Review
AI
Culture
Film & TV
4 min read

Ethan Hunt is MI Jesus, and it’s ridiculous

The final instalment of Mission Impossible warns about AI, yet plays out as if written by a chatbot.
Tom Cruise playing Ethan Hunt in an open necked shirt looks perplexed.
Tom Cruise in action.

Is this the FINAL reckoning? I’m not sure. I hope so. There has been speculation whether Tom Cruise will reprise his role as Ethan Hunt in further franchise instalments. He has expressed interest, while also suggesting that the use of the word ‘final’ is purposeful and indicative. Let us all pray that he’s being honest. I mean…he must be exhausted. The stress and strain, the pressure and pain, that he puts his body through for every Mission Impossible film is approaching elder abuse – he is 62 after all. 

In a departure from tradition, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is an immediate sequel to Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, which released in 2023. The series which has thrived on a formula of releasing stand-alone spy stories, allowing us to enjoy familiar characters in new scenarios, has decided to make a two-parter…although you wouldn’t know it. You don’t need to have seen Dead Reckoning to pay your money to watch Final Reckoning, as the script assumes you’ve not only missed the immediate prequel, but have never viewed any other Mission Impossible film.  

Goodness me, the film is plodding. It begins with a message from the President (Angela Bassett), delivered to Cruise’s super-spy Hunt. In previous instalments such messages have been a punchy way to set the stakes, roll the pitch, and then give the rest of the screen time over to remarkable action set-pieces. On this occasion we have an interminably long, and irritatingly portentous, monologue detailing why Ethan Hunt is the best of spies, the best of men, and essentially MI Jesus. The only man who can save the world from a literal apocalypse.  

The premise of the film is that the malevolent, power-hungry AI known as ‘The Entity’ (could no one have thought of a better name, REALLY!?), which Hunt failed to stop in the previous film, is now at large and tipping the world towards destruction. It is manipulating the media, gaslighting governments, and slowly infiltrating the nuclear arsenals of the world, all in preparation to annihilate most of the human race in a nuclear holocaust. It then plans to rule the remaining vestiges of humanity and create a new utopia for itself. Only Ethan Hunt can stop it…just as long as he convinces world leaders to trust him, finds the nuclear submarine where ‘The Entity’ originated, defeats hundreds of bad guys, and infiltrates a top-secret bunker in South Africa. 

We’re a world away from the lean and mean story of the first MI, where we only had the identities of CIA assets at stake! 

Its rubbish. Genuinely rubbish. 

The script is ripe. Nay! It is overripe. NAY! Burn the whole house down, because the brie has grown limbs and the fruit bowl is plotting your death. Every other conversation involves either Cruise pontificating on how the only way to defeat ‘The Entity’ is love and trust and the age of Aquarius, or someone explaining to Cruise how this mission is his destiny, because only he is good and pure enough to succeed. He’s MI Jesus, and it’s ridiculous. 

The film plods and plods and plods. The whole point of this franchise is to provide the viewer with regular, breath-taking action, and yet the first hour-plus is a litany of exposition and call-backs. Ethan travels to several European capitals, for about thirty seconds apiece, before formulating his plan. This is confusing and jarring, but to add to this pain, the audience is tortured with disorienting, quick-cut montages of Hunt’s previous adventures. The plot seems to be determined to link this final, world-ending catastrophe to his past escapades…except MI2…no one has love for that. 

Unfortunately, all these positives are packaged in such a self-aggrandising and cack-handed manner as to be rendered inert.

By the time the action really kicks in I was exhausted and in no mood. This is a shame, because the action is truly spectacular. A long sequence in a submarine – which is both well below safe diving depth, but is also slowly falling of an underwater cliff. A breath-taking fight between two biplanes. Gunfire galore. I recognised its brilliance on an intellectual level, but enjoyed none of it. I was too damned bamboozled by over an hour of nonsense beforehand. 

The performances are fine. Cruise is the last remaining true action star, putting himself through a gruelling regimen to ensure he performs his own stunts. This shows on the screen and is very much appreciated and commendable. Simon Pegg returns as Benji to provide the comic relief. Ving Rhames’ Luther has a brief appearance which is bitter-sweet and lovable. Henry Czerny and Rolf Saxon are delightful additions – the only call-backs to the first film which don’t irritate, and actually elevate the film. 

Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning is fine. It is serviceable. It delivers the heart-stopping thrills. It has timely theme: of what true humanity and human relationship is in a world dominated by AI, technology, simulated reality, and simulated interaction. This is all good. Unfortunately, all these positives are packaged in such a self-aggrandising and cack-handed manner as to be rendered inert. For a film whose story serves as an (admittedly histrionic) warning about the dangers of AI, it plays out as if designed by chatbot. 

