‘Mission Impossible—The Final Reckoning’: More Moron Lines Than Story
An attempt to make the M:I franchise coherent leads to epic incoherency.
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Hey, kids, this is the 250th essay I’ve published here on this Substack, which is something1. You might imagine I would take care to choose a very cool subject for a milestone like this, or maybe write something thoughtful about this whole process2.
You have obviously never met me. If you can find a lazier content maker in this world, I’d be surprised. As ever, I will write randomly about the last thing I watched late at night after a day spent huffing fumes and brushing cats. In this moment, that means Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning, a three hour odyssey that actually feels much longer. Look, most of us have seen a few Mission: Impossible films—not necessarily by choice, but most likely due to the uncanny gravity that Tom Cruise and this franchise generates. You’re walking down the street and suddenly you’re in a theater, or you get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and find yourself on the couch, and there’s Tom Cruise and his weirdly messy hair3.
The main reason anyone has gone to see a Mission: Impossible film voluntarily in recent years is the action sequences, which are usually legitimately spectacular, and usually performed by Tom Cruise himself, lending them a sense of verisimilitude that many other action franchises lack. While it’s true that his study of Scientology has rendered Mr. Cruise unkillable4, he can be injured, so filming these sequences does generate a certain level of undeniable (if slightly morbid) fascination.
You don’t go to see one of these movies for the plausible or coherent plots, or because they promise to pay off the emotional beats of a lengthy story arc. But Cruise and company sure wish Final Reckoning was that kind of film, and they work really, really hard to tie in just about everything that’s ever happened in the M:I universe5 in an effort to kludge everything into one grand story we’ve apparently unknowingly been watching for 30 years now6.
Cool trick if it works. Unfortunately, despite a hundred or so Moron Lines, it does not work.
We’re the Moron Brothers, Don’t Get Along with Others
A ‘Moron Line’ in Jeff-parlance is a line of dialogue that exists to ensure that the classic Idiot in a Hurry gets something, usually something anyone with a standard level of intelligence and education will easily grasp. It’s like when someone says, “If I cut this wire, this nuclear bomb blows up” and another character says “And then everyone in this city will die” as if that’s not the usual outcome of exploding nuclear bombs7.
Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning is absolutely bloated with Moron Lines. Every single plot detail is Moroned, and forcefully. In part, this is because the plot—which began in the previous film—is sprawling and stupidly complex and makes little sense, and the producers assume (probably correctly) that no one will remember any of it from that previous movie8.
Another reason for all the Moron Lines is the fact that Cruise, Director Christopher McQuarrie, and writers Bruce Geller and Erik Jendresen are determined to somehow make the M:I franchise into a cohesive whole, with Final Reckoning placed as an Avengers: Endgame-style emotional payoff. They sprinkle references and clips (so, so many clips) from earlier films throughout, trying desperately to make it seem like six films that were conceived as more-or-less standalone action romps are, in fact, very, very connected9.
Some of it works! Bringing back a clearly-delighted Rolf Saxon to reprise his role as William Donloe (the guy whose career is ruined when Cruise hangs from a ceiling to steal data from a secure location in the very first film, 30 years ago) is a crowd-pleaser, and an example of something that actually makes sense in terms of callbacks.
But for the most part, it just makes the story unnecessarily convoluted. This is a franchise built on Macguffins—black boxes and mysterious doomsday weapons that are never explained in any detail. Suddenly trying to make these into a coherent over-arching storyline is hard work, and you can feel everyone in this movie sweating freely with the effort10.
Tom Cruise Literally Does the Arms Out, Kneeling in Front of Police Pose
The other source of incoherence stems from a decision made in the previous film, the improbably titled Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning, Part One11. In that story the idea that Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and the rest of the M:I team are just highly-skilled espionage agents is tossed out the window with the revelation that they were all criminals or in deep trouble and offered service in the Impossible Missions Force (yes, that’s the name they settled on) as an alternative to prison or execution or something12.
The idea is to jolt the emotional stakes and give these characters (especially Cruise’s robotic Hunt) a baked-in bit of pathos to pay off, but because the concept was introduced so late in the game it’s a heavy lift to take it seriously. So they have to keep reminding us about these emotional stakes over and over again to ensure we remember them when the time comes13.
Of course, the action is reliably spectacular. Cruise may be a bit bloated from procedures, but he’s in pretty great shape for a 60+ year-old man, and remains a plausible brawler (his running skills remain suspect), and the film’s commitment to Big still pays off. It’s not that the movie isn’t entertaining, despite it’s incoherence. It’s that it could be so much tighter and more satisfying if they weren’t so worried about legacy14.
Writing is a delicate dance, sometimes, and as a professional I have definitely gotten notes from editors to insert more references to emotional stakes. But there’s a trick to doing that cynical sort of plotting and character development without it feeling cynical. And that’s what’s missing here. Then again, everyone involved in this film bought a Swiss Chalet with the money they made, and I am once again Googling whether or not you can eat moldy bread, so maybe I’m the one missing it15.
NEXT WEEK: ‘The Running Man’ Just Sort of Gives Up
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It’s actually the 253rd essay I’ve written for this Substack, but the less said of those shadowy lost essays the better.
People have been making this mistake about me for my entire life, believing that I’m thoughtful.
It is bizarrely messy in this film. It’s like someone told Cruise that the youngsters all have messy hair these days, and he was all in.
Look, after decades of expensive study in the Church Cruise can probably bend spoons or some shit with his mind bullet powers, but that doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff to me. I have naps to take.
With the wise exception of the second film, which apparently even Cruise has decided doesn’t actually exist.
The Cosmere this is not.
Maybe it’s not! I’ve never actually experienced a nuclear explosion. Maybe we’d all just get superpowers!
The only thing I do remember from the previous film is Cruise’s comical car chase in Rome, which is legit fun.
Just like me when I write book seven in a series and honestly can’t remember anything that happened in a bunch of books that I personally wrote.
Except Cruise, of course, because his bizarre god has made him sweatless. Or so I imagine.
Of one, apparently.
I would choose prison. Three meals and an hour in the yard every day, and no hanging off of biplanes as they spin in the air? Not bad.
Also because you’ve dozed off while Angela Basset’s President of the United States stares dolefully into the middle distance, contemplating the end of the world or Ethan Hunt’s bizarro hair or something.
Then again, I am not a 60+ year-old man bloated from procedures (I’ve still got time, though!), so maybe I just don’t understand.
Nope. Mrs. Somers always told me I was god’s perfect little boy, and I believe her.
👏 😄
I think the Mission Impossible films get better the more frustrated Tom Cruise's character gets. When all the gadgets malfunction, when Benji misdirects him out a window without seeing how high it is, when Ethan has to improvise--that's when the movies are great. Final Reckoning doesn't have enough of that. It's mostly three hours of exposition laid over montages from the previous films. I couldn't believe how badly they bungled it.