experience, for sure — but it’s a reality that waits for us. In the future, the way we trust our senses will be radically altered. You know, because you’ve felt it, too.

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One opens in theaters on July 13.

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‘mission: impossible — dead reckoning part one’ review: tom cruise amps up the electrifying action but story is strictly secondary.

Hayley Atwell joins returning cast Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby in Christopher McQuarrie’s high-octane opening salvo of the two-part Ethan Hunt thriller.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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It says a lot about Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One , the first chapter in the $3.5 billion franchise’s two-part seventh installment, that detailed footage of one of the film’s most spectacular stunts was released in full online last December. The extended clip showcased the meticulous planning and execution of a sequence in which Tom Cruise as superspy Ethan Hunt drives a motorcycle off a cliff and plunges 4,000 feet into a ravine, separating from the bike and BASE jumping the final 500 feet to the ground.

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The movie’s sustained adrenaline charge is both its strength and its shortcoming. Comparing part one of Dead Reckoning with Brian De Palma’s terrific 1996 opener, which upgraded the CIA’s covert Impossible Missions Force from its 1960s television origins to the big screen, is an illuminating insight into how audience expectations have changed in the past 27 years — or perhaps more accurately, how the major studios have reshaped audience expectations.

Working with screenwriters David Koepp and Robert Towne, De Palma assembled the nuts and bolts of an admittedly convoluted story with patience and care. He allowed his characters space to breathe while building to stylishly choreographed action sequences that bristled with the director’s customary Hitchcockian flair.

Notable among them was a nail-biting CIA heist operation in which Cruise’s Hunt was lowered into a state-of-the-art Langley security vault to copy a highly prized classified document. It set the tone for a series driven by jaw-dropping stunts, redefining the actor’s career at the same time.

His Ethan has become more careworn, jaded, emotionally bruised; he’s acquired the gravitas that comes with loss. And the passionate, hands-on commitment with which the actor approaches each stunt, emphasizing practical execution over effects, has only intensified through the years. No one can accuse Cruise of being a performer who fails to deliver what his audience wants. Which includes running. So much running.

In that sense, Dead Reckoning Part One works like gangbusters. If something has been discarded in the storytelling craft along the way, it’s unlikely that the core fanbase will mind. But McQuarrie, who co-wrote the screenplay with Erik Jendresen (an Emmy winner for Band of Brothers ), invests so much in the almost nonstop set-pieces that the connective narrative tissue becomes virtually disposable.

Sometimes it feels as if he’s boiled down the most thrilling elements, not only of the Mission: Impossible series, but of the Bond and Bourne movies, and threaded them into a sizzle reel. There’s less sense here of a story that demanded to be told in two parts — this one running two-and-three-quarter hours — than of McQuarrie and Cruise having a bunch more jaw-dropping stunts they plan to pull off and new travel-porn locations on which to unleash mayhem.

The A.I. development harnesses the power to make everything from people to vessels of war undetectable, to turn allies into enemies, commandeer defense systems and manipulate the world’s finance markets. It has become a monster with a mind of its own that knows everything about everyone and can be controlled only with a cruciform key made of two bejeweled parts lost in the Russian submarine disaster that opens the movie.

As the motivation for a globe-hopping hunt to find the two halves of the key and slot them together to tame the A.I. renegade before Gabriel can get his paws on it, it’s a serviceable plot. But it’s elaborated in numbing scenes lumped in among the fun stuff, with Ethan and his associates trudging through leaden exposition dumps, intoning gravely about “The Entity,” as it’s come to be known. Ominous statements are batted about like, “Whoever controls the Entity controls the truth,” which I guess is tangible enough as a threat to world order.

But when we get to see the digital mega-brain at work, looking like a giant fibrous, pulsating cyber sphincter, the whole thing becomes a bit silly. And if after the first half-hour or so you’re still following the plotting intricacies of how the parts of the key got to wherever they are, whether they’re real or fake, who has them and how the IMF crew plans to get them back, congratulations.

Besides, the strong cast, high-gloss production values and constant wow factor of the action offer plenty of distraction from the storytelling deficiencies. And the fact that Gabriel aims to wound Ethan by harming the people he cares about gives the film a few genuine emotional moments, even if McQuarrie seldom lingers long over them.

In a nice full-circle touch, Henry Czerny is back as Kittridge, Ethan’s prickly CIA boss. Seen previously in the De Palma film, he brings with him a personal history with Ethan and a deep knowledge of the agent’s past that add tension when Hunt once again goes rogue in the new mission. Returning from Fallout is slinky arms dealer Alanna, known as the White Widow ( Vanessa Kirby ), the daughter of Redgrave’s Max, representing another link back to the first film.

In her strongest screen role, Rebecca Ferguson continues bringing smarts, sharp moves and personal — if not sexual — chemistry with Cruise to her character from Rogue Nation and Fallout , MI6 agent Ilsa Faust. She’s first encountered here holed up in the Arabian desert with a $50 million bounty on her head. Ethan’s loyal core backup remains trusty field agent Benji ( Simon Pegg ), supplying the wisecracks and whipping up those masks; and expert hacker Luther ( Ving Rhames ), who somehow gets through awkward mouthfuls like, “Ethan, you’re playing four-dimensional chess with an algorithm!”

Among the various figures trailing them — both U.S. Intelligence agents and Gabriel’s hit squad — the most memorable is an ice-cold killer known as Paris (Pom Klementieff), a deadly force behind the wheel of an armored truck and a ready-made action figure with her bleach-blond mop, pleated plaid mini and snug leather jacket.

Paris is in hot pursuit in one of the stand-out set-pieces, on the tail of Ethan and Grace amusingly squeezed into a yellow Fiat 500 on a wild ride through the cobbled streets of Rome that conveniently takes in almost every major tourist attraction before capping it off with a doozy of a sequence on the Spanish Steps. A swanky party at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice yields more suspense on the city’s bridges and in its canals. And the early desert action segues to a tense race against the clock at Abu Dhabi Airport, the undulating roof of the new Midfield Terminal giving Cruise a challenging new course to sprint.

In terms of sheer entertainment, the movie has plenty to offer. Editor Eddie Hamilton keeps his foot on the accelerator with breathless pacing, and cinematographer Fraser Taggart’s dynamic camerawork keeps the visuals fluid and exciting. Much of the propulsion is also due to Lorne Balfe’s pounding score, incorporating a thunderous remix of the classic Lalo Schifrin TV theme music.

For a series now well into its third decade — and continuing next summer with Dead Reckoning Part Two — Mission: Impossible has remained remarkably consistent, with ups and downs but never an outright dud. Some of us might lament the madly busy overplotting at the expense of more nuanced character and story development, but that’s endemic to Hollywood studio output these days, not just to this franchise. And as one of the few relatively grownup big-budget alternatives to comic-book superhero domination, I’ll take it.

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It begins with a plunge into the icy deep, where a submarine is menaced by an invisible threat — a scene that induces shivery memories of “The Hunt for Red October” and “Das Boot” (and also triggers inevitable thoughts of a certain ill-fated submersible ). Then it shifts to a hot orange desert, billed as Arabia though it might as well be Arrakis , where a dust-storm pursuit gives way to some tricky sleight-of-sand. Ludicrously entertaining and even more ludicrously titled, “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” doesn’t just rack up the miles in style. Like so many globe-trotting thrillers and big-screen tourist brochures, it’s also a gleaming advertisement for Hollywood itself, a celebration and a reminder of how profoundly the movies have shaped our views of the world.

The task of saving that world once again falls to Ethan Hunt, a.k.a. Tom Cruise — and if the world can’t be saved, well, maybe at least the movies can. Or can they? Even if not, just try and stop Cruise, now 61, from taking the weight of the entire industry on his shoulders. His gargantuan cine-savior complex was apparent back in 2020, when he railed against COVID protocol violators on the U.K. set of “Dead Reckoning Part One,” captured in an audio recording that did not exactly self-destruct in five seconds. If the rant was overblown, this actor-producer is hardly alone in having bought into his own mythos: Earlier this year, Cruise was praised by none other than Steven Spielberg for having single-handedly “saved Hollywood’s ass” with the stunning success of “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Now, on the eve of this seventh “M:I” caper’s release, Cruise is playing the familiar role of the exhibitors’ evangelist, urging audiences on social media to seek out some of the summer’s biggest titles ( “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”) in theaters. The cross-studio solidarity is touching; it also reflects some of the industry’s deep existential anxieties around moviemaking and moviegoing. No single picture, no matter how successful, is going to lay those anxieties to rest, though “Dead Reckoning Part One,” with its queasily apocalyptic stakes and enjoyably kinked-up plot, at least seems to be in conversation with some of the underlying issues. Is it a coincidence that this time around, the movie’s big bad villain is artificial intelligence?

That would be something called the “Entity” — no, not the horror-movie incubus that menaced Barbara Hershey back in 1982, but rather a frighteningly self-aware robo-weapon powerful enough to bring data systems, economies and entire nations to their knees. Ethan and his loyal Impossible Mission Force gizmo experts, Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), are tasked with neutralizing this threat before it falls into the hands of the wrong country — which, as the movie cynically asserts, pretty much means any country. Fortunately, the Entity hasn’t reached Skynet levels of techno-malevolence yet; presumably that’s still to come in “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two,” due out in theaters next year. For now, AI proves a frustratingly elusive phantom, one that acts primarily through a powerful human emissary, more devilish than angelic, named Gabriel (Esai Morales).

