Since 1996, the Mission: Impossible franchise has put Tom Cruise through the wringer. He’s scaled skyscrapers. He’s leapt out of planes. He’s broken bones. He did whatever the hell it was that Mission: Impossible II was about. And yet, despite this pathological desire to risk life and limb in the pursuit of mass entertainment, it’s starting to look like Cruise’s most difficult job yet will be to get anyone to see Mission: Impossible 8.
The most recent Mission: Impossible film, this summer’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, did not exactly proceed as anticipated. The movie was initially slated for release in 2021, only for Covid to shut down production twice. And then, when it did eventually make it to screen, people stayed away in bafflingly large numbers. Despite being a critically acclaimed orgy of giddy set pieces, the film struggled at the box office. As things stand, Dead Reckoning Part One is the second lowest-grossing entry in the franchise after 2006’s Mission: Impossible III, earning almost $50m less than 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout. All in all, Paramount looks set to lose about $100m on the film.
And now, to make matters worse, the next one is going to be delayed as well. Although the plan was to release it one year after Part One, the effects of the Sag-Aftra strike have caused Paramount to shunt the film back. It will now be released on 23 May 2025. That is unless anything else goes wrong before that, which at this rate almost certainly will.
The task now facing Mission: Impossible 8 is, well, extremely difficult. Dead Reckoning Part Two isn’t just a normal M:I film, but a direct sequel that was made in the retrospectively wrongheaded belief that everyone would go bananas over its predecessor. And even the few people who did see that film will have waited so long for its sequel that they will have probably forgotten what actually happened in it. Not to be a downer, but at this rate you shouldn’t be surprised if Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two ends up making even less money than Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
So now the question is what Mission: Impossible can do to reverse its fading fortunes? Obviously, my suggestion would be to do nothing at all. For those who saw it, Dead Reckoning Part One was likely to be one of the most intense cinematic experiences of their lives. It’s a relentless pounding of a film that exists purely to give a modern action audience what it wants in greater quantities than it can possibly handle. It is a magnificent film – one of the best in the series, even – and I would argue that its failure is more a symptom of the death of theatrical cinema than a rebuke against the quality of the film itself. My advice would always be for the franchise to keep doing exactly what it’s been doing, in the knowledge that its long-term legacy will outweigh contemporary gripes.
But I said that when it came out, and everyone stayed at home anyway, so it just goes to show what I know. So maybe Mission: Impossible does need to course-correct a little to remind audiences what they’re missing. We could, of course, start with the obvious. Saying (and typing) “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is an almighty pain in the bum, and the title hints at the sort of bloat that is bound to affect an almost 30-year-old franchise. Maybe for the next one, just give it a one-word subtitle. Mission: Impossible – Pow, maybe, or Mission: Impossible – Oi.
Also, as much as that video of Tom Cruise jumping off a motorbike on a mountain cheered us all up in the depths of Covid, there might also be a lesson to learn here. Why on earth would any film choose to lead with repeated shots of the film’s biggest stunt being executed? By the time the actual film came out, everyone assumed that they’d already seen the best bit for free on YouTube. Next time, Mission: Impossible should try saving some excitement for the actual film.
Next we should probably look at the films that actually did make money this summer. M:I was far from alone in underperforming, with fellow presumed dead certs like Indiana Jones and The Flash also tanking. The two big shining lights of the summer were Barbie and Oppenheimer. Were they perfect films? No. But they got audiences hyped up beyond all recognition anyway. The day that Barbie came out, for instance, my local cinema was decked out in bright pink, with many of the staff coming to work dressed in Barbie costumes. Is that something that Mission: Impossible could attempt? Would the promise of being shown to your seats by someone dressed as Simon Pegg be enough to turn things around? Actually, probably not.
In the end, Hollywood is an industry ruled by the bottom line. And if the Mission: Impossible films are going to make money again, this can only mean one thing: they need to become a lot cheaper, and fast. There are ways to scrape away at the edges of the budget, of course. They could make the next one in fewer locations, and pare down the cast to its bare bones. But the big money-suck on the Mission: Impossible films are the stunts. I hate to say it, but these might need to be trimmed back. This isn’t the end of the world, though. I firmly believe that you could centre a very good Mission: Impossible movie around a sequence where Tom Cruise gets pushed down a concrete staircase in a shopping trolley. If anyone needs me to write it, I’m right here.
