Latest news with #EsaiMorales
Forbes
a day ago
- Business
- Forbes
Scary New ‘Final Reckoning' Video Shows Tom Cruise Rehearse Bi-Plane Transfer
New Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning behind-the-scenes video footage shows Tom Cruise practicing the film's harrowing bi-plane scene. The thrilling sequence takes place at the end of the third act of The Final Reckoning. In the scene, Cruise's Impossible Mission Force Agent Ethan Hunt attempts to secure a device from the film's main villain, Gabriel (Esai Morales), to hopefully put a stop to the self-aware artificial intelligence program The Entity. If the Entity isn't stopped, it will begin launching missiles from all of the world's nuclear arsenals. During the scene, Ethan needs to fly a bi-plane and chase down another bi-plane that Gabriel is flying, and then transfer himself from his plane to wrestle the device from the madman. Paramount Pictures on Monday released an intense scene involving a helicopter with a camera attached, which shows Cruise rehearsing in mid-air how he abandons his red bi-plane in the film to transfer to the yellow bi-plane to reach Morales' character. The already scary footage is made even more intense when a wheel rig attached to the bottom of the chopper that's fashioned to look like the bottom of the yellow bi-plane bumps the top of the red bi-plane as Cruise is holding on to its wing. The end of the 1-minute, 11-second clip shows Cruise safely returning to the ground with a smile on his face. The full behind-the-scenes segment can be seen below. The live-action version of Disney's 2002 animated film classic Lilo & Stitch, which opened against Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning on May 23, topped the domestic box office over the weekend with $61.8 million in ticket sales from 4,410 North American theaters. The Final Reckoning, however, held firm in the No. 2 spot with $27.2 million from 3,861 theaters. The Final Reckoning — which is presumed to be Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie's last Mission: Impossible movie — has made $122.6 million domestically and $231.2 million internationally for a worldwide box office tally of $353.8 million to date. The film had a $400 million production budget before prints and advertising, according to The Numbers. The Final Reckoning is the eighth Mission: Impossible film in the espionage thriller franchise that began in 1996. Also starring Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Henry Czerny and Nick Offerman, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is now in theaters.
New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How They Pulled Off That Wild ‘Mission: Impossible' Plane Stunt
Of the many storied stunts that Tom Cruise has performed over eight 'Mission Impossible' movies — scaling the world's tallest building in Dubai, riding a motorcycle off a Norwegian cliff, retrieving a stolen ledger from an underwater centrifuge — it seems unlikely that one of the most shock-and-awe set pieces in the series' nearly 30-year history would involve two old-timey biplanes that look like they should have Snoopy at the controls. And yet many viewers have emerged from the newest installment of the franchise, 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,' astonished by that scene: a 12-and-a-half-minute sequence in which Cruise's seemingly indefatigable special agent, Ethan Hunt, hitches a ride on the undercarriage of a small brightly colored aircraft, overtakes the pilot, then leaps onto another plane midair to fistfight the film's grinning villain (Esai Morales) — all while being bashed and batted by the elements like a human windsock. If it looks as if Cruise is genuinely getting blown sideways in the sky, it's because he was. The actor's well-known penchant for performing his own stunts meant that the scene was shot largely as it appears onscreen, minus the digital removal in postproduction of certain elements like safety harnesses and a secondary pilot. Most 'Mission' stunts, said Christopher McQuarrie, who has directed the last four films in the series, begin with either finding or building the right vehicle for the job. In this case it was a Boeing Stearman, primarily used to train fighter pilots during World War II. Eventually, the production bought multiples: two red, two yellow — 'because if you have just one plane and that plane breaks,' he explained, 'the whole movie shuts down.' According to the stunt coordinator and second unit director, Wade Eastwood, Cruise, 62, trained for months on the ground before the full concept took flight. 'Tom's already a very established and very proficient pilot,' Eastwood said, 'but being on the wing of a plane is not something that people do. So we tied it down and put out big fans and wind machines, and we had the prop running just to see what the effects would be on the body, and it was absolutely exhausting. I mean, you're fighting the biggest resistance band you've ever fought in your life.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning Ending Explained - Is This Really the End of Tom Cruise's M:I Series?
Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. The answer is no, there are none. Full spoilers follow. It's been one wild, stunt-filled ride over the past 29 years, but every mission must come to an end eventually. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is apparently the final entry in this long-running series, as Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt confronts his most daring and high-stakes mission yet. Now that The Final Reckoning is in theaters, we're here to break down the ending to this epic blockbuster. Who lives? Who dies? Is this really the end of the road for Ethan and his team, or could the franchise return? Read on to learn Impossible - The Final Reckoning's Ending Explained The Mission: Impossible series has always been about the IMF racing against the clock to prevent various villains from unleashing global catastrophes, but the deck is really stacked against Ethan and his team in the eighth and final movie. While Ethan stopped Esai Morales' Gabriel in the short term in 2023's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, there's still the little problem of the hyper-advanced AI known as 'The Entity' worming its way into every computer system across the globe. The situation is immediately dire in The Final Reckoning, with The Entity systematically taking over the nuclear stockpiles of every nation on Earth and Angela Bassett's President Sloane forced to choose whether to unleash a preemptive strike on those nations. The Final Reckoning only further cements its dark, foreboding tone when Ving Rhames' Luther Stickell becomes an early casualty in the conflict with Gabriel, which allows Gabriel to take possession of Luther's Poison Pill device. Even after Ethan defies the odds and retrieves The Entity's source code from the sunken Sevastopol submarine, he knows that the code is useless unless he can combine it with the Poison Pill. One way or another, all roads lead to Gabriel. As this conflict unfolds, The Final Reckoning introduces some fun and unexpected callbacks to previous Mission: Impossible films. For example, we learn that The Entity has its roots in the Rabbit's Foot, the MacGuffin device from 2006's Mission: Impossible III. Ethan's team also reunites with former CIA analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), the man who almost walked in on Ethan during his tense wire-hacking mission from the original film. Meanwhile, Shea Whigham's Jasper Briggs is revealed to be the son of Jon Voight's Jim Phelps, the IMF leader from the original film. No wonder he seems to bear such a personal grudge toward Ethan. Ethan and Gabriel's paths do ultimately converge in South Africa, at a digital bunker where The Entity plans to retreat before unleashing a nuclear holocaust. Ethan's plan is to retrieve the Poison Pill and combine it with the source code module, tricking The Entity into isolating itself on a holographic drive that Hayley Atwell's Grace can then pickpocket. Predictably, things go haywire with the arrival of CIA Director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and his team, and Simon Pegg's Benji is shot in the ensuing chaos. As Ethan and Gabriel battle it out aboard two dueling planes, the clock steadily ticks down to nuclear armageddon. President Sloane is forced to make her choice, and she chooses to trust Ethan and pull the US's nuclear arsenal offline rather than allow The Entity to take control. Ethan finally outwits Gabriel, and the latter's defiant villain speech is cut short when he bashes his head into the tail of his plane. Ethan parachutes to safety and combines the module with the Poison Pill. Grace performs the impossible feat of snatching the drive at just the right moment, trapping The Entity in its tiny prison. Once again, Ethan and the IMF have saved the world from ruin, even if few people will ever know the full truth. Even more impressive, they do so without any further casualties. Benji survives his near-fatal gunshot wound, meaning Luther is the only IMF member to die in The Final Reckoning. Ethan and his team reunite one last time in London's Trafalgar Square, where Grace hands Ethan the briefcase containing The Entity. After exchanging solemn nods, they all go their separate ways. Thus ends their latest, and apparently last, impossible mission. Does The Final Reckoning Have a Post-Credits Scene? As mentioned above, the eighth and final (for now?) Mission: Impossible movie has no mid- or post-credits scenes. You're free to leave once the credits start rolling. Though, as always, it never hurts to stick around and show some appreciation for all the cast and crew who made those death-defying stunts happen. The lack of a post-credits