'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning': Hold Your Breath One Last Time for Tom Cruise

I went to see "Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning" yesterday. Even though I'm not a die-hard fan of the series, I still felt a sense of nostalgia and melancholy watching this final installment.

We all knew this day would come – the day it would be released before Tom Cruise's 63rd birthday. He was 33 when the first installment came out in 1996. Cruise will age, his character Agent Ethan Hunt will retire, and the "Mission: Impossible" series will end, just like Daniel Craig taking his final bow as James Bond.

Unlike Bond, who's a fictional character that can be revised and played by different actors, the "Mission: Impossible" IP is completely tied to Cruise's personal image. His practical stunts and behind-the-scenes preparation have become core elements of the franchise's appeal. Especially in today's Hollywood, the preservation of its immersive, realistic filming style and Cruise's double-free stunts is invaluable. In an era overwhelmed by CGI and where action movies feel increasingly artificial, he still chooses to convey authentic physical experiences to audiences in a traditional, classical way, resisting Hollywood's digital wave. When he retires, the "Mission: Impossible" series will end.

This feeling of farewell and melancholy had already begun spreading when "Dead Reckoning Part One" was released. Determined to leave no regrets, Cruise, then in his sixties, still insisted on performing all the dangerous stunts himself in the film. Train climbing, street racing, and motorcycle cliff jumping – these all required consistent practice. To prepare for the cliff jumping scene, which only appeared for two minutes in the film, Cruise practiced 13,000 motorcycle jumps and 500 skydives over a year. On filming day, he jumped from the 1,200-meter cliff six times without safety measures. Even that unconventional train action sequence was filmed without the aid of stunt performers or special visual effects. As the train slid off the bridge, Ethan led Grace (Hayley Atwell) in climbing upward carriage by carriage, defying gravity and performing a spectacular feat of survival against impossible odds.

The level of suspense also reached new heights after the cliff jump. These crazy, extreme challenges repeatedly put Cruise in life-threatening situations. Yet they kept us, the audience, completely focused on the screen, making us believe that everything unfolding before us was real – not the result of digital effects or AI-created fake imagery.
And in "The Final Reckoning", these pinnacle action sequences continued. Skydiving, fighting on propeller plane wings, and maneuvering rolling off-road vehicles – watching these scenes made my palms sweat. Even though we all knew Ethan would survive, just thinking about how Cruise actually filmed these scenes in person rather than using special effects overwhelmed me. In a sense, Cruise is the world's most famous extreme "athlete".

What impacted me most was Ethan diving into the deep sea to search for a crucial item in a sunken nuclear submarine.

Note: Spoilers ahead

Ethan was completely alone on this diving mission. He didn't need to fight anyone, no one was chasing him, and no villains stood in his way. There was only the cold, dark waters and a nuclear submarine about to fall onto an underwater cliff. Wearing specialized diving gear, Ethan repeatedly opened valves to enter the submarine, struggling through the dark waters charged with unstable air. After finally finding the crucial item, he tried to return to the surface. But the route by which he came in had been rendered impassable by immense water pressure, so he could only exit through the torpedo tube. However, it was too narrow for Ethan to pass through with his diving equipment. With time running out, he decided to remove his diving suit and pass through the tube naked.

He eventually succeeded, once again cheating death after being saved by his teammates.

Watching this sequence, I started having difficulty breathing, not because I have claustrophobia, but because I was learning to dive then. Through my diving lessons, I've come to understand that diving is actually much more dangerous than it appears. As you descend deeper, atmospheric pressure increases, oxygen consumption becomes faster, and nitrogen builds up in your body, which increases the risk of losing consciousness. But the ascending phase can be extremely dangerous too: if you ascend too rapidly, the atmospheric pressure decreases, and the air in your lungs expands exponentially. In the worst-case scenario, the alveoli may rupture, causing permanent pulmonary damage. Additionally, when a diver is in a high-pressure environment (about 3-4 atmospheres or above), the nitrogen in their lungs may break through the alveolar filter and enter the bloodstream, causing a narcotic effect. Nitrogen doesn't participate in cellular chemical processes, but when its partial pressure in the blood reaches a certain level, it can dissolve heavily in fatty tissues and nerve tissues. This disrupts nerve fiber conduction and central synaptic transmission, prevents normal neuron excitation, and weakens various bodily functions, sending the diver into a suppressed state, and in severe cases, resulting in death.

