Posted in: Movies, Paramount Pictures | Tagged: mission: impossible 7, movies, Paramount Pictures, top gun: maverick

CinemaCon: Top Gun: Maverick First Impressions from Paramount Panel

Published Thu, 26 Aug 2021 14:27:10 -0500

So I made the wrong call in my Paramount Pictures liveblog this morning. Well, I made 50% of a bad call. I said I had a feeling that they were going to screen something for us, but I thought the logical choice was Top Gun: Maverick since we know the movie is done, it's the big release from Paramount this year, and there is a lot of hype behind it. They could have let the social embargo down for the press to drum up more hype. However, Paramount decided to screen Clifford the Big Red Dog while also giving no new release date for said movie. However, as a member of the press, I was incapable of reporting on said screening unless they dropped the social embargo, which was unlikely considering it has no release date. However, there was a long Mission: Impossible featurette, a brief intro for the new Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum film The Lost City [possibly The Lost City of D the former was said at the panel and the latter is the one listed on Wikipedia], and the first thirteen minutes plus a new trailer for Top Gun: Maverick.

CinemaCon: Top Gun: Maverick First Impressions from Paramount Panel — Paramount Pictures Logo at CinemaCon 2021. Credit: Nathan Rose of FlickDirect [Thanks!]

This is in no way a review of Top Gun: Maverick because they only showed us the beginning, but it was an excellent first impression. The movie opens with Maverick being part of a test program that is trying to reach Mach 10, but their program is in danger of being shut down. And that's all we're going to say about the actual plot of the footage because we don't want to spoil anything, even for the opening of the movie. Tom Cruise remains as dynamic as ever with charisma that is just palpable. The flight scene we got to see in those thirteen minutes of footage was stunning, and on a massive screen, it's likely to give someone vertigo. You're going to really feel like you're on a plane. Paramount really pulled no punches with this one, and it's all right there on the screen. They also played a new trailer for the movie that reveals that Miles Teller is Goose's son and showed some more flight sequences. The young recruits need to go on some sort of mission, but they are the best of the best, so who could possibly have the skills to train them? This movie is out in November, so this trailer should drop sooner rather than later.

Paramount Shifts Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible 7, and More — Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance, and Jerry Bruckheimer Films.

The other movie that Paramount is clearly pulling no punches on is the seventh Mission: Impossible movie. Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie came to CinemaCon and gave a detailed breakdown of the plane stunt in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. That talk was given in person, but this time Paramount showed a long featurette detailing the big stunt from the next movie; Cruise driving a motorcycle off of a massive cliff and then parachuting down to the ground. Cruise trained insanely hard for this stunt did up to 13 jumps a day out of a plane and also did over 13,000 motocross jumps. There is a moment when Cruise goes over the cliff, and the production team is just watching and waiting because if the chute doesn't open, he is dead. Then the shoot opens, and the palpable reaction was instantaneous. Then they reveal they shot the stunt six times. McQuarrie says the only thing that scared him more than this stunt was the stuff they have planned for movie eight.

As previously stated, Paramount decided to use the remainder of their time to screen Clifford the Big Red Dog in its entirety which is honestly such a weird choice. They screened this movie without giving any sort of new released date. We all thought that the early 2022 movies such a Scream [January 14th] or Sonic the Hedgehog 2 [April 8th] would at least get a shoutout. CinemaCon 2022 is in March, so those movies would either be out or too soon to give any sort of exclusive first look. And after Sonic overperformed and was one of the biggest movies before the pandemic shut everything down, the fact that Paramount didn't even mention it was an odd choice for them to make. They talked about the success of A Quiet Place: Part II, but not one of the only legitimate box office success stories of 2020. Perhaps this is why they want to look forward and not back, but that would mean spotlighting a large subset of future movies, which they did not do.

The Paramount presentation is usually highlighted by seeing Tom Cruise do something completely insane, and this one was no different. It's a shame because if this were a normal year, we likely could have seen Cruise and McQuarrie take over the entire presentation to talk about that stunt in person, which would have been fun. However, the Top Gun: Maverick footage was top-notch, and the movie looks like it will be a lot of fun in November. The lack of showing of the early 2022 movies was a shame, especially for the fans that have been begging for anything — but hopefully, that will come soon. Please join us for the last panel of CinemaCon 2021 with Lionsgate later today.

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