Mission Impossible 5 International Trailer. Oh Wait…

After the atrocity that was Knight and Day, it’s kind of nice to see Tom Cruise returning to the top of his game. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol was arguable one of the best of the series, and were it not for the overwhelming amount of action juggernauts being released this year (Bourne, Batman, Avengers etc), it would probably have a lot more staying power as a modern action feature. We shouldn’t deny the fact that it was the fifth highest grossing film of last year, and Cruise’s most successful picture to date.

Now that he’s leaving that first-gen Rachel Dawson’s Creek, weird annoying mouth woman behind, it seems that Cruise is going to be career-driven once again. His first mission (which he chose to accept) comes in the form of Jack Reacher, a film which is a potential franchise-launcher based on the novels by Lee Child.

Who is Jack Reacher you ask? Jack Reacher is a former Military Police Major, who then moved on to be part of a Special Investigations Unit. Since leaving the Army, he has been a drifter; wandering the United States with a foldable toothbrush and an expired passport.

The books describe him as being 6’5”, weighing in at somewhere between 210-250 pounds. Wait. What? You mean to tell me that out of all the stacked actors out there who could probably afford a decent action franchise to launch their careers, Paramount landed on Tom ‘Diddy’ Cruise?

The truth is, Paramount didn’t have a say. Neither did Academy-award nominated director Christopher McQuarrie. You see, the majority of this film’s financial backing comes in the form of TC Productions. A production company that was formerly known as Cruise/Wagner productions. So regardless of what fans of the books would expect of a Jack Reacher film, Cruise has gone the extra mile to ensure that they are displeased with it before a second of film has been screened to the public. In Cruise’s defence though, Child has been quoted as saying,

Reacher’s size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way.’

Read into that quote how you will, but personally it doesn’t sound like Child is overly convinced.

To try and defend the early criticisms, the first international trailer has been recently released and contains perhaps the most by-the-book trailer action I’ve ever seen. Not only that, the music sounds suspiciously like the Mission: Impossible theme.

I’m going to go with my gut and write this film of as a simple Tom Cruise vehicle for fans of Tom Cruise only. For everyone else, I’m sure we’ll still be rewatching The Bourne Legacy by the time ‘Reacher’ rolls around.

Jack Reacher is released on December 21st, 2012 via Paramount Pictures, TC Productions and Skydance Productions.

The HD trailer below comes courtesy of TrailerAddict.