The Final Reckoning Is a Massive Goodbye That Sometimes Feels the Weight of the Whole Franchise
The setup
Ethan Hunt and his team make one final attempt to stop the Entity before it falls into the wrong hands, forcing Ethan to confront old choices while the fate of the world hangs on the mission.
Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning feels like a three hour love letter to this entire franchise and more importantly, to the people who have stuck with it all the way through. Obviously everyone is going to compare it to Fallout because that’s usually considered the best film in the series. Personally, I think Final Reckoning hits that same level.
Not one second of this movie felt wasted to me. It’s nearly three hours long and I genuinely could have sat there for another three.
I don’t think it works quite as well as a standalone film though. You absolutely need to see Dead Reckoning first, and there are references going all the way back through the franchise. If you haven’t watched the previous movies, you’re going to be wondering who the hell Donloe is and why everyone suddenly cares about something called the Rabbit’s Foot.
For anyone who has followed these films though, it all comes together beautifully. Ethan and his team are still trying to stop the Entity and Gabriel, except now the AI is basically planning its own Terminator Judgment Day by using the world’s nuclear weapons to wipe out humanity.
The stakes have never been higher, and the tension is ridiculous. There’s a massive underwater sequence where Tom Cruise is basically alone with hardly any dialogue, and somehow it still keeps you completely on edge. That takes some serious confidence from a movie.
And obviously Tom Cruise couldn’t finish this franchise without trying to kill himself one more time. The biplane sequence is absolutely insane. Watching this man hanging onto the wing of a plane while it’s flying through the sky is exactly the kind of madness I’ve come to expect from Mission Impossible. His need for adrenaline will apparently never disappear, and I’m completely fine with that.
Thanks, Tom, for being a lunatic for our entertainment.
What really makes Final Reckoning work for me though is that the heart of the entire series is running through it from beginning to end. It genuinely feels like everything has been leading here.
Positives
The biplane stunt, submarine sequence, a strong sense of finality, the team gets emotional weight, Tom Cruise's commitment is still ridiculous.
Negatives
Very long, lots of callbacks, some retconning makes the franchise feel more connected than it really was, the Entity story remains overcomplicated.
Verdict
A suitably enormous send off that does not quite match Fallout at its peak, but gives Ethan Hunt and the franchise a finale with real scale and heart.
