Midweek Update: Can 'Mission: Impossible' Make One More Comeback?

Earlier this week, Paramount announced that they would push back the sequel to Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One almost a year to May 23, 2025. They would also change the title from Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part Two to a title TBD (leaving Part One likely changed to just “Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning” in all future materials).

This was not a good summer for Tom Cruise. 2022 was a major victory lap with the success of Top Gun: Maverick, and it proved him right that his movie should stay in theaters for as long as possible before going to streaming. The Mission: Impossible franchise, despite its massive costs, had also shown Cruise as a master showman whose 2011 entry Ghost Protocol kicked off an incredible streak of action movies. Dead Reckoning seemed like it would be the slam dunk of the summer. Instead, it got blown away by the one-two punch of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Instead of people talking about another Cruise triumph, the conversation turned to the film’s hefty price tag with another installment still on the way.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning wasn’t a bad bet on paper, but they never really cracked the story. Even though it captures Cruise’s fight against technology—emphasizing that no machine can ever truly replicate what he does or the movies he makes—the execution is sloppy. The film’s marquee stunt of Cruise using a motorcycle to jump off a cliff seems to miss that the series’ more memorable set pieces are built into raising the stakes or showcasing more than just Cruise (e.g. the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol or the HALO jump in Fallout).

While Paramount clearly isn’t abandoning Mission: Impossible, Cruise will be pushing 63 when the next movie arrives. Cruise may like to show himself off as a real-life superhero, but he can only push his body so far. As we also saw from audiences this summer, they’re just as likely to be awed by Cruise’s efforts as to ask, “What else you got?” There’s only so much time left for Ethan Hunt, and I wouldn’t be upset if Mission: Impossible 8 was his last appearance in the franchise before handing it off to someone else.

But since we’re getting at least one more Mission: Impossible, it’s important to remember that Cruise has revived the series in the past. Ghost Protocol was going to be a kind of forced-transition where Cruise handed off the series to rising star of 2011, Jeremy Renner. But Cruise proved himself crucial to the movie’s success, and teaming with writer and director Christopher McQuarrie for Rogue Nation and Fallout made Mission: Impossible one of the most exciting franchises around. But a hit isn’t promised, and Dead Reckoning, which lost sight of why the recent installments worked so well (yes, it’s Cruise, but it’s also set piece construction and the dynamic of the team), clearly went so poorly that Paramount is eager to ensure that audiences don’t even even recall the title (or feel obligated to sit through a mediocre action movie before seeing its “Part Two”).

What leaves me hopeful is that Cruise and McQuarrie are clearly attuned to what audiences think (going so far as to tell them how to set their televisions). I don’t know what this means for the next Mission: Impossible (and nothing can even happen until the SAG-AFTRA strike gets resolved, hence the release date delay in the first place), but hopefully they can rekindle the magic before the franchise self-destructs.

What I’m Watching

My wife and I recently finished watching Savior Complex on Max. The three-part documentary series follows the case against Renee Bach, a young Christian missionary from Virginia who went to Uganda and ran the NGO Serving His Children. The damning accusation against Bach is that she presented herself as a healthcare professional, and that an unknown number of Ugandan children died in her care.

Rather than sensationalize Bach’s actions or simply present her as an example of Christian hypocrisy, director Jackie Jesko wisely does three things. First, she gives Bach plenty of rope to hang herself. At one point, Bach lies about the presence of the NGO’s nurse, and when confronted with the fact that the nurse wasn’t there on the day in question, Bach tries to backpedal and claim it was someone else to emphasize that she didn’t perform medical duties unsupervised. Second, the documentary shows that even if we outline the best case scenario for Bach, we still have a woman who never took the time to learn medicine, didn’t care enough about maintaining the proper licensing paperwork to keep running her foundation, and didn’t comprehend that in a country full of white missionary/expat doctors, wearing medical equipment like a stethoscope implied to Ugandan mothers that Bach was a doctor.

But it’s the third thing that brings the whole documentary home, and it comes in the final episode. I won’t spoil the twist, but it emphasizes the core point of the documentary, which is that white people, regardless of their faith denomination, have a way of bulldozing into non-white spaces and making themselves the main character. I’m sure Renee Bach sees herself as the hero and martyr of this story, but as Savior Complex emphasizes, given her background and community, there was never going to be another way for her to see herself. The question the documentary poses to its white audience is “Are you willing to help a non-white community if you can’t be the face of that service?”

In other viewing news, I’m working my way through Hooptober, but I think this will be the last time I participate. I was lukewarm after last year, but figured I’d give it one last go. It’s not a bad system, but I think it works better for horror fans who want to be pushed beyond what’s familiar. Personally, I want more control over my viewing habits, and Hooptober ultimately gets in the way of that.

What I’m Reading

I’m making my way through MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, and so far it’s not too bad. I’m only about 85 pages in, but it’s a breezy read, and I’m curious to see how it shakes out, especially since I feel like audiences are now cooling on superhero material. Look no further than the tracking on The Marvels, which is set to open to $75-80 million. That wouldn’t be awful, except Captain Marvel opened to $153 million in 2019. I sense a similar issue is coming for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Honestly, I’m surprised the market was able to handle this much superhero saturation for so long, but audiences now seem eager to move on, or at least, only head out for the biggest superheroes (Batman, Spider-Man, etc.).

What I’m Hearing

I thought I’d be uninterested in the latest If Books Could Kill since I’m not sure I needed to hear about a dimwitted book railing against homelessness, but it’s a worthwhile listen since it goes beyond the book to talk about homelessness in more concrete terms and why housing policy succeeds or fails in various areas.

I’m also listening to me! I was on The Morning X with Barnes & Leslie to do a brief Fall Movie Preview. (I only had time to list five movies to put on your radar, but obviously this fall has more to offer than just five movies.)

What I’m Playing

Well, I somehow managed to hit 100% on Castlevania: Rondo of Blood before Spider-Man 2 arrived. Rondo of Blood is definitely one of the harder games I’ve played (I don’t go out for the notoriously difficult stuff like Elden Ring and Dark Souls), but it was rewarding in the end. I also haven’t set Castlevania completely aside even though Spider-Man 2 is now here. I’m playing Symphony of the Night again because A) it’s spooky season; and B) it’s one of my all-time favorite games.

As for Spider-Man 2, I’m still at the beginning, but it’s pretty much what I wanted. The mechanics are still great, the storytelling is A+, and the only stressful parts are when I go to put out a fire and a bunch of cultists beat me to death. But you gotta take the bad with the good.