Flashbacks shed light on Gabriel and Ethan’s ugly, not always compelling history, which involves a confrontation, a betrayal and, surprise surprise, a beautiful dead woman. She’s a throwback to the many beautiful dead women from Ethan’s past, including three of his doomed IMF colleagues (played by Kristin Scott Thomas, Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė and Emmanuelle Béart) from the Brian De Palma-directed first “Mission: Impossible” feature (1996). Christopher McQuarrie, who directed the series’ two previous movies ( “Rogue Nation” and “Fallout” ) as well as both halves of “Dead Reckoning,” has a more restrained, less operatic visual style than De Palma (which could be said of most filmmakers). But in many respects he’s paying tribute to that 1996 caper, not only by staging a doozy of a runaway-train sequence, but also by reintroducing Ethan’s old IMF nemesis Eugene Kittridge, played once again by a banally sinister Henry Czerny.

Kittridge’s return can’t help but serve as a marker of how far Ethan, Cruise himself and this ever-durable series have come over nearly 30 years. It also suggests that the IMF, the utterly vital, eternally disavowable, brutally underloved bastard child of American intelligence, may not survive this latest and severest test of its abilities and resources. The “Dead” in the movie’s title certainly doesn’t bode well for anyone on-screen; neither does Ethan’s unnerving habit of reminding his closest colleagues that their survival means more to him than his own life. The sentiment may be cheesy, to the point where you half expect Ethan to pull off his latex mask and reveal Vin Diesel underneath. But it also reminds you that the “Mission: Impossible” movie franchise began with Ethan being framed for his teammates’ coolly premeditated murders, a formative trauma that he has never fully shaken off.

For the record:

10:50 a.m. July 5, 2023 An earlier version of this review said Tom Cruise’s character maneuvered a yellow Beetle through the streets of Rome in one scene. It was a yellow Fiat.

It’s enough to make you fear for Ethan’s closest allies, among them Luther, Benji and the always-on-the-run Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), all of whom are put in varying degrees of escalating danger as the typically serpentine narrative leaps from one spectacular piece of on-location fight choreography to the next. Notably, Ethan also finds himself a new sparring partner named Grace (a terrific Hayley Atwell), a wily thief who first pops up during an undercover operation at the Abu Dhabi airport before taking Ethan on a harrowing, sometimes hilarious ride (by yellow Fiat) through the streets of Rome. That Italian escapade soon leads to another in spooky nighttime Venice, where, in tight alleys and on haunted canals, the combat takes on a murderous close-quarters intimacy.

The quality of the action here is, for the most part, more fluid and satisfying than jaw-dropping; there’s nothing here to rival De Palma’s snazziest set pieces, or Ethan’s vertiginous climb up the walls of the Burj Khalifa in “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” (2011), or his men’s room demolition derby in 2018’s “Fallout.” But McQuarrie’s typically fastidious writing (undertaken this time with Erik Jendresen) makes up for whatever his direction may lack in sheer verve. And he does pull off one major cinematic coup: a triumphantly visceral, spatially disorienting, pull-out-the-stops ripsnorter of a climax that seems designed to ensure that no one dares set a movie aboard the Orient Express ever again, for fear of inviting unfavorable comparisons.

There’s more to the story, of course, which, though relatively fleeting at 163 minutes, feels generously overstuffed for a first-parter. I haven’t yet mentioned Pom Klementieff’s role as Paris, a lethally lithe newcomer of mysterious motives, killer threads and very few words. Or Vanessa Kirby, who, reprising her “Fallout” role as a ruthless arms dealer, has only to sit in a train car with a smartphone to deliver the movie’s single most impressive performance.

Maybe that’s unfair to Cruise, who once again suffers for our pleasure like no one else, hurling himself and his motorcycle from great heights, fighting in claustrophobically tight spaces and, yes, running and running and running some more. For all that, he knows how to temper his usual superhuman self-seriousness with lightness and wit. He’s even gracious enough to cede some of the spotlight to his co-stars this time around, spending a fair chunk of the movie’s endgame amusingly on the sidelines. He returns for the big-bang finish, of course, in a spirit of goofy optimism and eternal vigilance. “Dead Reckoning Part One” ends on his watch, but the movies will not.

‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One’

Rating: PG-13, for intense sequences of violence and action, some language and suggestive material

Running time: 2 hours, 43 minutes

Playing: Starts July 12 in general release

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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The Extravagant Treats of “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One”

By Anthony Lane

Like the beat, beat, beat of the tomtom, a pounding of the drums tells us that another installment of “ Mission: Impossible ” is under way. Most of us know the trills and thrills of Lalo Schifrin’s original score, which remains the most exciting theme tune ever composed for TV. (Paddling furiously in its wake is that of “Hawaii Five-O.”) For the ensuing movie franchise, the tune has been repeatedly stretched and tweaked—or, in the case of the second film, lacerated by Limp Bizkit. Now, as the seventh chapter of the saga begins, we hear no melody at all: nothing but the rhythm, thudding forth. But it’s enough. We brace ourselves, and adopt the Mission position. Here we go.

The new movie, which is directed by Christopher McQuarrie, runs for two hours and forty-three minutes, and its full title is “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One,” which takes about half an hour to say. If Part Two, which is due to be released next June, is of similar dimensions, we’ll be landed with a tale that is more than five hours in the telling. Concision junkies will have to look elsewhere. The first sign of swelling, in this latest adventure, comes with a gathering of U.S. intelligence personnel, which goes on and on. It’s eventually halted by a guy who throws smoke bombs around, unleashing clouds of pretty green gas—a mild surprise to those present, who were presumably expecting coffee and a selection of pastries, but by this stage any interruption is welcome.

The topic of the meeting is the Entity, which is discussed at such length, and in tones of such grandiloquent awe, that I understood it even less at the end than I did at the start. In the world of “Mission: Impossible,” villainy gets bigger and more abstract by the movie. In “ Rogue Nation ” (2015), we had the Syndicate. In “Fallout” (2018), we had the Apostles. Now we get the Entity. (What next? The Intimation? The Word in Your Ear?) It seems to be a species of A.I.—“an enemy that is everywhere and nowhere,” we hear, with “a mind of its own.” Access to it is granted by a cruciform key, in two sections; collect the pair, slot ’em together, and the Entity lies within your grasp. Any government or terrorist outfit possessing it will wield unquenchable power, and the one person who can stop it from slipping into evil hands is, of course, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), Frodo Baggins having taken early retirement.

Ethan assembles his usual gang, consisting of Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), who has been on call since the first “Mission: Impossible” (1996), and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg). Also in the mix is Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who made her début in “Rogue Nation.” To my eyes, it was with the arrival of Ferguson that the franchise truly took flight; her manner was tranquil even at the height of tension, her character’s fealty was elusive, and she was splendidly unimpressed by the hero. That impressed him. Make no mistake, Cruise is in control of these movies—“A Tom Cruise Production,” the opening credits of “Dead Reckoning” announce—but he has the wit to realize how dreary that dominance would become if Ethan were not, at regular intervals, unmanned by women.

Hence the amazing Grace (Hayley Atwell). She is a thief, whom Ethan bumps into at the Abu Dhabi airport. The thing about bumping into Grace is that, post-bump, you will find yourself bereft of valuables, for her fingers are feather-light. Although she has a sheaf of passports, like Jason Bourne, she is new to mayhem, never mind to brutality, and Atwell does a lovely job of suggesting that Grace’s natural state is one of criminal innocence—wide-eyed yet without a flake of ditziness, and far too schooled in common sense to be a femme fatale. Observe how she pauses, with a frown of uncertainty, before putting on one of those rubber masks which more seasoned habitués of “Mission: Impossible,” when switching identities, don and doff like gloves. Ever practical, she ties her hair back before clambering onto the outside of a speeding train, and, as she and Ethan are harried through Roman streets by multiple vehicles, exclaims, “Is there anyone not chasing us?” An excellent question. The chase concludes with a merry plea. “Don’t hate me,” she says, leaving Ethan bewitched, bothered, and be-handcuffed to a steering wheel. Nice.

The cuffs are a Hitchcockian clue, and the whole movie is clamorous with echoes of earlier works. (“Dead Reckoning” was a Humphrey Bogart thriller from 1947—tangled, surly, and steeped in postwar bitterness.) On the trusty comic principle that huge blockbusters deserve dinky modes of transport, Ethan and Grace scoot through Rome in a Fiat 500, the color of ripe lemons, recalling Roger Moore’s Citroën 2CV in “For Your Eyes Only” (1981), or, indeed, the tuk-tuk driven to exhaustion by Harrison Ford in the latest “ Indiana Jones .” The climax of McQuarrie’s film, set on and atop a train, alludes with pride to the first “Mission: Impossible” and winds up saluting “The General” (1926), Buster Keaton’s runaway masterpiece, as a locomotive takes a deep dive through a broken bridge.

Cruise has none of Keaton’s dreamy stoicism, but both actors, trim and compact, define themselves by the outsized magnificence of their stunts. In addition, each of them is most at ease when in haste. They run unstoppably yet with an oddly formal poise—torso held upright, like that of a waiter with a tray, above the pumping pistons of their legs. Watch Keaton sprint along the crest of a hill, a century ago, in the finale of “Seven Chances,” or Cruise in full flow on the roof of an airport, in “Dead Reckoning.” Relentlessness of this order ought to be chilling. Not so. Instead, we are stirred and amused by a preternatural sight: men as little machines.

