With all the promotion of Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, set to debut in U.S. theaters in the next few days, I thought it was high time to see Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, released in 2023, and which is actually Part 1 of the two-part story which will conclude with The Final Recognition.
So I saw Dead Reckoning on Paramount+ last night. And I was struck by several things, all of which have been inexorably building over this eight-movie run, which, as we all know, began as one of the best television series in history:
1. Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt has been getting more and more like the best secret agent in movie history, i.e., James Bond. Hunt is a far better fighter than anyone ever was in the Mission Impossible TV team. In fact, the strength of that team resided in its group prowess, and while Hunt has an impressive group behind him, he clearly has powers not only equal to Bond's but sometimes approach Superman's. I mean, he leaps more than tall buildings, and in Dead Reckoning he jumps off a jagged mountainside, high above a fast-moving train he's attempting to intercept.
2. Cruise's Hunt shares another Bondian characteristic: a penchant for beautiful women. In Dead Reckoning there are at least a handful. My favorite is Ilsa Faust, played by Rebecca Ferguson, most recently in a crucially starring role in Silo. Much like Bond's women, Hunt's are not only beautiful but keenly intelligent and resourceful, and they're central to events in which the narrative turns.
3. Whereas the MI team on television were invited to lend a hand in reducing or stopping significant challenges to US security, Hunt and his crew are called upon to stop challenges to the world order that verge on jeopardizing humanity itself. In it that sense, Hunt may be even a little more than Bondian, and in Dead Reckoning he approached Terminator territory, fighting an AI menace that -- in the opinion of at least some so-called experts -- has become since 2023 the greatest threat our species has faced, and in this case engendered.
I don't share that view, but I do look very much forward to see how it all turns out on the screen in The Final Reckoning very soon.
See also Mission Impossible 6: Fallout: Better (These Days) Than Bond ... Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol
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