{"id":2189442,"date":"2025-12-06T18:12:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2189442"},"modified":"2025-12-06T18:12:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:12:12","slug":"mission-impossible-finale-entertaining-but-disappoints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/mission-impossible-finale-entertaining-but-disappoints\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Mission: Impossible\u2019 Finale: Entertaining But Disappoints"},"content":{"rendered":"

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celebrity.land has republished this piece now that \u201cMission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning\u201d is streaming on Paramount+.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There are no post-credits scenes in the \u201cMission: Impossible<\/a>\u201d movies. There easily could be. Audiences are now conditioned for them, thanks to the Marvel<\/a> Cinematic Universe. And since there\u2019s always another impossible mission right around the corner, a post-credits teaser would be an easy way to signal what\u2019s coming next and keep audiences speculating during the years-long wait between entries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Instead, each \u201cMission: Impossible\u201d film feels like a stand-alone adventure. There\u2019s no homework you need to do before heading to the latest movie. No need to rewatch the previous story or read up on some forgotten character who\u2019s about to make a cameo. For over three decades, the franchise resisted the seemingly irresistible trend of the cinematic universe and its trademark post-credits teaser.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cMission: Impossible \u2014 The Final Reckoning,\u201d from writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, still doesn\u2019t have a post-credits scene, but in almost every other way, it feels like the mediocre byproduct of an overextended cinematic universe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is a movie that expects you to be deeply familiar with the entire franchise, from forgotten minor characters to decades-old MacGuffins. The result is perhaps the most disappointing installment in the \u201cMission: Impossible\u201d franchise so far, even if its breathtaking final act is enough to redeem \u201cThe Final Reckoning\u201d from failure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, Pom Klementieff plays Paris, Greg Tarzan Davis plays Degas, Simon Pegg plays Benji Dunn and Hayley Atwell plays Grace in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.”<\/figcaption>
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Paramount Pictures and Skydance<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

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The plot of \u201cMission: Impossible \u2014 The Final Reckoning\u201d is so unimportant and nonsensical that it\u2019s barely worth explaining. Here are the broadest of strokes: a sentient artificial intelligence called The Entity (established in 2023\u2019s \u201cDead Reckoning\u201d<\/a>) has sparked global chaos by flooding the internet with misinformation. Against a backdrop of political infighting and martial law, The Entity begins to hack into nuclear missile systems around the world, threatening to wipe out humanity unless it\u2019s installed as ruler of Earth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With just days left to avoid an apocalypse, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his Impossible Mission Force team set out on a globe-spanning adventure to save humanity. This involves locating a sunken nuclear submarine at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean that contains The Entity\u2019s source code, and then traveling to a doomsday bunker in South Africa for a final showdown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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None of the above necessarily makes for a bad movie, although the plot is sometimes so contrived it becomes impossible to follow (I also would have liked to see a bit more of the global chaos that\u2019s teased in one opening scene, but never comes up again). The real problem is how obsessed \u201cThe Final Reckoning\u201d is with franchise history. From the opening credits, which feature a montage of moments from previous films, to pivotal plot points that revolve around a character we haven\u2019t seen since 1996\u2019s \u201cMission: Impossible\u201d and a deadly weapon only mentioned in 2006\u2019s \u201cMission: Impossible III,\u201d there\u2019s enough cameos and callbacks stuffed into \u201cFinal Reckoning\u201d to confuse even the most die-hard fans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The choice to make artificial intelligence the movie\u2019s chief villain also feels like a mistake. \u201cThe Entity\u201d was probably an exciting idea in 2019 when the two-part blockbuster was first announced. But in the years since, we\u2019ve been bombarded with endless claims that AI is on the verge of changing the world, while all it actually seems capable of doing is organizing shopping lists and producing ugly art.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even worse, this amorphous digital blob robs \u201cThe Final Reckoning\u201d of having an exciting human villain. An enigmatic Esai Morales does his best as the assassin Gabriel (who was previously in league with The Entity but now wants to control it), but he\u2019s never given clear motives or enough of a personality to fill that void.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On the plus side, the threat of a nuclear apocalypse does give us an engrossing subplot in which the U.S. president (Angela Bassett) has to decide whether to initiate a strike against The Entity before it\u2019s too late. These scenes, shot by cinematographer Fraser Taggart with heavy shadows and tilted angles, play like a tribute to classic political thrillers of a bygone era \u2014 think \u201cThe Manchurian Candidate,\u201d \u201cThree Days of the Condor,\u201d or even \u201cDr. Strangelove.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nick Offerman, Charles Parnell, Angela Bassett, Mark Gatiss and Janet McTeer in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.”<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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Thankfully, none of these filmmaking blunders matter once the movie reaches its final act, which features the gasp-inducing airplane stunt Paramount has been using to market this movie <\/span>since 2022<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It was worth the wait, and the scene, in which Cruise leaps midair between a pair of brightly colored two-seater planes, is the kind of death-defying sequence that\u2019s defined the \u201cMission: Impossible\u201d franchise for decades. No other movie can come close to what \u201cThe Final Reckoning\u201d accomplishes here, thanks to both Cruise\u2019s willingness to risk his own life and his innate ability to understand exactly where he is within the camera\u2019s framing at all times and act accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even if the exact reason Cruise\u2019s character needs to leap between planes is unclear or uninteresting (something about a digital \u201cpoison pill\u201d designed to confuse The Entity), the result speaks for itself. Those last 30 minutes more than make up for the Marvel-esque dreck that leads up to it, establishing \u201cThe Final Reckoning\u201d as one of the most entertaining movies of the summer, and maybe of the entire year.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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See \u201cMission: Impossible \u2014 The Final Reckoning\u201d on the biggest screen you can find. And if you need to step out to use the bathroom at any point, just make sure to do it within the movie\u2019s first two hours, before Cruise and the rest of the IMF arrive in South Africa for that astounding finale.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cMission: Impossible \u2014 The Final Reckoning\u201d is streaming on Paramount+.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n