This week, Ethan Hunt returns for the seventh (and penultimate?) time in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning! Did the production delays harm the final film? Are we warming up to something great in part eight, or all we falling apart before the finish line? Do we really need to motivate Ethan with another dead woman — or worse, two dead women?

Unanswered Questions:

• Is there any way to reconcile the IMF in this movie and the preceding installments in the franchise?
• In what ways is Dead Reckoning compromised by the pandemic, and compromised by being the first half of a two-part story?
• How does Grace rank alongside the strong women we saw in Fallout?

Further reading:

• The Bechdel Test
• Women In Refrigerators (Gail Simone)
• Christopher McQuarrie Breaks Down the Making of ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’ and Why AI is the Villain in Exclusive Q&A (Collider)
• The Last Star In Hollywood Definitive List Of Tom Cruise Films
• The Last Star In Hollywood: Production Schedule

A huge and sincere thank you to all our listeners for coming on this journey with us! For bonus shows, extra content and more, support The Last Star In Hollywood and the Next Word network by visiting Patreon.com/NextWord!

Join us in two weeks for a wrap-up show, and come on back in May of 2025 for Mission: Impossible – Shenanigans Ensue!

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