Therefore, rapid ascent in deep diving is considered extremely dangerous, and divers typically need to stop at 5-10 meters for three to five minutes before surfacing to release excess nitrogen from their bodies. Additionally, they shouldn't travel by plane for 12-24 hours afterward – the low pressure at high altitudes can also cause nitrogen narcosis and death.

However, all these rules were broken during Ethan's diving sequence. I may not have experienced skydiving, riding motorcycles on cliffs, or fighting on trains or airplane wings. But I have dived, so I can somewhat imagine how difficult and dangerous everything Ethan did was. By extension, I can imagine how challenging all his other feats were.

At the same time, this sequence made me feel the loneliness of a hero in twilight. "The Final Reckoning" might be the last time I'll see Cruise's all-out effort on the big screen.

Another thing that moved me was Ethan's fast running. Perhaps this sequence wasn't significant plot-wise and wasn't as thrilling as other challenging stunts. But just seeing 60-odd-year-old Cruise running at full speed, with everything around him whipping backward in a blur, and the camera moving in tandem with him, I felt inexplicably touched. Running a marathon in every film might be one of the essential elements of the entire "Mission: Impossible" series. This is where its charm comes from – the duality of classical and innovative elements, coupled with real physical experiences that break through artificial image qualities.

Therefore, beyond these pinnacle action sequences, any shortcomings in plot and character development can be completely forgiven. Since "Rogue Nation", I've clearly felt my own weariness with spy films that don't prioritize plot logic. Why does the world always need another (or several) white men to save it? These films use lots of boring dialogue scenes to convince audiences: the world is in crisis, and the male protagonist is the only one who can save everyone. I believe I'm not alone in feeling tired of this narrative. After a glorious decade, the box office and critical failures of Marvel and DC superhero films in the 2020s are another manifestation of the public's weariness with white male-centered superhero narratives.

Meanwhile, stereotypical gender concepts championed in Hollywood action films are also evident in the "Mission: Impossible" series. In white male agent stories, women are often merely plot devices, regardless of whether they're protagonists or supporting characters, heroes or villains. The one-dimensional and stereotypical nature of these female characters is a topic that's been discussed perennially. Therefore, after the Me Too movement, and especially in the post-2020 era, with the emergence of feminist waves, more people are beginning to change these male-dominated screen stories. In recent years' super-IP sequels, we can see these classic male-centered films attempting to correct and compensate for gender stereotype issues. For example, in the final "Indiana Jones" film, it was the female protagonist, Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who chased planes on motorcycles, not the titular male protagonist. In "No Time to Die," two new female agents appeared: Paloma (Ana De Armas) and Nomi/the new 007 (Lashana Lynch). Both actresses went on to lead action films after this movie: de Armas in "Ballerina" and Lynch in "The Day of the Jackal." And in "The Final Reckoning", Grace, the female protagonist, also got her share of world-saving opportunities (though they can't compare to Ethan's in terms of difficulty and importance).

Are these changes enough? I don't know. But I think at least in these changes, we see a new trend of women becoming action film protagonists. This trend provides some comfort to those of us nostalgic about classic action stars retiring: whether it's Ethan's character or Cruise's fighting spirit, they're not without inheritors in today's Hollywood. Florence Pugh insisted on doing her own stunts without doubles while filming "Thunderbolts," jumping from the world's second-tallest building in Malaysia. If a role is written that way, I believe there'll definitely be actresses who'll give it their all and deliver a stunning performance.

In any case, "The Final Reckoning" is a film that showed respect for its audience and gave the series an impeccable ending. The past era is over. But fortunately, there are new stories to look forward to in the future.