Tom Cruise doing Tom Cruise things has proven to be a winning formula for almost 40 years, but even by the diminutive action icon’s standards, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is set to take things to jaw-dropping new heights.
It’s become a ritual for each new installment in the long-running spy franchise to boast one marquee stunt that gets plastered all over the marketing, and in this instance, Cruise took it upon himself to ride a motorcycle off a cliff before parachuting to safety, a stunt we should point out that he performed no less than half a dozen times with a mere six-second window to pull the cord lest he plummet to a fate insurance companies couldn’t bear thinking about.
That’s more than likely only going to be the tip of a death-defying iceberg, too, but even the man in charge of the studio thinks that director Christopher McQuarrie and his team would benefit from being a little more judicious in the editing room, after Paramount chief Bob Bakish admitted at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference that he finds Dead Reckoning to be too lengthy for his liking.
“I haven’t seen all of MI:7, but I’ve seen a bunch of it. We actually just did the first test screening for an audience last week, and the audience lost their mind. And it’s still too long, they’ve got to cut it. But the movie is insane. It’s like a complete thrill ride. And Tom, he’s very good.”
Cruise being deemed as “very good” in a blockbuster that’s “too long” isn’t exactly how you hype what could conceivably be the star and producer’s second billion-dollar hit in a row after Top Gun: Maverick, but a butt-numbing length won’t do much to deter audiences from checking out the long-delayed and hotly-anticipated first half of Dead Reckoning when it finally comes to theaters this summer.