There is a devout podcast, “Light the Fuse,” which peruses “Mission: Impossible” in all its incarnations. Should you wish to hear an interview—nay, a two-part interview—with a former marketing intern on the third film, here is your opportunity. As the podcast approaches its two-hundred-and-fortieth episode, one has to ask: why do these movies continue to suck us in? Perhaps because they are as fetishistic as their fans. Precision is everything. I have lost count of the objects, friendly and hostile, that click, lock, or shunt into place. The bass flute that turned into an assassin’s rifle, in “Rogue Nation,” somehow stood for the cunningly wrought design of the entire narrative. Likewise, on a larger scale, the main attraction of “Dead Reckoning” is a motorbike-and-parachute leap that was previewed, unpacked, and explained online, many months ago, the purpose being to demonstrate that Cruise, the nerveless and unfading star, had performed the maneuver himself. Here is a motion picture equipped with auto-spoilers, eager to stress that at the heart of its fantasy lies something risky and real.

It was after “Rogue Nation” that I searched my conscience and discovered, as I sorted through the rubble, that I was looking forward with greater gusto to the next helping of “Mission: Impossible” than I was to the upcoming James Bond. For somebody reared on 007, this was tantamount to apostasy. I felt like a mid-Victorian Protestant admitting, in shame and confusion, to the lure of the Catholic faith. The change of allegiance was merely hardened by “No Time to Die,” the most recent Bond flick, in 2021, which foundered in an agony of self-involvement. Who wants a hero who expires under the sheer weight of backstory? Where’s the fun in that?

By contrast, retrospection has played a blessedly small part in the emotional legend of Ethan Hunt. We gaze back, in remembrance of stunts past—“Oh, my God, that bit in the fourth one where he climbed a skyscraper with magnetic suckers on his mitts,” and so on. Ethan’s own impulse, though, is forever onward, and to complain that his character lacks depth is to misinterpret the laws of dramatic physics. He is mass times velocity plus grin. If he has a history, it tends to self-destruct from film to film; which of us honestly remembers, let alone cares, that he got married in “Mission: Impossible III” (2006)? Does he remember? That’s why the plot of “Dead Reckoning” is a cause for concern—not because of the metaphysical fluff (“Whoever controls the Entity controls the truth”) but because of Gabriel (Esai Morales), a smooth devil who craves the cruciform key. Thirty years ago, apparently, he crossed paths with Ethan, who declares, “In a very real sense, he made me who I am today.” I don’t like the sound of that. Let us pray that Part Two will not require Ethan to follow the example of poor 007, forsaking crazy capers to lick his psychological wounds.

For now, how does Part One stack up? Well, as I say, it’s too talky by half. A funky soirée at the Doge’s Palace, in Venice, brings together Ethan, Ilsa, Gabriel, Grace, and the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), the arms dealer with a hypnotizing stare whom we first encountered in “Fallout.” All the interested parties, in other words, yet the result is just not interesting; I vaguely hoped that Miss Marple would show up, reveal the killer’s name, and hit the dance floor. Soon afterward, a fight breaks out in an alleyway, during which Ethan beats a woman’s head against a wall—a spasm of nastiness that has no place in a saga as strangely anesthetized as “Mission: Impossible.” There isn’t the faintest shudder of sex in “Dead Reckoning,” so why does McQuarrie allow such violence to sour the spirited action?

But let’s be fair. Despite its longueurs and shortcomings, this movie is still a bag of extravagant treats. A submarine attacked by an invisible foe beneath the Arctic ice. A grand piano suspended directly over Ethan and Grace, and prevented from dropping only by a slowly weakening clamp. Rebecca Ferguson wearing a sniper’s eye patch. A nuclear bomb that asks the person trying to defuse it whether he is afraid of death. And, best of all, in Rome, the Fiat 500 rocking and rolling down the Spanish Steps—which, as we are charmingly assured in the closing credits, were not harmed in the making of the film. Thank God. Or thank Tom Cruise. The choice is yours. ♦

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By Rebecca Mead

By Helen Rosner

• Entertainment
• Tom Cruise Is Doing the Most to Try to Save the Movies in the New <i>Mission Impossible</i>

Tom Cruise Is Doing the Most to Try to Save the Movies in the New Mission Impossible

A t the end of the apocalypse, after the sun has fried every flower and tree, as the last skyscraper turns to dust, when each extant cockroach has gone belly-up with x’es for eyes, there will be one man standing tall, or somewhat tall: Tom Cruise is forever, and if that idea may have seemed mortifying 40-odd years ago, when he was mugging his way through thinly disguised navy recruitment ads or grinning and grinding in his skivvies to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll,” it’s more palatable now. Cruise has never been a great or subtle actor, but he has grown into a perfectly watchable one , and that has come to mean more at a time when the movies are shrinking, literally and metaphorically. He’s the star attraction of the seventh Mission: Impossible film, Dead Reckoning Part One, and he carries the film ably on his back, along with his always-at-the-ready parachute. Cruise, still in love with what big mainstream movies used to be, has become a chivalric dreamer, striving to ensure their survival by sheer will. Maybe he can pull it off and maybe he can’t. But at least there’s some pleasure to be had in watching him try.

If you’re fond of MacGuffins, you’ll love Dead Reckoning Part One, whose central thingie is a two-piece key that can be used to control an instance of artificial intelligence gone rogue, a manmade smarty-pants that has beehived into an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful entity known, cleverly, as the Entity. Basically, it’s all just an excuse for Cruise—returning as Impossible Mission Force veteran Ethan Hunt—to do stuff like ride motorcycles off cliffs and drive teeny-tiny cars down Rome’s Spanish Steps. Cruise’s devotion to practical action and his insistence on doing most of his own stunts, many of them quite dangerous, are already the stuff of legend, or at least a bunch of press releases, and it’s not giving too much away to say that the plot of Dead Reckoning Part One —directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who has been pulling the franchise’s various strings and levers since 2015’s Rogue Nation —is virtually unfollowable after about the first third. The story exists only as flimsy interstitial tissue between the Tom-centric stunts, but maybe that’s enough. Ostensibly greater movies have given us less.

All you need to know going in, really, is that every woman for whom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt expresses even the tiniest bit of affection is doomed. But not right away, which means that Dead Reckoning brings back Rebecca Ferguson’s silky-steely Ilsa Faust, of the most engaging characters from the franchise’s last two entries, Fallout (2018) and Rogue Nation (2015) . She, apparently, has one-half of the much-desired-by-many-parties key, which makes her a target of, well, everybody: We first see in her in the corner of the world where she’s been hiding out, the Arabian Desert near Yemen. Ethan shows up on horseback, a dazzling sight wrapped in scarves and goggles designed to shield him from the swirly, sandy wind. There’s an encounter, and an event. Shortly thereafter, the action shifts to IMF headquarters (“the other IMF,” as one character quips wryly), where zillions of workers in suits are rushing to make hard copies of digital information—on typewriters. You could make a whole movie about that and plenty of people would be happy, but admittedly, it would be rather low on action.

As it is, the action in Dead Reckoning zips from the desert to the office to Rome to Venice to the Austrian Alps—the locations alone are transportive, even if the plot is a mess. Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames return as Ethan’s sidekicks Benji and Luther, and the three of them make almost as many solemn pronouncements about loyalty and family and friendship as Vin Diesel does in the Fast and Furious movies. Ethan stands by his team; he’s willing, he reminds us more than once, to die for them, and that includes any newbie who might enter the fold. In this case, that would be Hayley Atwell’s Grace, a pickpocket extraordinaire and sleight-of-hand expert who, at any given point in the movie, may or may not have the all-important half-key. The point is to keep it out of the hands of Ethan’s adversaries, which include Vanessa Kirby’s Alanna, AKA the White Widow, and an acrobatic assassin, Paris, played by Pom Klementieff. Ethan’s biggest enemy, though, is evil silver fox Gabriel (Esai Morales), who seeks the key to unleash chaos upon the world. Or something.

And the stunts! Isn’t that really what it’s all about? They include, but are not limited to, a gorgeously staged duel between Faust and Gabriel, set on a slender Venetian bridge: Faust wears a silky topcoat whose tails whirl about her as her sword slashes through the air, intensifying the already intense aura of Venetian mystery and drama. There is that business with the almost-miniature vintage Fiat 500 and the Spanish Steps, though rest assured, no Spanish Steps were harmed in the making of this film. The movie’s last third or so takes place in and around—but also, of course, atop—the Orient Express as it steams through the Alps. That section, already detailed in promotional videos for the film, also features Cruise speedflying—not to be confused with skydiving—over jagged mountain terrain. It’s beautiful, and it does look pretty dangerous.

Cruise has invested a great deal of emotional energy in making sure we know it’s really him doing these stunts, and you can’t blame him. In a green-screen movie world, where the idea of excitement, if not the thing itself, can be filled in long after filming is done, it’s rare to be able to watch a human being move like this. Cruise is muscular, feisty, nimble—but he does have bones, like everyone else, and those bones are now 61 years old. He’s the last survivor of his generation of action stars. Nicolas Cage and Bruce Willis have moved on, by necessity or choice, but Cruise still wants to do some version of what he has always done, whether it’s flying, running, or wrestling down random baddies on top of a moving train. Ethan Hunt is a grave presence—a recurring flashback in Dead Reckoning features snippets of a murder that looms large in his psyche, apparently influencing his every move. But Cruise doesn’t have a naturally grave persona; he has to work at it, and so he does.

At a certain point in Dead Reckoning, Ethan is required to smile at one of the women in his orbit. She has just said something nice to him, or about him, and he must respond appropriately. So he stiffens his jaw ever so slightly, and his eyes crinkle like those of a painted Santa. This expression of veiled gratitude, of being a sturdy guy who knows it’s better not to show much emotion, takes some effort, and you can see Cruise working to deliver. But even this not-quite-a-smile takes muscle and nerve. Think of it as a microstunt, less dangerous, certainly, than riding a motorcycle off a cliff, but a bit of risky business in its own right.

