Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Trailer Fails to Impress
Tom Cruise is running back to theaters, but this time, he’s got something to prove again. Today, Paramount released the first trailer for the eighth Mission: Impossible movie, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Previously called Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two, the film was retitled after the seventh entry in the long-running spy series, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, massively underperformed at the box office and lost Paramount money. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning doesn’t have a plot synopsis, but based on the trailer, it will effectively be the second half of Dead Reckoning, as expected, with Ethan Hunt and his team fighting a sentient AI and its cult-like worshipers, led by an assassin with connections to Ethan’s mysterious past. This one appears to have another cast of thousands, with returning players Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell (yes!), Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerney, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, and Angela Bassett being joined by newcomers Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, and Janet McTeer. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie from a script by McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will arrive in theaters on May 23, 2025. You can see the trailer below:
They’re certainly trying to sell this as the last Mission: Impossible movie, with all those shots of the older films in the series, the sense of impending doom, and Tom Cruise saying “one last time” at the end. (You’d think they’d have played the Mission: Impossible theme song, though; it’s kind of a letdown without it.) My guess is that they’re hedging their bets; on the one hand, Cruise has said he’d be up for more of these movies, but the last one was a big dud, and Cruise is over 60 now. If it does well, and Cruise can keep up with the stunts (and doesn’t decide he’s bored), they can always find a way around the “last time” thing. But if this one bombs, too, at least they gave fans an ending to the series. It’s also good marketing, as even people bored with Mission: Impossible might head to theaters to see the saga (such as it is; if we can say it about The Fast and the Furious, I guess we can say it about Mission: Impossible) end. And they used shots from classic scenes in the series, like the infiltration of CIA headquarters from the first film. They also stick mostly to shots featuring Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames, the only two who’ve been in every Mission: Impossible movie, and there’s a definite indication that Rhames’ Luther Stickell may die. We’ll see if it’s enough to draw crowds to the theater.
I’m not sure the story will do it because it looks like Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is picking up right where Dead Reckoning left off. I was wondering if they’d revamp the movie and end the AI storyline early on before sending Ethan and his team on a different mission to distance this one from the previous flop. It shouldn’t surprise me that they didn’t; it would likely have required a beefed-up budget to change it that much, and I doubt Paramount wants to spend that much on the follow-up to something that lost them money. Unfortunately, that hampers my excitement for the film. I hate this stupid AI plot, mostly because of the way it was executed in Dead Reckoning, and I don’t really care how it wraps up. AI is a lot less cool when you make it the actual villain rather than a tool used by the villains, especially in something that’s not a sci-fi movie. And Esai Morales is an excellent actor; just make him the main bad guy who wants to use AI for some super-duper bad guy stuff. And it’s so convoluted, with the keys from the Russian submarine and everything; they should have just wrapped it up in one movie. However, I’m looking forward to seeing Hayley Atwell again, partly because I always am (because let’s be real… holy shit), and partly because she was fantastic in Dead Reckoning and easily the best part of the movie and the best female lead this series has ever had. It’s just too bad she wasn’t in one of the better entries. Maybe Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will change that, but I’m not holding my breath.
Let us know what you think of the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning trailer below!
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Comments (2)
I didn’t see either of those. I think doing an evil AI thing can work better in a sci-fi movie, but it needs some physical form. Like in the Terminator movies (both of them), Skynet is the evil force, but the main antagonist is the Terminator or the T-1OOO, and despite being robots working for AI, they have a certain degree of sentience and even personality that they develop over time. Ultron is another example; he has a physical body and has the capacity to reason and even feel emotion.
Makes me chuckle because I actually like the plot, but it’s almost like he’s fighting a bunch of brats experiencing withdrawal due to screen time reduction.
They had that other sentient AI movie called AfrAId. I liked it but it was low key. Much like M3gan.