Trailer Watch: Tom Cruise Shows Off His Balls Of Steel With More Death-Defying Stunts In Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part 1

Prepare to light the fuse again.

With Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick set to take off this week, the powers that be could not have picked a better time to drop the teaser for Cruise’s other action titan, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, due July 13, 2023.

Plot details to the seventh Mission: Impossible chapter are closely guarded but judging from trailer,  this much is clear: Henry Czerny is back as Impossible Missions Force (IMF) director Eugene Kittridge. He's seen giving Cruise’s Ethan Hunt a mouthful in a tense confrontation similar to a scene they shared in Brian DePalma’s 1996 original.

“Your days of fighting for the so-called good are over,” Kittridge says. “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.”

Dead Reckoning Part 1 marks Kittridge’s second appearance in the 26-year-old film series. Where has he been all this while? Is he still with the CIA? Or has he defected to the criminal consortium, The Syndicate (is this “our chance” he’s referring to?)?  Wait, are we still dealing with The Syndicate or another subversive variant? Or is Hunt being framed for another crime? (If you know your Mission: Impossible, that happens to him a lot.)

We’re still a long way from the release, so keep guessing. Elsewhere in the two-minute-15-second teaser, we see a few familiar faces from past instalments — Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, and Vanessa Kirby — as well as new players, including Hayley Atwell, Shea Whigham, Pom Klementieff, and Esai Morale.  

The action set-pieces previewed are pretty badass too — a sniper showdown during a desert storm, a vehicular pursuit involving a Fiat, a nightclub brawl, a chase atop a moving train (another call back to the bullet train sequence in the first Mission: Impossible), and said train falling off a bridge. The trailer ends on an epic note: Hunt drives a motorbike off a cliff and free-falls into the valley below.

Dead Reckoning is written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who was behind 2015’s Rogue Nation and 2018’s Fallout; McQuarrie also has a hand in the Top Gun: Maverick script. Part One will be followed by Dead Reckoning: Part Two in 2024.

Watch the trailer here: