Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning trailer positions upcoming film as the culmination of whole series

Ethan Hunt’s greatest hits are being rolled out, and Ron Swanson can’t bring himself to believe that one man could be responsible for all those feats.

The latest trailer has dropped for Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, the last instalment in the Tom Cruise-led action series, now with added Nick Offerman playing a many-starred general who is familiarising himself with Ethan’s resume.

It’s a lot to get your head around, and this next movie, out in May, will only add to the long list of bonkers stunts that tests the limits of the studio’s insurance policy on Cruise.

Here, he’s hanging off another plane (but a different model to when he previously clung onto the outside of a flying aircraft!) and also jumping off another one into the water. The man is an adrenaline junkie.

The movie is being marketed as the culmination of every Mission: Impossible chapter since the first Brian De Palma film in 1996, hyping it up as an unmissable event. As one character intones in voiceover, “Everything you are, everything you’ve done has come to this”.

It not only positions it as bigger than a “regular” Mission: Impossible flick, it also sidesteps the slight problem of the fact the previous one, Dead Reckoning Part One, underperformed at the box office in part because it was released one week before Barbenheimer literally took over cinema screens and the wider culture.

This eighth movie was originally named Dead Reckoning Part Two, and the title was changed perhaps due to the studio not wanting to create the impression that you couldn’t see it if you missed part one.

Renowned for its elaborate practical stunts, the franchise has been a lucrative one over the near three decades it has been going.

After playing around with different filmmakers including John Woo and J.J. Abrams, Cruise has settled into a close partnership with director Chris McQuarrie, who has helmed each movie since the fifth, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

McQuarrie and Cruise often start filming without a complete script, just a series of story beats and a wishlist of stunts.

The upcoming film will also feature long-time co-stars Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg, as well as Hayley Atwell, Esai Morales, Henry Czerny, Pom Klementieff, Holt McCallany, Hannah Waddingham, Shea Whigham and Janet McTeer.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in cinemas on May 17