Paramount’s applying the full-court press for Brad Bird’s upcoming Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol ahead of the sequel’s Dec. 16 release. The studio announced earlier that the film will open the 8th Dubai Film Festival on Dec. 7, circling back around to the spot of Tom Cruise’s death-defying wire walk on the side of the city’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper. And now two new TV spots have dropped online (via TheMovieBox). We have them below.





The clips are short, but they run long enough to establish the ground rules. Key terms like “set up” and “disavowed” are barked, with authority. Cars are flipped. Two women appear to get into a fistfight. Simon Pegg gets a laugh line. All is right with the world.

The BMW spot actually has more of what I’m interested in, which is Bird’s directorial style for his action sequences. As you know, this is a filmmaker coming off two brilliant animated features in The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. And while Dash’s … uh, dash through the jungle in Incredibles ranks as one of my favorite action set pieces in a Pixar film, that doesn’t mean Bird will make a smooth transition to live action. The clips look great. And I like M:I 3 more than most, so I’m going into this one with raised expectations. But we’ll see what Bird and Cruise made of this mission soon enough, as the film’s IMAX opening is right around the corner. For images and more info on the film, visit our Blend Film Database.