Apparently, the best new way to get a role in the Mission: Impossible franchise is to be a contender for an Outstanding Supporting Actor Emmy Award. In the Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning trailer, star Tom Cruise is surrounded by a crew of the buzziest television stars of today: Emmy winner Nick Offerman (The Last Of Us), Emmy winner Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), and the all but guaranteed future Emmy winner Tramell Tillman (Severance). If there’s one major takeaway from this series, it’s that Cruise knows how to build an elite team.
Cruise teased the Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning trailer on Sunday with a silhouetted picture of himself (presumably) hanging from a plane. That’s just one of many impressive stunts in the full trailer, and also just one of a few flight-related moments (“You gave him an aircraft carrier?”). But beyond the new bits, the trailer has quite a nostalgic tone—we keep coming back to the dagger from the iconic original stunt from the first M:I movie, the Langley vault heist. As the new movie’s tagline goes, “Every choice, every mission, has all led to this.”
M:I8 is a direct continuation of the story began in M:I7; in fact, this one used to be called Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part Two until the previous film’s lukewarm box office performance prompted a title change. Now the emphasis is on a final reckoning, with Ethan asking his team to trust him “one last time.” As we noted with the release of the film’s teaser, Christopher McQuarrie and co. seem to want us to believe that this is Ethan Hunt’s final outing, but Cruise has expressed a desire to keep doing these movies until he’s old and gray. So when you catch the film in theaters on May 23, you don’t have to worry too much about saying good bye to Ethan Hunt forever.
