Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will be the last entry in the blockbuster franchise – or so it is rumoured. This is as difficult to imagine as the jaw-dropping stunts performed by Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in seven previous films over nearly three decades.
The concluding part to Dead Reckoning (2023) sees Ethan faced with the mystery of the Entity, a dangerously rogue artificial intelligence programme. The gallery of villains includes Gabriel (Esai Morales), a figure from Ethan’s past who is linked to the death of Ethan’s lover.
Among the cast are Ving Rhames, the only actor to feature in every one of the previous movies, and Simon Pegg – who entered the Mission: Impossible universe in the third production – alongside Angela Bassett, Henry Czerny, Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby and Pom Klementieff.
The Final Reckoning will be out in India on May 17, six days ahead of the US premiere. The film has already been released in Japan and was screened at the Cannes Film Festival now underway.
Although an air of finality hangs over the new movie, it’s possible that the series will continue in some form or the other. However, despite Tom Cruise ridiculous fitness levels, age is not on his side.
Born in 1962 (two years before Ethan Hunt), Cruise has pushed his body to unimaginable limits for the Mission: Impossible films. He has performed many of the fate-baiting stunts himself, such as leaping on to a taxiing plane and riding a motorbike off a cliff.
The Final Reckoning sees Cruise once again precariously hanging on to a plane. How long can he keep carrying on? Only god, and Tom Cruise, knows.
Cruise’s singular talent for making stunts appear utterly plausible is one of the key reasons for the massive popularity of Mission: Impossible. Ever since the first film from 1996, the action set pieces have gotten more intricate, the stunts more death-defying, the sense of danger greater.
Expansion is central to the franchise. Aided by improvements in budgets, technology and visual effects, every movie has been more fantastical than whatever came before it. The films are largely apolitical, steering clear of specific geopolitical concerns while reflecting broad anxieties about nuclear bombs, biological warfare and the march of AI.
Before the films, there was the television show of the same name. Created by Bruce Geller, Mission: Impossible rolled out seven seasons between 1966 and 1973, with a revival in 1988.
The show revolves around the fictitious Impossible Missions Force, which is American in origin but independent of that country’s agencies. The IMF works behind the scenes to protect global security – the James Bond formula, but shrunk for television.
The first Mission: Impossible film adaptation, directed by Brian De Palma, retained several elements from the show, such as Lalo Schifrin’s rumbustious opening theme music, self-destructing messages and facial masks to deceive opponents.
In the TV show, the IMF leader is Jim Phelps. In the first Mission: Impossible movie, Phelps works with rather than against the enemy. Phelps’s death not only severs ties with the TV series but also sets up Ethan Hunt as the hero.
Brian De Palma, a known fan of Alfred Hitchcock, directed Mission: Impossible like a suspense thriller with high-octane action thrown in. De Palma used unnerving close-ups, tilted camera angles and double-dealing characters to ratchet up the tension.
The tech was old-fashioned – the main quest is for a floppy disk containing vital information – but the action was thoroughly modern. The sequence of Ethan sneaking into a heavily guarded room and purloining the disk while dangling from a wire rivalled any of his later exploits.
Apart from setting the benchmark for the franchise, the film established Ethan as up for anything, unblinkingly committed to his cause and concerned for his colleagues. Ethan is the ideal over-achieving spy, Bond-like in his physical prowess and love of risk, but un-Bondlike in his monomaniacal work ethic and largely asexual nature despite a string of girlfriends.
A character in Mission: Impossible wonders about Ethan: “Is he serious?” The answer holds true not just for this film but everything that followed: “Always”.
Some of the sequels have weak plots or ineffective villains. There has been a tendency to retire or kill off secondary characters after building them up. The demise of Ethan’s most recent lover, Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), in Dead Reckoning, was baffling.
But there has been remarkable consistency too, with fewer dips than typically seen in a long-running series. Every single film has something going for it. Ethan Hunt always delivers the goods, as does Tom Cruise.
Even the feebly plotted second Mission: Impossible, directed by John Woo, worked because of excellent stunts and Cruise’s evolving interpretation of Ethan’s personality. Although JJ Abrams’s Mission: Impossible 3 was distracted by Ethan’s domestic situation, the film has a superb Philip Seymour Hoffman as the antagonist.
The fourth film, Ghost Protocol (2011), revitalised the franchise.
Animation filmmaker Brad Bird brought a touch of the gag-led cartoon to Ghost Protocol, in which Ethan breaks out of a prison in Russia, breaks into the Kremlin, and rappels down the Burj Khalifa skyscraper. Christopher McQuarrie has ably steered Rogue Nation (2015) and Fallout (2018), and is also behind the Reckoning films.
The latter phase of Mission: Impossible has been altogether more satisfying, increasing Ethan’s work load while also giving fans the breathless, rigorously staged thrills they have come to expect.
In an interview in 2016, eminent screenwriter Robert Towne, who wrote the first two films, articulated the principle behind the plotting. “…There were certain action pieces around which the story had to be written, or, at the very least, the story couldn’t interfere with the action pieces”, Towne told the website Creative Screenwriting.
Towne praised Tom Cruise’s “ferocious energy level” and “childlike delight”, which is inseparable from Ethan Hunt. Towne says in the interview: “Tom, inside, knows he can accomplish anything, even if he has never tried it before. Tom is somebody who never gives up on anything. He just knows he will triumph. That is Ethan Hunt. And that ‘peskiness’ and persistence also has its comic side, and so it’s highly suggestive.”
A world that doesn’t have Ethan Hunt to set it right is hard to accept, especially since the Jason Bourne franchise has been wrapped up and there’s no new James Bond production in sight. In the ecosystem of money-spinning franchises, particularly one led by the most bankable Hollywood star on the planet, it’s perhaps best to abide by the dictum “Never Say Never”.