The Mission Impossible films have always been a vehicle for Tom Cruise. This has been their greatest strength – he is the last true movie star after all, and we may never see such a charismatic and powerful screen idol again. This has also been their greatest weakness. What a shame this only became apparent in the (potential) final outing. 

  

2 stars. 

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Article
Community
Culture
Football
Friendship
4 min read

As the season starts, here's why fans go mad for football

The game is part of life, but not all of life

Henry Corbett, a vicar in Liverpool and chaplain to Everton Football Club.  

  

A football stand displays a long banner with text on it.
Everton F.C.

“I hate football,” said the mother of two mad keen footballing children. The clue to the hatred is maybe in the ‘mad keen’. Why do children and adults care so much about football? 

“That Champions League music is so pompous…!” 

“It’s only a football match! They make it too important. If their team loses then they are miserable for the whole weekend.” 

“We can’t plan holidays until the fixtures come out.” 

The money spent, the jobs refused, lost or short-changed, all because of football. A giant banner at a recent Everton home game read “I simply love you more than I love life itself”. 

And there is football manager Bill Shankly wisdom: “Football is not a matter of life and death. It’s more important than that.” At least that was a typical Shankly quip, hyperbole for effect.  

Why do some of us love football so much? 

It often goes back to childhood. Playing with mates, scoring a goal, saving a goal, enjoying the togetherness, the shared aim, the friendships formed. Then there’s that first experience of going to a match. Up the stairs and there before you is a great huge rectangular expanse of green grass. Back in the day, it was maybe not so green, but still way more impressive than your back garden or the local park. Then comes the drama, unscripted, of the game. The sways of emotion, the joy, the frustration, and all experienced as part of a bigger community. When you kick a ball with your mates aged 50, or go to a game aged 80, you are doing something that connects you with your childhood enthusiasm, joy and wonder. 

Then there are the family connections. You may have gone to that first match with your Mum, Dad, Grandad, older brother or sister. When Everton supporters were asked about their feelings at the last Premier League game at Goodison Park, again and again they referenced family members who they had gone to the match with. Some passed away, some no longer able to go, even some whose ashes were buried behind the goal. 

There are the great memories of games seen or even played in. That win from 2-0 down, that last minute goal, the euphoria of a Cup win against the odds. And the memories are shared ones, with family, with friends. Football can write some miserable scripts, 0-0, 0-1, 0-6, but it can also write some wonderful memorable dramas.  

Love for family, for friends, for a team, for players is a deep emotion and when that love is linked to victory or defeat the stakes are raised. 

There is another reason which can touch us all, football-lovers or football-haters. Deep down we all want to be winners in life, not losers. The feeling of victory, not defeat, is such a treasured one. And the win, or loss, is a shared one: we are part of a group together, an identity together. Love for family, for friends, for a team, for players is a deep emotion and when that love is linked to victory or defeat the stakes are raised. In life we want goodness to win over evil, kindness to win over cruelty. The reason every Church shows the symbol of the Cross is because there was the ultimate demonstration of purposeful love, the sacrifice for the sins of the world, down the ages, across the world. When the apostle Paul writes to beleaguered, persecuted Christians facing death at the hands of Emperor Nero, he tells them “We are more than conquerors,” more than winners.  

Football, playing or watching, taps into that deep feeling of victory. “We’re on the march with (manager’s name here!) army…. And we’ll really shake them up when we win the FA Cup…” When my team faced the prospect of relegation I wondered why I was feeling butterflies, and more than butterflies, in my stomach. Why did I care so much about this game of football, and the result at the weekend? Yes, because it affected people’s lives, because it would mean loss of income and job losses at the club if relegation happened. But also, because the feeling of defeat, of failure, would hang over us, and that feeling goes deep, to the pit of the stomach.  

So why do some of us care so much? Because football taps into deep feelings; of family and friendship, joy and elation, togetherness and identity, and that wonderful feeling of victory… or the sorrow of defeat. Those feelings go deep. The problem is that football, unlike the Cross, sometime delivers, but definitely doesn’t always. That’s a reason why the mum of those those two mad-keen football-loving children should try and make sure that her two sons have other interests besides football, another faith beside faith in their team. Football is part of life, but not all of life. I also hope she stops hating what can be a beautiful, enchanting, community-fostering game, with many a helpful story to tell. 

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Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
 
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
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