Mission: Impossible: Tom Cruise Addresses if He'll Ever Direct a Movie in the Series

By Nathaniel Brail

Paramount Pictures will soon release the seventh installment of the Tom Cruise-led Mission: Impossible franchise, and fans are really excited to see what will happen next. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One will be released in a few weeks, and the initial reactions have praised the spectacle of the film as well as Hayley Atwell's (Captain America: The First Avenger) performance. From everything we've seen in the trailers, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One takes Cruise to a whole new level of stunts, and it looks like it could wind up being the film of the summer. ComicBook.com's Brandon Davis attended the world premiere of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and he had the chance to speak with Cruise about all of his insane stunts over the years and also ask the actor if he would ever direct one of these movies.

"We're trying to be as competently as possible. I wouldn't say they're safe. We do it as safely as possible, as competently as possible.," Cruise told us at the premiere of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One. "Look everything I produce these films. I'm involved in every single frame, in every aspect of these movies, every aspect from top to bottom. So it's, you know, and, McQ and I, you know, we've made every film I've ever made over the past 16 years, whether you see his name on it or not. It's both of our collective minds that work through here along with the other filmmakers that we're working with. Look, you just break it down and try to anticipate just like when I'm producing a film or I'm working, you know, any artist that I'm working with, any filmmaker that I'm working with, I study their work. I study every actor. I study our crew's work and I try to be as prepared as possible and as detailed as possible to anticipate any of the problems that could come up."

Cruise revealed when asked if he ever had an itch to direct, "I've been asked to do that since I was a little kid, you know, and I love producing films and I really love acting in movies."

What Does the "Dead Reckoning" Title Mean? 

McQuarrie recently spoke about the meaning behind the "Dead Reckoning" title, which was unveiled at CinemaCon 2022.

"When I came up with the title, I knew it applied more to Part Two than it did to Part One, which is why it eventually settled on being Part One and Part Two," McQuarrie told  Light the Fuse. "The title for the first movie was nearly ... a title that referred to something like a Ghost Protocol kind of thing, it was a government policy – It wasn't a government policy, it was a government, what would you call it? A government measure of last resort, with catastrophic consequences. By the time we got to the end of Part One, that had distilled down into an entirely different set of circumstances that appear in Part Two and not in Part One. So, the word would no longer have been appropriate for the title of Part One."

"And yet, Dead Reckoning didn't really apply as well to Part One as well as it did to Part Two until we started to play with the beginning of the movie, and kind of recognize that Dead Reckoning, while it sounded cool, what did it really have to do with the movie? And over the course of our, really starting to dig down into the arc of the character journey for Ethan [Hunt], it took on deeper and deeper meanings as we went. And you'll see just how thematic and how it represents, how it's conceptually represented in every character's journey in this film we're in." McQuarrie added.

What is Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One About? 

Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which premieres in theaters on July 12th. It's the beginning of the end for the action-packed franchise, as Cruise reteams with longtime collaborator and filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie for more death-defying and breathtaking stunts. Hunt and allies Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) attempt to track down a new weapon with the power to tear the world apart. Actors Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Esai Morales join the cast for the latest installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, which is set to wrap up with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 12th!

What do you think about Tom Cruise directing a Mission: Impossible movie? Are you excited for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One? Let us know in the comments below or by hitting up our writer @NateBrail on Twitter!

Trending Now: