How to Survive Mission: Impossible 7 in a Movie Theater

How to Survive Mission: Impossible 7 in a Movie Theater,Standard Digital Project, IMAX, RPX, ScreenX, or 4DX? Five screens and 14 mostly wonderful hours later, I’ll you the best way to see Tom Cruise risk his life in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One.

How to Survive Mission: Impossible 7 in a Movie Theater

In 2011, the Mission: Impossible films shifted from action story vehicles of varying quality and narrative coherence to unapologetic stunt spectaculars with one clear reason to see them: Tom Cruise risking his life to entertain you. But Ghost Protocol and its antecedents — 2015’s Rogue Nation and 2018’s Fallout, the fifth and sixth entries into the franchise, respectively — didn’t just propose audiences watch the savior of cinema dangle from various extremely high things on any screens, they suggested audiences do so on the biggest, most dynamic screens they could possibly find. A decade ago, that meant IMAX. Today, with the seventh M:I movie upon us, there are myriad options: you can see Dead Reckoning Part One on a big screen (Standard Digital Projection), on a gigantic screen (IMAX), on a really big screen (RPX), on a stretched (ScreenX), or in pure chaos (4DX). To help you avoid choice paralysis, I spent the better part of one week watching Dead Reckoning in every format available to me in New York City. Here’s what I learned, five screens and 14 mostly wonderful hours later.

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Option #1: The Big Screen

You’ll be self-destructing in the first five seconds.Photo: Paramount Pictures and Skydance

What Is 4DX?

There’s a scene in Fallout when an IMF courier delivers a message to Ethan in his safehouse. Their authenticating call and response goes like this:

Courier: Fate whispers to the warrior…

Ethan: A storm is coming.

Courier: And the warrior whispers back…

Ethan: I am the storm.

4DX is that storm.

There’s a scene in Dead Reckoning when Jasper Biggs (Shea Whigam) prepares his unit for the difficulty of capturing Ethan Hunt by calling him a “mind-reading, shape-shifting incarnation of chaos.”

4DX is that mind-reading, shape-shifting incarnation of chaos.

It combines the very basic act of watching a movie (sitting, looking, listening) with the sense overload of an amusement park ride that’s overdue for inspection (swaying, shaking, wetness, chill, desperation for it all to end). Large seats with retractable footrests are synchronized to the action on screen, creating a distressing ballet of three primary experiences: movement (the chairs rock from side to side and front to back and the seat backs are like roided-out massage devices, prodding you in the general area where a character is receiving a punch or kick onscreen), wind (if there’s wind in a scene, it will be windy in the theater), and mist (if someone gets wet in a scene, you will be sprayed in the face like a misbehaving cat). A handful of other auditorium-wide effects — like flashing lights, scent infusions, and fog — are less overwhelming and, honestly, sort of nice.

A story: When I was a teenager, my family stopped in Las Vegas for one night on the way to Yosemite National Park from central Texas. We stayed at the Excalibur, a casino designed with children in mind. While my parents gambled, the casino allowed my sister and I to rent one (1) Pay-Per-View movie in the hotel and gave us some cash to spend in the Excalibur arcade. We watched Beautician and the Beast in the room, laughed our asses off, and then proceeded to the games, where I spent like $15 of my $20 on a machine that strapped me into a moving seat and screened a 10-minute movie action sequence. At the time I thought, “It would be so amazing to watch a full-length film like this.” But, like children often are, I was totally wrong.

Why Should I See Dead Reckoning in 4DX?

If you’ve (1) already seen Dead Reckoning in a reasonable format, and (2), after having reading this, understand that I wholeheartedly do not recommend it. If at this point you remain morbidly curious and incapable of getting the idea of 4DX out of your twisted little mind, there’s nothing I can do to save you. Go for it, freak.

Why Shouldn’t I See Dead Reckoning in 4DX?

I spilled an ounce or so of Pepsi Zero on myself during one of the first seat rumblings, leaving me afraid of my Pepsi Zero for the next two and a half hours. Imagine being afraid of your Pepsi Zero! The nonstop wind effect during a scene in the Arabian desert was so cold it numbed my fingertips for the remainder of the movie. Because the screening was nearly empty, the intermittent bangs of dozens and dozens of retractable footrests falling was jarring. During a relentless chase sequence in Rome, it almost felt like Regal Union Square was going to collapse right into the N/Q/R/W line. 4DX is fantastic for horror movies, where the jolts and jostles only add to the surprise of a jumpscare. I could see it being sort of fun for a more typical action movie that takes occasional breaks from the insanity. But for a movie like this, one that almost never gives its characters time to breathe, 4DX is a stomach issue waiting to happen.