Tom Cruise stunts are wilder than ever in first trailer for 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning'

Who wants to see Ethan Hunt do something stupid and death defying? Well, you're in luck because Tom Cruise is back as the IMF's top agent in the first trailer for the seventh Mission: Impossible movie, Dead Reckoning Part One. Christopher McQuarrie, the only filmmaker to ever helm more than one M:I project, returns as writer and director for this film, which was revealed as the first of a two-parter during a CinemaCon presentation earlier this year. 

This Mission is going back to the very beginning with the return of Henry Czerny as Hunt's old boss Eugene Kittredge, who wasn't been around since the very first film. Early Monday morning, after a leak over the weekend, Paramount officially dropped the massive first teaser trailer for Dead Reckoning, and it's clear that Kittredge is here with a warning. After facing down global conspiracies for decades, it seems Hunt now has to face something that challenges the concept of truth itself, and it's hard to tell if he and Kittredge are even on the same side anymore. 

What we can tell right away is that Cruise and McQuarrie have kicked this installment of the franchise into absolute overdrive from the very first frame of their third Mission collaboration. Even by the standards of Rogue Nation and Fallout, this movie is absolutely huge, taking Ethan and his crew from one corner of the globe to the other.

Check it out below, and keep an eye out for Tom Cruise doing his trademark insane stunt work at the very end. 

From the return of Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson, sporting both an eyepatch and a sniper's rifle) to the arrival of Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff (fighting a bunch of guys on a train, no less) to an unexpected nod to The Italian Job tucked away in the car chases, this absolutely looks like the biggest Mission ever, and as McQuarrie explained, there's a reason for that. 

“When we went into making Fallout, I said to Tom, 'I really want to make this more of an emotional journey for Ethan,’ knowing full well that that would be a longer movie because the action just consumes an obligatory amount of real estate. You're only left with so much room for the story. So I knew Fallout would run longer.” McQuarrie said during an appearance on the Light the Fuse podcast. "Going into [Dead Reckoning], I said, 'I want to take what we learned from Fallout, and apply it to every character in the [new] movie. I want everybody to have an emotional arc. I just want the movie to have more feeling across the board.' With the addition of extra characters and the addition of storylines for the team, the movie's gonna be three hours long and in reality, that means with us doing it, it'll be three-and-a-half [hours long]. Who are we kidding? Let's just call it four [hours], cut it in half, and make it two movies! And now, the story can just breathe."

With a returning cast that also includes Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby, and Simon Pegg, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One will finally arrive in theaters after several COVID delays on July 14, 2023. Dead Reckoning Part Two will follow about a year later on June 28, 2024.

Looking for more wild action? Jurassic World Dominion opens June 9, and Fast & Furious sequel Fast X is in the works with its own epic two-parter of stunt chaos that starts on May 19, 2023.