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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One review – Tom Cruise does it better

Seven films in and nothing about M:I, from the star’s incredible stunt skills to the silly-serious tone, is showing any sign of slowing down

A lready, the keynote stunt has become a legend: the one on the poster, the one he reportedly did – for real – six times in one day before he was satisfied. Tom Cruise’s compact body floats free of the motorbike as it drops to Earth from between his diamond-hard thighs, having launched him with a throaty roar off an unfeasibly high cliff-edge; he sails through the sky, pulls the ripcord on a nifty little parachute, and swoops down towards … the speeding Orient Express, fully intent on the traditional carriage-top punch-up. We gasped in the audience. Someone behind me went: “Oh shi-i-i …” Carly Simon should have come in with a new song: Fair Enough, Somebody Does It Better.

This outrageously enjoyable spectacle has compelled my awestruck assent with its sheer stamina, scale and brio: the seventh in the Mission: Impossible action franchise with Cruise starring as Ethan Hunt, the mysterious, superfit leader of a top-secret intelligence/combat unit called the Impossible Mission Force, brought in by a shadowy US government agency when they want deniable stuff doing. Their initials of course are IMF, and in this film they finally get round to doing the gag about them not being the International Monetary Fund, the one we reviewers have been doing for years.

Seven films! Daniel Craig got sick of 007 after just five. But at 61, Cruise looks better than ever and pretty much wedded to the IMF. Other actors his age might be turning to offbeat character turns, but Cruise was doing those for Paul Thomas Anderson and Michael Mann 20 years ago. The M:I series is his vocation, and Cruise has single-handedly persuaded us that the action genre has a new respectability and purpose: the box-office saviour of the live cinema experience. But I can’t help wondering: does he have an exit strategy for this franchise? Like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, this film is split into two parts, and Cruise does a fair bit of talking here about his friends and what he might sacrifice for them. Should we be worried about the end of Part Two?

In this film, as in so many in the past, evil forces are trying to get hold of a MacGuffiny object which will permit them to control/destroy the world, and Ethan and the gang are the only people to stop them. There is some tremendous stunt work, including a wacky Italian Job-style chase around Rome in a titchy little yellow Fiat, the biggest train scenes since Paddington 2 and some very impressive horsemanship from Cruise in the Arabian desert – in his headdress he is the seventh pillar of hunkiness. A very tense opening sequence aboard a Russian sub called the Sebastopol – its associations with Crimea being perhaps a rebuke to Putinist chauvinism – introduces us to a certain bejewelled cruciform key, split into two; this is the oddly low-tech object whose owner, having reunited the halves, can master a new and terrifying form of AI, a self-replicating digital consciousness with the capacity to invade any operating system in the world. Already the genie is emerging from the bottle.

Ethan assembles his crew: there is quirky Benji, played by Simon Pegg, whose purpose is often to direct the boss from afar as he races around various terrains, and Ving Rhames as Luther, his supposed best mate (although they never seem particularly close). Rebecca Ferguson returns as ex-MI6 operative Ilsa, and Vanessa Kirby is back as the arms dealer White Widow who had a moment with Ethan in the last film. Pom Klementieff is a badass martial-arts expert intent on bringing down Ethan at the behest of Hunt’s scary nemesis Gabriel (Esai Morales), while Hayley Atwell brings her English sang-froid to the role of Grace, a criminal who meets-cute with Ethan and becomes a gutsy part of the team.

Of course, we have the traditional analogue-era scenes of Cruise sprinting, as well as the rubber masks, with a new comedy emphasis on people suspiciously tugging at people’s faces to see if they are for real – although a slightly goofy plot quirk at one stage requires Benji’s plastic-mask-fabricating machine, a bit like a waffle maker, to go terribly wrong.

In the past I have been agnostic and a naysayer about M:I, but the pure fun involved in this film, its silly-serious alchemy, and the way the franchise seems to strain at something crazily bigger with every film, as opposed to just winding down, is something to wonder at.

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Cruise control: An homage to the relentless reliability of 'Mission: Impossible'

Linda Holmes

Tom Cruise returns again (and again, and again, and again) as Ethan Hunt in the latest Mission: Impossible film — Dead Reckoning Part One. Christian Black/Paramount Pictures and Skydance hide caption

Tom Cruise returns again (and again, and again, and again) as Ethan Hunt in the latest Mission: Impossible film — Dead Reckoning Part One.

More than Marvel or DC, more than Jurassic World , maybe even more than James Bond with its revolving 007s, the Mission: Impossible franchise runs on its ability to meet expectations. Not just any expectations — high expectations. People go in wanting top-flight action, beautiful locations, a modest amount of melancholy character business about Ethan Hunt's mounting personal losses, Tom Cruise doing a lot of his own stunts, and an uncomplicated story in which a bad guy has (or wants) something and a good guy has to go get it. And that's exactly what they get.

And unlike Fast & Furious , this franchise hasn't shape-shifted over and over. It has remained remarkably stable at its core, despite taking several films to settle on writer-director Christopher McQuarrie and changing up the women in Hunt's life every movie or two.

'Mission: Impossible' is back, but will you accept it, or will it self-destruct?

It is axiomatic even within this universe that the idea of the government's underground "Impossible Mission Force" is absurd; the films have even started having characters comment on it. It also seems unlikely that Hunt would be forever on the edge of being disowned and deemed a traitor, given that no human being has ever been forced to demonstrate his trustworthiness so many times. If there were really a spy like Hunt — he flies helicopters! he climbs skyscrapers! he does close-up magic! — you have to assume he would be popular with spy leadership instead of constantly seeming like he's at risk of a negative performance review. But these things are utterly unimportant, because I know them going in, and the fact that they make no sense (and repeat over and over) is a given.

In fact, I'm not sure anything has ever really surprised me in one of these movies, which might seem contradictory given that they are, in part, "thrillers." By the time an M:I guy who has seemed to be a good guy is revealed as a stealth bad guy, you've probably spent a good amount of time thinking, "Who's the stealth bad guy in this movie? Oh, I bet it's him." There don't tend to be complex motivations behind any of what happens; the villains are generally just kind of international dirtbags who have something they shouldn't. A list, a bioweapon (twice!), some launch codes, some data and of course, the sentimental favorite: big shiny balls of plutonium. In the case of the new installment Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , the battle is over two halves of a key that, in some gauzily defined way, can be combined to stop a godlike AI spoken of only as ... The Entity.

This all probably sounds like criticism, and it emphatically is not. Talking about the predictability or thinness of a story in a Mission: Impossible movie is like talking about the nutrition information on a box of Pop-Tarts — if you were focused on this aspect of the thing you are about to consume, you would have chosen something else. The story of The Entity is somehow vague and overexplained, not to mention unpleasantly adjacent to a kind of "tech as replacement for an all-knowing God" attitude that the movie doesn't actually care about, and that it doesn't really give the audience much reason to care about either. And that turns out to be completely fine.

Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One . Christian Black/Paramount Pictures and Skydance hide caption

Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One .

Because what Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One cares about is jumping a motorcycle off a mountain and then creating, though its marketing, an entire sub-narrative about the 60+ action star who trained to do the stunt himself and shot it on day one so they wouldn't waste any money if he died . What it cares about is a train dangling from a mountain. A car chase that is as witty and inventive as any you'll see anywhere. A fabulous race through an airport full of glass walls. Refreshing the cast with a woman as charming as Hayley Atwell, who is wonderfully entertaining as a scrappy pickpocket named Grace. Relying on Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, as Benji and Luther, to anchor the Impossible Mission Force team.

Movie Reviews

Tom cruise hangs on for dear life to his 'mission' to save the movies.

The biggest problem (if there is one) with Dead Reckoning is not its story, per se, but how much time it spends explaining it. It's worth noting that, as with action blockbusters generally, these films have gotten longer ... and longer ... and longer. At around two hours and 45 minutes, Dead Reckoning is roughly an hour longer than the original Mission: Impossible . It tries heroically to avoid dragging by featuring such genuinely exciting and inventive action sequences. But two hours and 45 minutes is a long time to sit in a seat having your needs met, and every time the film slows down to discuss (1) The Entity (a term that sounds sillier and sillier with repetition), (2) the keys, where they've been, and what they may open, or (3) the entire concept of a godlike AI and what it might be able to do, it gets a little ... well, fast-forwardable for future home viewers.

But again, this is what one expects. It is film as both exquisitely crafted entertainment and ruthless consumerism, fulfilling the order made at the counter with the certainty of fast-food fries that will always be the same – and will always be good.

There is some cost to this. For whatever reason, Mission: Impossible avoids the questions that are so often asked about Marvel movies in particular, about what Ryan Coogler or Chloé Zhao would be doing if they weren't making superhero movies, or about what the actors would be doing if they weren't tied into these franchises for years. Tom Cruise has mostly stopped doing the more intimate projects in comedy and drama that he did earlier in his career; he's a three-time acting Oscar nominee who pretty much does just action blockbusters now. He seems thrilled and delighted to be in this half-actor half-stuntman lane, and at 61, that's certainly his right. But there doesn't seem to be, for instance, another Magnolia in his future.

I do worry that having one's expectations precisely met – neither exceeded nor even simply upended – is becoming the only way to get people into theaters. Yes, perhaps we will take a risk for something at home that we can always turn off if we don't like it. But to get audiences to a theater, does a film need to be a sequel or a piece of IP or a franchise like this that delivers and satisfies, as neatly as a bed with hospital corners? There are signs that we're not quite there yet; Everything Everywhere All at Once did great, for instance, and an expectation-meeter it was not. But I worry about the longer-term difficulty of getting people into theaters to see something more ... well, more weird (not that all the Entity talk doesn't get a little weird).

Seeing a movie that is so very good at doing what it promises drives home that point that it takes both movies that do what they promise and movies that do something you couldn't have anticipated to make up an industry that thrives.

This piece also appeared in NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what's making us happy.

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Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Reviews: Critics Share Strong First Reactions

Fans now know critics' initial reactions from the first official screenings of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 .

Paramount is set to bring the longest Mission: Impossible movie to date with Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible 7 , serving as the first of a two-part finale for this 27-year-old action saga.

Featuring an incredible cast of actors with credits in other massive blockbuster franchises, Tom Cruise looks to bring the heat with Ethan Hunt for a seventh time before the franchise officially ends in 2024.

Mission Impossible 7 Earns Rave Critic Reviews

But how are critics reacting to the first Mission: Impossible outing in five years?

Critics took to social media to share their first reactions to Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 after the movie had its world premiere event.

Screen Rant's Joe Deckelmeier called this his new favorite movie from the series, offering plenty of praise to franchise newcomer Hayley Atwell in the process:

"'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning' this phenomenal! Hayley Atwell STEALS ever scene she’s in. This is now my favorite 'Mission: Impossible' film. With the AI being the villain, this feels like a cautionary tale. The action had my heart rate elevated. That train scene is mind blowing!"

Collider's Steven Weintraub described Mission Impossible 7 as "incredible" and "one of the best films" he's seen in 2023, noting that fans need to see it on the big screen if possible:

"'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning' is incredible. The fastest 2 hr 30 min movie I’ve seen in a long time. One of the best films I’ve seen this year and Tom Cruise has done it again. Demands to be seen on the biggest screen. Cannot recommend this movie enough."

Weintraub was also surprised at how much he enjoyed Atwell's performance, calling her "a fantastic addition" to the Mission: Impossible movies:

"Big surprise was how much I loved Hayley Atwell in the film. I’ve always been a fan but she is a fantastic addition to the franchise and is a HUGE part of the movie."

BackstageOL described the sequel as "a culmination of the highlights" of everything in the series so far while also being a perfect set-up for its 2024 sequel

"Can confirm.... 'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning' is a PURE ADRENALINE RUSH!! 'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning' feels like a culmination of the highlights in the 'MI' series while delivering on the important story beats and sets up part 2 BEAUTIFULLY! The action set pieces will BLOW YOUR MIND"

Collider's Perri Nemiroff called Mission Impossible 7 "another winner for the franchise" and highlighted how good the production value and set pieces were, praising the way the team "[captured] things in camera" visually:

"'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - Part 1' is another winner for the franchise. Yet again, the production value is THROUGH THE ROOF with some of the most well-defined and exhilarating set pieces photographed in ways that truly make you feel like you’re in the middle of the action. The emphasis on capturing things in camera makes a HUGE difference, and you can feel it. Also really dug the mission this time around and how the technology they’re after factors into the characters' individual arcs."

Nemiroff continued to praise Cruise and Atwell's performances, along with Rebecca Ferguson, teasing a scene with Ferguson and Cruise that "had [her] in tears [from] laughing so much" while celebrating the 2-hour-43-minute epic:

"Tom Cruise is A+ as always and Rebecca Ferguson continues to be a favorite, but franchise newcomer Hayley Atwell wound up being the MAJOR standout for me. She can do it all. Action, comedy, a capable hero in many respects while trying to get her sea legs in others. One of the most captivating performances/arcs, and just a hugely enjoyable character to watch. She’s got a scene with Tom that involves a Fiat 500 that truly had me in tears I was laughing so much. One more set piece shoutout — there’s a particular scene within the sequence on the train that had my jaw on the floor. 2 hours and 43 minutes that I will happily watch over and over.

Uproxx's Mike Ryan gave props to director Christopher McQuarrie for his "ambitious examination of/meditation on AI" as it shines a light on how the technology may affect the real world :

"'MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE' works as Christopher McQuarrie’s ambitious examination of/meditation on AI and the dangerous path we might be on. (He doesn’t like it) With the inherent nature of being “part one” (said that a lot lately), not as satisfying as 'FALLOUT'"

Gizmondo's Germain Lussier saw Mission Impossible 7 as a "dynamite, timely story" with an excellent cast of characters, and he teased that the film's final set piece is one of the top three moments in franchise history:

"'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1' is fantastic. Dynamite, timely story. Excellent new characters. Huge variety of action and a final set piece that ranks top 2-3 all-time for the franchise. It gets a little dense at times but its pace & intensity more than cover that.

Fandango's Erik Davis "had the absolute best time" with this new movie, complimenting the sequel for feeling complete while also leaving fans "dying for what comes next:"

"I had the absolute best time watching 'Mission: Impossible' - an impeccably made action film that does not stop entertaining. Each action sequence is long, crazy & intense. The story is big & sprawling, but I like how it both felt complete & left you dying for what comes next"

Davis also praised "the Rome chase & the train sequence" as his favorite parts of the movie, offering specific praise to Pom Klementieff for playing "a wicked villain with a cool arc:"

"I watched 'Mission: Impossible' in a Dolby house, and DAMN! The sound on this thing is incredible - fav parts are the Rome chase & the train sequence. Biggest scene stealer goes to Pom Klementieff, who plays a wicked villain with a cool arc. Pom having a great summer!"

The Wrap's Umberto Gonzalez added his own praise for the set pieces and the villain, urging fans to see this movie on an IMAX screen for the full experience:

"'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning' is FANTASTIC with insane set pieces & a very timely villain. It demands that you see it in IMAX."

The Ankler's Jeff Sneider felt Mission Impossible 7 didn't have the same emotion that made Cruise's work in Top Gun: Maverick great, also hinting at some minor issues with the villain's backstory and "Ethan’s rushed bond w/ [Hayley Atwell's] Grace:"

"'MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7' is VERY good, though it lacks the emotion that made 'MAVERICK' great. The climactic train sequence is AWESOME & the entire cast RULES, from my man Tom Cruise to the great Shea Whigham. There are 2 minor issues: Villain backstory & Ethan’s rushed bond w/Grace."

Will Mission Impossible 7 Be a Hit For Fans?

With Tom Cruise fighting for Mission Impossible 7 to get its shine in as many premium theaters as possible, these reviews certainly mark a great start for the latest entry in his spy/thriller saga.

And even though it will face plenty of stiff competition this summer, coming two weeks after Indiana Jones 5 and one week before both Barbie and Oppenheimer , the MI7 team likes its chances to be a hit this summer blockbuster season.

While none of the Mission: Impossible movies have broken $800 million at the global box office , almost every film has surpassed the totals of the one before it, with 2018's Mission: Impossible - Fallout ranking at the top with nearly $787 million.

And with Cruise still riding the immense highs he earned from Top Gun: Maverick , which is currently the 12th-highest-grossing movie ever made , he could have a real shot at making waves this summer with yet another legacy series.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 will hit theaters on July 10.

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New 'Mission: Impossible' is the freshest movie in multiplexes right now

A couple of weeks ago, the abysmal “ Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ” provided a depressing overview of everything wrong with modern blockbusters, exhuming America’s favorite archeologist for an indifferently staged, crushingly cynical exercise in forced nostalgia and corporate brand extension. Film critic turned filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once said that the best way to criticize a movie is by making another movie, and as a welcome corrective to “Indy” and the rest of this summer’s rash of sludgy, unasked-for sequels, along comes “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” to show us how these things are supposed to be done.

The irony should not be lost on anyone that the freshest movie in multiplexes right now is the seventh installment of a decades-old franchise based on a 1960s television program. But as its star reminded us last summer , “It’s not the plane, it’s the pilot.” The tireless Tom Cruise and company have outdone themselves again. This is a preposterously entertaining picture, pulling off stunts that have never been seen before onscreen. Crisply shot in beautiful locations with elaborately clever action scenes that are ludicrous in conception and even better when they pay off, it’s a gloriously extravagant and luxuriantly silly movie.

Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt, the go-get-'em superspy whose can-do recklessness saves the world time and again. In the fifth film, Alec Baldwin’s obstreperous department director memorably referred to him as “the living manifestation of destiny.” This time, Shea Whigham’s amusingly exasperated fellow agent calls Hunt “a mind-reading, shape-shifting incarnation of chaos.” The point of all this purple prose is that our hero doesn’t often wait for orders to follow, especially now that the planet is endangered by the sinister whims of a sentient artificial intelligence program known only as The Entity.

The subtext is a semiotician’s dream: Analog Tom versus an evil algorithm. The Entity has infiltrated and corrupted all the usual high-tech tools of spycraft, so Hunt and his pals are stuck doing everything the old-fashioned way. Their dilemma doubles as a declaration of principles for Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie, who famously eschew CGI trickery and modern moviemaking shortcuts in favor of practical stunts and classical craftsmanship. The rows of manual typewriters transcribing sensitive CIA files and the sleight of hand, close-up magic tricks performed by the actors are indicative of the movie’s old-school ethos. The Entity is Cruise’s ultimate adversary because it’s capable of manipulating the reality we perceive through all of our screens, while the star has spent the past dozen years putting himself at considerable personal risk to make us believe our eyes.

