There’s one thing you won’t catch Glen Powell doing and that’s stealing Tom Cruise’s valor.
When asked if he’ll replace Cruise in future Mission: Impossible films, as recent online rumors have envisioned, Powell was resounding in his response. “My mom would never let me do that,” he told Pat McAfee on the sports analyst and commentator’s show.
Powell called Mission: Impossible “the worst gig in town, everybody knows that.” He called the franchise “a death trap,” referring to the many death-defying stunts performed by Cruise himself over the years that lend the series its unique edge.
Ever since Powell rose from adorable sidekick-type casting in films like Everybody Wants Some!! and Sex Ed to leading man movie stardom in romcoms like Anyone But You and actioners like Top Gun: Maverick, he’s been compared to Cruise. His boyish good looks, manly physique, and all-American charisma make him the most logical inheritor to the legacy that Cruise, now 62, will eventually have to pass on.
Powell’s casting as the hotshot naval pilot in training Lt. Jake “Hangman” Seresin in Maverick — literally the mentee of Cruise’s character — only intensified the comparison.
The two actors became friends over the course of the shooting experience, with Cruise even gifting him flying lessons, Powell shared in a 2022 interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I would be updating him about my progress, and he would check in with me,” he said. “After I got my pilot’s license, there was a little card that just said, ‘Welcome to the skies.'”
The rumors circulating about Powell replacing Cruise on the spy franchise, which kicked off in 1996 with the first film by director Brian De Palma and writers David Koepp and Robert Towne, are unsubstantiated. The prospect of Powell stepping into a role Cruise made famous, however, feels so natural that many, including McAfee, find the concept credible enough to double-check.
The trailer for the eighth film in the franchise, Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning, dropped on Monday. The upcoming film finishes what last year’s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One started.
Neither Cruise nor director Christopher McQuarrie have commented on the ominous presence of the word “final” in the eighth film’s title. It’s unclear whether this will really be Ethan Hunt’s final reckoning, but if the franchise is extended or spawns a spin off, Cruise and Powell’s friendship could certainly set the latter up for success.
While filming Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise offered his costar sage advice to “lean into the douchebaggery” of his character in order “for the ending to work.” Maverick’s box office sweep, perhaps unsurprisingly, proved Cruise’s instincts right.