Tom Cruise doesn’t need a ticket to fly in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation trailer

By Rick Marshall Published March 23, 2015

Details regarding the upcoming fifth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise have been hard to come by over the last year or so, but with the weekend debut of the film’s first trailer and its official title, we finally know quite a bit more about the next adventure for secret agent Ethan Hunt and his Impossible Mission Force.

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher), the new film is titled Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, and will pit Ethan (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team against a group of rogue international agents that are seemingly their equals in every way — and determined to destroy Ethan’s team. The first trailer for the film offers a taste of what’s to come for the IMF, as well as a reminder that 52-year-old franchise star Tom Cruise is still capable of accomplishing the most impossible mission of all: defying age with one impressive stunt after another.

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Along with Cruise reprising his leading role, the film also stars Jeremy Renner (The Avengers), Alec Baldwin (30 Rock), Simon Pegg (Star Trek), Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), Simon McBurney (The Last King of Scotland), and Rebecca Ferguson (Hercules). The script was penned by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 writer Will Staples and Iron Man 3 co-writer Drew Pearce.

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation will hit standard and IMAX theaters July 31, 2015.

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The best action scenes in the Mission: Impossible movies, ranked

mission impossible movies best action heist scenes ranked fallout halo sequence

Since it first arrived on the big screen in 1996, the Mission: Impossible film franchise has thrilled audiences with increasingly ambitious practical stunts. Star and producer Tom Cruise won’t be satisfied until he’s shown gravity who’s boss once and for all, diving off of increasingly high platforms at increasingly deadly speeds. The daredevil feats have become such essential parts of the Mission: Impossible films and their marketing that one could almost forget the stories that these stunts are meant to service.
In most M: I movies, at least one of those miraculous action set pieces is attached to some sort of heist or caper. Ethan Hunt is a spy, after all, and his quests typically require that he infiltrate a highly secure location and intercept an important item, person, or piece of information. With respect to the remarkable craft put into each of the daredevil actions, how often is the payoff equal to the setup? Is there a correlation between the magnitude of the danger to Tom Cruise and the stakes to Ethan Hunt? On the occasion of Dead Reckoning Part One’s theatrical release, we’re ranking the action scenes in the Mission: Impossible series and our preferences might surprise you.

7. Stealing the Rabbit’s Foot (Mission: Impossible III)
Mission: Impossible III: Daring Leap (HD CLIP)
Mission: Impossible III gets a bit of a bad rap for its efforts to ground the series in something approaching reality, and it can definitely be argued that director J.J. Abrams’ more TV-style aesthetic was an overcorrection from John Woo’s unrestrained bombast. We’ll stand behind M:I-3’s more human and emotional characterization of Ethan Hunt, the romance subplot, and of course, the outstanding performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, but we do have to admit that the choice to essentially skip this movie’s main heist sequence is pretty disappointing.
In the second act of M:I-3, Ethan’s wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) has been kidnapped by terrorist Owen Davian (Hoffman), who promises to kill her unless Hunt retrieves the mysterious “Rabbit’s Foot” weapon from a secure facility in Shanghai. Hunt goes rogue and, with the help of his team, plans a daring swing between two skyscrapers, using a third, taller building as a fulcrum.
However, while we see Ethan’s leap and his tricky landing on the roof of the facility, we don’t follow him inside for the rest of the heist. Instead, we remain with his teammates Zhen (Maggie Q) and Gorley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) as they wait to hear whether or not he’s acquired the Rabbits Foot. We only catch up with Ethan once the mission has gone sideways, and Zhen, Gorley, and trusty tech wizard Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) participate in a wild, shaky-cam car chase away from the building’s facility. It’s a cute subversion of the franchise’s usual structure and it allows the plot to continue at an even clip, but for the purposes of this list, we can’t put it anywhere but dead last.

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Is Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 streaming?

Tom Cruise looks and stares in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

It's been five years since the release of Mission: Impossible - Fallout, but the latest film in the series has finally arrived. Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie have reunited for the new sequel, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, and this is a story that has finally given Ethan Hunt (Cruise) a foe that he can't easily dispatch. The Entity is something that Ethan has never had to contend with before, and it will push him and his team to their limits.

Mission: Impossible regulars Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson are all back as Luther Stickell, Benji Dunn, and Ilsa Faust, respectively. Vanessa Kirby also reprises her role from Fallout as the White Widow, Alanna Mitsopolis. And for the first time since the original Mission: Impossible film in 1996, Henry Czerny has returned as IMF director Eugene Kittridge.

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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1’s ending, explained

Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell turn around in a small car, looking concerned.

Nearly three years ago, director Christopher McQuarrie started filming Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, and it's been a long journey to get this sequel on the big screen. Franchise star Tom Cruise has been headlining the Mission: Impossible films since 1996 with increasingly risky stunts and over-the-top action that has kept audiences coming back for more. But Dead Reckoning Part 1 takes things to another level with a story that is too big for a single movie.

By most accounts, Dead Reckoning's two-movie adventure will mark the end of Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his time in the Impossible Mission Force. When the ending comes around for Part 1, Ethan's team has been forever changed, and even bigger challenges lie ahead in Part 2. If you need help making sense of it all, then you've come to the right place because we're about to dive in. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to keep reading, preferably after you've already seen Dead Reckoning Part 1.