The state of cinema in a post-pandemic world is something that has been worrying folks in the industry for a while now, with ticket sales still not back up to pre-2019 levels yet (albeit with a steady rise since things reopened towards the end of 2020). While some films have outperformed what many believed they could earn at the box office, like the incredibly successful yet depressingly generic Avatar: The Way of Water, the latest box office blockbuster, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, looks set to be a bit of a commercial bomb.
Whether or not this is a result of the film’s actual quality is up for debate, but the numbers simply don’t lie: Harrison Ford’s latest turn as the adventurous archaeologist looks set to lose at least $200 million dollars, which is no small number even when dealing with the astronomical amounts we see thrown around by studios nowadays. And, while this all may be down to the fifth and final installment in the Indiana Jones franchise being middling, it has led to a few people asking what this means for another beloved franchise that’s about to release a new film: Mission Impossible.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One will be the seventh time we see Tom Cruise reprise his role as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, and while number six in the series (Mission Impossible: Fallout) broke box office records for the franchise, that doesn’t necessarily mean the newest effort will do the same. With that said, the Mission Impossible marketing machine has been out in full force, whereas Indiana Jones did feel a bit like it was relying on its name to draw viewers in, something commenters on Twitter pointed out.
It’s also fair to say that audiences are suffering from an element of franchise fatigue, as the hype for new films (like Oppenheimer and Barbie) seems to be reaching a fever pitch.
With that all said, the Mission: Impossible series isn’t suffering from a lot of the problems Indiana Jones does. Cruise, despite being in his 60s, is still in tip-top shape, doing the sort of insane stunts he’s known for, and in the recent Top Gun film, showed he definitely still has a je ne sais quoi in abundance that makes him such a box office draw. Ford, on the other hand, was digitally de-aged for a large chunk of the film and really hasn’t been a leading man in quite some time. The film also had some other things not go its way, like poor weather keeping large swathes of American audiences indoors over the weekend.
Whether or not Dead Reckoning Part One will suffer from a box office defeat like Indiana Jones has is something we’ll only learn with time. But there’s no doubt Cruise and his co-stars will have put together a real action adventure, and when it comes down to it, that’s the most important thing. Whether or not audiences agree is something we’ll see when it opens later this month.