The Final Reckoning Broke My Heart

Out of all the spy movies that I devoured at a young age, Mission: Impossible was always my favourite. There was something about Ethan Hunt in particular that drew me in. He wasn't a flawless badass like James Bond, but no matter what was thrown at him, he could always figure it out. His competence and total commitment to the cause were what set him apart for me. As an anxious little kid who spent a lot of time thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong, I was inspired by Ethan's ability to just act. He could free solo a rock face without thinking, jump out of a plane with no parachute, sprint down the face of a building and not even flinch. These movies weren't made with young girls in mind, but when I was watching them I wasn't just a girl. I was just like Ethan. If he could do it, then so could I.

I still feel a bit like that same awe-struck little kid whenever I watch a Mission: Impossible film. They encapsulate everything that I love about action movies. They are pure and unselfconscious. And, like their protagonist, totally confident in themselves. They exist to entertain. They exist to be awesome, which is why I loved them so much growing up. It didn't matter that the plot was convoluted or that the reveals were goofy. The magic parts of Mission Impossible were the thrills. The chases. The explosions. I was basically skipping into the theatre humming the theme song on my way to see Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, ready to be blown away by what promised to be an epic sendoff to possibly the greatest action franchise of all time.

Instead, I got my heart broken.

The movie is almost three hours long, and the first hour feels like an extended sequence called, "Here's what you missed on Mission: Impossible. As it continued, I couldn't help but feel duped. After almost 30 years, Mission: Impossible: Final Reckoning changed the rules on me. What was once my tight action-suspense thriller was now a bloated, self-serious scatterplot of hair-brained schemes and coincidences. The plot, which until now was always secondary to the thrust of the action, was now front and center and more convoluted than ever. Previous installments that were hardly more than tangentially connected were suddenly recontextualized as building blocks, all converging toward this final "inevitable" conclusion. And it felt... cheap. You're telling me that the franchise synonymous with rubber-mask reveals all of a sudden wants me to take it with a straight face?

A tone shift this drastic so late in the series is hard to swallow. To switch from wisecracks and one-liners to surly board room meetings and endless doom and gloom was jarring, and certainly not what I was hoping for. Not even Simon Pegg as comic-relief sidekick Benji cracks a smile. I have no problem with action movies that take themselves seriously. Look at John Wick or Mad Max: Fury Road for two recent examples. But I just can't buy it here. Even in later installments of the franchise when a more somber side of IMF espionage began to emerge, there was always a wink at the audience. There had to be. If I'm going to suspend my disbelief enough to believe in electro-adhesion gloves, exploding gum, and a government agency called the Impossible Mission Force, then the movie has to be in on the joke at least a little bit. This new dour tone just doesn't translate well to voice modulator chips and one-in-a-million odds. They had the perfect recipe, and then decided to throw it away for the big finale.

But the greatest gut-punch of them all was Ethan Hunt himself. While he's always been capable of superhuman feats, Hunt was never more than just a man. In Final Reckoning, suddenly he's the Chosen One. This was his destiny all along. Everything he's ever done has built up to this. Instead of a highly trained man in mortal peril, Ethan has become another infallible action hero wearing plot armour so thick that I never felt a drop of the tension that every other movie in the franchise lives and dies on. Without the stakes to back them, the extravagant action setpieces lose all impact, no matter how technically breathtaking they are. And if the action isn't working in your Mission: Impossible movie, something is very, VERY wrong.

The central setpieces—a biplane dogfight between Ethan and the incredibly forgettable big bad, as well as a tense dive into a nuke-filled submarine—didn't feel like the pulse-racing, teeth-gritting sequences of their predecessors. In fact, both have been done better before, with the helicopter chase in Fallout and the underwater heist in Rogue Nation respectively. The illusion of danger shattered, the action which used to be the beating heart of these films felt drawn-out and, it breaks my heart to say, tedious.

I felt like a kid finding out that Santa Claus isn't real. Who am I if I don't love Mission: Impossible with every fiber of my being? The action has always been enough to sustain me, it's what hooked me in the first place and kindled my love for the franchise as a kid. If it's suddenly not enough, can I even call myself an action movie connesieur? Can I still call myself She Loves Explosions? (Government name, by the way).

I was in an existential tailspin. I still am. In every other M:I movie I've come out with a vague recollection of the plot, but a crystal clear image of the action. This time, it was reversed. And now I was being punished for my ignorance. The movie is banking on your selective memory though. It's hoping you've forgotten about Jeremy Renner in 4 and 5. And most of what happened in 2. But not 3, that one's important. And how dare you forget about the CIA security manager who Ethan got banished to the Arctic in 1996? And remember John Voight from the first movie? His son is here now. Does that matter? Not really.

It breaks my heart to not give Final Reckoning five stars and a "hell yeah!" high five. It makes me question my morals to say that it was just okay. I'm finally entering my first few years of adulthood, and the franchise that inspired my childhood games, recess debates, and featured in countless high school movie nights has come to a close. This is not how I wanted to say goodbye. Not with a cheer, but with a defeated sigh.

Sitting in the theatre, I so badly wanted to feel like that little kid who used to play Secret Agent in her backyard and listen to the M:I theme song when she needed to feel as unstoppable as Ethan Hunt. But in the end, Final Reckoning forgot what made the franchise special in the first place. It traded high-octane spectacle and fun for an overwrought finale which spends half of its runtime trying desperately to tie together loose ends that were best left unraveled.

I wasn't there to find out what happened to William Dunloe or discover what the Rabbit's Foot really was. I was there to see my favourite super spy accept his final impossible mission and fight like hell to save the world one last time. I wanted one final ride, but Final Reckoning stalled out. Honestly, I'm really not sure how to recover.