At last year's CinemaCon, Paramount Pictures successfully got us insanely hyped for the action in the upcoming Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 – specifically by previewing the first ever trailer for the film. The footage was amazing and instantly got us prepared for the crazy experience that the blockbuster promises to deliver... but now we are a full 12 months closer to the release date, and we find ourselves even more excited for the movie thanks to the 20 minutes that were just debuted at CinemaCon 2023.
Sony blew our minds with Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse footage on Monday, Warner Bros. amazed us with an acclaimed screening of The Flash on Tuesday, and Universal provided an exciting preview of The Exorcist: Believer yesterday, but today was Paramount Pictures' turn to impress the crowds gathered in The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, and they successfully did so with an extended and exciting new look at Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1. A full action sequence from the film was shown, and it suggests that we are in for a real treat this coming July.
Opening in Italy, the Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 footage began with Grace (Hayley Atwell) in a spot of trouble. After arriving in the country, she was immediately arrested thanks to a tip given to the police that she was carrying multiple passports, all of which have a criminal record attached to them. She pretends that she has no idea what's going on, but also slyly removes a paper clip from one of the passports (clearly with the intention of using it to pick her handcuffs). Before she can escape, however, the phone rings, and Grace is confused when she is told that her lawyer has arrived.
While Grace is taken to another room, the police officer who was interrogating her has a mysterious man (Esai Morales) walk into his office claiming to be an INTERPOL agent. He asks for an inventory of what Grace was carrying when she was apprehended, and the conversation quickly gets sinister when the man asks about a key that looks like a pendant. The stranger reveals that he knows about the officer's criminal indiscretions of the past, including giving a piece of stolen jewelry to his mistress, and wants to know if the key is being hidden. Realizing that he is not actually speaking with an INTERPOL agent, the Italian cop tries to reach for the phone to call for help, but his effort is halted when he is stabbed in the hand.
Meanwhile, Grace is left by the police escorting her to meet with her lawyer, and it turns out that they man claiming to be her attorney is actually Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), who was also the person who provided the authorities about her arrival in Italy. As usual, Ethan is two steps ahead: he is also looking for the key, and he knows that she doesn't have it because she slyly slipped it into the pocket of a stranger with whom she was flirting on the plane. He explains that she is in extreme danger because of what she has stolen, and tries to learn all of the info he can about the people who hired her – but this conversation is cut short when she reveals that Ethan's "friends from the airport" (clearly a reference to a previous scene) are at the police station.
At this time, Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) and his partner (Greg Tarzan Davis) arrive at the station looking for Ethan, but they are too late. The hero and Grace have managed to escape with the help of some knockout gas – though she is able to get away from Ethan when she pretends in front of a group of cops that he is a stranger who is harassing her. Outside, Grace makes a desperate move and steals a police car, which Ethan responds to by stealing a police motorcycle, and she quickly proves that she is not as adept a driver as the protagonist of the Mission: Impossible franchise. She smashes through a restaurant's outdoor seating area and hits a number of cars, and when Ethan pulls up to the driver's side window to hell her to pull over, her vehicle is hit by another and goes spinning – the airbags deploying.
As Grace recovers from the crash, Ethan goes over to the passenger side and pulls her out, but they are immediately held at gun point by both Jasper and his partner as well as heavily armed police driving a Humvee. Jasper throws them a pair of cuffs, and it appears that our hero is going to have to surrender, but everything goes to hell when Pom Klementieff's character arrives on the scene. She takes out one of the policemen and uses his assault rifle to start shooting at everyone, and amid this chaos, Ethan cuffs himself to Grace (not wanting her to escape again). Unfortunately, he cuffs his left wrist to her right wrist, meaning that when they get in another car, she has to drive.
Grace and Ethan drive away, Pom Klementieff's character pursues in the aforementioned Humvee, and Jasper and his partner join the chase as well. As all kinds of chaos unfolds – driving over piles of mopeds and crashing into other cars – Ethan eventually figures that he has to be the one behind the wheel, and they switch seats and get close. When they manage to temporarily escape, Ethan uses a gadget on his phone to try and acquire a new car... and what they end up getting is a crappy, small, yellow Fiat. The Humvee eventually catches up with them, and crashes into them, calling the tiny hero vehicle to tumble down some stairs and end up in a pedestrian area surrounded by even more stairs. Ethan attempts to drive away, Klementieff's character still pursuing, and after some hard turns the whole thing tumbles over multiple times and crashes down to the street. The Fiat fortunately lands on its tires, and Ethan and Grace are ok, but they have somehow switched seats, and Grace is driving again.
Without Ethan's skills behind the wheel, Grace ends up driving the car in big circles around a square – the Humvee stalling but eventually starting up again – and the chase begins again when Grace is finally able to turn and drive away. They end up in a tunnel, but when a fleet of cops head in from the other direction, they have to spin around again and drive off.
After some more intense driving, Grace and Ethan hit another road block set up by the police, and they have to stop. The Humvee is behind them, and Grace raises her hands as though she is going to surrender, but Ethan grabs the wheel, slams the Fiat into reverse, and he is ready to crash into the Humvee when the scene came to an end.
Obviously this was only a taste of the action that Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 will be delivering to theaters this summer, but it was one hell of a taste. One of the best parts of this franchise is the capacity to provide both thrills and laughs simultaneously with the massive set pieces, and that's exactly what the CinemaCon 2023 footage delivered. Within a matter of seconds you go from giggling at Ethan Hunt's struggle to drive the Fiat to being terrified by the dangerous Humvee that is getting closer and closer to catching up with the characters. It was kind of a bummer that the preview didn't include material featuring legacy characters like Simon Pegg's Benji, Ving Rhames' Luther and Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa, but we'll hopefully get to see plenty of them when the blockbuster arrives in theaters this summer.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, featuring a stellar cast that includes Vanessa Kirby, Henry Czerny, Cary Elwes, Rob Delaney, and Mark Gatiss in addition to all of the actors mentioned earlier, will be heading to cinemas everywhere in just a few months – Paramount Pictures moving the release date today to Wednesday July 12. Stay tuned for more updates about the next chapter of the Mission: Impossible franchise as well as more of our coverage from on the ground at CinemaCon 2023.
