From left: Henry Cavill, Christopher McQuarrie, Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg attend a press conference for Mission Impossible - Fallout at the Imperial Ancestral Temple in Beijing on Wednesday.(Photo: Global Times)

Mission Impossible-Fallout, Tom Cruise's sixth film in the Hollywood spy action franchise is set to hit Chinese mainland theaters on Friday.

The mainland is the last stop on the film's world tour, so the film's performance in the world's second largest film market is crucial for its global box office take, which currently sits at more than $540 million.

To promote the film, director Christopher McQuarrie - also director for the franchise's fifth film - and lead stars Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill and Simon Pegg attended a premiere press event at the Imperial Ancestral Temple near the Forbidden City in Beijing on Wednesday.

The Imperial Ancestral Temple, or Taimiao, was a royal temple where emperors held ceremonies to pay their respects to their ancestors during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. A national key cultural site, the site is now used to hold commercial events from time to time.  

The Wednesday ceremony opened with a dizzying laser show as the director and stars walked out from the main building to a stage to share some behind-the-scenes stories with media.

As the stars later left the stage and made their way down a red carpet, they received an exceptionally warm welcome from Chinese fans who flooded both sides of the aisle while holding out movie posters, shirts or anything else that could be written upon for the stars to sign. 

One of the most well-known Hollywood stars in China, Cruise is known in Chinese as Atang Ge (Brother Tommy). The star, caused screams everywhere he went, took selfies with fans and even walked back to interact with fans who stood in more remote areas.

This was Cruise's second visit to the capital after his 2015 trip to promote the fifth movie in the series. 

Short videos and photos of the stars quickly went viral on Chinese social media platforms, triggering a wave of praise for the 50-something star's well-maintained shape and charisma.

"Sexy nanshen [lit. male god]" and "He has been hot his entire life!" were some of the most popular comments floating around on social media.

Despite the fact it has been 22 years since the first film in the franchise made its debut, Cruise is still regarded the soul of the series.

"There is a certain emotional quality in the movie that goes all the way back to the first film. The sense of team and that sense of achieving the impossible resonate with people. I think there is a certain kind of wish fulfillment in this franchise that you don't get anywhere else. And most importantly, Tom and the way he approaches making this movie is a way that goes back to the Silent Era; we talk about Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, all filmmakers in their own right who performed their own stunts and did their own action scenes," McQuarrie told the Global Times in an interview on Thursday.

Holding an 8.1/10 rating on IMDb and a 97 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the sequel is regarded by some overseas critics as "the best of the series ever." The film currently has more than 230,000 want-to-see votes on Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan, the highest ranking among the six movies that are set to debut on Friday.