Yours portly ventured to his local cinema last week.  One of the glories of summer vacation is that I can go see the movies at 11:40 AM on a Thursday morning, which is exactly what I did when I went to see Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025).

Why such an early showing?  Well, the movie—and this point is my chief complaint about it—is nearly three hours long.  Like every major film release these days, directors seem incapable of shooting and editing a film that is under two hours.  A small handful of super long films don’t feel long, and I welcome their three-hour runtimes, but those (like Goodfellas [1990]) are very much the exception to the rule.  What happened to the tight, 90-minute flick?

M:ITFR gets a bit of a pass because it is the final (allegedly) film in a franchise that dates back to 1996.  Think about that—this franchise pre-dates the birth of Dr. Fiancée by two years.  I was eleven when the first film released; I’m forty now.  It is a testament to Tom Cruise‘s longevity, dedication, and fitness that he was able to play Ethan Hunt for so nearly thirty years.  Cruise famously and frequently performs his own stunts; seeing a man of his age (he’s 62; he’ll turn 63 in July) perform them is impressive.

The flick was filmed back-to-back with its predecessor, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), but the writers’ strike delayed production of M:ITFR until 2024.  That means Cruise played Ethan Hunt for twenty-eight years—dang!

But I digress.  Is the impossible length of this film worth accepting the mission?

Yes—with some caveats.  Again, the film is long, and between the exquisite action set pieces were a lot of dull, expository scenes.  One of my criticisms of Dead Reckoning back in 2023 was the characters overexplained everything.  That was not quite as bad as in this film, but because it is a direct sequel and the eighth installment in a franchise spanning twenty-nine years, it had to do some expository flashbacks to past installments.  These expository bits were handled very adeptly and quickly, and helped to refresh my memory on all the crazy events in the series.  Still, there were a number of times I caught myself checking my phone’s clock out of mild boredom.  I also got up and used the bathroom at one point, which I never do at the theater if I can help it; I don’t think I missed anything important.

The length and the expository scenes were also due to the plot, which was somehow both convoluted and simple.  The flick very much featured “video game plotting,” by which I mean it consisted of a series of telescoping quests that ultimately led to the final goal.  “Go here, get this, take this there, use this to get that, take this and that to another place,” etc.  This movie would make a great video game, but it got a bit tiring figuring which piece of which thing they needed.

Additionally, while there were some genuinely suspenseful, edge-of-my-seat moments, it was always clear that Ethan Hunt would win the day, even if it wasn’t clear what kind of deus ex machina would save him at any given point.  Ethan Hunt must be part feline, because he definitely has nine lives.  In the course of the film, he survives swimming in the Arctic in only his underwear; getting the bends while ascending from the Arctic dive; a biplane crash; multiple gun and fistfights; and more.  Of course, we expect this kind of plot armor for the protagonist, and the ridiculous nature of these movies is part of the fun, but, goodness!

Regarding the Arctic dive:  Ethan (spoiler alert) just happens to float to just the right point in the ice caps for one of his teammates—who rode there on sled dogs—to reach in and grab him.  The flick explains this unlikelihood in the setup to the mission, but, come now.

And yet… that very same ridiculousness and sheer unlikeliness is what makes the film, like all of its predecessors, so good.  It’s fun.  It’s totally impossible, but, again, this is Mission: Impossible after all.  Yes, the film drags horribly at points, but the action sequences are incredible.  There is a point when Ethan Hunt has to retrieve a McGuffin from a sunken Russian submarine.  His adventure into this watery grave is gripping.  I accidentally squeaked my straw at one point and felt self-conscious, because the scene was so quiet and tense.

The film’s main antagonist is an amorphous artificial intelligence called “The Entity,” which is slowly penetrating all of the nuclear powers’ nuclear arsenals.  None of the powers take their arsenals offline before The Entity can seize control of them because all of them think a.) they can control The Entity (and then control the world’s nuclear weapons) and b.) they want to control their weapons in the event they need to strike the other nations’ nuclear weapons before The Entity can launch them.  That doesn’t make sense—all nations should have immediately disconnected their nuclear arsenals and let The Entity flail about impotently—but it’s supposed to be some kind of statement about the folly of man.

However, The Entity does raise some chilling questions about AI.  When the predecessor to this film released in 2023, the wild capabilities of generative AI were just becoming widely known.  The Entity made for the perfect villain for that cultural moment.  I still believe that is true, as AI has only become more powerful, realistic, and terrifying.  It feels as though no one has seriously thought through the sheer destructive power of this technology.  Will AI launch a bunch of nukes?  Probably not.  Will it destroy human creativity, independent thought, and drive?  I think so; it already is!

Regardless, I can’t help but wonder:  do any of the champions of AI ever read mid-twentieth-century science fiction?  Have any of them seen this movie?  Do they believe, like so many of the human villains and governments in this film, that they can control a vastly self-replicating digital intelligence?  That is a very human assumption, so I suspect they do.  But, goodness!  How much power is enough?  How much money is enough?

M:I, for all of its fun, popcorn flick dressing, raises these questions.  Yes, it does it in a goofy and cloying way, but given the recent actions of the tiny hats and the addiction to generative AI, at least it’s pointing out how fragile and precious peace and human ability are.  That it does so with an aging Tom Cruise climbing onto planes (he does this twice in one sequence, and it’s a staple of the franchise) and dashing around the globe makes it a fun, albeit at times slow, experience.  It’s definitely worth watching if you’re willing to give up your entire day to do so.

Oh, and the President is a black female.  I’ll leave you to decide if that’s less probable than surviving a dive in Arctic water.