The clock is ticking in the thrilling debut trailer for Mission: Impossible 8, now officially known as Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. Tom Cruise returns to the role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt who is seeking the location of the destructive A.I. known as the Entity, a search set in motion by the events of the seat-gripping Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning - Part I from 2023. Here's the trailer.
Scroll down to check out our trailer highlights and key reveals.
Ethan Hunt is closing in on the Entity's underwater location
Dead Reckoning - Part I culminated in the battle between Ethan and the Entity's human surrogate, Gabriel (Esai Morales) aboard the top of the Orient Express. The latter seemed to escape with one of the cruciform keys meant to activate the Entity, but Hunt actually pulled a sleight of hand on Gabriel and palmed the key for himself (throwing back to the floppy disc trick from the first Mission: Impossible film, released in 1996).
The Final Reckoning closes in on the aquatic resting place of the all-powerful A.I., which has the power to shape the destiny of everybody on the planet. We first saw the Russian submarine in which the Entity is housed at the beginning of Dead Reckoning - Part I – it's named the Sevastopol and went down somewhere in the Arctic Circle, resulting from the sentient Entity's desire to protect itself.
We imagine that Gabriel will be a bit miffed that his old enemy Hunt pulled the big blind on him, and indeed he's now threatening terrible recriminations on Hunt and his team.
As expected, things are about to get cold
Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who's been with the series since 2015's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, is nothing less than tenacious in scouring remote corners of the globe in which Hunt, his allies and enemies can go on the rampage. Of course, Tom Cruise is a key factor in all of this, having single-handedly escalated the ambition of these films with every subsequent chapter.
We found out some time ago that McQuarrie was shooting in the frigid Arctic for the eighth Mission: Impossible movie (this is the first time it's appeared in the Mission: Impossible series), and we now get teasing glimpses of the final result. One shot, in particular, is a doozy: a barely-clothed Ethan in a prone position underwater being given the kiss of life by... someone, we can't tell who exactly.
We're assuming this is part of the Arctic sequences (the deep blue light would indicate it's so). And of course, this isn't the first time Cruise has performed a death-defying stunt underwater – we all remember the agonising tension of the underwater heist from Rogue Nation in which Cruise learned to free dive for more than six minutes (a record subsequently beaten by Kate Winslet for 2022's Avatar: The Way of Water).
Familiar faces from Dead Reckoning - Part I are back
The Mission: Impossible movies now rival the Fast & Furious franchise in terms of the surrogate 'family' (say it gruffly) dynamic. The cast of The Final Reckoning is pretty sizeable: with Cruise at the helm, we can also welcome Hayley Atwell's thief-turned-ally Grace, Simon Pegg's fellow IMF operative Benji Dunn and Ving Rhames' old hand Luther Stickell, who's been with the series since 1996.
On top of that, we've got Esai Morales' villain Gabriel, his former henchperson turned good Paris (Pom Klementieff), Vanessa Kirby's black market bidder The White Widow and Henry Czerny's IMF chief Eugene Kittridge (whose appearance in Dead Reckoning - Part I was a reprisal of his role in the 1996 film). Shea Whigham's dogged intelligence agent Jasper Briggs and Briggs' cohort Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) both return from the previous film as do Charles Purnell and Mark Gatiss as the heads of the NSA and NRO.
Angela Bassett reprises her role as former CIA director Erika Sloane (she last appeared in 2018's Fallout) while Rolf Saxon makes his first appearance since the original 1996 film as disgraced CIA analyst William Donloe, now banished to Alaska. Newcomers to the franchise include Holt McCallany, Hannah Waddingham, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman and Katy O'Brian.
It throws back to the events of the first Mission: Impossible
We've already mentioned the character of William Donloe. He appeared in the most famous sequence from Brian DePalma's inaugural Mission: Impossible movie as the unsuspecting analyst who is hijacked from above by Cruise's daredevil Ethan Hunt. The scheme to stall and distract Donloe resulted in one of the quintessential images from the series: Cruise suspended and spreadeagled over a motion-sensitive floor in a bid to retrieve the elusive NOC list.
The scene is quoted wholesale in the trailer for The Final Reckoning and Hunt even appears to be twirling the knife that ultimately gave the game away during the NOC list hack. This, along with Czerny's presence as the returning Eugene Kittridge, gives a palpable sense of how much the past is weighing on Ethan Hunt. He's accumulated a lot of baggage throughout his various impossible missions, and this now makes him a more pronounced target for both Gabriel and the Entity.
Tom Cruise runs... a lot
Of course he does, although we can't see Mission: Impossible - Leg Day catching on as a title. If anyone can sprint well on camera, it's Cruise – such marathons have become his franchise signature, particularly that extended Shanghai tracking shot in Mission: Impossible III (2006) and that breathless London rooftop pursuit in Fallout, which infamously resulted in a busted ankle.
We love the following shot with Cruise barrelling down Westminster Bridge at night. If there's another thing these movies do brilliantly, it's making London look gorgeously cinematic and ripe with intrigue. Both Rogue Nation and Fallout demonstrated this beautifully.
Tom Cruise's stuntwork is as insane as ever
One word: biplane. Cruise and McQuarrie teased this aerial standoff sequence a couple of ago while they were filming it, and it looks like the real deal as the planes tumble and roll over the hills and cliffs of South Africa. Of course, Cruise isn't in the plane but dangling from it as it performs a mid-air barrel roll – will this sequence match the now-classic motorbike jump from Dead Reckoning - Part I?
It teases Cruise's final appearance as Ethan Hunt
Cruise's final line in the trailer indicates he may be done as Hunt (also implied by the film's none-too-subtle title). However, do we believe that? Hunt is Cruise's signature character, allowing him to act out all manner of giddy, stunt-inspired fantasies all the while tethering him to the top of the Hollywood box office tree. Is he ready to call it a day after eight movies?
We do know that Cruise has recently signed a contract with Warner Bros to appear in more auteur-driven films, perhaps driven by a desire to return to acclaimed roles like Magnolia (1999). One of these films is the new project from The Revenant's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu in which Cruise is reputedly playing a person trying to amend a global disaster of his own making.
That sounds like it has the potential for Cruise to mercilessly parody his big-screen image, but will such films come at the expense of the Mission: Impossible blockbusters? Only time will tell.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is released on May 21st, 2025. If you're seeking an adrenaline fix before then, don't miss Gladiator II at Cineworld from November 15th. Book your tickets via the link below.
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