Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning – Should You Watch it?

The Final Reckoning is the eighth film in the Mission: Impossible movie franchise, once again starring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt.

It’s an epic film in more ways than one, clocking in at a mighty 169 minutes. So, is it worth almost three hours of your life? Before you watch, here’s what you need to know.

Spoilers for earlier films in the Mission Impossible film series follow, as well as very minor spoilers for Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning.

1. You don’t need to rewatch all the previous films to prepare

If you were to sit down and watch all seven films leading up to this one, you’d be trapped in front of the TV for well over 15 hours, which must be longer than Tom Cruise has spent sitting down over the course of his entire life.

And honestly, even if you did that, by about the fourth film it all becomes a blur of Ethan clinging onto various things (at least two trains, an Airbus, the Burj Khalifa), rubbery unmaskings (the iconic jaw-grip-and-lift takes place at least once per film, and usually several times), and running.

There’s an exhausting amount of running in Mission: Impossible films, most notably across rooftops, past world-famous landmarks, and through tunnels.

Why are there so many tunnels in these movies? I have no idea – but this is the kind of thing you’ll find yourself asking, instead of focusing on why Ethan is running at any given time. As such, it becomes (mission) impossible to keep the plot straight.

But there’s absolutely no need to do any rewatching, or even any remembering, as the first half hour of this near-three-hour monster is almost entirely devoted to recapping everything you need to know.

The film opens with a voiceover in which the fictional US President acts as Basil Exposition and explains exactly who Ethan Hunt is and what he’s been up to for the past 30 years. Weirdly, she’s explaining all of this to Ethan Hunt, which would be pointless, but luckily we, the audience, are there to overhear it.

Once the film has very clearly set out what has happened and what’s about to happen (bye bye Earth), it proceeds to make very little sense for the rest of its running (oh-so-much running) time.

Things happen, seemingly with zero consequences, and no regard for narrative coherence. It’s a bit like watching an impenetrable arthouse film, except that someone is constantly either trying to defuse a bomb or kicking someone else in the face. And I mean that in a good way.

All you need to know is that Ethan and his team must circle the globe to get a thing to attach to another thing to prevent an AI known as ‘The Entity’ from destroying the world. And you don’t even really need to know that.

2. It emphatically concludes the film series

The film doesn’t only recap. It also pulls plot strands, characters and situations from previous films together to create a satisfying finale to the series narrative. (It is very convincingly the last film in this story arc at least, but will it really be the last Mission Impossible film ever? We have thoughts.)

For example, way back in M:I-3, the JJ Abrams-directed third instalment of the series, the screenplay didn’t even bother to explain what the plot MacGuffin was. It was just a Very Bad Thing, known as the “rabbit’s foot”, which everyone ran around trying to steal. Well, guess what? Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning explains what the rabbit’s foot was – sort of – and how it was the catalyst for everything that’s happening now.

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Some pivotal characters also return for a bow. If you recall the first film, Ethan has to steal a NOC list from a computer terminal in a CIA vault protected by alarms, lasers, sound and heat sensors. He manages it by sweatily hanging from a ceiling vent on a sort-of trapeze. His team almost succeeds in getting in and out without a trace until mildly incompetent, traitorous spy Franz Krieger (Jean Reno) drops his knife at the last moment, blowing the operation. Idiot.

Ever wondered what happened to the unlucky analyst – William Donloe (Rolf Saxon) – who returned from a bout of IMF-induced poisoning to find a knife stuck into his desk and presumably a very angry boss to deal with?

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Realistically, you’ve probably never wondered. But you’ll find out in The Final Reckoning, and it’s a surprisingly great callback.

You’ll also discover what happened to unsmiling former CIA director Erika Sloan (Angela Bassett), a key character from the sixth instalment, Mission: Impossible – Fallout. She’s now the unsmiling President of the US. Luckily, having encountered Ethan before, she knows to ignore her nuke-happy advisors and instantly give him an aircraft carrier and 48 hours to save the world.

And it wouldn’t be a Mission: Impossible film without the return of Ethan’s team. Alongside the longest-serving survivors (Simon Pegg’s Benji and Ving Rhames’ Luther) are new team members Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Paris (Pom Klementieff), who do most of the henchman-kicking in this film. Or at least they do after Ethan has saved them both at least once, and even then, they don’t do as much kicking as he does.

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Of course, if you don’t remember some of these characters or situations, the film will recap it all for you, so you can enjoy it anyway, or at least nod along knowledgeably.

It’s not all callbacks, remixes and greatest hits, though. There are some new additions to the cast. Fans of Severance will be delighted to find out that the best of these is Tramell Tillman (who played Seth Milchick in the Apple series). Would you like to know what it’d be like if Mr Milchick was a stoic, macho submarine captain, with an unfeasibly attractive crew? Hell yes, you would – and The Final Reckoning delivers.

3. Ideally, you’ll be watching it in IMAX

Almost every sequence that doesn’t involve bomb defusion or face-kicking instead involves one of Ethan’s team detailing the many ways in which his next act is likely to get him horribly mangled or killed, and then him doing it anyway while they look on, weeping in terror.  

Largely, this film is an excuse for Tom Cruise to perform a series of increasingly unhinged stunts, which is really what the Mission: Impossible franchise boils down to.

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It was filmed for IMAX, and that’s the best way to see it. Yes, it’ll be fun when it arrives on streaming – with the bonus that you can pause the action for toilet and tea breaks – and it’ll look good on any cinema screen.

But this is the kind of over-the-top blockbuster that’s most enjoyable on the biggest screen possible. If you’re not seeing a retinal afterimage of Tom Cruise hanging from a biplane for two days after watching this film, have you even watched it at all?      

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning opens on 21 May in the UK and 23 May in the US. If you’d like to know where to buy tickets, we have all the info you need.