“Big Movie. Big Screen. Loved it.“

As theaters begin to reopen internationally, Tom Cruise and his Mission: Impossible writer/director Chris McQuarrie decided to show their support for exhibitors yesterday by paying a visit to the Odeon BFI IMAX to check out an advance screening of Christopher Nolan’s action/sci-fi epic, Tenet. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros., who Cruise has worked with a number of times including on Edge of Tomorrow and The Last Samurai, was more than happy to accommodate his request to attend a word-of-mouth preview screening of Nolan’s latest, which opens in the U.K. today and in the U.S. next weekend. 

Oddly enough, Cruise and Nolan – two of the most prolific filmmakers in cinematic history as well as two of the biggest advocators of the theatrical experience – have never worked together, but it’s fair to wonder whether Cruise’s outward show of support could get the ball rolling on a potential collaboration down the line. 

Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 are headlined by Tom Cruise (Top Gun: Maverick) as IMF ace Ethan Hunt, as well as fellow returning stars Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Fallout) as Ilsa Faust, Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible – Fallout) as Benji Dunn, Ving Rhames (Mission: Impossible – Fallout) as Luther Stickell, and Vanessa Kirby (Mission: Impossible – Fallout) as the White Widow. Newcomers to the storied action franchise include Hayley Atwell (Avengers: Endgame), Pom Klementieff (Avengers: Endgame), Shea Whigham (Joker) and Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: Dark Phoenix), who is rumored to be playing the villain. Henry Czerny (Sharp Objects) has also been confirmed to reprise his role as Eugene Kittridge from the first film.

There isn’t much information regarding who else will make up Ethan Hunt’s team for his seventh and eighth adventures, but fans still holding out hope that some combination of Jeremy Renner (William Brandt), Angela Bassett (Erica Sloane), Paula Patton (Jane Carter) and/or Maggie Q (Zhen Lei) will also return. There have also been rumblings that the likes of Henry Cavill (August Walker) and Alec Baldwin (Alan Hunley) may also be back in some capacity as McQuarrie recently teased, “Any character, dead or alive, is fair game to return.“

While filming has been halted due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it’s slated to start up again within the next week or so and both sequels are expected to film back-to-back, with Mission: Impossible 7 set to light the fuse in theaters on November 19, 2021, while its sequel, Mission: Impossible 8, will open the following fall on November 4, 2022. 

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While many sites have decided against reviewing The New Mutants, one of The Hollywood Reporter‘s Paris-based film critics has shared their verdict on the Marvel movie, and it’s not so good.

They start by explaining that the only way you’ll find it an “eye-opening experience” is if you’ve never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, A Nightmare on Elm Street, or an asylum-set psychological thriller. It gets worse, as the trade notes the movie “will provide an eye-rolling case of déjà vu,” adding that Josh Boone’s take on these characters is “Generic and, at its best, straining to be heartfelt.”

“Even the handful of twists meant to be vaguely new, such as a same-sex love affair between two of the heroines, wind up feeling familiar, which is perhaps why Boone actually inserts a clip from an episode of Buffy showing the same thing,” the review continues. “The movie isn’t even as scary as it could be, a fact that could be explained by the need to maintain a PG-13 rating, but in the end we’re only reminded of recent teen horror ensembles like It that worked much better.”

Praising the performances of the female cast members, it concludes with a, “It’s just too bad the movie that launched them doesn’t have the same impact. As far as the mutant franchise goes, it never makes its last stand.” 

This is obviously just one person’s opinion, but if it turns out to be indicative of the rest of the reviews, it may explain why Disney hasn’t held any press screenings.

What do you guys think?

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The New Mutants arrives in theaters this Friday (no, we can’t quite believe it either), and it’s obviously going to be very interesting seeing how fans respond to the movie and what sort of interest it’s able to generate in terms of box office revenue. Unfortunately for the franchise, it could gross over $1 billion, and that still wouldn’t mean Marvel Studios would move forward with a sequel. 

Instead, Kevin Feige and company intend to reboot the X-Men and, well, all the mutants tied to them, for the Marvel Cinematic Universe at some point in the next few years. 

Making The New Mutants part of the MCU’s continuity simply would not make sense, but when Screen Rant asked director Josh Boone which character he would like to bring to the big screen from that world, he made it clear that he’s always been a fan of Spider-Man. 

“I don’t know, man,” he started. “I’d look at any opportunity that came my way. Our favorite character growing up, more than any other, was always Spider-Man. So, we’ll be like everybody else, ‘We wish we could make a Spider-Man movie!'” Jon Watts is currently in charge of the wall-crawler for Marvel Studios, and there’s no sign that will change in the near future.

However, it’s ultimately Sony Pictures that call the shows when it comes to what happens with Spider-Man, and with such a huge number of spinoffs on the way, they could very easily task Boone with telling a story that somehow ties into the web-slinger wider world. We’ll just have to wait and see. 

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Javicia Leslie will suit up as Batwoman in season two of The CW series, replacing Ruby Rose after she decided to walk away from the role of Kate Kane. Leslie plays a newly created character, of course, and there’s a lot of excitement surrounding what Ryan Wilder is going to bring to the table. 

Talking to The Hollywood Reporter about joining the cast of Batwoman, the actress said that both she and the character share a “quirky but ‘I’m a boss if I have to be’ type of mentality,” something which led to her connecting with Ryan from the start. Showrunner Carolin Dries, meanwhile, tells the trade that when it came to her audition, “Javicia blew everyone else away.”

Leslie says she still hasn’t seen the Batwoman costume, and shooting obviously hasn’t started yet. However, she’s definitely ready for the role from a physical standpoint. “I’m very active in my personal life,” she says, “so being able to allow that to be my work, that’s heaven for me. I do Muay Thai. I do fitness training. I run. Anything that’s active I’m always down for, so this is going to be like playing on the playground every day.”

As for what it means to become the first Black Batwoman, Leslie explains that, “This really had nothing to do with me and everything to do with my people and with little Black girls. There’s not many actors that get this opportunity to play in a world that you can continue to develop and expand on for a decade. This is a great beginning to what I’m sure will be a very long journey.”

Needless to say, comic book fans are massively excited to follow her on that, and to see what the actress brings to the role of Batwoman when she joins the Arrowverse early next year. 

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