The Mission: Unattainable movie franchise has all the time dabbled within the, properly, unimaginable. We have seen Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt climb his approach up the Burj Khalifa, have a bike joust to forestall the unfold of a bioweapon and grasp off the aspect of an airplane. Even probably the most grounded entry, Brian DePalma’s 1996 Mission: Unattainable, featured Cruise leaping off of an exploding helicopter onto a prepare within the Chunnel. However with the earlier movie, Lifeless Reckoning, and this yr’s follow-up Closing Reckoning, the sequence has jumped utterly into science-fiction territory with an AI villain referred to as The Entity. It has the facility to manage something that touches the web, manipulate digital data to go well with its wants and probably wipe out humanity by means of a world nuclear annihilation.
Stopping the Entity is a mission Ethan Hunt has no selection however to just accept. However as a fan of this sequence from the beginning — hell, I even like John Woo’s gloriously operatic Mission: Unattainable 2 — I am unable to assist however see the transfer into true sci-fi as an enormous mistake. It makes each Reckoning movies far too plot-heavy and impenetrable (Closing Reckoning clocks in at three hours!), and so they additionally simply do not have a lot to say about AI past a Terminator-esque extinction state of affairs. However maybe worst of all, the shift in direction of sci-fi inadvertently (or maybe purposefully) turns Ethan Hunt into some type of Messiah. Apparently, solely Scientology’s best son can save us.
The very best M:I movies are those that do not get slowed down within the intricacies of plot mechanics. That is a pattern that really kicked off with the JJ Abrams-directed Mission: Unattainable 3, which relied on an ordinary MacGuffin (the “Rabbit’s Foot”) and a powerhouse Philip Seymour Hoffman villain efficiency to ship Ethan and his group gallivanting around the globe. With Ghost Protocol, director Brad Hen used his expertise in animation and love of silent movie to show Cruise right into a modern-day Buster Keaton, hopping from one elaborate set-piece to a different.
The sequence discovered a brand new life when author/director Christopher McQuarrie hopped aboard for Rogue Nation, which launched Rebecca Ferguson’s enigmatic Ilsa Faust. McQuarrie has beforehand likened his method to the franchise as one thing like motion movie jazz, whereby he and Cruise would develop some set piece concepts and construct a story round that. On the similar time, in addition they sought to develop Hunt’s inner-life and group dynamics greater than earlier movies. Plot, as soon as once more, was principally a car to achieve these spectacular motion set items and character-defining moments (which had been typically one and the identical).
McQuarrie principally repeated his formulation for fulfillment with 2018’s Mission: Unattainable – Fallout, which was notable for that includes a real-time excessive altitude skydiving sequence. However with 2023’s Lifeless Reckoning, he confronted the bounds of making an attempt to improvise a film because it was being shot. Manufacturing was considerably delayed by the pandemic, and the movie additionally needed to undergo a number of reshoots. Maybe not surprisingly, it additionally turned more and more extra complicated and plot-heavy.
That film could not simply deal with The Entity’s AI like one other plot MacGuffin, as an alternative it virtually turned an anchor for the movie’s momentum. We needed to study what the Entity was, why it could possibly be dangerous and likewise introduce new characters who had been dedicated to its ambitions. The ultimate movie seems like a hodgepodge of concepts making an attempt to string collectively just a few notable motion sequences, like that aforementioned bike leap. The extended manufacturing additionally led to the departure of Ilsa Faust, who was instantly changed by Hayley Atwell’s Grace, an knowledgeable thief who’s so thinly sketched she does not even get a final title.
I had hoped that McQuarrie, Cruise and co-writer Erik Jendresen would study from the sloppiness of the final movie and refocus on the characters and motion we love in The Closing Reckoning, however sadly issues get much more convoluted. We’re introduced with a world the place the Entity has already taken over most data techniques, can simply reshape digital actuality at will and is within the strategy of taking up nuclear weapons techniques around the globe. There isn’t any hope however Ethan Hunt, who should hunt down the Entity’s supply code in a sunken Russian submarine and attempt to cease it from annihilating humanity (whereas additionally making an attempt to outlive the apocalypse in an underground information bunker). And if that each one sounds tiring as you learn it, it is even more durable to swallow as you sit by means of the movie’s three-hour runtime.
As soon as the movie really begins transferring across the half-way level, it delivers a few of the most complicated set items we have seen but. Hunt’s dive into Arctic waters feels as claustrophobic as a few of the greatest scenes from The Abyss, and it is nonetheless thrilling to see Cruise grasp onto bi-planes in the course of the climactic chase. I simply want it really did one thing attention-grabbing with the AI on the heart of the story, as an alternative of giving us a basic-ass Terminator/Wargames state of affairs. We’re instructed that the Entity has impressed a cult-like following, and that it may possibly utterly reshape the thought of fact, however we do not really see the way it impacts individuals around the globe.
That is a selected disgrace for the reason that Mission: Unattainable sequence’ has all the time been about real human effort, you’d suppose McQuarrie and crew would even have extra to say concerning the impression of AI. Followers wish to see sensible stunt work being achieved by a film star who’s determined for consideration. Now with real-world AI threatening to dumb down the act of creativity and recycle current content material, turning the movie’s AI right into a simplistic villain simply looks like a complete waste.
The Closing Reckoning additionally wastes far an excessive amount of time extolling Ethan Hunt’s virtues as humanity’s savior. No authorities will be trusted, no elected leaders — only one man who by no means follows orders. The one man who has given up love and bled for an ungrateful world. Even the individuals whose lives he has ostensibly ruined can not help however love him.
The Mission: Unattainable franchise has all the time been an arrogance mission for Cruise, however he additionally balanced out his ego by working with proficient administrators who pushed him and the sequence in new instructions. Now, in his fourth movie with McQuarrie, and probably his final as the principle character, Cruise can not help however remind us how a lot he’s suffered. And it is as boring as one more world-ending AI villain.
