‘Mission: Impossible 8’ Director Says Someone ‘Almost Had a Heart Attack’ Watching Action Sequence at Early Screening: ‘I Guess We Did Something Right’
Anyone planning to watch “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” may want to have a health checkup beforehand.
According to director Christopher McQuarrie, the final instalment of the Tom Cruise’s hit spy franchise — films that have become known for upping the crazy with each title when it comes to stunts — has a sequence that gave at least one early audience member more than just a shock.
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“We had a small screening, and someone said, ‘I was suffocating throughout the entire sequence. I almost had a heart attack,'” he told Empire magazine in an interview, according GamesRadar. “And I thought, ‘I guess we did something right.”
While the sequence in question wasn’t revealed, the trailer for the “Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning” sees Cruise scuba dive and explore a wrecked submarine, fly and fall out of a biplane and, naturally, do a lot of running.
In “Dead Reckoning,” the first of “Mission Impossible’s” two-part finale, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt finds himself up against a dangerous AI program called The Entity that seems to predict his every move and could cause disaster if it falls into the wrong hands. After escaping a calamitous train crash in the ending of the movie, Ethan realizes The Entity is stashed aboard an old Russian submarine, but a foe from Ethan’s past named Gabriel (Esai Morales) is also on the trail.
Morales returns for “The Final Reckoning,” in addition to Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Henry Czerny, Greg Tarzan Davis, Mariela Garriga and Indira Varma. Newcomers to the franchise include Hannah Waddingham, Janet McTeer, Holt McCallany, Katy O’Brian, Nick Offerman and Tramell Tillman, while the trailer revealed that Angela Bassett is back as CIA Director Erika Sloane after she first appeared in “Mission: Impossible – Fallout.”
“Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is scheduled to be released on May 23, 2025. The film originally was set for 2022, but was delayed multiple times by the pandemic and SAG-AFTRA actors strike.
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