He wasn’t still supposed to be doing this. It’s easy to forget how far Cruise’s star had fallen back in the mid-2000s when his strange couch-jumping escapades on “Oprah” and bizarre, Scientology-fueled feuds with Brooke Shields and Matt Lauer had alienated his longtime fanbase. (Though Cruise turned out to be right about the “Today Show” host.) Paramount head Sumner Redstone famously fired him in 2006, temporarily banning the star from the studio lot following the commercial disappointment and artistic failure of J.J. Abrams’ crummy “Mission: Impossible III,” the lowest-grosser of the series and still one of the cheapest-looking $150 million movies ever made.

The mandate for 2011’s “Ghost Protocol” was for Cruise’s Ethan Hunt to retire and pass the torch to series newcomer Jeremy Renner, then white-hot off “The Hurt Locker.” Instead, Cruise brought on McQuarrie to rewrite the script during production and clawed back control of the franchise by executing one of the most spectacular stunt sequences in modern movies — dangling a hundred stories high from Dubai’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper with a gasp-inducing “holy crap, that’s really him” verisimilitude. McQuarrie and “The Incredibles” director Brad Bird reconfigured the series into an intricately slapsticky “Spy Vs. Spy” cartoon, with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt envisioned as a Nietzschean Übermensch pitted against the laws of physics. A star was reborn when Jerry Maguire became the American Jackie Chan, and Cruise stuck with the winning formula for the following three "Missions,” plus an upcoming eighth installment, all directed by McQuarrie. (“Dead Reckoning Part One” is dedicated to the late Sumner Redstone, “Film fan and friend,” so I guess there were no hard feelings.)

The series is now far enough along to be able to kid its own tropes with gags about just how often Ethan and his pals end up going rogue. If the original inspiration was to be the USA's 007, “Dead Reckoning Part One” finds our secret agent firmly in his Roger Moore era, staying just barely on the right side of self-parody with underplayed aplomb. We spend so much time talking about his compulsion to risk his life for our entertainment that I think people take for granted what a witty performer Cruise is. He has a shrewd sense of economy, understanding exactly how much to give the camera and that a quick glance with his arched eyebrows can serve as a comedic pressure relief valve for the audience during a grueling action scene. (He looks like he can’t believe he’s surviving this stuff, either.) I felt like the last “Mission: Impossible” movie, 2016’s “Fallout,” was missing that sense of humor, almost dour in its attempts to give Ethan an inner life. Hunt has never been an interesting character. We’re here to watch him run.

Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg are back as his trusty tech support sidekicks, though their computer skills are fairly useless in the face of The Entity. The key to shutting down this digital monster is, quite humorously, an actual little gold key. Hunt and his crew are tracking the item when it’s pickpocketed by a professional thief (Haley Atwell) hired by Vanessa Kirby’s international arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis, who too-briefly appeared in the previous picture. (Kirby’s playing the daughter of the character played by Vanessa Redgrave in Brian De Palma’s original 1996 “Mission: Impossible,” and has a similar way of looking at Cruise like she’s about to sink her teeth into a juicy steak.) Esai Morales shows up as a dashing, devilish assassin from Ethan’s past, now working on behalf of The Entity, assisted by a silent swordswoman (Pom Klementieff) wearing Daryl Hannah’s “Blade Runner” makeup. Unimpressed by all of them is Henry Czerny’s Eugene Kitteridge, the expertly sour agency head from the first film, who, 27 years later, still says the name “Hunt” like it’s a swear.

A lot of characters are coming and going in this film. Cruise and McQuarrie like to shoot their action scenes first and write the story as they go along. (The two even shut down production on 2015’s “Rogue Nation” for a week or so until they could come up with a better ending.) The ungainly plotting of “Dead Reckoning Part One” occasionally shows the seams of such an approach. Pegg’s character brushes them off by saying  —partially as a reminder to the audience — that “details tend to get in the way.” But he's got a point. Best to sit back and let it wash over you, savoring the lush locations and exquisitely tailored costumes. The pleasures of these films are in their propulsive energy and fluidity of bodies navigating tactile physical spaces. (Cruise has said he shows his stunt team “Singin’ in the Rain” for inspiration, trying to conjure the joy of movement that Gene Kelly inspired in him as a kid.) If you really need a story synopsis: A number of extremely attractive people in very expensive clothes are trying to get their hands on that key.

And good lord, what lengths they go to! A car chase through the cobblestone streets of Rome in a tiny yellow Fiat builds to “Blues Brothers” proportions. It seems like everybody in Italy is after Cruise and Atwell, who are hilariously handcuffed together for the entire sequence. (I’m still smiling about the precision timing of a gag in which their car flips over so many times that the passenger and driver switch seats.) The centerpiece of the film’s marketing campaign is a jaw-dropping stunt in which Cruise drives a motorcycle off a cliff in the Austrian Alps, parachuting away in an homage to “The Spy Who Loved Me.” But the ads don’t show you where he lands, which is one of the movie’s biggest laughs, kicking off a hellzapoppin’ finale on the Orient Express that plays like Buster Keaton’s “The General” crossed with “Titanic.” McQuarrie and stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood have pig-piled so many threats and obstacles onto the scene with such Looney Tunes abandon that I finally lost my mind laughing when a grand piano nearly fell on Ethan’s head.

One can’t help but marvel at the sheer, cocky showmanship of it all — at Cruise and company’s crazed commitment to showing the audience sights we’ve never seen before, six sequels into a series nobody ever expected to last. The “Part One” was a perhaps unnecessary addition to the title, as unlike the abrupt, cliffhanger endings that spoiled this summer’s “Across the Spider-Verse” and (I’m told) “Fast X,” “Dead Reckoning” comes to a proper, fully satisfying close. It feels like a complete story has been told, leaving us dying to see what these lunatics can possibly come up with for the next chapter. This may not be sophisticated art, but it’s serious artistry.

"Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" is now playing in theaters.

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Sean Burns Film Critic Sean Burns is a film critic for The ARTery.

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All Mission: Impossible Movies, Ranked By Tomatometer

“Hey, Tom. Paramount here. Yes, the studio. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to create a new summer franchise out of a 30-year-old TV show, and have it virtually improve with each sequel over 20 years…”

And so Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt has halo-jumped, rock-climbed, motorcycle-duelled, and face mask-revealed his way across dozens of countries to unravel all manner of world threats in the Mission: Impossible movies. He’s had help along the way, featuring a cast of series veterans, like Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg, and occasional players like Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton. Hunt hasn’t had too much help from the IMF, though, considering how many times they think their star employee has gone rogue.

A trademark for most of Mission: Impossible ‘s lifespan was bringing in a new director for each entry, ranging from John Woo to Brad Bird to Brian De Palma, giving each entry a unique spin. But Since Rogue Nation , Cruise (who also produces) has found a perfect collaborator in Christopher McQuarrie. He was the first to direct two M:I s in a row, with Fallout raking in the series’ best box office and critical marks. And McQuarrie is directing the next two films: Dead Reckoning – Part One releases this Friday, with Part Two  out June 28, 2024.

Before we see what death-defying hijinks they get into next (we don’t think Ethan’s been to the moon yet), we’re ranking all Mission: Impossible movies by Tomatometer! — Alex Vo

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) 96%

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) 97%

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (2015) 94%

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) 93%

Mission: Impossible III (2006) 71%

Mission: Impossible (1996) 66%

Mission: Impossible II (2000) 56%

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Mission: Impossible

Where to watch.

Watch Mission: Impossible with a subscription on Peacock, Paramount+, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

Full of special effects, Brian DePalma's update of Mission: Impossible has a lot of sweeping spectacle, but the plot is sometimes convoluted.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Brian De Palma

Henry Czerny

Ving Rhames

Kristin Scott Thomas

Sarah Davies

Movie Clips

More like this, movie news & guides, this movie is featured in the following articles., critics reviews.

'Mission: Impossible 8' Set Images — Tom Cruise Is on the Run

• New Mission: Impossible 8 set images show Tom Cruise running desperately in front of London's Houses of Parliament.
• The movie was previously known as Dead Reckoning: Part Two and involves a significant time jump from the last film.
• Christopher McQuarrie confirmed that Mission: Impossible 8 will conclude the story that began in Dead Reckoning .

Is it a Mission: Impossible movie if Tom Cruise isn't running? Hell, is it a Tom Cruise movie if Tom Cruise isn't running? Well, good news folks, if the latest set images from Mission: Impossible 8 (definitely not the final title) are anything to go by—we're getting some running done and, from the looks of it, Ethan Hunt isn't doing so good. Images posted on Twitter have shown off Cruise in full pelt in front of London's Houses of Parliament, with Big Ben looming large in the background, and looking a little worse for wear, with his shirt bloodied. What has the Entity done this time?

The movie, once known as Dead Reckoning - Part Two , has been back in production for a while in the UK, after the previous installment— Dead Reckoning —shot a large portion of the film in and around the Peak District and Derbyshire area, including an incredible steam train crash which saw the locomotive plummet into a quarry. Given the length of Cruise's hair, too, the film will obviously carry a significant time jump from the last film which will add an air of intrigue to the plot.

What Can We Expect from 'Mission: Impossible 8'?

While the film is no longer titled Part Two , its writer and director Christopher McQuarrie fully believes this is the concluding part of a story that began in Dead Reckoning , as he explained during an interview with Collider's Steve Weintraub at the film's premiere back in July.

