New Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Trailer Runs Down Memory Lane
Ethan Hunt is going on one last impossible mission… unless this one is a hit, in which case, they’ll greenlight at least three or four more. Today, Paramount released the first full trailer for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the upcoming eighth installment in the spy series based on the 60s TV show (and its 80s revival). Picking up where the previous film, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, left off, The Final Reckoning finds Ethan Hunt scrambling to find the key to a nuclear submarine that will help him stop an evil AI from… doing… something; I don’t remember the whole plot of the last one, if I’m being honest. Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt, as do his usual spy sidekicks, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg. Back from Dead Reckoning are Hayley Atwell (the best thing about that movie), Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Vanessa Kirby, Cary Elwes, and Henry Czerny. This time, Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, and Hannah Waddingham join the cast, with Angela Bassett returning from Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Are you starting to see why these movies cost so much money? It’s not just the stunts. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will sneak into theaters, possibly with a sci-fi face mask, on May 23, 2025, and you can see the trailer below:
As with the teaser from several months ago, the new Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning trailer is pushing this as the final installment in the series without coming right out and saying it, and that’s by design. I wasn’t joking when I said that this will only be the last Mission: Impossible movie if it fails; Dead Reckoning was a bit of a slap in the face for Paramount and Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie et al., letting them know that audiences aren’t going to show up just for a brand anymore. The opening weekend for Dead Reckoning was weak, and the second-weekend drop-off was massive, the biggest of the series, and that’s because word-of-mouth said this one was a bunch of jumbled AI nonsense that didn’t have the punch of the last few films in the series, which were all mega hits. (To be fair, it also got huge competition from Barbie and Oppenheimer in its second weekend, so there were two big movies men and women would rather see playing against it.) This put Paramount in a bind because, for some ridiculous reason, they split Dead Reckoning into two nearly three-hour films under the odd assumption that people would want to spend almost half a season of television watching Tom Cruise fight a computer program. Refilming the movie Marvel-style wasn’t an option because Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning cost around $400 million to make, and Dead Reckoning lost money on a $291 million budget. So, they had to think outside the box – as much as Hollywood is capable of right now – and they came up with trying to convince the audience this was their last chance to see Ethan Hunt do crazy stunts on the big screen. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not this works.
As for the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning trailer itself, it looks good, if standard for the series. It seems like Nick Offerman and all these new actors were brought in for the “Here’s How Cool Ethan Hunt Is” exposition dump/nostalgia fest, which is a shame and an example of how these movies could save money: you don’t need great actors to play a bunch of nobodies in suits. Use Nick Offerman when you need a new villain, not someone who could be played by the most experienced extra. (And maybe give him more to do than the underused Esai Morales, who should be excellent.) Regardless, the scene seems to exist to call back to the best parts of the previous Mission: Impossible movies, which is kind of shameless and seems to be for the trailer more than the film. It’s also a little silly, like having Ethan hold the exact same knife he dropped on the table during the CIA infiltration in the first Mission: Impossible. (“I stare at this knife, watch the moonlight dance across the blade, and remember more successful films.”) The story is kept mostly in the background, which is par for the course since these movies – and I like them, or some of them, anyway – are mostly excuses for big stunts and action scenes. And those seem pretty cool: Tom Cruise hangs off the side of a biplane, Tom Cruise dives off an aircraft carrier into the sea, Tom Cruise has a martial arts fight with a knife-wielding bad guy, and it looks like fun. Hopefully, it’ll be enough to take our minds off the AI stuff, and maybe Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will be an entertaining final chapter (or just another chapter) in the Mission: Impossible series.
Let us know what you think of the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning trailer in the comments!
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