When the first Mission: Impossible hit theaters in 1996, I was excited to see Tom Cruise play Ethan Hunt in this remake of the popular TV show. I followed the next few releases with diminished interest, but then something happened, starting with the fourth installment, Ghost Protocol (2011).
Mission: Impossible started making sense again, and I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. The stakes grew higher, the stories improved, and the action still featured a Tom Cruise excited to be there, defying his age while pulling off incredible stunts. It all culminated with the final two-part adventure, the Dead Reckoning movies.
I watched Dead Reckoning Part One in theaters last year after waiting through the pandemic-related release delays, and it was all worth it. Mission: Impossible 7 didn’t just offer the same recipe as the previous movies. It brought an exciting twist that could not be more ominous in real life, where we were witnessing the dawn of AI via ChatGPT.
I did not know much about the film’s plot, but I knew that Dead Reckoning Part One would not give us a proper ending. We’d get a cliffhanger and teaser for the second episode, due next year.
After a long wait, the first trailer for Mission: Impossible 8 is out, complete with a new title. The film isn’t called Dead Reckoning Part Two, as expected. Instead, we got Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, and I can’t wait to watch it.
By the end of the two-minute trailer, available below, Tom Cruise is asking us to trust him one more time for this type of story, and I have a bad feeling about it. I expect this to be his last Mission: Impossible adventure. Will Ethan Hunt die by the end of The Final Reckoning? That would be one way for the overarching story to end.
Remember that we’ve witnessed all sorts of associates of Hunt either getting killed, having to fake their deaths, or suffering some kind of loss while on the job. Despite his best efforts, Hunt could not save them. Dead Reckoning is the best example of that, having taken Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) from us. We did get Grace (Hayley Atwell) instead, more on that later.
Therefore, Ethan Hunt sacrificing his life to defend the world against a rogue AI and those interested in harnessing its powers while simultaneously serving the AI makes a lot of sense. The Final Reckoning’s first trailer doesn’t give away any of that. It’s only speculation.
What the first Mission: Impossible 8 trailer gives us are plenty of scenes from what should be exciting action sequences featuring not just Ethan Hunt but the entire team.
It’s not just Grace coming back. Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), and even Paris (Pom Klementieff) chose to accept this mission. Paris didn’t die in Dead Reckoning. But since I did talk about Hunt’s death, I’ll say that others from his inner circle could always die in The Final Reckoning.
The first trailer also teases some of Cruise’s upcoming stunts and gives us lots and lots of running from the protagonist. It wouldn’t be a Mission: Impossible movie without Hunt sprinting from one place to the next.
Whatever happens in The Final Reckoning on May 23rd, I hope the franchise doesn’t end once Tom Cruise is done with this iconic role. After Dead Reckoning, I did say that Hayley Atwell deserves a shot at starring in a Mission: Impossible spinoff. Hopefully, she’ll get that chance once Mission: Impossible 8 cements her role as a key IMF operator.