scene isn't necessarily that surprising, given that they've never really been a thing with this particular Hollywood franchise. Still, with this supposedly being the last entry in the series, you might think Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie would want to give fans one last nod before sending Ethan Hunt off into the sunset. As much as this is billed as the conclusion of the series, The Final Reckoning certainly leaves the door open for more. A post-credits scene could have hinted at what's next for the victorious Ethan. But that does raise an important question. Is this really the end? Let's explore what we know. Is This Really the End of the Mission: Impossible Series? Paramount has definitely marketed The Final Reckoning as the conclusion to the Mission: Impossible saga. It's right there in the name. This film is meant to cap off a 29-year journey and chronicle Ethan Hunt's final and most desperate mission. But how final is this film, really? It certainly wraps up on a pretty open-ended note. Ethan is still alive, having somehow survived diving to loot a sunken submarine in the frigid Arctic Ocean. Luther may have perished heroically, but the rest of the IMF is alive, too (even Benji, who was touch-and-go there for a bit). That's honestly one of the criticisms that can be leveled at The Final Reckoning. Even in this supposedly final outing, the film seems reluctant to break too many of its toys or veer outside the standard formula. Anyone expecting to see Cruise's iconic hero finally bite off more than he can chew and meet his end will come away disappointed. Given the way The Final Reckoning ends, there's nothing stopping Paramount from greenlighting another sequel featuring this revamped cast, with Cruise's Ethan being joined by Atwell's Grace, Pegg's Benji, Pom Klementieff's Paris, and Greg Tarzan Davis' Theo Degas. The studio certainly seems to be leaving that door open, whether or not they choose to walk through it. It may all come down to a question of money. The Mission: Impossible franchise has certainly raked in the cash for Paramount over the years, but these movies are also insanely expensive to produce. Stunts this epic and stars this famous don't come cheap. Case in point: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One grossed an impressive $571 million worldwide, yet the film is still considered to be a box office failure because of its massive budget (which was inflated by complications stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic). The Final Reckoning's budget is reported to be as high as $400 million even before marketing, meaning it needs to gross way more than its predecessor to break even. That may be too much to hope for in a summer movie season as crowded as this one. That's to say nothing of the fact that audiences are proving ever more fickle in the age of endless streaming options. Given the astronomical cost of making Mission: Impossible movies, Paramount may be happy to close the door on the franchise and focus on the more profitable Top Gun series. The ROI simply isn't there any longer. That said, we could see Paramount pivoting in a slightly different direction with Mission: Impossible. Perhaps Cruise's character could become more of a supporting player, with a new generation of heroic IMF agents taking center stage. That formula certainly worked for 2022's Top Gun: Maverick. At one point, rumors even suggested that Maverick star Glen Powell was being eyed to become the new face of the M:I franchise, though Powell himself has denied this. At the very least, we know director Christopher McQuarrie has explored the idea of further sequels beyond The Final Reckoning. But if the studio ever does greenlight them, we suspect the goal will be to pivot to smaller, cheaper spinoffs with less emphasis on Cruise. It's not as if Cruise is getting any younger, and at some point, Ethan Hunt needs to be allowed to retire for real. How many times can one guy save the world before it's enough? In IGN's Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review, Clint Gage gave the film a 6 out of 10, writing, "While its action is reliably thrilling and a few of its most exciting sequences are sure to hold up through the years, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tries to deal with no less than the end of every living thing on the planet – and suffers because of it. The somber tone and melodramatic dialogue miss the mark of what's made this franchise so much fun for 30 years, but the door is left open for more impossible missions and the hope that this self-serious reckoning isn't actually final." For more on the series, check out our ranking of the Mission: Impossible movies from worst to best. Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning': What the Critics Are Saying
