In 2023, Paramount Pictures released Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning. The film was the seventh installment in the Mission: Impossible series overall. Two decades before that, Land of the Dead hit theaters, marking a comeback of sorts for the late, great horror director George Romero. What do these two seemingly unrelated movies have to do with each other? Believe it or not, they almost shared a title. With the sequel to Dead Reckoning, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, hitting theaters next month, now is the perfect time to explore the small but interesting thread that connects the M:I series to a 2005 zombie movie.
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As Shakespeare once asked, “What’s in a name?” Well, if that name is “Dead Reckoning,” the answer is, quite a lot. The phrase “Dead Reckoning” was originally a nautical term for determining a ship’s current position based on its past position and factors such as recorded speed and time spent traveling. This is opposed to, say, relying on the stars for navigation or landmarks. It’s highly unlikely, however, that George Romero had seafaring vessels on his mind when he wrote the script for his fourth “of the Dead” movie in early 2000.
Dead Reckoning was Romero’s original title for Land of the Dead as well as the name of the film’s heavily armed, mobile fortress. In both cases, the filmmaker was most likely referring to the literal walking dead that inhabited his movies, either as humanity’s final judgement at the hands of the cannibalistic cannibals, or in the case of the tank, the living’s punishment of the undead.
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Mission: Impossible, meanwhile, was very much using the phrase for its connection to navigation. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning uses the term metaphorically to allude to Ethan Hunt’s journey and how he utilizes his past experiences and previous knowledge to navigate a new, dangerous situation. One thing both films have in common is that neither of them chose the phrase “Dead Reckoning” for its aquatic aesthetic.
Romero was forced to change Dead Reckoning‘s title to Land of the Dead after producers pressured the director to use a name with a stronger connection to his previous films, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. Mission: Impossible‘s relationship with the two-word title is slightly deeper. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning was originally titled Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One and was intended to be filmed back-to-back with Part Two, marking the franchise’s first two-part installment. With the success of the IT duology and Dune parts 1 and 2, it made sense for Paramount to adopt the “two-parter” method with their most recent Mission: Impossible story.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, Dead Reckoning Part One and Two couldn’t be filmed back to back, putting the “Part Two” title in Jeopardy. What’s more, Dead Reckoning Part One was one of the most expensive films ever made, and while it wasn’t a flop at the box office, it also wasn’t the runaway hit Paramount was hoping for. For those reasons, the sequel’s official title was changed to Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, while the first Dead Reckoning quietly dropped the “Part One” from the title when it left theaters.
That makes Final Reckoning and Land of the Dead the only two movies in existence that started life with the title Dead Reckoning, only to have their names altered at the behest of their respective studios. To paraphrase Phineas and Ferb‘s Doctor Doofenshmirtz, that’s not a lot of movies, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning hits theaters on May 23rd and check back with us soon for more content involving the 20th anniversary of Land of the Dead.
