The Mission Impossible series has always been about the stunts, not the story. It has always been the case of having a cool action set piece, then wrapping a story around that. Working backwards isn’t necessarily a great move, but in the case of Mission Impossible, it has served them fairly well, I mean, we are sitting at number eight in the franchise. But I knew that when “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning” was about to be released (the movie’s part one before this one), and all the marketing surrounded Tom Cruise and his never before seen stunt where he drives a motorcycle off a cliff and then transitions into a base jump; that movie was going to suck - and suck it did. Cool stunt - so cool in fact, someone died trying to replicate it. Do you know what they did wrong? 

They weren’t Tom Cruise. 

So cool in fact that there was literally no reason for it to happen if you actually watched the movie. So cool that if you just YouTube that scene, you saved yourself two hours. Is it weird that the promotion showing Tom Cruise prepping for that stunt was actually more entertaining than watching the movie? Because as incoherent as “Final Reckoning” is, the problems with it came before the movie ever started its production. 

Problem one is that you have sequelitis. Most movies are suffering from this right now as most movies that come out are remakes, reboots, or sequels. You have to make it bigger, better, more teeth. “Fast and the Furious” suffers from this. “Jurassic World” suffers from this. “Transformers” suffers from this. Now anytime Marvel makes a superhero movie, it suffers from this. In the case of “Mission Impossible” you can’t quite pass the peak that was “Mission Impossible Fallout.” “Ghost Protocol” - sick movie. “Rogue Nation” - tight. “Fallout” - badass. “Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning” - what do we do to top those last movies? Tom Cruise almost died in all three of them leading up to these two - I guess we are going to have to kill Tom Cruise? Because that really is the only thing that we haven’t seen yet. 

Two - the writing. Don’t get it twisted, I love Mission Impossible as a movie series. They are, however, one of the more complicated movies in terms of twists and turns that the plot takes. If I’m being honest, I’ve watched them all multiple times and I still couldn’t tell you who Tom Cruise a.k.a. Ethan Hunt’s team is fighting. Who is on their side? Who is a double agent? Who the fuck is that guy? The Mission Impossible series has a lot of “who the fuck is that guy?” moments. It helps that Ving Rames and Simon Pegg reprise their roles, at least that gives us some grounding as to who we are supposed to be rooting for. To add another layer of complication, they keep impersonating each other and you just stop caring because following the plots is like trying to stay awake in an 8am Trigonometry class. It’s not happening. 

Enter: “Dead Reckoning.” The first part of this two part series introduces, semi-coherently, the idea of some kind of super AI called “The Entity.” An AI of extreme power, and we must stop the machines before they turn into Skynet and enslave us all into the Matrix, essentially. The plot reeks of nineties anti-technology rhetoric. But in practice, you get a bunch of characters saying really stupid lines like “...the entity wants us to fight. It wants us to not trust each other.” 

At a certain point in the film, you stop and ask yourself “what am I watching?” 

The movie seems to explain technology and AI as if it’s being explained by your boomer parents who are not really sure how any of it works but they have picked up some technology buzzwords over the years like “algorithm,” “encryption,” “database,” and “server farm.” 

But it gets better. 

The sequel “Final Reckoning” not only expects you to remember all of the technology gobble-de-gook from “Dead Reckoning,” it also expects you to remember characters and events from the previous eight Mission Impossibles! That my friends, is the real Mission Impossible. Hey, remember that random guy from the first Mission Impossible that worked the CIA vault from a movie that came out thirty years ago? Hey, remember thirty years ago? To include anything from the first Mission Impossible that came out thirty years ago is INSANE. How about just keeping the movie relevant to the events in the current movie that we paid to see? Remember when movies referenced the movie you are currently watching? As I recall, the first Mission Impossible that came out thirty years ago knew how to do that. 

One of the more modern James Bond movies “Spectre” had this same problem. For whatever reason, they deemed it a smart idea to tie all of the previous movies of the Daniel Craig-era into that one movie. As if that had been the plan all along. Requiring the viewer to watch movies from the past like twenty years. Nobody is doing that or going to do that. Okay - some people are doing that. Point is: it adds so many narrative problems that you end up retconning a dozen or so details and it seems to be more of a problem in these high budget spy thrillers. 

The third and final problem with this film is Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise for the last like twenty years has been playing Tom Cruise in Tom Cruise the movie. The line has become blurred between Tom Cruise actor and Tom Cruise the person. Part of this is his reclusiveness following some major media missteps that he took in the past. Tom Cruise promoting his own movie became detrimental to his own movie. In a move that many actors should copy, Tom Cruise now just sticks to the movie promotion, keeps it professional, and keeps it moving. The focus is on the film he is promoting, not his political views, not who he is dating, just the movie. That being said, Tom Cruise should have given his introduction at the beginning of the film like this: 

“Hey I’m Tom Cruise. You knew that. That’s why you're here. 

I’m the last real movie star, bitch. 

Look, a lot of people and their families worked really hard on this film. 

Thank you very much for coming. Just a heads up, the plot of this movie is a hot mess. 

We really shit the bed on this one. 

The truth is: what you really want to see is me trying to elaborately escape Scientology by trying these insane suicidal stunts, right? 

I’m getting old - I’m sixty, and it’s starting to get weird.

This is the last one. Enjoy it. ” 

And then the movie would jump cut to the scene where Tom Cruise is fighting the guy on the bi-plane with no story context. Because that was the best part of the movie. 

But as much as Tom Cruise is the heart and soul of this franchise, the last two installments have been increasingly noticeable how old Tom Cruise has gotten. To his credit, he looks great for his age, but he’s paid to be in that shape, and he’s starting to look geriatric. It’s not as believable to see him do the things he’s doing, especially fighting a man a third of his age in the peak of his life. In this film, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) engages in a well-edited knife fight with an elite special forces soldier who could easily be his son’s son in terms of age. But he insists on continuing to be in these films as if he’s still the crackpot agent he was thirty years ago and that’s just not the case. As a Tom Cruise fan, it’s hard to see him get old, it really is. But it’s a natural process and it’s time for Cruise to stop making action films and take a stint on Broadway to learn how to dramatically act again so he can start doing character work like Gary Oldman. That way we can see Cruise age gracefully, remembering that he used to be this crazy stuntman dude, while enjoying him in something he actually looks age appropriate for. 

As you can tell from reading this, I didn’t like this movie. There are a few scenes: two to be specific that are really good and that give you that old sense of Mission Impossible. But there is too much filler and too much exposition without enough action. The movie is honestly kind of boring. I wouldn’t recommend this movie. What I would recommend is YouTubing the scene where Tom Cruise fights the main villain on the bi-plane. That scene might be one of the best in the franchise. It’s too bad it was surrounded by a bunch of nonsense.