How long is too long for a franchise? The only answer Hollywood cares about is “as long as it’s still making money”, especially after the pandemic shut down the big movie pipeline and redirected major releases to their studio’s streaming platforms. 2023 promised to be the year in which Tinseltown and the film industry bounced back; and it has (just look at the huge box office hits of Barbie and Oppenheimer), but not because of self-styled industry saviour Tom Cruise.
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning is an important movie regardless of its quality – it shows how one man can get a messiah complex and claim to save cinema. The irony is that Dead Reckoning is, despite the glowing reviews, a huge disappointment to fans of the franchise and, at this point has grossed less at the box office than that Jim Cavizel child slavery movie.
I love the Mission Impossible franchise. I’m one of those anoraks shouting to the heavens about how it’s the only true action franchise left that cares about actual stunts (except for John Wick, of course). Dead Reckoning was the movie I was most looking forward to this year: I even closed my eyes when I saw trailers in true superfan fashion, to truly enjoy the movie’s surprises when I got to see them. Maybe it’s my own passion for the franchise and high expectations for this entry into it, but Dead Reckoning was sub-par at best.
The plot follows Team Impossible as they search for the key to a bomb or AI or some other maguffin, you know the drill. Except this time there is a mysterious figure from Ethan’s past (Esai Morales), who turns up to give him the typical villain pop-psychology nonsense which coalesces into two sixty-year-old men fighting on a CGI train. Simon Pegg is squirrely, Ving Rames doesn’t get up from his chair, and, oh yes, they kill off Rebecca Ferguson because, with the addition of Hailey Attwell, there are too many women on the team so Ilsa has to go.
It’s this death that really undid the film for me; I saw Ilsa as the future of the franchise, a potential successor to Tom Cruise in the series – at least, the clearest successor to me. To see her killed off the way she is in this film killed off my hopes for the franchise with it, especially after all the character work they gave to Ilsa.
Though the movie was advertised as a part one and I wasn’t expecting a full story arc in Dead Reckoning, it felt inescapably like director Christopher McQuarrie was pulling his punches, holding back from the really great stuff to keep it for part two. It didn’t have the same urgency and excitement of Fallout, more ticking boxes than trying to create iconic moments for the franchise.
Dead Reckoning is everything that the last three entries weren’t: bloated, indulgent, with more money to make action scenes look more crummy than they do in the behind-the-scenes featurette. 2023 has proved that it’s time to move on from franchises like Marvel, DC, Indiana Jones, and The Fast and the Furious. Maybe it’s time to add Mission Impossible to the pile.
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By Kevin Boyle
(header image via Hollywood Reporter)
No But Listen 