"I knew I wanted to expand the cast, and I knew I wanted to give each one of those characters more to do, so I knew the movie was going to be bigger and longer than Fallout [ the previous movie]. And at which point I said, 'Why are we fighting this? Why are we going to try to jam this into two hours? Let's just break it in half and make it two movies.' That really was the rationale behind it being a two-part movie. It just it wasn't just that the story was bigger but that we wanted more emotion in the movie. At that time, the studio were actually very genuinely excited about it. And, you know, I think we were excited about it too. And then there were times when we were on set, and Tom would look at me, and he'd say, 'This was your idea. Just remember that.'”

The eighth film in the Mission: Impossible series is set to release in May 2025. Stay tuned to Collider for updates and check out Cruise's speedy retreat in video form below:

Mission: Impossible 8

Release Date May 23, 2025

Director Christopher McQuarrie

Cast Greg Tarzan Davis, Mariela Garriga, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, Hannah Waddingham, Janet McTeer, Charles Parnell, Esai Morales, Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby, Nick Offerman, Mark Gatiss, Holt McCallany

Main Genre Action

Genres Action, Adventure

Writers Erik Jendresen, Christopher McQuarrie

Studio(s) TC Productions, Skydance

Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures

prequel(s) Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning

Franchise(s) Mission: Impossible

'Mission: Impossible 8': Release Date, Cast, Filming, and Everything We Know So Far

Ethan Hunt's next mission is currently on hold.

Quick Links

Does 'mission: impossible 8' have a release date, will 'mission: impossible 8' be in theaters, who is returning for 'mission: impossible 8', who are the new cast members in 'mission: impossible 8', what will 'mission: impossible 8' be about, who is making 'mission: impossible 8', when and where did 'mission: impossible 8' film.

Editor's Note: The following contains full spoilers for 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning' Fans of the Mission: Impossible franchise have been eagerly awaiting the next chapter in Ethan Hunt's story in Mission: Impossible 8 .

It's honestly amazing that the Mission: Impossible series has been able to up the ante with every installment since the original 1996 film. Each installment somehow ends up being more exciting than the last and adds its own flavor of action spectacle to keep the franchise fresh and exciting. With a solid foundation formed by Mission: Impossible 1996, we got high-speed motorcycle chases in Mission: Impossible II , a terrifying villain in Mission: Impossible III , a Burj Khalifa-scaling triumph in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol , a stealthy espionage treat in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation , and a gripping nuclear prevention tale in Mission: Impossible - Fallout .

Ethan Hunt's latest mission, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning , might be the best installment in the long-running series yet. In a surprisingly topical tale about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence, Ethan and his team are tasked with finding and destroying a rogue AI known only as The Entity. The resulting globe-trotting journey leads to some incredible action setpieces and more than a few shocking twists and turns.

While the second half of the epic search for The Entity undoubtedly makes Mission: Impossible 8 one of the most anticipated projects of 2025, although moviegoers will have to wait a bit longer than expected for Ethan Hunt's next mission. To learn more about the second part's cast, release date, production status, and more, here is everything we know so far about Mission: Impossible 8 (queue fuse-lighting sequence).

Editor's Note: This piece was updated on April 24, 2024.

Mission: Impossible 8

Mission: Impossible 8 is set to release on Friday, May 25, 2025 . The film has gone through numerous delays, having previously been scheduled for release on August 5, 2022, November 4, 2022, July 7, 2023, and June 28, 2024.

While the initial two delays were because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused both Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning to constantly be delayed as well, the latest setback was because filming had been halted by the SAG-AFTRA strike .

There's a reason why Tom Cruise's catchphrase of "See you at the movies" has become so prevalent. With Top Gun: Maverick and the Mission: Impossible franchise being such massive box office hits, you better believe that Mission: Impossible 8 will be premiering exclusively in a movie theater near you. After the previous movie lost its IMAX screens after one week due to Oppenheimer , Mission: Impossible 8 will be receiving a three-week IMAX exclusive releas e.

After the film's theatrical run concludes, Mission: Impossible 8 will more than likely be joining the rest of the franchise entries on Paramount+ for a streaming release.

If, by chance, you still haven't seen Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning , you can stream the movie on Paramount+.

Watch on Paramount+

Unsurprisingly, global action superstar Tom Cruise will once again be reprising his role as IMF Agent Ethan Hunt. The actor's world-famous tenacity for doing his own stunts has made him one of modern cinema's most famous figures. Also set to return to assist Ethan in his quest for The Entity are Captain America: The First Avenger standout Hayley Atwell as Grace, Hot Fuzz star Simon Pegg as Benji, and Pulp Fiction icon Ving Rhames as Luther. Also on the cast list is Doctor Sleep star Rebecca Ferguson as the fan favorite Ilsa Faust, but given how her character's story goes in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning , that may not be the case (unless there is a flashback sequence or Ilsa's death was a fakeout).

Other characters expected to return are the antagonists of the film, such as Essai Morales ( La Bamba ) as Gabriel, Vanessa Kirby ( Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw ) as The White Queen, and Pom Klementieff ( Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ) as Paris , the latter of whom may return as a redeemed ally after barely surviving her wounds in Part 1 . Also likely returning are Part 1 's deuteragonists, including Shea Whigham 's ( Kong: Skull Island ) CIA agent Jasper Briggs, Greg Tarzan Davis ( Top Gun: Maverick ) as CIA agent Degas, Charles Parnell ( Top Gun: Maverick ) as NRO, and Henry Czerny ( Clear and Present Danger ), reprising the character of Kittridge, who debuted all the way back in the first Mission: Impossible . Kittridge isn't the only familiar face from a past film returning this time either, as Rolf Saxon ( Tomorrow Never Dies ) is reprising his role as William Donloe - another character who hasn't been seen since the first film. Also likely returning in flashbacks is Mariela Garriga ( NCIS ) as Marie - the mysterious woman from Ethan's past who Gabriel killed.

The returning cast is already massive, but even more new faces are joining the second chapter. This includes Emmy Award-Winner Nick Offerman ( The Last of Us ) as Sydney, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Holt McCallany (Mindhunter) as Bernstein, the Secretary of Defense. Also joining the cast in undisclosed roles are Emmy-Award Winner Hannah Waddingham ( Ted Lasso ), Academy Award nominee Janet McTeer ( The Menu ), Lucy Tulugarjuk , Katy O'Brian ( Love Lies Bleeding ), and Tramell Tillman ( Severance ).

While an official plot synopsis has not yet been released, Mission: Impossible 8 will almost certainly be continuing Ethan Hunt's search for The Entity, even though the world's governments and other third parties are trying to stop him. Ethan is also likely seeking retribution against Gabriel, who has now murdered two people very close to him. It's an epic conclusion that will likely see Ethan bring along old friends and potentially meet new enemies.

The film was initially set to be titled Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two , but this is now subject to change. Only time will tell if Paramount decides to remove the "Part One" from the seventh installment.

Much of the behind-the-camera crew from Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning will be returning for Mission: Impossible 8 . This includes writer/director Christopher McQuarrie , who has become a franchise veteran after directing Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation and Mission: Impossible - Fallout prior to the Dead Reckoning films. McQuarrie also shares screenwriting credit with Band of Brothers scribe Erik Jendresen .

Also attached to return are composer Lorne Balfe ( Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves ), cinematographer Fraser Taggart ( Robot Overlords ), editor Eddie Hamilton ( Top Gun: Maverick ), and production designer Gary Freeman ( The Witches ).

In an interview with Collider, McQuarrie revealed that most of Part 2 has already been completed , but there are still some major set pieces that have not been filmed yet. However, production was not able to be completed before the initiation of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Filming has since picked back up, and photos from the set made their way online in late March 2024 .

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Mission: impossible, common sense media reviewers.

First M:I movie starts off with a bang; violence, peril.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

In the fight between good and evil, honesty, integ

Ethan is willing to risk his career, reputation, a

Ethan's initial team of six agents is gender-balan

Frequent action and suspense. A series of attacks

Characters embrace against a wall as a ruse, kissi

Infrequent language includes "hell," "son of a bit

Diet Coke, British Airways brands seen. Dunhill ci

Characters smoke cigarettes. Close-up on a needle

Parents need to know that Mission: Impossible is the first film in the popular action spy series starring Tom Cruise. Expect lots of fighting, danger, and characters killed in unusual ways, with blood appearing on clothes, hands, and knives and a couple of characters getting shot to death. There are also…

Positive Messages

In the fight between good and evil, honesty, integrity, and bravery prevail. Trust is precious, but it's fragile, and even the most steadfast of allies are corruptible.

Positive Role Models

Ethan is willing to risk his career, reputation, and life to uncover treachery and get justice for his fallen friends -- even if that means breaking the rules and ignoring direct orders. Luther is one of the rare associates that Ethan can trust. Otherwise, most characters have ulterior motives and are easily tricked.

Diverse Representations

Ethan's initial team of six agents is gender-balanced, but the film quickly focuses on its White male hero as the lone renegade among untrustworthy players -- almost all of them also White men. The only associate Ethan can trust is Luther, a Black man who has a shallow but positive role as an elite hacker. The main female character (who's White) is portrayed as manipulative.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Frequent action and suspense. A series of attacks kills a team of agents early in the film: A rigged elevator impales an agent in the face, and there's a bloody gunshot and fall from a bridge, a double knifing, and an exploding car. A restaurant is blown up and flooded; a man crashes through a window and escapes. Several fights include punches, slaps to the head, knife fights, and gunfire (one woman is shot to death). A long sequence takes place atop a speeding train, with a helicopter chasing it and men jumping, falling, sliding, and hanging over the side of the train. Brief bloody images (hands, shirt, clothes), but deaths usually happen just after the camera cuts away or in wide shots and aren't graphic or gruesome. In one scene, Ethan forcibly pats down a woman without her consent, briefly grabbing her breasts before pressing her into a bed as he holds her wrists down.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Characters embrace against a wall as a ruse, kissing on the cheek. Ethan is accused of coveting another man's wife. An agent forcibly pats down a woman -- it's portrayed as sexual tension but isn't consensual. (See Violence & Scariness section for more details.)

