Guys, it’s just dawned on us that, once Tom Cruise hangs up his leather jacket, we might not have any more movie stars doing absurd, vaguely moronic, and absolutely thrilling stunts for our entertainment. If any cause deserves its own Sarah McLachlan-soundtracked public awareness campaign, it’s this one. It’s hard enough to imagine someone coming along to replace Cruise just as a movie star, but as a stuntman? Pssh, the insurance would just be too nuts if Timothée Chalamet decided to hang off the side of a propeller airplane. And, yeah, that’s exactly what Cruise does in the new trailer for Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, which Paramount dropped on Monday morning to remind you that you’ve still got a heart beating away in that chest of yours and that Tom Fucking Cruise wants to stop it.
Take a look:
Instead of a synopsis (which, let’s be real, no one gives a shit about when they go to one of these movies), here’s what Cruise told Empire when they asked him if this was, truly, the final installment of Ethan Hunt’s adventures:
“You gotta see the movie,” laughs Cruise, when Empire tries to get an answer out of him. “It’s a hard thing for me to discuss at the moment, because it really is something that you have to experience.” It is, though, he says, “an epic, emotional journey of the entire franchise,” an odyssey of sorts. “It’s Homeric,” he promises.
Homeric! Huh! Well, you can see Tom Cruise stare in horror as Circe turns his supporting cast of IMF agents into pigs when Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning hits theaters on May 23. Or, even better, we imagine that the first few years of Cruise’s action-star retirement will see him tied to a mast as producers attempt to lure him to projects with the promise of crazy-ass stunts.