Fighting The Fates in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING (Patreon)

The Mission: Impossible movies have gotten very good at what they do.

They are going to whisk the viewer away to all sorts of gorgeous international locales. They are going to ground the action in practical, real-world, performance-based stunt work. They are going to be shot as carefully-planned sequences that not just allows for visual coherence, but maximized dramatic effect. The story will engineer pressure cooker scenarios that depend on timing, objectives, and all the stuff that makes for compelling tension. And in that same spirit, Tom Cruise will do his damnedest to run, hang off planes, jump off cliffs, and otherwise try to cheat death in the pure name of entertaining you. Which is why the films are squarely about Ethan Hunt overcoming seemingly improbable, nay IMPOSSIBLE odds to do just that.

But in trying to speak about this particular entry, I very once again find myself bucking at the opportunity to write a “traditional” review because 1) I’m not good at them 2) There are many wonderful minds that do it much better and 3) I ultimately just prefer writing the deep dive. But what’s funny about a movie like Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One is that so many of the things that are wonderful about it are so dang evident on screen. And getting into “why it works” usually means getting really granular and can best be explained with visual aid, like in this full video essay that I made with Landon that breaks down all of the action scenes in Fallout (you can watch it right here). Because that’s the way you really see the love that goes into the nitty gritty elements of craft.

I suppose that I could muster a few opinions on the specifics. I could point out that Hayley Atwell is so charming, so smart, and so good in this that (despite her having a pretty great career) I still feel like this film is proof-pudding that Hollywood has been wasting that potential and utterly coming up short in letting her demonstrate that talent. I could point out that she’s why the movie feels pretty grounded on the whole. Or maybe I could talk about how I wish the marketing blitz held back on more of the big action beats. Or I could talk about the inherent problems of “breaking up the last film into two parts” always feeling a bit underwhelming, what with the Fast X and Spider-Verse of things these days. Or I could get lost in the weeds of where Dead Reckoning ranks in relative “comparison” to the other films, though I get the instinct. But the truth is that the only real conversation that interests me about the film is a thematic one.

It is also a spoiler-y, so caution - the rest is for those who have seen the film.

So by the end of the first big extended sequence, you realize this film is about something I find kind of fun and meta: Tom Cruise is fighting A.I. Well, it’s a rogue one, but still, it hits the very real world problem of how the rich and powerful are going to buy into this garbage as if it has actual insight. Yes, we live in an age of algorithms that are making short work of mass programming, but the brutal idiocy of these same programs creates the same host of issues we deal with today. And it’s a gentle reminder to all the tech-friendly execs out that, that correlation does not mean cause. No, eating ice cream at the start of a show does not make it better. No, an audience doesn’t “prefer” seasons that are four episodes long because they stop watching your boring shows after that long. You’re drawing the painfully wrong conclusions from the raw data because they only have a syntax and not a semantics. And it’s obvious to anyone who understands that fictional narrative depends on genuine dramatic engineering and not a host of surface-level details…

So what does this have to do with Mission: Impossible?

Kind of everything, oddly enough. Because the entire idea of this silly “impossible mission force” is that Cruise and company have been fighting probability every step of the way. And what is A.I. about other than betting on what is most likely. But they’re all about doing what is very, very unlikely. And by throwing Tom into a fight with an algorithm that is trying to predict his behavior, the film is also putting him in a meta-fight with the screenwriting conventions that have actually defined this series. It can predict the plot-twists, the tropes, the relationships, and even the character motives as it’s constantly trying to head him off at the pass. It’s essentially behaving like the Greek fates of dramas past, setting such lowly humans on their doomed paths. But every step of the way, what’s fascinating is that Cruise is constantly NOT trying to outsmart it - in fact, there’s many times he just plays right into the expectant hands and dire circumstances - but that’s because what’s actually grounding him at every step is just plain old dumb morality… And isn't it funny how that’s always what has helped him ultimately succeed?

Even if Ethan is a force of nature, the thing that these films always have is another character’s thematic through-line to balance off that (even if that’s our CIA villains in the last one). But here, this is a movie about “buying in.” Which is why it starts with a new recruit dropping a mission off and a Ghostly Ethan congratulating him on making the right choice. But it’s best manifested in the arc of Hayley Atwell’s character and the way she slowly comes to buy into what this whole shebang is really about. But alas, it does seem to directly come at the sacrifice of the Ilsa of it all, which perhaps feels a bit of another meta writing thing. Especially because the A.I. even identifies the pattern of their relationship, as they are stuck in the retract-come-together stasis. I understand where it goes feels a little… unceremonious? It’s even its own little meta commentary on the cyclical trope of “fridging” (in a way that shows deep awareness). But when it comes to the actual emotions of it all, everyone plays it genuinely, including Atwell, who feels sensitive to the mantle. And it’s one that gets to the simple, unignorable heart of these films.

When recruiting Atwell, Hunt tells her that he can’t promise her safety. But he can promise that he will value her life more than his own. To which she offers the very human response of “you don’t even know me.” And it’s all about the retort: “why would that matter?” And he means that. He will try to save everyone all the time, always. That’s it. That’s Ethan. It’s his one thing. And even if it’s something we already know, it’s about the overwhelming simplicity of it, along with the essential certainty behind it. Because this has NEVER been a film series about making “the tough choices.” Such reasoning is for demagogues, anyway. No, this is about making the simplest choice, again, and again, and again, for everyone. And it’s about buying into why that matters. It’s not logical. Nor does it even really care about what’s possible. But contrary to what any algorithm can understand: it’s human. And for that, along with all craft-centric reasons listed above…

I’ll take all the reckoning they got.

<3HULK