‘Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part One’ Trailer: Tom Cruise Has a Death Wish Defying Gravity

Tom Cruise has done the impossible: resurrected theaters and completed mind-blowing stunts.

The certified movie star leads Christopher McQuarrie’s “Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part I,” kicking off the two-part finale to the decades-long franchise. Cruise reprises his role of undercover CIA agent Ethan Hunt in the seventh film, soon to be followed by “Mission: Impossible 8” in June 2024. Cruise has played Ethan for close to 30 years since the films began in 1996 with Brian De Palma’s feature.

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Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Vanessa Kirby are back in their respective roles, while new cast members include Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff.

“Dead Reckoning” will exclusively have a theatrical release in part due to Cruise’s urging. Production for “Dead Reckoning Part I” was repeatedly halted by the COVID-19 pandemic but eventually wrapped in September of 2021 with the budget ballooning to upwards of $290 million. Test screenings began in March 2023.

Paramount Global president Bob Bakish called the film “insane” and “a complete thrill ride,” praising lead star Cruise’s dedication to his death-defying stunts including a motorcycle sequence.

“I had about six seconds once I departed the ramp to pull the chute and I don’t want to get tangled in the bike,” Cruise detailed of the intense stuntwork. “If I do, that’s not going to end well.”

A 70-ton train is also “wrecked” onscreen in an action sequence that director McQuarrie called the “biggest challenge” of his career.

“At the start of this movie, I said to Tom, ‘What do you want to do?’” McQuarrie shared. “He said, ‘I want to drive a motorcycle off of a cliff. What do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I want to wreck a train.’ We’re enormous fans of Buster Keaton, John Frankenheimer, David Lean, all of these filmmakers who at one time or another had a fabulous train wreck. I thought, ‘I’ve earned that, I want to wreck one too.’ I think the energy that went into developing it, designing that, building it, and then making a sequence that justified its existence was probably the biggest challenge of my entire life.”

“Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part I” premieres July 12 in theaters. Check out the trailer below.

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