Happy New Year 2023 from The Spy Command

Our annual greeting

It’s the end of another year. Here’s hoping for a great 2023 for readers of The Spy Command.

The future of the James Bond film series is up in the air. (Who will be the next film Bond? When Bond 26 even have a script?)

Regardless, another Mission: Impossible movie is scheduled for 2023, with another in 2024. And there will be other spy entertainment along the way.

And, as Napoleon Solo reminds everyone, be sure to party responsibly this New Year’s Eve.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Tom Cruise teases his next Mission: Impossible film

Tom Cruise is ending 2022 with one box office triumph, Top Gun: Maverick. But as the year nears its end, he is hyping his seventh Mission: Impossible film, due out in July 2023.

Cruise and his M:I studio, Paramount, have shown behind-the-scenes footage for the signature stunt of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One. In that scene (filmed in 2020), Cruise’s Ethan Hunt drives a motorcycle off a cliff.

Of course, that evokes a stunt from 1995’s GoldenEye, near the end of that Bond film’s pre-credits sequence. Except, this time, Cruise himself is doing the stunt. In a video that runs more than nine minutes, Cruise says it’s the most dangerous stunt attempted in a Mission: Impossible film.

Here’s the video:

“I’ve been wanting to do it since I was a little kid,” the 60-year-old Cruise says in the video. “It all comes down to one thing — the audience.” According to the video, Cruise did at least six such jumps.

Toward the end of the video, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie adds this note: “The only thing that scares me is what we have planned for Mission 8.” Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part Two is due out in 2024.

Will Bond 26 avoid M:I 7 and 8?

A previous Eon James Bond avatar on Twitter

Whether intentional or not, Bond 26 may avoid competition from the next two Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible films.

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part I is scheduled for 2023 and its follow-up, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part II is supposed to be out in 2024.

Meanwhile, Barbara Broccoli, boss of Eon Productions, has said Bond 26 won’t start filming for at least two years. A 2024 filming date most likely means the movie won’t be out until 2025. Bond 26 will feature a successor to Daniel Craig, whoever that is.

Obviously, that’s not official. Bond 26’s filming date isn’t set in stone and, until we know more, the next Bond film might not go into production until later. Based on various Broccoli interviews, there’s no new Bond actor selected, and work on a script hasn’t started yet.

There has been a lot of filming done on Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning but work may remain to finish the two-part saga. The two films are expected to be the final bow for Tom Cruise’s M:I saga, which began in 1996.

The last time we had a M:I film and a Bond movie the same year was 2015. That’s when Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation came out in the summer while Eon’s SPECTRE debuted in the fall.

Cruise’s M:I movies feature stunt sequences that appear to be homages to earlier Bond films. Yet, some M:I enthusiasts say Cruise’s movies have a sense of fun lacking in recent Bond movies.

None of this may be significant. But there’s a possibility Eon’s next Bond adventure won’t take place until after Cruise, 60, concludes his M:I run.

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.

Mission: Impossible 7 trailer leaks

Tom Cruise

A trailer for Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One leaked for a time on social media before being yanked by Paramount.

A version of the trailer for the movie had been shown last month at CinemaCon. An official trailer hasn’t been released. The existence of the leak was reported by The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets.

A website called The Digital Fix quoted David Ellison, a producer on Top Gun: Maverick and the M:I movie, as saying the trailer will “drop next week.”

The video for the seventh Mission: Impossible film starring Tom Cruise that circulated on social media appears to have homages to the James Bond film series. They include scenes that evoke For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, and GoldenEye.

Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One is scheduled for release on July 14, 2023. The eighth film will be released in 2024.