During CinemaCon 2021 last August, crowds gathered in The Colosseum in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas were treated to a remarkable preview of Christopher McQuarrie's upcoming Mission: Impossible 7 – the movie showing off a spectacular new stunt featuring star Tom Cruise leaping off a cliff on a motorcycle and deploying a parachute so that he could fly to the ground.
Ten months later, the Mission: Impossible franchise has once again delivered at the theater owner convention, not only revealing the first ever footage from Mission: Impossible 7, but also the movie's incredibly exciting new title: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One).
Tom Cruise wasn't able to come to the event in person due to the fact that he is presently hard at work making Mission: Impossible 8 – which one guesses at this point will be called Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part Two) – but he did provide a fantastic recorded message to introduce the trailer for the new movie... while hanging out of a red biplane mid-flight. It turned out to be an appropriate lead in for what was shown from 2023's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One), as the footage suggested that the next chapter in the beloved franchise will be absolutely brimming with all varieties of crazy action.
The Mission: Impossible 7 trailer is mostly cut together as montage, showing off quick moments from a variety of different sequences, but at the heart of it is a face off between Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt and Henry Czerny's Eugene Kittridge, who is back in action for the first time since the first Mission: Impossible back in 1996. The two characters stand together in a room that is entirely obfuscated by clouds of white mist, and Kittridge delivers some pretty stark news to the legendary Impossible Mission Force agent:
Your days of fighting for the so-called greater good are over. This is our chance to control the truth, the concepts of right and wrong for everyone for centuries to come. You're fighting to save an ideal that doesn't exist. Never did. You need to pick a side.
As Kittridge makes his spiel to the protagonist, all varieties of stunning action and craziness unfold, taking place in locations and climates all around the world. While we see flashes of returning Mission: Impossible characters including Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa Faust, Vanessa Kirby's Alanna Mitsopolis, Simon Pegg's Benji Dunn, and Ving Rhames' Luther Stickell, there are battles in sand-swept desert, underwater explosions, green gas bombs blowing up, sprints through candle-lit hallways, car chases on cobblestone streets, and even a sequence featuring Ethan Hunt back doing combat on top of a train – which very much feels like a callback to the thrilling finale of the movie that launched the action series decades ago.
Because no great trailer is truly great without a breathtaking final moment, the Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One) footage came to a close with the aforementioned insane stunt that was previewed at last year's CinemaCon: Ethan Hunt rides through a bit of jungle on a motorcycle, and when he gets to the edge of a cliff, he just keeps going... and it's a crazy thing to behold. It certainly appears that all the hard work that went into making the stunt a reality has paid off.
It was right after that moment that the title of the seventh chapter in the Mission: Impossible franchise was revealed.
You have probably gathered at this point that the first trailer for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One) doesn't exactly provide any firm information about the actual plot of the film – instead opting to showcase tone and preview a wide variety of set pieces. That being said, there are multiple shots of an interesting key that are included, and it certainly makes me wonder if it is an important element at the heart of the story.
So when will you actually be able to see this trailer for yourself? Unfortunately, that information wasn't specifically offered this morning during the Paramount Pictures presentation at CinemaCon, but we can certainly offer a guess. We still have more than a year to wait for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One), but right around the corner from now is the release of the next Tom Cruise movie: Joseph Kosinski's Top Gun: Maverick. The Navy-centric blockbuster will be arriving in theaters on May 27, and one can easily envision the teaser for the next Mission: Impossible sequel being shown during the trailer roll before screenings.
Also starring franchise newcomers Esai Morales, Hayley Atwell, and Pom Klementieff, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One) is now in post-production and, following a few release date changes, it is now on track to be released on July 14, 2023. As soon as the first trailer for the movie launches online, you can be sure that you will find it here on CinemaBlend.
