Please just let it be over
Mission Impossible–there are eight of these films in the ether now.
That’s a lot of impossible missions. The latest one is what was supposed to be Dead Reckoning: Part Two, which was supposed to have been shot back to back with Part One, and I think all of that fell apart once some of the numbers started to come in for Part One. That’s not to say there wasn’t any success with that movie–it made $571 million at the box office against a budget of $291 million, but once you factor in the marketing campaign, it didn’t do as well as it could have. That might be because the global audience is starting to get burned out on these films. I know this latest one, at nearly three hours in length, kinda burned me.
Let me just preface this at the top: I know that Mission: Impossible is about the stunts. It’s about globetrotting around the world, really cool spy gadgets, and tearing off fake masks in order to make you wonder if anyone is who they say they are. That’s to say the story is usually pretty simple, there are some bad guys, a MacGuffin that they have to get in order to defeat the bad guys, and Ethan Hunt and his intrepid team will save the day. Circling back to the stunts–Tom Cruise is guaranteed to do two things in these movies: run like hell, and pull off authentic stunts because he is a god damn mad man. And for the most part, I dig the movies because of that. I’m not trying to pull thought-provoking meaning out of them, and I’m not going to have them as my favorite film of the year.
I’m saying all of this because this was just overall a solid “Eh” movie. I’ve mentioned the run time, but that part didn’t grate on me. What exhausted me was the weak story, the lame villain, and just how stupid they think the audience is. Oh–spoilers from here on out.
Let’s start with the villain of the movie. In Dead Reckoning, the villain is, truthfully, the Entity. A super-powerful, all-knowing Artificial Intelligence that knows your every move and is constantly predicting what you will do next with pinpoint accuracy. This movie came out just as ChatGPT was making waves, and it was pretty topical. That’s not to say this movie is no longer topical, because let’s be honest, AI is still very scary, and has gotten very advanced. No, what made the first movie work was just how much they flexed what this thing was capable of.
In this movie, it took over nuclear arsenals, which, yes, is a pretty big deal, but why? It is trying to destroy the world and humanity, but what is the point of that? If its goal is to control everything, there’s not much to control if it blows up the whole world. At some point, it also just stops trying to stop Ethan, I guess because its’ human puppet, Gabriel, a former IMF agent, has gone rogue and is trying to control the Entity himself. So Gabriel becomes the villain? I don’t know, and I don’t really care. He’s bland as hell, even if he has a sweet voice. I’ll get to the ending in a bit, but he was written one-dimensionally. There wasn’t any depth to him, and I knew Ethan was going to beat him.
The writing in this movie is also bland, and the weakest part of the whole thing. I can’t tell you how many times characters would stand around in a circle, telling each other what the plan is, finishing each others’ sentences to show how cool they were and how well they know each other, and the music would swell dramatically to emphasize The stakes…they’ve never been higher! I felt beaten over the head with exposition every time they would explain how they were going to take Luther’s poison pill, and plug it into the hard drive containing the source code of the Entity, which would save the day. And for some reason, they brought back a minor character from the first movie, who, every time he is introduced, they go “Oh, it’s that guy! The man who designed the Blackvault, the most secure vault ever made for the CIA! Remember??”. And in case you forget what all of that shit means, they show a clip from the first movie of him discovering the knife in the vault, just so you can make the connection. Every time. Maybe I am exaggerating, but don’t treat me like I’m stupid. I can pick up on details as I go, all while marveling at the stunts.
Luther dies in this movie (R.I.P), but he also looks like he was going to die anyway. He was hooked up to an IV drip, wearing a hospital gown, and was watched over by a nurse. So that makes his death a whimper instead of some big sendoff that Ving Rhames deserved. His illness in the movie is never explained, by the way. You just know he’s sick.
