At one point in the film Lawrence of Arabia, the eponymous T. E. Lawrence, an imperious Englishman, defies his Arab friends’ disapproval in order to save a man’s life. When they object that the man’s time has come, that he must die because “it is written,” he counters, “Nothing is written.”
In Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning, the concluding installment to the franchise, superspy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) borrows Lawrence’s catchphrase as a response to his enemies: “Nothing is written.” One suspects he has in mind not just fictional supervillains but also risk-averse studio executives.
This phrase, shot through with the hubris of the Lawrence character, is paired with a film that’s chock-a-block full of Christian imagery. None of it hangs together in a coherent way. (Neither does the film.) But as an expression of Hollywood megalomaniacal vision, it’s still strangely pious, a grab bag of Saint Christopher medals, paeans to free will, Cold War–liberal aspirations for global harmony, and an overall lament that no one seems to know the truth anymore because it’s been redefined by “the Lord of Lies.”
In this final mission, Ethan and the gang are fighting for more than just survival—they’re looking to preserve free will against a determinist, antihuman, antitruth enemy. Much is made of the series’ iconic catchphrase: “your mission, should you choose to accept it.” Ethan is humanity’s advocate, claiming that a machine wants only other machines but humanity’s strength lies in individuals who go rogue.
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And what about when going rogue goes wrong? The film puts the final, crucial action of the heist—and the fate of the world—into the hands of (a woman named) Grace. But the gesture feels empty when everyone needs her … except Ethan Hunt.
The Final Reckoning starts in the middle of a worldwide crisis of truth. An evil, sentient artificial intelligence system, the Entity, which took over the internet in the previous installment, is intent on capturing all the nuclear arsenals and destroying the world entirely, sealing itself safely in a digital bunker. Ethan wants to destroy this “anti-God” while everyone else wants to control it because it will give them the power to define what’s real and do a bunch of other stuff. (In a film which could easily lose 45 minutes of exposition, the Entity’s rules and powers are somehow still vague.) The Entity itself, of course, just wants to put humanity out of business.
Cruise’s supporting cast is made up of quippy character actors, with Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) as the mellow voice of truth. The rest are mostly there as comic relief, though impish pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell) gets a great entrance—and provides welcome bleeding-heart shock as she witnesses Ethan’s violent lifestyle.
In a world where “human” is always better, it’s strange that so little attention is paid to supporting characters’ story arcs. Several times, motifs suggest a build to a resolution, from a vixenish assassin (Pom Klementieff) forever requesting permission to seek revenge (a theme that’s funny every time it appears) to an earnest sidekick (Simon Pegg) being given explicit responsibility for a team. But both of these threads peter out without payoff. Instead, we get endless throwbacks and retcons to the earlier films in the series, larding up a story that’s already ambitious with the weight of legacy.
The one subplot that does get screen time is all telling, no showing, as an American president (Angela Bassett) handles a turgid nuclear standoff. With an AI villain, it’s a little boring that the worst-imaginable scenario in a post-truth world is just a rehash of the paranoid fears of Tom Cruise’s and director Christopher McQuarrie’s Cold War childhood. (There’s also an amusing dose of Luddism—baby boomer Cruise snarls, “You spend too much time on the internet,” as he beats up a henchman.)
This subplot’s premise is essentially recycled from Fail Safe, a political thriller from 1964, in which Henry Fonda’s US president resolves to nuke New York City as a gesture of apology when an American nuke accidentally strikes Moscow—this despite the fact that his wife will die in the blast. It’s a sign of how half-baked this tribute is that when Bassett’s president picks an American city, we never find out which one.
Despite endless talk about how high the stakes are in the president’s war room, those scenes don’t hold a candle to the heart-pounding danger of actual stunts. You don’t need much explanation about the stakes when the enemy is gravity. The most famous image in the series remains Tom Cruise dropped on a wire into a pristine white CIA vault, destroying some poor national security employee’s career by stealing top-secret information. (We actually catch up with that very employee, banished to a South Pole research station. But don’t worry—lest we think Ethan is really blameworthy, the employee forgives and thanks him right away.)
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And Ethan’s twin battles with gravity in this film are worth the price of admission. Having commandeered an aircraft carrier, mostly because it’s a cool ride, Ethan dives to the bottom of the Bering Sea to go on a tense, nearly silent scavenger hunt inside a Russian sub on the ocean’s floor. It’s not clear to me whether the water is as cold as we assume, but when he exposes his bare skin to it, I shuddered viscerally anyway. I couldn’t help but think of another catchphrase Ethan repeated earlier in the film: “It’s only pain.”
The final action sequence is another stunner, with Cruise doing some complicated stunts involving biplanes that I won’t spoil by describing.
The sequences, however, feel totally independent of the personal stakes that made such stunts so engaging in previous films. Ultimately, we just don’t care when the world is at risk. There needs to be a person on the line—a person cared about by another person. However, with each film, Ethan has become increasingly isolated, a suffering servant of espionage.
The problem is that Ethan is interesting when he’s doing things, but when introspection becomes the mission, the series won’t give him anything to regret. Every time he faces a bad decision, he’s told there was a good angle he hadn’t considered. Without accompanying the cocky swagger of “Nothing is written” with the true sense of tragedy and irony that Lawrence ultimately faces, a hero’s introspection is toothless, a mere self-canonization.
Is it really a problem that we’re given a perfect hero? Christ figures have their role in stories, but only when they are truly “with us,” the people of Earth. Ethan Hunt is sealed in an unreality bunker of his own. One can’t help but be appreciative of his mighty feats, but a little self-awareness might have successfully landed the franchise plane. Instead, it parachutes to safety, coattails aflame.
Hannah Long is an Appalachian writer living in New York City. Her writing has appeared in Angelus News, The Dispatch, and Plough Magazine.
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