Ethan Hunt's story is now over, supposedly — and early watchers are responding to the last Mission: Impossible installment. Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, the final film in the spy action franchise, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday and received a five-minute standing ovation. The film was directed by Christopher McQuarrie with a budget nearing $400 million. Leading up to the highly anticipated movie's release, Tom Cruise's jaw-dropping stunts like him holding on the side of a helicopter and the under water sequence has been promoted on the film's social media and the star's own account. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' Review: Tom Cruise Delivers but the Convoluted Eighth Entry Takes Its Sweet Time Getting There Tom Cruise Hints at Life After 'Mission' as He Whips Cannes Into a Frenzy at 'Final Reckoning' Premiere 'Mission: Impossible' Director Christopher McQuarrie Was Ready to Quit the Business When He Met Tom Cruise Final Reckoning begins a couple of months after 2023's Dead Reckoning ends. Hunt (Cruise) and the IMF team are on a mission to stop Gabriel Martinelli (Esai Morales) from getting access to the world-ending rogue artificial intelligence known as 'The Entity.' Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny and Pom Klementieff round out the cast. As of Thursday, the film sits at an 82 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It officially hits theaters on May 23, by Paramount, the same day as the live-action Lilo & Stitch. The two projects are expected to earn the biggest Memorial Day box office sales in history. Below, read on to know what critics are saying in the first reviews of the movie. The Hollywood Reporter's chief film critic, David Rooney, praised Cruise's performance in his review, 'Cruise's commitment to performing his own stunts and giving audiences the analog thrill of in-camera daredevilry instead of digital fakery has progressed to ever more astonishing feats over the course of eight Mission: Impossible movies. It's the key reason for this franchise's longevity — along with the self-destructing mission instructions, the identity-switching facemasks, the heroic sprints and the high-speed vehicular chases.' However, he ultimately felt, 'The Final Reckoning ends up being a bit on the dull side. If it's going to be the last we see of one of the most consistently entertaining franchises to come out of Hollywood in the past few decades — a subject about which Cruise and McQuarrie have remained vague — it's a disappointing farewell with a handful of high points courtesy of the indefatigable lead actor.' USA Today's movie critic Brian Truitt wrote, 'Overall, there's an Avengers: Endgame feel to Final Reckoning, throwing back to plot points and characters from previous films.' Elsewhere, the publication stated, 'If The Final Reckoning is indeed at hand, you couldn't ask for a better death-defying, free-falling, edge-of-your-dang-seat sendoff.' Vulture's movie critic Bilge Ebiri wrote, 'Final Reckoning does eventually recover from the calamity of its first hour to give us an entertaining, if still messy, Mission: Impossible movie. It achieves this by tuning out the broody chatter of its first act and giving us a lengthy, ingenious (and refreshingly silent) sequence inside a sunken submarine, a wreck whose unstable spot on the sea floor ensures that our hero will wind up bouncing and rolling around a room inconveniently filled with floating torpedoes.' The New York Times' chief film critic Manohla Dargis wrote, 'Male-driven action movies often have a savior complex, with heroes who are beaten and brutalized only at last to rise vengefully triumphant. Final Reckoning leans hard into that familiar theme — the team faces betrayal, the fate of everyone on Earth is in Ethan's hands — which gives the movie a quasi-religious dimension. That's weird, no doubt, but there's something plaintive about Ethan's fight this time because it echoes the urgent struggles of workers in the entertainment industry (and everywhere else) to prevent their replacement by artificial intelligence. For years, Cruise has put on a very good show pretending to nearly die for our pleasure; now, though, his body really does seem on the line.' Despite the film's promotion of its action sequences, IndieWire's reviews editor and head film critic, David Ehrlich, surprising wrote, 'The longest Mission: Impossible movie ever has, by far, the least action to offer in return.' The film's run time is nearly three hours long. Time magazine's film critic Stephanie