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Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

6/16/2025

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PG-13 for surprisingly blunt violence.  I mean, it's not R-rated by any stretch of the imagination.  I just know that when that dude's arm gets wrecked, there's no walking that off.  You have some pretty typical Mission: Impossible style violence and that should be mentioned.  But once or twice, I thought, "Man, that's excessive."  Also, Tom Cruise looks for any excuse to get his shirt off in this one.  Sometimes, he wants you to see him in his underwear.  So just get used to seeing a 62-year-old man with minimal clothing for a lot of the movie.

DIRECTOR:  Christopher McQuarrie

I remember when I had to call him McQ.  I'd like to stress that the perfect storm of blogging is getting pretty close.  I just remembered that I'm almost done watching Scott Pilgrim Versus the World and I couldn't watch my chaser show because the kids were taking up all the Netflix accounts.  Thus, I started Predator: Killer of Killers.  I have a very hard life.   I create my own stress.  You should see my blood pressure.

I have to say, I'm happy that Cruise is putting Mission: Impossible behind him.  A couple of years ago, I wrote two articles about the Mission: Impossible franchise for Catholic News Agency.  I remembered none of those articles when I revisited them, but I would like to point out that I'm grateful to my younger self for writing the one recapping most of the franchise.  Note: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning hadn't been out at the time and that's the movie that I probably needed the most refresher on.  But I'm glad that the franchise is closing up (for now, at least) while I still kind of enjoy them.

Now, I will say, these last two movies aren't my favorite.  I can completely identify why Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning aren't my favorites.  They aren't bad movies by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact, I left the theater last night in a pretty solid mood because The Final Reckoning was pretty darned cool.  But that word, cool?  That's the biggest issue with The Final Reckoning.  The Mission: Impossible movies have always been "cool."  I'm not saying that is a problem with the film.  But it seemed a lot like The Final Reckoning was tonally so obsessed with being cool that is forgot to be fun.  That's the problem with the last two movies.  The entire Mission: Impossible franchise, with the exception of M:I 2, is popcorn guzzling fun.  Even the OG Mission: Impossible ​(not the TV show, you Mission: Impossible snob!) is fun in its own way.  But there was so much seriousness and impressiveness when it came to having stunts, I never really laughed.  It was "ooh" and "ahh", but rarely tension breaking laughter.  (Okay, I laughed morbidly loud when Gabriel got his arm snapped back.  That's probably not healthy.) 

And the movie was so self-aware that it was the last in the franchise.  I mean, I get it.  Tom Cruise has made this franchise his baby since 1996.  I think that there was a Mission statement (pun intended) to make all of the franchise somehow matter.  I get why.  If you want to show that all of this work was the culmination for this one moment in time, it does create a sense of scope that the other Mission: Impossible movies don't really have.  After all, as is acknowledged in the first minute of this movie, Ethan Hunt has saved the world so many times.  What makes this saving of the world different from the other times that Ethan Hunt has stopped the timer in the last second?  Well, to do that, the filmmakers felt the need to tie in every Mission: Impossible into this one story.  But while this does bolster the epic tone that this movie attempts, I can't help but be reminded of my least favorite James Bond movie, Die Another Day.

For 007's 40th anniversary, Everything or Nothing tried to make a Bond movie so filled with references to the 19 movies leading up to the 20th that a Bond fan would be in heaven trying to spot them all.  Unfortunately, these movies were written to be episodic.  There was no attempt to make it one, unified storyline.  Heck, if you watch those Bond movies, there were canonical issues highlighting that these weren't written to be one story.  Still, Die Another Day tried doing that and the movie suffered.  In an attempt to make everything one giant story celebrating the many adventures of James Bond, the narrative came across as clunky and secondary to the celebration of 40 years of Bond.  The Final Reckoning has a lot of that, but without the great sin that Die Another Day committed.  Instead of Easter eggs and fan service, these beats from the previous Mission: Impossible are in the form of plot points.  But to execute this, the movie went heavy on the flashbacks.  My son even pointed it out.  I mean, I was glad that those flashbacks were there.  As much as I'm more knowledgable than the average bear about the Mission: Impossible movies, there were things that I did not remember about the series.  But it is such a glut of information that it becomes gobbelty gook.

And, if I'm being honest, not a lot of it matters.  If I tried summarizing the plot the way that Tom Cruise and McQ want me to, it would sound like a lot of technobabble and spy-fi nonsense.  But the easier answer would be, "Ethan Hunt needs to take down an AI about to launch the world's nukes and, because of a lifetime of not following the rules, no one trusts Ethan with the world's fate."  That's so much easier than what the movie tried presenting to us.  Honestly, there are some plot points from previous films that kind of work, like "The Rabbit's Foot" from Mission: Impossible III coming back into play (although, between you and me?  I hate this.  The reason that I like The Rabbit's Foot" as a Macguffin because it shouldn't be so concretely defined.  Also, the thing clearly said "Biohazard" and explaining it away as a red herring makes no sense).   Then there are connections that are aggressively frustrating.  There's this guy who really doesn't like Ethan.  He's a by-the-book IMF agent (or CIA?) who has made it his mission (no pun intended) to put Hunt in his place.  Revealing that he had a fake name and that he's Jim Phelps, Jr. is straight up forced.  It's an unearned revelation because it really doesn't change their dynamic like the movie think it does. 

So, at one point, it comes down to fan service.  The term "fan service" tends to be a dirty word for a lot of film fans.  I don't deny that there have been times that I've rolled my eyes when I notice egregious moments of fan service.  I try not to.  I'm a sucker for a bit of fan service at times.  The resurrection of the Enterprise-D in Picard season three is so shameless, yet I've watched that clip over-and-over.  So, again, this is written by a guy who recognizes that The Final Reckoning is a deeply flawed movie...but still enjoyed it. So if we recognize that there's a lot of fan service happening in the movie, mind as well embrace one bit of fan service: William Donloe.  Mission: Impossible brought back Rolf Saxon to his bit part from the first film to play a pretty large role in this one.  He was a throwaway joke "Manning a radar station in Alaska".  But I really like the addition to William Donloe on the team.  Outside of the fact that his presence is part of Ethan's forgiveness of himself (returning to that notion tha the movie is a criticism of Ethan's devil-may-care attitude), Donloe is a joyful character in a world full of bleakness.  

All this leads to a place that every Mission: Impossible blog leads to: the spectacle.  It feels like there are fewer action sequences in The Final Reckoning, but the spectacles are greater.  It doesn't really matter what the story of these movies is --at least according to the production crew --but there are moments that are so impressive that I just had to applaud.  I mean, again, not fun.  Just cool.  But they are really cool.  

It sounds like I hate this movie.  I mean, it's good.  It's just that it has that problem a lot of franchise closers have:  it tries so hard to be bigger than the other ones when, in reality, I would have just loved another Ethan Hunt adventure.  Sometimes that's all I want.  And trying to make this thing grand in scope just hurts the product as a whole.
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    Film is great.  It can challenge us.   It can entertain us.  It can puzzle us.  It can awaken us.  

    It can often do all these things at the same time.  

    I encourage all you students of film to challenge themselves with this film blog.  Watch stuff outside your comfort zone.  Go beyond what looks cool or what is easy to swallow.  Expand your horizons and move beyond your gut reactions.  

    We live in an era where we can watch any movie we want in the comfort of our homes.  Take advantage of that and explore.

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    Mr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies.  They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved.

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