Is "Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning" going to be a 'disappointing success?'

[Mike Blakesley]

Tom Cruise is literally everywhere this week promoting his latest stunt-fest, which I am quite anxious to see, having really enjoyed the last one. But we are playing "Lilo and Stitch" this week, mainly due to the tracking, which is making it look like about 4x the hit that MI:TFR is going to be.

We also talked to a friend of ours who has 28 screens in the southwest US -- he said the MI sales are "good, but not great" and another industry-watching friend in Washington said that MI in his area is not selling all that well.

Closer to home, our neighboring theatre's Friday night show for Mission is still empty, while their Lilo show is getting decent sales. Here, we are close to two sellouts (on Lilo) already. (We are not playing Mission until probably late June, thanks to wacky outdated studio policies, and may not play it at all to be honest. Depends how it does, I guess. But we already miss a good number of big movies every summer because of those studio policies.)

I wonder if this series is going to go out with a so-so bang as opposed to the grand finale Cruise is hoping for? It's almost certain to be the latter after Lilo this weekend....something Cruise is bound to be pissed about, given what happened two years ago with the Barbenheimer phenomenon going in and stealing his thunder that summer.

[Scott Jentsch]

Lilo & Stitch is overwhelming Mission: Impossible in theaters, with nearly 5,200 screens vs 3,500. A spot check of tonight's showings, though, show both movies selling a majority of the screens they're in, so that's a good sign. It's just that the sheer number of screens is going to go in Disney's favor this weekend.

[Bobby Henderson]

A couple of factors put the Lilo and Stich re-make at an advantage over the Mission: Impossible sequel. Despite its PG rating Lilo and Stich is obviously directed at kids. Such movies are in short supply at cinemas. Aside from the greater number of screens, Lilo and Stich has a running time of 1 hour and 48 minutes versus the 2 hour 49 minute run time of The Final Reckoning. That means not only more screens, but more show times for each screen.

The M:I sequel does have a 3 week hold on IMAX branded screens. That will give people who are inclined to see that movie a better chance to see it on those premium screens. Many movies just get one week in the big house and that's it. I would expect Lilo and Stich to lose a lot of screens in weeks 2 and 3 of its run. While the family movie might beat M:I in the opening weekend battle it's possible M:I could have staying power to eventually earn a bigger domestic haul.

[Mike Blakesley]

Despite its PG rating Lilo and Stich is obviously directed at kids. Such movies are in short supply at cinemas.

The PG rating is no surprise. Every kids movie for the past many years has been rated PG. I can't remember the last G-rated title we played. Even the religious toon "The King of Kings" was PG.

Second - they're not in short supply, maybe that's just the media peddling bullshit again. Since January 1, we have played:

Sonic the Hedgehog 3*
Mufasa*
Dog Man
Paddington In Peru
The King of Kings
A Minecraft Movie
Snow White
The Day The Earth Blew Up
Lilo & Stitch

and a couple of others I'm forgetting. Upcoming this year we have:

Elio
How to Train Your Dragon
Smurfs
The Bad Guys 2
Freakier Friday
Zootopia 2
The Spongebob Movie: Search For Squarepants

and a couple of others I'm forgetting. There are also a lot of PG-13 movies that could be seen as aimed at kids -- some Marvel films, Superman, Wicked For Good, etc.

I mean, sheez, how many kids movies do you want? Out of the 22 weeks so far this year, in 15 of them our screen has had a PG movie on it.

*These two were released in 2024 but due to dumb studio booking practices, we couldn't squeeze them in until January.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Around here it seems to be more popular than Lily & Stitch, at least for now... let's see if it holds on.

The movie itself is all over the place, a bit too long for my liking, but great, no-brain action, mixed with some fake nostalgia. It also features a personal introduction by Tom Cruise, much like the last Top Gun did. I don't think it will break any records, but anything that pulls a crowd nowadays is a welcome change from the desolated rooms I used to sit in the last months...

[Frank Cox]

At least they set the volume for the Tom Cruise "welcome to the theatre" at a level proportional to the movie, so it doesn't blast you out of your seat like the last one did.

As far as the movie itself goes...

meh.

It suffers from the same inflationary malady as the plots in Fast and Furious, James Bond and Marvel.

[Bobby Henderson]

I watched the M:I movie this past weekend. I thought the movie was decent, but it wasn't my favorite out of the franchise. I still like the first one the most, followed by installments 4-6 (Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and Fallout). The one directed by John Woo sucked. The third one had other problems.

The stunt work in this movie is excellent; it's too bad the Academy Awards isn't adding the Stunt Design category until the 2028 awards. This M:I installment would be an early front runner. OTOH some of the action sequences, such as the one with the airplanes at the end, are so over the top that they cause the suspension of disbelief to erode. Modern action sequences need to be entertaining yet plausible. When the action beats become too absurd the audience gets reminded it's only a movie and the scene turns into mere chewing gum for the eyeballs.

I have another theory why this movie isn't raking in the same big bucks as the Lilo and Stitch re-make. It isn't quite as "escapist" as it should be. That's not the movie's fault. It's just a matter of bad timing. The movie involves terrorism and geopolitical intrigue. If you turn on a news broadcast you're going to hear about terrorism and geopolitical intrigue. Real life is getting scary on a number of fronts. This movie might inadvertently remind viewers of that. Lilo and Stitch might provide more of a break from that depressing stuff.