The Mission: Impossible film series started out relatively short. The 1996 original runs a tight 110 minutes. Over a quarter century later, much has changed. Hollywood blockbusters are real, real long these days — nearly as long as its various Indian counterparts, whose films (like last year’s delightful RRR) routinely run in the three, even four hour range. Even John Wick entries now take forever to watch.
But back to the Mission: Impossible films, that series has seen ballooning runtimes over the last 27 years — creeping over two hours with number two, inching past that with number three, and so on. By 2017, entry number six, Fallout, had grown so long that it was a mere two minutes shorter than Goodfellas (with epic modern end credits, of course).
But what of Dead Reckoning Part One, the first part of the series’ (alleged) final bow? How long will it take to watch that?
Surprise surprise! It runs a gargantuan 163 minutes, or two hours and 43 minutes. (Again, with epic modern end credits). For some context, that’s four minutes shorter than John Wick 4. And it finds the franchise crossing the Goodfellas Rubicon, running 17 minutes longer than Martin Scorsese’s very long, very filling modern gangster classic. (Also worth noting: M:I 7 is nearly a half hour longer than the exceedingly popular Top Gun: Maverick.)
Can you withstand watching nearly three hours of Tom Cruise nearly killing himself to entertain us? Find out when Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 12.