Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (2025)
Maybe it is ADHD. Maybe it's franchise fatigue. Mission Impossible as a series makes me feel dumb. I watch these movies and the second that the credits roll I could not tell you a single plot point that has happened in the film. MI is unique in that I can say that for every single movie in the series, I feel similarly about the Fast and the Furious but I didn't feel lost until after Tokyo Drift in that case.
I don't know what it is, I just can't differentiate these movies. Ethan Hunt is on the run, Tom Cruise does some crazy things, they narrowly avert disaster and we move onto the next one. The actual details within there - which organisation, returning characters, plot twists - just do not stick with me one bit. Even the naming of the films confuses me as I thought this was supposed to be Dead Reckoning Part 2 but I suppose they changed their plan?
Part of me assumes, and hopes, that these movies do well because they are inoffensive. People know the name and they know Tom Cruise so the box office results will mostly just roll in regardless of what is actually going on in the movies. I genuinely hope that I'm not alone in feeling a bit lost 8 movies and 30 years in.
The biggest draw in recent years has been to see whatever tremendous stunt that Tom Cruise has pulled off in the latest iteration. Here, there is a sequence on a pair of prop planes. It is a fun sequence and even got a few laughs out of us with all the fumbling between planes but it didn't quite wow me in the way climbing the Burj Khalifa or hanging from the side of an airplane. One thing I noted was there is a long underwater sequence which felt a bit more CGI-heavy than previous movies. I'm not sure if that type of set-piece belongs in this series as I would prefer smaller-scale effects that are easier to hide. It broke the immersion for me as I was thinking when is Tom going to do something more real and dangerous.
Ultimately there is nothing wrong with sitting down and watching this one. It's a well made action movie with a very strong cast. I'd love to see Tom Cruise make something different going forward and this would be a good send-off to the series that has defined most of his career.
