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CNET
3 days ago
- Business
- CNET
'Mission: Impossible: Final Reckoning' Is Out Now. Here's Where to Stream the First 7 Movies
It's been almost 30 years since Mission: Impossible hit cinemas in 1996 as an adaptation of the 1966 television series of the same name. The Brian De Palma-directed film, starring Tom Cruise, was a critical success and kickstarted a franchise so successful that MI movies are still coming out more than two decades later. When the first movie came out I was extremely excited to see it and borrowed the VHS tape from a neighbor. Flash forward to 2000 and I made it my mission to see the sequel, MI2, at the box office. After directors De Palma, John Woo, J.J. Abrams and Brad Bird played hot potato with the reins, Christopher McQuarrie helmed the next four films, beginning with Rogue Nation. With Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning coming out May 23, I'm binge-watching the whole series on a streaming service. If you're thinking about doing the same thing -- or at least rewatching the previous film -- here's where you can stream all of the Mission: Impossible movies for an adrenaline-fueled romp. How to watch Mission: Impossible parts 1-7 The entire Mission: Impossible series -- from the 1996 original to 2023's Dead Reckoning -- is available to stream on Paramount Plus, making it the most convenient streaming service to binge the franchise. Prime Video includes the first four films alongside the seventh in your subscription: Mission: Impossible, MI 2, MI III, Ghost Protocol and Dead Reckoning. The other two films require a rental or purchase fee. Hulu subscribers can stream the first five movies: Mission: Impossible, MI 2, MI III, Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation. Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning hits theaters on May 23, in a year that will also see Paramount Pictures bring back two other franchises this summer, with Smurfs arriving in July and The Naked Gun coming in August. James Martin/CNET Paramount Plus Carries all Mission: Impossible movies Paramount Plus has a starting price of $8 per month or $60 per year for its basic, ad-supported plan. The Paramount Plus with Showtime tier goes for $13 a month or $120 per year. You can take advantage of a one-week free trial if you'd like to test the service out before committing. Alternatively, you can get Paramount Plus with a Walmart Plus subscription, which sets you back $13 per month or $98 per year. If you have Walmart Plus, you can upgrade from the entry-level Paramount Plus tier to Paramount Plus with Showtime for $5.50 per month or $65 annually. In addition to the MI movies, you can stream tons of other films and series on Paramount Plus, including Smile 2, Evil and Criminal Minds: Evolution. See at Paramount Plus Do you need to watch the entire Mission: Impossible series before The Final Reckoning? Generally, most of the Mission: Impossible movies are at least somewhat standalone, especially Mission: Impossible 2. While I recommend watching the whole lineup, I recognize that not everyone has time for a commitment like that. At the very least, whether it's been a while or you've never seen it, I recommend watching Dead Reckoning because The Final Reckoning is a direct sequel. The trailer for the new movie references Mission: Impossible, MI III, Ghost Protocol, Fallout and Dead Reckoning, so it's worth queuing those flicks up. MI 2 and Rogue Nation don't show up in the trailer, although that's not to say there's no continuity with them in The Final Reckoning.
