The Hollywood promise of thrills, fun and heroism is not unique to a Tom Cruise production, but the Tom Cruise iteration of that promise is unique. Unlike other Hollywood legends like James Cameron or Steven Spielberg, Cruise is a force to be reckoned with both behind and in front of the camera. He wants you to think these thrills are real, that he will never half-ass anything, and he’s doing it all for the audience. We need only trust him. However, the notion of trust that makes the Mission: Impossible franchise stand out—even amongst Tom Cruise productions. As a spy franchise, it’s full of not just spectacle, but twists, deception, double crosses, triple crosses, and, of course, international drama about tensions between governments.
When Ethan Hunt (Cruise) asks President Erica Sloane (Angela Bassett) to trust him with an aircraft carrier so he can save the world from the truth-redefining algorithm known as The Entity, it’s not necessarily the in-world logistics of the action that should stick in our minds, but the implications. It’s not a surprise if Optimus Prime needs help from an aircraft carrier. World-ending blockbusters are a dime a dozen, but how many $400 million dollar productions have truth itself on the line?
This is where the fun of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning‘s exposition comes in. Director Christopher McQuarrie says he and co-writer Erik Jendresen hate writing exposition, but they still write the hell out of it. It’s a necessary evil that becomes a source of its own thrills throughout. There’s a scene in Mission: Impossible – Fallout with at least five movie-defining twists in as many (or even fewer) minutes. The Final Reckoning might have that twist-per-minute record beat threefold, but it does so by progressing the characters and narrative in a way that is tense and organic. A great example can be seen in Gabriel (Esai Morales).
In Dead Reckoning, Gabriel was The Entity’s messenger. The Entity helped him move throughout the world undetected, giving him a ghost-like presence. When Gabriel failed at the end of Dead Reckoning, his master forsook him as a follower, but not as a pawn. Gabriel no longer properly worships The Entity, but is now trying to control it. Rather than working together, they’re both using each other. When Gabriel threatens the lives of Ethan’s friends, he is still certain of what Ethan will do, but he no longer makes his demands with the perfect security The Entity gave him. His dialogue, his threats, while similarly accurate, are now peppered with a touch of insecurity and rage.
Beyond singular characters, the persistent dialogue can make for a tense symphony of noise when multiple characters with distinct knowledge and motives are present. For instance: Ethan’s not alone when he’s asking President Sloane for the keys to the George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier. There’s an assortment of government folks in there, each going at each other’s throats for an assortment of reasons. The character dynamics are tense, twisty. Person A might be criticizing President Sloane for not trying to control The Entity, pinning Person A against Ethan’s desire to destroy The Entity. When Person B speaks up against Person A, you might assume Person B is in favor of Ethan. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This, it turns out, is false, because Person B thinks the notion of trying to find The Entity is ludicrous. Person A thinks Ethan has the wrong motives for his mission, Person B thinks Ethan should be locked up.
This seems simple enough, but it’s one thread in a tense tapestry of confusion, ego, and preposterous jargon that will draw you in with its mystery. (Someone should make a 10 hour loop of whoever whispers “primordial digital ooze” for people to fall asleep to.) Cutting through all this is one simple truth: this horrible situation is all Ethan’s fault, and yet only Ethan can fix it. This is what makes Sloane’s obvious contempt for Hunt essential for the drama, because that contempt is building up to one of two things. A. She’s a judge about to slam her gavel to lock him away from the world. B. She’s putting a gun to his head to go save it.
Of course, we know that, whether Ethan has her approval, he’s going to save the world, but her approval (or lack thereof) is what gives these stakes an existential weight. Even if the world is in danger in the traditional, nuclear weapon sense of a Mission: Impossible film, those nuclear weapons are the gun The Entity is holding to the head of the world. Whether Ethan can disarm this truth-defining threat will involve a balance of existential, almost divine grandeur without actually getting into the supernatural, and this is where the franchise’s most spectacular set piece comes in.
This set piece involves the Sevastopol, a sunken submarine, frozen in time, that holds The Entity’s source code. This sequence might be the closest we’ll get to a proper, big budget adaptation of Jonah and The Whale. The scale, the beauty, and the horror are unmatched. The sound design for this unliving watercraft is reminiscent of the M.U.T.O. in the 2014 Godzilla, a similarly existential threat in another story about humanity’s relationship to the world around us. Images of Ethan floating to the submarine, flares illuminating both his view and presence, resonate as reasonably plausible, yet otherworldly.
This biblical, mythic scale can bring us back to the Hollywood promise as given by Tom Cruise, and can make us wonder: what does Cruise think of the story of Icarus flying too close to the sun? He can obviously understand it as a cautionary tale, but does he also see it as a responsibility? It was easy to mock Cruise for making Top Gun: Maverick after he previously stated that making sequels to a sanitized, kids movie version of war would be “irresponsible”, but could making these movies be his way of claiming responsibility? If one takes something away from these movies to bring into the real world, it won’t be a proper criticism of the authorities and structures that hold the world at gunpoint. Maybe he knows this big war machine will keep lumbering on with or without him, and emphasizing the reality of the stunt work and spectacle is meant to remind us that they are, indeed, spectacle. Maybe we’re just supposed to trust that Tom Cruise will entertain the hell out of us, whether he’s going to the bottom of the ocean, or engaging in an almost Hitchockian set piece where he’s holding onto a plane and Gabriel is trying to stab him with his big knife.
That’s a lot of maybes, but one thing is certain: every penny of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’s obscene budget is visible on screen. However, whether your reasons are moral (given its political allegiances), logistical (given the absurdity of the narrative), or simply reasons of endurance (given the onslaught of exposition), Tom Cruise understands that you might have a hard time investing yourself into it. But whatever your bullet is, if you can bite it, you’ll find a richly fun and contrived plot, coupled with $400 million images that will take your breath away.
