MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING. It took me until the previous Reckoning to realize that, among its many other fine and compelling attributes, one of the great successes of the Mission: Impossible franchise, at least in its late-stage iterations, lies in its simultaneous fealty to its origins — cinematic, not so much the television series — and ability to craft propulsive, exciting cinema that does not require the same fealty in its audience. This fact became clearer to me with each recent entry, as I realized (repeatedly) that I was unsure as to the plot machinations of the previous chapter and, more importantly, that it probably didn’t matter.
This could (and probably does) seem dismissive, a suggestion that the movies are mere exercises in self-aggrandizement and grand-scale shark jumping. But what once struck me as a narrative weakness is actually a mark of the evolution of the series and the subtlety with which it has evolved, primarily in the hands of producer/star Tom Cruise and multi-hyphenate co-conspirator Christopher McQuarrie.
Dead Reckoning (2023) was a reminder of the initial, lasting influence of Brian DePalma’s work on the first Mission: Impossible (1996), a genre-establishing exercise in style and craft that caught us when we weren’t looking. We were an audience of Bond acolytes, a multi-generational collection of viewers for whom spy movies were primarily a silly entertainment, a self-aware source of fun with tongue usually very much in cheek. But DePalma (and Cruise) reshaped our genre expectations, elevating both the trade-craft elements of the story, and the scale of the stunt and effects work. As we watched Cruise fly from an exploding helicopter onto a moving train, we were seeing something new. We certainly didn’t expect to see our hero jumping off and onto ever-higher, faster, more, well, impossible objects, let alone for the next three decades.
And, in fairness, there were plenty of times, especially in what we now know as the early going, when the franchise’s future seemed anything but assured. Except among the true faithful, the second and third installments didn’t promote the level of excitement of even a mediocre Bond. And even as the ascendancy began, as Cruise started courting death by misadventure ever more actively, the movies felt a little like background noise, a tentpole in an era of tentpoles that actively reduced the amplitude of most of our serotonin response.
But the McQuarrie era (which may or may not actually have drawn to a close with this Final Reckoning) has seen a redoubling of effort to create the most exciting stunt sequences in movies, but also to streamline the storytelling, to create a narrative continuum that doesn’t require constant skimming of the Wikipedia page to reorient oneself.
The trap, into which almost all other major action franchises of this century have fallen, is a deceptive one: The audience won’t be satisfied with anything less than what they’ve already been given, but they are also deadly afraid of change. Too much, too little, neither or both and their attention has already drifted elsewhere, but not before they’ve taken to their cyber-troll boards for a great, collective venting of spleen. What Mission: Impossible has continuously and ingeniously managed to do, unlike so many others, is to stay the course but also, in an apparently organic way, raise the stakes of its set-pieces and stunts within its established framework.
Particularly within the last three movies, the franchise has become effortlessly self-reflective but also globally conscious, creating villains that transcend national boundaries or notions of allegiance that represent humanity’s hubris and consumption as the real well-spring of antagonism and conflict. It’s an ingenious balance, and one that doesn’t require rabid fandom of the audience. There are flashbacks within Final Reckoning from movies I haven’t seen, but their inclusion feels neither gratuitous nor like pandering; rather they are evidence of a self-awareness of the evolution and distillation of the series as a whole. It’s the sort of fan-service that works, affirming the preferences of the faithful but also reminding the rest of us that we aren’t to be excluded for our once and future skepticism. In fact, the hindsight serves as a corrective, assigning importance to objects and events from the past that could easily been dismissed as MacGuffins.
I’ve consciously avoided a dissection of plot here; it both is and is not the thing. This is an espionage movie with the highest stakes yet, and it moves with such determination and grace that, even if spoilers might not ruin anything, they might steal some of the joy of discovery, which is plentiful.
There are film series I have probably enjoyed more in their totality (John Wick), but none that have done as much, or covered as much ground, risking the loss of the thread, the plot and the audience, while managing to finish on perhaps their strongest, most lingering note. PG13. 169M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK, MINOR.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
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For showtimes call: Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456; Mill Creek Cinema 839-3456; Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.
This article appears in Glory Over Land and Sea.