Geek Tyrant
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Tom Cruise Was So Exhausted After His MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE Plane Stunt, He Had to Be Carried Off the Wing — GeekTyrant
Tom Cruise has spent three decades redefining the action genre by throwing himself off cliffs, scaling skyscrapers, and hanging onto planes mid-flight, and with these kinds of stunts come absolute exhaustion. According to Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning stunt coordinator and second-unit director Wade Eastwood, Cruise pushed himself to the limit for the franchise's epic aerial sequence. In an interview with The Times, Eastwood shared just how brutal the shoot was for the actor: 'It beat the hell out of him. The wind hitting him, and the blast of the propeller, particles hitting him. It was the hardest workout you could ever do, it was very dangerous and very exhausting for him. Many times we were carrying him off the wing because he was so tired. And he was flying all day.' Cruise was just so physically drained. The man was literally clinging to a moving biplane in mid-air, day after day. To communicate during these sky-high shoots, Cruise used simple hand signals. A tap to the mouth meant he needed a break, at which point he'd lay down on the wing (still in the air!) for 10 to 15 minutes before getting back to the stunt. Despite the grueling conditions, Cruise never let the pressure show. Eastwood added: 'Tom doesn't show fear, Tom shows competence. He had fun during all his stunts, even when it was exhausting. He's always positive, he'll always put on a smile, and he genuinely enjoys it.' This marks the possible final chapter in the Mission: Impossible saga, and Cruise went out swinging. But don't expect the 61-year-old actor to stay grounded for long. His next project pairs him with The Revenant director Alejandro González Iñárritu for a sci-fi drama where Cruise plays a man who almost destroys the world… and is now out to prove he's the one who can save it. Eastwood doesn't think we've seen the last of his death-defying antics: 'No, no chance. He's a machine. He acts like a 20-year-old. And there's no magic there, it's just hard work and discipline with his food, nutrition, and training.' So yeah, Cruise may have had to be carried off a plane this time, but something tells us he'll be right back in the cockpit soon enough.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' Review: Tom Cruise Delivers but the Convoluted Eighth Entry Takes Its Sweet Time Getting There
Two extended stunt sequences in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning are as bold and original as anything seen in the enduring spy franchise's almost three-decade history. That includes Tom Cruise, as covert CIA division agent Ethan Hunt, riding a motorcycle off a 4,000-foot cliff and BASE jumping the final 500 feet of a ravine, or the breathless climactic train mayhem in 2023's Dead Reckoning, the opening installment of this two-parter. In the new film, Ethan navigates a sunken Russian submarine, his movement between flooded and unflooded compartments destabilizing the vessel and sending it barreling down a slope into the depths. Later, he chases down a villain by scrambling between two vintage biplanes flying at 10,000 feet, frequently dangling from a wing over stunning South African landscapes. More from The Hollywood Reporter Nude and "Voluminous" Cannes Red Carpet Looks From Past Years That Would Violate New Dress Code David Lynch's Son Intros 'Welcome to Lynchland' Doc in Cannes: "This Festival Meant a Lot to My Dad" Kurdistan Film Commission Launches, Celebrating Cannes Premiere With Invite to the Cinema World 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. The trouble is, aside from a pre-titles sequence in which Ethan and master thief turned Impossible Mission Force recruit Grace (Hayley Atwell) are captured and threatened with torture by slick terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales), we have to wait out roughly half the almost three-hour movie for much of the exhilarating action and fabulous locations that are the series' lifeblood. It's a relief when uber-cool assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff) — now on Ethan's team and eager to ice Gabriel, her former employer — grabs a machine gun and starts mowing down Russians in the Arctic Circle. If Dead Reckoning risked overkill with its barrage of spectacular set-pieces — that car chase around Rome and down the Spanish Steps with Ethan and Grace in a Fiat Bambino was an all-timer — Final Reckoning spends a disproportionate amount of time trudging through recaps, reams of exposition and mind-numbing cyber-speak. There are so many round-robin conversations about the gravity of the situation, it feels like being trapped in an endless committee debriefing. At times, it borders on self-parody. Director Christopher McQuarrie and his co-writer Erik Jendresen planted the seeds for a more brooding, rueful Ethan in Part One. I lost count of how many times we hear the IMF oath: 'We live and die in the shadows, for those we hold close, and those we never meet.' The melancholy vein runs deep as Ethan is repeatedly confronted with the wages of his rogue espionage activities in a film laced with callbacks to previous installments, stretching all the way back to Brian De Palma's still great 1996 kickoff. McQuarrie peppers snippets of the earlier films throughout, resurfacing not just moments of high-octane action but also lacerating losses. The script works hard to mythologize Ethan as a tragic hero, who can save the world but must go forever unacknowledged, always acting 'for the greater good,' but more than once at the cost of someone he loves. Cruise plays all this with corrosive