Tom Cruise doesn’t make a lot of sequels, but when he does, you can guarantee they’re going to be worth it – as long as we pretend that Jack Reacher: Never Go Back doesn’t exist. The A-list megastar literally just headlined one of the greatest sequels of all-time in Top Gun: Maverick, and he’s reprising yet another role in his next feature when Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One comes to theaters at long last.
One of the most tortured productions of the pandemic era, writer and director Christopher McQuarrie’s third consecutive time at the helm of the legendary espionage franchise has endured its fair share of setbacks and delays, but the first trailer has us more than confident that Ethan Hunt’s seventh outing will more than live up to the hype and expectation.
Cruise was happy to sit on Maverick for almost three years until he deemed it ready to be unleashed on the world, a decision that paid off handsomely as the jaw-dropping aerial epic netted upwards of $1.4 billion at the box office. Can lightning strike twice, though? Co-star Hayley Atwell certainly seems to think so, as she revealed in an interview with Digital Spy.
“Mr. Cruise knows exactly what he’s doing. He wants these films to absolutely galvanize the audience into just being totally transported. And we won’t stop until it’s ready, and it delivers. Tom is very much an advocate of the audience being… this is for the audience. This is to delight them, and to thrill them, and to move them.
Similar to what we saw with what he did brilliantly with Top Gun and how he absolutely made sure every detail was right for it, and perfect, and was able to deliver not only the film that lovers of the original wanted and expected, but to also bring in an entirely new audience to that movie and to that character.”
The highest-grossing Mission: Impossible movie was last chapter Fallout with a $791 million haul, but it can’t be ruled out that Dead Reckoning‘s first half could crack the 10-figure club. After all, the last three entries in the series have landed Rotten Tomatoes scores of 93, 94, and 97 percent, and Maverick has very recently shown us what happens when Cruise headlines a universally-acclaimed big budget blockbuster.