Mission: Impossible 7 (and Bond) questions

The trailer for Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One is out. For understandable reasons, fans of the James Bond films are interested.

Naturally, the blog has questions.

Is Tom Cruise’s M:I series ripping off Bond? You might not want to throw bricks from inside a glasshouse.

Live And Let Die evoked “Blaxploitation” films of the early 1970s. The Man With the Golden Gun evoked kung fu films from the same period. Moonraker evoked Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (even using the same musical notes from John Williams’ score from the latter movie). Moonraker also has similarities to the 1966 movie Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die.

So how would you phrase it?

It depends on how well the ideas are executed.

Movie audiences, generally, don’t care about what ideas are borrowed from whom. They care about whether they like the movie or not.

What makes Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible films different from the most recent Bond movies?

The most recent M:I movies (2011, 2015, 2018) are, for the most part, more fun than the Bond installments of the same period. According to Barbara Broccoli, No Time to Die was a “cinematic masterpiece” (source: No Time to Die official podcast).

No Time to Die enthusiasts would agree. Others may or may not say they had a better time viewing the three M:I films of the 2010s.

That’s all a subject for debate. The seventh M:I film won’t be out for more than a year. We’ll see how it goes.

Mission: Impossible 7 trailer officially released

Paramount released the trailer for Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One today after it had leaked out over the weekend.

The trailer for the seventh film in the M:I series starring Tom Cruise contains some homages to James Bond films such as:

–Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt driving a car with its doors knocked off, similar to Daniel Craig’s Bond in Quantum of Solace.

–Cruise/Hunt driving a small yellow car in a chase, similar to Roger Moore’s Bond driving an extremely small car in a chase in For Your Eyes Only.

–A fight on top of a train, with the participants having to duck when approaching tunnels, a la Octopussy.

–Cruise/Hunt riding a motorcycle off a cliff similar to Pierce Brosnan’s Bond in GoldenEye.

The trailer has some striking images, including an Osprey aircraft in flight and a train locomotive going off a cliff.

Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One is scheduled for release next year, with the following installment coming out in 2024. Originally, the two movies were to have been filmed back-to-back. That was before delays related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The trailer is below.