Zacharek criticized its story as its biggest issue, writing, 'It's big, extravagant, and at times very beautiful to look at. The story is the problem: packed with expository dialogue, it feels as if it were written to be digested in 10- or 15-minute bites. Characters robotically repeat significant McGuffiny phrases. The Rabbit's Foot! The Anti-God! The Doomsday Vault! Final Reckoning doesn't flow; it lurches forward in a series of information-delivery packets. If you've seen the first half of this double whammy, 2023's conveniently titled Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, but forgotten what the hell it was all about, you needn't worry. You could queue up Final Reckoning at home, go out to walk the dog, and get caught up in a snap when you return. And how cinematic is that?' YouTube critic Jeremy Jahns spoke highly of those 'epic' stunts in his review, 'When I say this is a stunt work showcase I mean it and we're right there to where it almost feels like to its detriment. But the stunts are so fucking entertaining and well executed you can't help but have fun while watching … that plane scene was absolutely epic, the tension was real,' he said. 'Mission Impossible may have started out being basically American James Bond, it's ended somewhere between Bond and Fast & Furious, somewhere in between those two. Mission Impossible has leaned into itself, it's leaned into the meme. Tom Cruise running montage videos on YouTube, this movie gives them more clips for the next one even when it doesn't make any sense.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
National Post
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- National Post
Film review: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (or is it?)
Article content Let's get one thing straight. This will be Tom Cruise's final Mission: Impossible movie. Unless of course it turns out not to be. Also, this prediction will self-destruct in five seconds. Article content Article content Granted, there is a sense of completeness in that subtitle — The Final Reckoning — but also one of confusion, since this is the continuation of 2023's Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, but without the decency of being called Part Two. It is also, for those of you who miss the days of Roman-numbered franchises: M:I VIII. Article content The previous instalment ended with Cruise's superspy Ethan Hunt in possession of a cruciform key that could be used to control — or destroy — an evil AI entity known as 'the Entity.' (Not very creative, these AIs.) Article content Article content Director Christopher McQuarrie returns for his fourth Mission feature. (He also made the 2012 Cruise movie Jack Reacher, presumably as a form of audition.) He opens with a greatest-hits montage over a message from the president (Angela Bassett), lest we forgot what a badass Ethan has been since the first Impossible film, now almost 30 years ago. Next, the obligatory getting-the-band-back-together sequence, as Ethan reunites with Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames) and Grace (Hayley Atwell). Article content They'll need all the team members' skills and then some to defeat both the Entity and the evil Gabriel (Esai Morales), who no longer has the key but has stolen a digital poison pill that has to be combined with the AI's source code to cut the Entity down to size. MacGuffins within MacGuffins … Article content Article content It's serious stuff, but not so serious that you can't chuckle at it from time to time. I was chuffed to see 'Gulf of Mexico' (not America) on a map wielded by the U.S. president, and amused that, after one ship is described onscreen as being 'somewhere in the Atlantic,' the next one we see says 'Location: Classified.' Come on, movie! We won't tell! Article content Article content But as with all the M:I movies, it's the journey rather than the destination that matters, and this one doesn't disappoint. Although I have to say it doesn't quite match the summer-popcorn insanity of the last one, which featured a bonkers motorcycle jump, and that scene where the Orient Express falls to its doom: One. Railcar. At. A. Time. Ethan and Grace had to scramble to survive that from inside the train, at one point dodging a plummeting piano. Article content This one has an extended sequence of Cruise infiltrating the sunken Russian submarine, which decides to slowly roll over on the ocean bed like a restless sleeper, causing missiles and torpedoes to rattle around inside the hull like so much uncooked spaghetti. There's also the bit promised by the posters – Gabriel and Ethan fighting in the sky, the latter clinging to the wing of an upside-down yellow biplane.