interiority alongside his characteristic physical stamina. But as compelling as his performance is, the movie feels dour and heavy for long stretches at a time. The tongue-in-cheek wit of the franchise at its best is largely absent. Then there's the unfortunate matter of 'The Entity.' Introduced in Dead Reckoning, that sentient AI menace is capable of infiltrating the financial institutions, law enforcement and nuclear facilities of the world's most powerful nations, unleashing chaos. In the months since Ethan evaded capture in Austria at the end of the last movie, the Entity has expanded its power, building a fanatical cult, sparking global violence and inching toward the annihilation of humankind. The U.S. — led by former CIA deputy director Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett, welcome back), who's since been elected president — wants to control and weaponize it. Ethan, convinced no one should have their hands on that much power, wants to destroy it. Even more so after he gets a Clockwork Orange-type indoctrination from the gizmo itself: 'It's the Entity's future, or no future at all.' Gabriel, who failed the Entity and is now an outcast (I'm not making this shit up), wants to use it to dominate the world: 'The Entity will answer to me. It's only a matter of time,' he declares, tacking on a hint of maniacal 'bwa-ha-ha' laughter. If you play a drinking game pegged to every time someone gravely intones the words 'the Entity,' be warned you'll probably be hammered within the first hour. The existential threat of Artificial Intelligence, starting with its incursions into privacy and security, is all too real, as is the notion of a cyber force manipulating the truth. But renegade AI programs make incredibly boring supervillains, and the scariest part is that we're bound to see a bunch more movies about them. I'll take marauding robots over angry screensavers. Every time someone says something idiotic like, 'The Entity, it wants you to hate me!' or 'Madam President, we're in the Entity's reality now,' Final Reckoning lurches further into self-seriousness, which doesn't sit well on a plot as maddeningly convoluted and, well, silly as this one. A lot of risible dialogue doesn't help. Lines like, 'You're forgetting the bomb! The nuclear bomb!' delivered during a particularly hairy moment, make you wonder if the writers are winking at us. When Ethan — spoiler alert — saves the day and a high-level doubter in Sloane's administration sighs, 'He did it,' you just know 'That son of a bitch' is coming next. Did McQuarrie and Jendresen use AI to write this stuff? Gaining control of the Entity is a multipart undertaking, the first step achieved in Dead Reckoning when Ethan took possession of the bejeweled 'cruciform' key. Or was that just a MacGuffin? The crucial next step is retrieving the source codes from a gadget called the Podkova, which was lost when the Sevastopol, a Russian submarine, vanished on its maiden voyage at the start of Dead Reckoning, thanks to some Entity treachery. It now sits below the polar ice cap in the Bering Sea. Only Ethan knows how to locate it, which is why Gabriel wants him kept alive and President Sloane puts her faith in him, against the advice of her defense and intelligence chiefs. The Podkova needs to be activated at a precise split second to stop the Entity from launching the nuclear warheads of eight nations and claiming billions of lives. So the pressure is on. Activation also requires an additional component stolen by Gabriel from Ethan's trusty hacker sidekick Luther, played by Ving Rhames, the only actor besides Cruise who has been with the series since the start. That history is warmly acknowledged here in an affecting moment. Ethan's bantering rapport with his close collaborators Luther and Benji (Simon Pegg) is always pleasurable, though it's limited here by how much time Ethan spends globe-hopping solo. Atwell is a welcome presence again, even if her character has lost some of the mischievous charm she had as a thief, becoming more serious and less fun since joining Ethan's IMF crew and having to learn new skills on the job, like defusing bombs. It's good to see Ron Saxon back as William Donloe, the CIA analyst baffled by Ethan's entry into the supposedly impenetrable black vault in the first movie. Likewise Bassett (her second time playing a U.S. president this year, after Netflix's Zero Day) and Henry Czerny as Kittridge, the ex-IMF chief now heading the CIA. But all the tense meetings at Virginia Emergency Command are staffed by over-qualified actors given too little to do — Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany. Same goes for Hannah Waddingham as an aircraft carrier commander. Tramell Tillman has an amusing wild-man energy as U.S. rescue submarine commanding officer Bledsoe ('Mister, if you wanna poke the bear, you've come to the right place!') And Bledsoe's vessel provides the setting for some frantic mano a mano, when an Entity convert tries taking out Ethan, conveniently while he's training shirtless in athletic boxer briefs. But I wish someone had explained what exactly these killer cultists expect to get out of serving the Entity. I did get a kick out of Klementieff's Paris muttering arch nonsense like 'Who will live and who will die?' or 'It is written.' Her response — delivered in French, in a perplexed deadpan — when asked to perform emergency surgery on Benji is priceless: 'I kill people.' But despite the expected pluses of slick visual polish, muscular camerawork by Fraser Taggart and a dynamic score by Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey, 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. 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
Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
