“Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning”: Farewell To One of The Last Good Franchises

The last installment of the long-lived action franchise hit cinemas last weekend. But is Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning a proper send-off for thirty years of movies?

Twenty-nine years have passed since the original Mission: Impossible, directed by Brian De Palma, was released in theaters, marking the beginning of a franchise that never stopped growing since. Even though it was in the hands of different directors through the years, it managed to define a distinctive style that was consolidated by Christopher McQuarrie in later installments.

As a huge fan of the franchise, Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning was the film I was most excited to watch this year. Even though Dead Reckoning — Part One did not reach the level of its predecessor, Fallout, it was far from bad, and I had big expectations for the very last mission.

I am sad to report that I was disappointed.

Ethan Hunt’s Final Reckoning

The film picks up about two months after the events of Death Reckoning—Part I. Ethan Hunt has gone into hiding, attempting to protect the key until Gabriel can be found. In the meantime, the Entity’s power has expanded, taking control of the most powerful countries’ nuclear weapons and threatening global security.

In that climate, Ethan is supposed to find the exact location of the sunken submarine Sevastopol, retrieve the Podkova module (containing the source code of the Entity) from it, and find Gabriel to recover a Poison Pill (a malware to destroy the source code) that was stolen at the beginning of the film. And then find a way to use all those gadgets together.

As you can see, the plot is extremely convoluted. There are several things happening at the same time, and we are expected to follow a number of characters, some of them pretty new to the franchise. That is the biggest issue: the script is messy. Instead of focusing on a main mission, it rambles through inessential plot points for most of the running time. There was no need for this movie to last almost three hours; the same could have been achieved by taking away fifty minutes.

There is a lot of exposition dialogue, and they make sure to over explain every single step through the mouths of different characters. The editing choices, instead of making these long explanations more dynamic, add to the confusion and make some scenes very tedious to watch.  

Action is On Point

If your main interest when it comes to Mission: Impossible is to watch Tom Cruise perform the craziest and most dangerous stunts, by all means, you have to buy a ticket for this. While some parts of the movie are slow, the action scenes are worth it.

There is a long sequence of Ethan recovering the source code from the sunken submarine that will make the claustrophobics sweat. And another of Ethan and Gabriel fighting on two colorful little planes that you probably saw on the promotional posters. I can’t really do them justice in writing, but just know these are some of the most ambitious action scenes in the entire franchise. The bathroom fight in Mission: Impossible — Fallout is still my personal favorite, but these are pretty good too. Hats off to Mr. Tom Cruise.

Nostalgia Consumed M:I Too

In this day and age, it has become all too common for entertainment to support itself on the public’s nostalgia for better times. As they do not have any new ideas, they sell us little scraps of the past. Despite being around for almost three decades, Mission: Impossible never had a need for that. There was a level of continuity story-wise (at least since the third installment on) but every movie covered an independent mission.

This time around, the first minutes of the film are a recap of Ethan Hunt’s life through the years. That choice would have been totally acceptable for me as a small self-tribute; after all, Mission: Impossible is one of the few franchises that survived the woke Hollywood era without burning down. But I soon realized that nostalgia was all the project could offer.

Let’s start with one of the matters Mission: Impossible III famously left inconclusive: What the hell was the Rabbit’s Foot? Turns out, it was the source code of the Entity. Or something like that. The idea is not bad, though I can help but feel this was just added to create a connection, and there was not a real plan behind it.

Angela Bassett is back as the U.S. president, and Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge. Also, Jasper Briggs, a character that appeared in Death Reckoning—Part I, is actually the son of Jim Phelps, the villain of the first movie. I thought that information would be important later on, but it wasn’t. And that is my point: the addition of nostalgic elements just for the sake of it is never conducive to great storytelling.

The only nostalgic thing I enjoyed was the appearance of William Donloe, that poor guy that was in charge of the Black Vault in the original film. His wife Tappeesa was also very charismatic, and their scenes were fun to watch.

Character Development Left the Chat

The focus of Mission: Impossible films has always been the action, and Ethan gets to be the leader of different teams through the years. However, M:I have always had some memorable supporting characters. Luther, Benji, Ilsa or even Julia, people whose fate was important to us. But The Final Reckoning has almost nothing left of that: Ilsa died in Dead Reckoning, Luther dies at the beginning of The Final Reckoning, and Julia is only mentioned in passing. Benji is still there, but he has very little screen time. So now we are supposed to be rooting for characters we don’t know and don’t care about.

Hayley Atwell does a good job as Grace, but I cannot help but see her as Ilsa Faust’s replacement, as the script pushes her as Ethan’s new love interest. They had already tried to do the same with Ilsa, but that made more sense: Ilsa had been around for two films, so she and Ethan had some history. The Final Reckoning takes place two months after the events of the previous film, so Ethan and Grace barely know each other. It feels like they are forcing it to have a spark of romance in the story. Paris and Degas can be taken out of the movie and no one would notice. They have no reason to be part of the mission.

The Evil AI

Just as in Death Reckoning-Part I, having the AI be the main villain does not work. The idea that technology will destroy humanity, though incompetently overused in the past years, can be good, but it needs to have a more solid development to be believable.

In this case, the Entity wants to destroy the world by taking control of the countries’ defense systems and putting people against each other by spreading the famous “misinformation”. To avoid being eliminated when the world collapses, the Entity needs access to a safe bunker. But what is the Entity going to do after, without electricity or Internet? It does not look like the best plan to me. Isn’t AI supposed to be intelligent?

The villain needs to be intimidating, but the Entity’s interventions in this movie are even more random than in Death Reckoning, which kills most of the tension. I’ll repeat what I’ve said plenty of times: our world is already so dystopian, that a voice coming out of a screen and predicting deaths is not impressive. Maybe ten years ago it could have worked, but we are way past it now. The only human villain, Gabriel, is quite underwhelming, and his motivations and ties with the Entity are superficially explained.

Besides, where does this leave Ethan as a character? Our protagonist has always been presented as an extremely intelligent and capable man, but this film paints him as a sort of Messiah. He is so important that the Entity is after him, and the ending suggests that he gets to keep the AI. They forgot that the movie was part of Mission: Impossible because it did not look like the same franchise anymore.

And finally, even though it has been sold as the final chapter, The Final Reckoning does not feel like a definitive ending. The movie leaves the door open for another installment; it wouldn’t surprise me if Mission: Impossible 9 was announced in a few years.

Box Office Hit… Right?

So far, Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning has had a wonderful start in theatres. Not only did it have the best opening of the entire franchise, but within a week of its release, it has made over $200.000.000 worldwide. Right now, it is the second most popular movie, the first being the Lilo & Stitch live-action; securing a very potent weekend for cinemas everywhere.

If you remember, at this same time last year, the media reported the worst Memorial Day weekend in U.S. history with the pitiful release of Furiosa. 2025 shows signs of recovery, if not in production’s quality, at least in the audience’s interest.

There is a problem, though: The Final Reckoning also happens to be the most expensive film of the franchise, with a budget of $400.000.000. That means the movie would have to make at least $1.000.000.000 just to break even. There is no way that is going to happen. Not even the most successful film of the franchise, Fallout, made that amount of money. It is a bit ironic to think that the most expensive movie is also the weakest of the entire franchise. They could have spent some of that money on a better script. Even Mission: Impossible 2, campy as it is, makes more sense.

In conclusion, it is not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and it has great action scenes, but being so fond of the franchise, I can’t help but be disappointed. And if Mission: Impossible is a disappointment, then what is left?