“You are the sharpest student in the class”: Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible 7 Director Lashes Out at Valid Criticism After Movie Failed at Box-Office With $291M Budget
Tom Cruise returned as field agent Ethan Hunt for the Impossible Mission Force for the seventh time earlier this summer.
When it came to Ethan showing his penchant for taking risks to carry out IMF’s missions, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was no different than its predecessors. How at the retirement age of 61, Cruise managed to do his own stunts, which included jumping off the cliff of a mountain while riding a motorcycle, remains the biggest mystery from the movie.
Director Christopher McQuarrie, or anyone else for that matter, simply has no reasonable explanation for Cruise’s anti-aging powers.
What Fans Didn’t Like About Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 7
Warning: The following part of the article contains spoilers for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Instead of explaining to fans how Tom Cruise continues to defy logic and run on trains like it’s nothing (in this movie he did that to fight off assassin Gabriel) Christopher McQuarrie instead chose to spend a lot of time unfolding the mystery surrounding the main antagonist, the Entity.
On the surface it seems Gabriel – the character played by Esai Morales – is the main villain. But he’s nothing but a liaison for the Entity, an Artificial Intelligence gone rogue. Gabriel is tasked with carrying out its bidding and stopping Ethan from getting his hands on a key that would unlock the AI’s secrets.
As always Cruise fans queued up to watch him do stunts in his trademark style and the movie ended up grossing $560.3 million at the the box office. However, it took $291 million to make the seventh installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise a reality. As such, just over half a billi on collection for one of the most expensive movies ever made is far from impressive.
Many fans felt the level of exposition in the movie was more than their liking and the time spent on explaining AI’s ability and secrets was redundant. All it did was give the impression that McQuarrie dragged the storyline more than needed.
How the Director of Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 7 Reacted to Fans’ Criticism
Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning is a two-parter story, with the eighth and final chapter of Ethan’s life set to be released in 2024. In Part One, McQuarrie gives far too much focus on unraveling the information surrounding AI through his main protagonists’ perspective and subsequently his intention of locating the two halves of its key.
Like Ethan, fans are also left picking little details throughout the movie to complete the puzzle, much to the frustration of some critics. However, McQuarrie feels explaining the workings of AI was necessary. Speaking on The Empire Spoiler Specials podcast, he said:
“Yes, I know for a lot of people there’s too much exposition in the movie. You wouldn’t feel so if I took it all out. You would trade exposition for confusion. And people who feel things are explained too many times, I congratulate you. You are the sharpest student in the class. You’re paying very close attention, and you’re listening to all the dialogue. I assure you not everyone is, not all the time.”
Apart from Ethan, Gabriel, and the Entity, McQuarrie had interesting characters like Ilsa Faust and White Widow at his disposal and perhaps more screen time could’ve been given to them. However, it’s only fair to afford him the patience to roll out the carpet for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two in order to showcase just what the Entity is truly capable of and when and where Ethan will manage to put brakes on it.