‘He has no fear': my life jumping out of planes with Tom Cruise
When Tom Cruise called to offer him a job on Mission: Impossible, Wade Eastwood was strapped into a car and ready to make a 30-metre jump. People were waiting for the stuntman on the set of a car advert, but he took a quick break for Cruise. 'The call came and I saw it was him, so I quickly took my helmet off and said 'Give me two minutes',' Eastwood recalls. 'And he was like, 'Please can you come and join me on Mission?' ' That was ten years ago. Eastwood and Cruise have since worked together on four Mission: Impossible films — starting with the fifth instalment, Rogue Nation — as well as The Mummy and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. The pair first met in 2013 on the set of the Doug Liman film Edge of Tomorrow and instantly hit it off. 'We basically met in the car park of the studio and found out immediately that we had very similar energy,' says Eastwood, 53. 'I'm not one to go on holiday and lie by the pool. I've got to do some extreme sports. And he's exactly the same.' Cruise is now a close friend, and they occasionally go skydiving together during their time off. As stunt co-ordinator and second unit director, Eastwood is in charge of all action sequences in the latest (and final) Mission: Impossible film, The Final Reckoning, which was released last week. And, as anyone who has ever watched one of the eight instalments knows, there is a lot of action: car chases pile onto plane crashes and submarine explosions. In The Final Reckoning, artificial intelligence is the super-villain. But Cruise is defying AI, as well as CGI and indeed age, in real life too: at 62, he is still doing his own stunts. 'Tom just doesn't want the audience to be cheated,' Eastwood says. 'We don't use green screens, everything is real. And the audience can feel it.' So what's it like co-ordinating stunts for a famously demanding megastar? In the previous film, 2023's Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise trained for over a year in motocross and skydiving, which involved doing more than 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps. No matter how many months of preparation and training there are, however, these stunts come with a very real danger of injury or even death. It is Eastwood's job to make them as safe as possible, but, as he admits, 'anything can happen'. The stuntman say he has yet to see Cruise get cold feet: the only time the actor ever backs out of a stunt is when it doesn't suit the story. 'Tom doesn't show fear, Tom shows competence,' he says. 'He had fun during all his stunts, even when it was exhausting. He's always positive, he'll always put on a smile, and he genuinely enjoys it.' Cruise was 34 when he starred in the first Mission: Impossible film. He recently told The Hollywood Reporter that he wanted to keep making action films 'into my hundreds' — but surely there are some stunts he can't do any more? 'No, no chance. He's a machine,' Eastwood insists. 'He acts like a 20-year-old. And there's no magic there, it's just hard work and discipline with his food, nutrition and training.' Cruise sticks to a strict workout routine in his gym, which travels with him to every film set. He calls it 'the pain cave' and a sign outside it reads: 'Only the motivated may enter.' In one scene of The Final Reckoning, Cruise walks on the wing of a small plane as it flies. 'The audience will never really appreciate how dangerous that plane chase is,' Eastwood says. 'I have to do what I can to eliminate as much risk as possible, but there is still a lot of risk.' Not only was it dangerous, but physically intense. 'It beat the hell out of him,' Eastwood says. 'The wind hitting him, and the blast of the propeller, particles hitting him. It was the hardest workout you could ever do, it was very dangerous and very exhausting for him. Many times we were carrying him off the wing because he was so tired. And he was flying all day.' Another standout stunt in the film is an underwater scene in which Cruise's character is infiltrating a submarine. Cruise wasn't able to see much because of the reflection of the lights, and his diving suit weighed more than 125 pounds. 'It was absolutely hectic and chaotic underwater,' Eastwood says. 'We rehearsed as much as we could, but it's like having an animal on set: they always react slightly differently, no matter how much you rehearse, and filming underwater was the same.' One of Eastwood's favourite stunts was Cruise's basejump off a cliff in Norway on a motorbike, for Dead Reckoning. 'When Tom rode past me and disappeared off the ramp … that was a moment I'll never forget in my 33 years in the film industry,' Eastwood says. 'Because all that work, all that training, all the prep, all the exhaustion, for everyone to come together to create this piece of cinematic history, and it goes perfectly — it's an amazing feeling.' He celebrated that stunt with some rare quiet time. Eastwood's favourite memory from the latest movie was filming in his native South Africa and being able to show Cruise and the rest of the crew his home. 'Tom saw my home town, Durban, where I grew up. It was very special,' he says. For a bit of light R&R, the pair jumped out of a helicopter together in Jeffreys Bay. But the real pinch-me moment came when it was time to go home from the set each night. Cruise and Eastwood would fly separate aircraft alongside each other back to the runway, Top Gun style. 'I'd just look across and smile and wave, and it's like, we're flying in my home-town mountains, where I grew up as a kid. Tom Cruise is in a biplane 10ft away from me, and we are going home as the sun's setting,' Eastwood says. 'It's surreal. It makes all the stress and the pressure more than worthwhile.'
