Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the latest addition to the Impossible saga, has fallen short of expectations with a less-than-ideal box office debut.
The movie, which cost roughly $290 million to make, made $235 million in the first weekend of release.
That’s a far cry from the $290+ million Hollywood experts predicted.
READ MORE: Watch Tom Cruise throw a train off a cliff in the new Mission: Impossible movie
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One isn’t just a mouthful to say, it’s also a big deal for two major reasons.
First, as the title suggests, this is the first part of a two-part finale that serves as a send-off for the main character Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise.
Secondly, Paramount Pictures threw absolutely everything but the kitchen sink at it, with outrageous stunts that defy the laws of gravity and physics.
So what went wrong?
The short answer is, probably nothing, as the movie is still expected to turn a hefty profit.
Dead Reckoning was released using Tom Cruise’s tried-and-tested recipe: a five-day release, in IMAX quality (ie, tickets are more expensive).
This is because Cruise notoriously shuns low-level cinematography and always wants his movies to be displayed using the highest possible quality.
Lest we forget, Cruise had to fight off streaming companies that were were trying to get their grubby mitts on both Dead Reckoning and Top Gun: Maverick during the pandemic.
Initially, the movie was projected to gross between $90 million and 100 million domestically and somewhere north of $160 million globally in the first five days.
But the film made $15.5 million on its first day, and $235 million in total, at the time of writing.
Deadline Hollywood, a web mag with a focus on cinema, said that unlike Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, another big-time production that underperformed in recent weeks, Dead Reckoning has two things going for it.
First, Tom Cruise’s box office performance is usually fireproof, and his movies tend to perform quite well even after weeks or months.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, people actually liked this movie.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 96 percent positive rating with over 340 reviews.
On Twitter, an admittedly less refined but equally effective way of measuring people’s reactions, people seem to love it as well.
Movie critic Scott Manz thinks Dead Reckoning is the best Mission: Impossible movie yet, followed by Rogue Nation and Fallout.
“The cast and crew did an awesome job working on the movie,” another user said.
Others are taking a more light-hearted approach in their reviews.
“Dead Reckoning Part II will conclude the REAL conflict: should Tom Cruise look left or right in the movie poster,” Kingofried Tomato asked.
Now, that’s a very good question.
