The seventh – and penultimate – instalment of the iconic Mission: Impossible movie franchise has received glittering reviews since it premiered worldwide this week, with early critics awarding Tom Cruise’s latest all-action adventure the highest Rotten Tomatoes score of the entire movie series.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to produce a movie franchise that will garner widespread acclamation and receive reviews that improve exponentially with each subsequent sequel… Mission impossible, right? Not for Tom Cruise, Hollywood’s unrelenting movie maverick; an actor whose enduring star power has transcended the traditional role of the action hero to take his rightful position as the unopposed juggernaut of the genre.
Whether it’s climbing a 2000-foot cliff in the opening scene of Mission: Impossible II; hanging onto the edge of a huge Airbus A400M plane as it takes off in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation; or ascending 1700 feet up the tallest building in the world with no more than a harness for Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, Cruise is the king of on-camera chaos, bringing the Mission: Impossible story to dizzying new heights with each subsequent flick – literally.
WATCH Tom Cruise pulls off the biggest stunt in cinema history below.
Tom Cruise: Action Hero
Following on from the global success of Top Gun: Maverick, which ended the year as the highest-grossing movie of 2022, and according to Stephen Spielberg “saved Hollywood’s ass,” film fans and critics were eagerly awaiting the release of Cruise’s next Mission: Impossible saga, and wondering just where you can take a blockbuster original franchise that’s now heading into its seventh chapter.
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Franchises aren’t exactly new in Hollywood; Star Wars went on for nine episodes and could’ve been more if Disney had signed off on Zack Snyder’s R-rated Star Wars story, Harry Potter had seven books to tell, spread over eight films, and Fast and Furious is set to release its tenth in the series with another title in the works.
Where Tom Cruise and the Mission: Impossible sagas differ is they’ve been getting better with each passing movie, the action sequences are brutal and the stunts have become more painstakingly realistic – because most of them are – receiving glowing reviews that have improved exponentially. Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One has received 98% on Rotten Tomatoes – the best in the series to date.
“I think when you look at this movie, it really defines what I think about cinema and why because you look at this kind of cast, you look at a brilliant ensemble cast, and the kind of story is very engrossing.”
Tom Cruise
Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One rejoins Ethan Hunt and the IMF team following the events of Mission: Impossible Fallout, as they’re forced around the world in search of a terrifying new weapon that has the potential to destroy all of humanity if it were to fall into the wrong hands.
A true cinephile, Cruise’s ongoing commitment to the omnipotence of big-screen cinema separates him from the rest, delivering blockbuster after blockbuster to elevate the cinematic experience rather than simply adding to it, telling remarkable stories that resonate with audiences all over the world. And no matter how many movies Cruise continues to make, his love for cinema will be his lasting legacy.