But surely, the stunts will make up for the bland storytelling and expositional vomit, right? I wish. The sequence where Ethan has to get the hard drive from the Russian Submarine was cool, but I started to get bored with it rather quickly. And then I got annoyed once he had to strip off his wetsuit in freezing temperatures, and lost his oxygen tanks/mask. I get that this is a fictional movie that strains credulity at the best of times, but he would be dead. There is no way Ethan Hunt would have held his breath that long from the deepest part of the ocean to the top. I’m saying that because he gets to the surface with nary a problem, except, of course, the thick ice pack that prevents him from getting out. His muscles start to seize up, but only once he reaches the top. Maybe there’s a behind-the-scenes documentary that shows me just how wrong I am, but it didn’t sit well with me. The knife fight, where you get to see Tom Cruise shirtless (a requirement to show how ripped Tom Cruise can still be), was just stilted and made me miss John Wick fights. It was just okay.
The technology piece also really bothered me. The whole concept was that they are trying to trap the Entity onto a flash drive, which only Grace can pull out because she’s good at sleight of hand, and then Ethan can Poison Pill it with Luther’s custom USB drive. (She has to do this in the blink of an eye. 100 milliseconds. They tell you this MULTIPLE TIMES.) Ethan plugged the Poison Pill into the drive with the source code, which somehow also affects the Entity–and Grace traps the Entity on the flash drive. But surely that can’t be the only copy of it in the world–and also…why couldn’t something this smart start generating its own version of its code, removing all dependencies from the source code? Oh, I forgot, I’m not supposed to think too much during these movies…
Honestly, I would have preferred Simon Pegg’s Benji on a keyboard going “And take that, you bastard,” as they keyboard warriored the AI out of existence.
It would have been a much more satisfying conclusion to the villain than it being stored on a “5D Optical Flash Drive”, which Luther somehow magically made…in a cave…with scraps. Err, I mean in an underground tunnel system, in a hospital gown with random computer equipment. For those who are interested, the drive is a real piece of technology that was demonstrated at some point in 2013. Microsoft is also working on its version of it, so I guess that’s nice. Gabriel dying from his head hitting the tail of his plane was pretty funny, though. Oh–speaking of that….
The big climax of the movie, riding the biplanes, was just okay. I know Tom Cruise did the stunt for real. I’m not dismissing how dangerous this was. But he’s also held onto the side of a jet plane taking off a runway before. He’s ridden a motorcycle off a cliff (multiple times). So the planes were more…comical than anything? Especially the wind hitting Tom Cruise’s face. Also I know Tom Cruise is fast, but there is no fucking way he ran faster than a plane taking off. Even an older plane.
Maybe it’s just getting to the point where they’ve done everything that they can, but I felt overall this was just a disappointing entry in the series, and perhaps it’s the last one. Christopher McQuarrie, the director, and Tom Cruise are being cagey about that. But in the end, I walked out of the theater just kind of tired, annoyed, and bored. I don’t know what the future plans are for this franchise… Haley Atwell and Pom Klementieff could start their own IMF team, and maybe that’s what they’re planning on doing as a spin-off? (Speaking of Pom’s character, Paris (because she’s French, hah, get it?!) she was really bad-ass in the last film, and in this one she just kept getting her ass handed to her. What gives??) I have to say, though, Grace is just an okay character. I love Haley Atwell, but I don’t know if she could carry her own film like Tom Cruise could. The man just runs on this weird manic energy that seeps into everything he does. Scientlogy is a bitch, man.
If this is the end, I hope it stays that way. They did their damndest to remind you of the good times we’ve had (seriously, the opening montage should have just stuck in the trailer), and they shoe-horned in random cameos/connections out the wazoo for no apparent reason than to drop easter eggs. Except, they weren’t done with finesse. Briggs is suddenly revealed to be the son of Jon Voight’s character from the first film, for no reason. Why??
What an overbloated, long, bland movie. Not even Tramell Tilman showing up for 10 mins saved this film, even though I fucking loved seeing Mr. Milkshake again.
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