So far “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” hasn’t fared as well as Paramount hoped it would
The film’s box-office run stands at a solid $452 million thus far – most of which comes from outside North America – but with its costly $290 million budget it needs to be considerably higher.
Critically the film fared great, performing as well as the fourth through sixth films whilst audience scores are similarly high.
Nonetheless, most of what criticism there is of the film centers on its script – or lack thereof. During the film’s publicity tour, the cast joked about how much of the script was seemingly made up on the fly, built around the meticulously planned set pieces as it went.
That the film is as cohesive as it is proves a testament to Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise’s skills. Still, there’s a definite sense the action drives the storytelling rather than the other way around with this entry. It’s an approach that has irked some – including filmmaker Paul Schrader.
Schrader, who last month famously gushed over Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” took to social media (via World of Reel) to take issue with the film and its script, dubbing it “tiresome claptrap” and adding: “There’s no reason that AI, given the correct prompts, could not have written this script.”
The review comes as it has been revealed that IMAX went to Paramount and asked them to change the release date of the film because they knew that the release of “Oppenheimer” would cut short Mission’s IMAX run (which lasted just over a week).
Bruce Markoe, head of IMAX post-production, revealed to Forbes:
“We wanted to play both movies as much as we could because Mission is going to be a great picture in IMAX, but they [the studio], dated the movie right behind Oppenheimer. We wanted to get them to move it, to create more time to play both in IMAX to the full extent that they both wanted, but it didn’t work out. That’s not our decision – that’s the studios’.
Sometimes the studios work with us, and they do move dates around, but other times they just say, ‘Nope, that’s our date. We don’t care!’. And then you have a conflict, unfortunately. So, this was a time when we couldn’t get the dates to be where we would’ve ideally liked.”
Markoe adds that ‘Mission’ may “come back and play [in IMAX] when we have another gap in the schedule” but that’s not locked in yet.