News.com.au
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
‘I'm open to it': Bond actor Ana de Armas teases return
When Ana de Armas first worked with Keanu Reeves in the 2015 psychological thriller Knock Knock, she was a young Cuban-born actor who had moved to Spain in her teens, found success on television, and was ready to try her luck in Hollywood. At the time, her broken English meant she had to learn her lines phonetically. A decade later, de Armas is reuniting with Reeves in From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina. Concurrent with the events during and after 2019's John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, the new spin-off sees de Armas as Eve Macarro, a dancer-turned-assassin taking down foes by any means necessary. 'Women are very creative and very imaginative, and if you put them in a situation where they have to fight for their lives, you'll be surprised what they can come up with,' the actor tells Stellar. 'It would be awesome to have more female action leads in the industry.' Since Knock Knock, de Armas has become one of the most in-demand stars in any type of film, with stand-out performances in Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Knives Out (2019), No Time To Die (2021) and Blonde (2022), which earned her an Oscar nomination for her turn as Marilyn Monroe. But as her star has risen, de Armas says she's never forgotten the example set by Reeves. 'He's one of the nicest people I've ever met and very hardworking, takes his work really seriously and he leads by example,' she explains, adding that being in Ballerina with him was a full-circle moment. 'If you just pay attention to his intentions, to his words, to the way he talks to people when he shows up on set and when he leaves set, it's generosity towards all the other filmmakers involved in every project he does. He doesn't need to say anything; he does.' For her part, the very private de Armas has also had to handle being in the public spotlight thanks to tabloid coverage of her previous relationship with Ben Affleck and current rumoured links to Tom Cruise. Even so, she tells Stellar of finding her place in the film business, 'I've never been afraid. It's a big industry and it can crush you if you're not careful. But you have to be focused and have your path clear where you want to go and just do that.' Although de Armas trained for four months in fighting and weapons techniques to prepare for shooting Ballerina, she says playing stilettos-wearing, CIA-employed Cuban agent Paloma in the James Bond film No Time To Die was good groundwork. 'I thought, If I can do this in high heels, I can do anything,' she says with a laugh. With the potential expansion of the 007 world after Amazon MGM Studios' recent purchase of the franchise, would de Armas reprise her role? 'We'll see what that brings, but I love Paloma,' she says. 'She was so fun. I'm open to it.' More recently, de Armas spent some time in Queensland, where she filmed esteemed director Ron Howard's survival thriller Eden – due for release later this year – with Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Richard Roxburgh and Sydney Sweeney. She has fond memories of the ocean and spending New Year's Eve watching the fireworks from Sydney Harbour – and not-so-fond memories of some of her unexpected tropical co-stars. 'I remember at random times on set, people just screaming, 'Snake!' and everyone running,' de Armas recalls of the Gold Coast location, which doubled as the Galapagos Islands. 'Stopping the take right away – whatever was happening, whoever was talking – we literally dropped everything and ran away, waiting for the guy to come with the stick and take the snake out. But I think we were fine… no accidents happened.' From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina is in cinemas June 5.