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent language includes "hell," "son of a bitch," "ass," "goddamn," "for Christ's sake," and "crap."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Diet Coke, British Airways brands seen. Dunhill cigarettes and Chicago's Drake Hotel are mentioned in conversation and serve as plot elements. Some merchandising and heavy marketing for this franchise.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters smoke cigarettes. Close-up on a needle with an unknown drug being injected into an arm. A bottle of liquor sits on a table. A minor character is drugged -- vomiting is heard -- so that agents can infiltrate a room.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Mission: Impossible is the first film in the popular action spy series starring Tom Cruise . Expect lots of fighting, danger, and characters killed in unusual ways, with blood appearing on clothes, hands, and knives and a couple of characters getting shot to death. There are also explosions, flooding, crashes through glass, a helicopter in pursuit of a high-speed train, and other moments of peril. In one scene, the main character forcibly pats down a woman without her consent, briefly grabbing her breasts before pressing her into a bed as he holds her wrists down. Infrequent language includes "hell," "son of a bitch," "ass," "goddamn," etc. Characters smoke, alcohol is visible on a table, and drugs are used to subdue others. Agents embrace and pretend to kiss as a ruse. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (11)
• Kids say (74)

Based on 11 parent reviews

Excellent...Enough Said!

A great action film...please read note at bottom, what's the story.

The big-screen MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE may not have the campy sensibility of its TV predecessor (which ran from 1966-1973), but it generates plenty of nail-biting suspense while capturing the overall spirit of the spy genre, complete with really cool high-tech gadgets. The setting is Prague, behind the old Iron Curtain, when the lives of Eastern European operatives are at risk. When a mission goes horribly wrong, secret agent Ethan Hunt ( Tom Cruise ) is labeled as a mole and hunted by the CIA. Now a fugitive, Hunt must track down the true double agent and a computer disk in order to clear his name.

Is It Any Good?

The Cold War may be over, but the spy genre is alive and well in Cruise and director Brian De Palma 's thriller. It's sometimes confusing and implausible, but Mission: Impossible still has great production values, tense high-tech espionage, and three thrilling set pieces that will keep action lovers on the edge of their seats. The movie unfortunately forgoes plot coherence in favor of flashy scenes and escapes. (The CIA headquarters break-in, while exhilarating, is particularly dubious.)

Mission: Impossible certainly has a great opening, breaking the rules of the Hollywood thriller by (seemingly) killing off most of its stars ( Jon Voight , Emilio Estevez , Kristin Scott Thomas ) right off the bat. De Palma also does a fine job of creating an atmosphere of suspicion; nobody with whom Ethan comes into contact is completely trustworthy. And the action sequences -- especially the helicopter in the Chunnel -- are some of the best Hollywood has to offer.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Mission: Impossible 's theme of self-sacrifice. What would you give up to do what you think is right? Is it ever OK to break the rules to get the result you want?

What makes watching action and violence compelling ? When does it go too far?

If you've watched the other Mission: Impossible movies or TV show, how does this one compare? What are some of the franchise's recurring themes?

In one scene, Ethan roughly pats down a woman he doesn't trust, grabbing her breasts and holding her down against a bed. What are other ways he could have tested her trustworthiness?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 12, 1996
• On DVD or streaming : November 12, 1996
• Cast : Jon Voight , Kristin Scott Thomas , Tom Cruise
• Director : Brian De Palma
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Middle Eastern/North African writers
• Studio : Paramount Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 110 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : thematic intensity
• Last updated : April 12, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Mission: Impossible 2

Mission: Impossible III

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Spy Movies for Kids

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Tom Cruise Has A Weirdly Cruel Way Of Keeping Pigeons From Interrupting Filming

Filming for Mission: Impossible 8 is currently underway and Tom Cruise has a creative solution for pesky pigeons.

• Tom Cruise creatively handles pigeon problem on set with birds of prey to ensure smooth filming of Mission: Impossible 8 in Trafalgar Square.
• Delays in Mission: Impossible 8 release announced due to SAG-AFTRA strike impact, pushing premiere from June 2024 to May 2025.
• Cruise's dedication to delivering high-stake stunts himself in the Mission: Impossible franchise sets it apart, making him a box office draw.

Tom Cruise is back on set as filming for Mission: Impossible 8 has commenced. Though it appears the crew was faced with an unusual problem, Cruise apparently had a creative solution albeit slightly cruel.

Tom Cruise Has A Strict Rule Regarding His Look During Public Events

Why tom cruise invited birds of prey to set.

Apparently, pigeons have been getting in the way of filming at London’s Trafalgar Square, where Cruise’s onscreen character Ethan Hunt must deal with a riot, and not the avian kind. Apparently, Cruise encouraged production to invite handlers with birds of prey to set to keep the pigeons at bay.

“It was a clever move and meant the scenes were filmed without a hitch,” a source told The Sun.

A variety of birds of prey, including hawks and falcons, have been used on set to combat the pigeon problem. And this certainly isn’t the first time large birds have been used to keep away smaller ones, in the entertainment industry and otherwise.

Though filming has just started on the new Mission: Impossible movie, it won’t release until next summer.

Why Tom’s New Mission: Impossible Movie Was Delayed

Though filming is underway, Mission: Impossible 8 was already delayed, with the news disappointing fans last October. Paramount Pictures pushed back the release of the film by almost a full year. Originally slated for June 28, 2024, the film's premiere was rescheduled to May 23, 2025.

The delay came as a result of the SAG-AFTRA strike, which caused production on many shows and films to halt. Cruise's involvement in the Mission: Impossible movies has been nothing short of iconic, making it one of the most successful and well-known action movie franchises globally.

As the face of the series, Cruise has played the role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt since its inception. His dedication to performing jaw-dropping stunts himself has become a trademark of the franchise, setting it apart in the action genre.

'Mission Impossible': The Cast Ranked From Richest To Poorest

Since its debut in 1996 with the simply titled Mission: Impossible, the franchise has grossed over $3.5 billion globally , making it one of the highest-grossing film series of all time.

With a net worth of at least $600 million , Cruise makes a substantial pay check for each film, reportedly commanding around $70-100 million per movie , showcasing his value as a box office draw.

While Cruise will clearly be busy overseas for the next few months as he completes the movie, there continue to be rumors around his personal life, as his youngest daughter, Suri, is turning 18. Reports claim the actor hopes to make contact with the teen now that she’s a legal adult, though there have rumblings that Suri and her mother Katie Holmes aren’t interested in communicating.

There have also been rumors about Tom’s connection to Scientology. While it was speculated last year he may be distancing himself from the Church, his appearance at Scientology HQs in London in November seemed to dispel the rumors.

Screen Rant

Godzilla x kong: the new empire vod release date confirmed after $500 million box office.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire's VOD release date has been confirmed after the Monterverse movie made over $500 million at the box office.

• Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire hits VOD on May 14 after earning $522 million globally from theaters.
• The Monsterverse movie outperformed expectations with a $194 million debut and the potential to surpass franchise records.
• Despite mixed reviews, the film's success shows audiences continue to enjoy the Monsterverse franchise.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire 's VOD release date has been confirmed after the MonsterVerse movie made over $500 million at the box office. The fifth film in the franchise and a direct sequel to 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong , the latest installment sees the two titular titans teaming up once again to stop Hollow Earth's tyrannical leader, the Skar King, and the ice-breathing Shimo from destroying the surface world. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire 's cast includes Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, and Fala Chen.

Now, a month after it was released in theaters, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire 's VOD release date has been confirmed. According to ComicBook.com , the latest Monsterverse movie is coming to digital platforms on May 14 . The movie should eventually be available for streaming on Max, though a release date has yet to be announced.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Ending & Monsterverse Setup Explained

How did godzilla x kong: the new empire perform in theaters.

With the latest Monsterverse movie heading to digital platforms on May 14, this will essentially mark the end of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire 's box office run, which has been an overwhelming success. Released in theaters on March 29, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire earned $194 million globally during its debut weekend , beating out Dune: Part Two 's $182 million to claim the title as the largest opening weekend of 2024 so far. Domestically, it opened to $80 million, which was the Monsterverse franchise's second-best behind 2014's Godzilla .

To date, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has made $522 million at the box office , which breaks down to $182 million domestically and $339 million internationally. It's the second highest-grossing movie domestically in the Monsterverse franchise, and it only needs $18 million more to surpass 2014's Godzilla . It's also in striking distance of surpassing 2017's Kong: Skull Island ($568 million) as the highest-grossing Monsterverse movie globally. However, once The New Empire arrives on digital platforms, its box office sales will decrease dramatically, so it's unlikely to make up the difference in a little over a week, barring any re-releases.

This box office success is despite Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire 's reviews , which were some of the worst the Monsterverse franchise has ever seen, resulting in a 54% Rotten Tomatoes score. However, as evidenced by its 91% audience score and its box office success, the majority of moviegoers are still enjoying the Monsterverse franchise. Soon enough, audiences will be able to enjoy Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire from the comfort of their own home.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is showing in theaters.

Source: ComicBook.com

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

After nearly destroying each other in 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong, the giant Titans are back to face a new dangerous threat, but this time, they are on the same side. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the fifth film in Warner Bros.' growing Monsterverse franchise and will be directed by Adam Wingard.