A fitting end to a 30-year franchise that still feels as fresh and as relevant as ever.

DIRECTED BY: CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE/2025

This is an “After the Show” review where we get into spoilers and discussions for people who have seen the film being reviewed. If you wish to read a spoiler-free review, please read the one at this link.

We are told in the film’s tag-line, “Our lives are the sum of our choices”, and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning seeks to prove that. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his mission impossible team are back picking up where Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (formally Part 1) left off. Now, Ethan has the key to access the source code of “The Entity”, as every nation, and the entity’s stooge Gabriel (Esai Morales), are pursuing it in hopes of controlling “the entity” who is seeking to gain access to the world’s nuclear arsenal to bring about the destruction of mankind. This sounds like a truly impossible mission to stop, but that’s why we have the IMF, or Impossible Mission Force!

The Final Reckoning is a long entry that gets bogged down early with exposition and the challenge of connecting the dots of all of the previous Mission: Impossible installments featuring Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. For those who haven’t seen some of the previous entries, making these connections will be helpful to newcomers to help them connect the many plot points weaving through the previous films, and long time fans will be able to see the previous entries in a new light. In a greatest hits reel, we get to see many of the previous film’s highlights and spectacular moments, as well as many of the actors who previously shared the screen in Ethan’s ongoing missions. I personally was excited to see that Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Owen Davian, who kidnapped Hunt’s wife to obtain the “Rabbit’s Foot” had a crucial tie-in to “the entity’s” goals in The Final Reckoning. The highlight reel was a good way to tie all of the previous installments together, but served to add too much detail for those who were expecting this to just be a quick-start continuation of Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning, which only served in giving this film a much slower start by comparison.

Once the mission gets started, however, The Final Reckoning quickly jumps into gear and gives us what we expect from these films: a pulse-pounding, visually pleasing set of stunt set-piece spectaculars! The two standout sequences are clearly the submarine mission to obtain “the entity’s” source code, and the thrilling climatic plane-chase sequence which is effectively interconnected with the IMF Team’s attempts to simultanously deal with a massive bomb, as well as setting up a trap to capture “the entity”. Cruise continues to put 100% effort into putting everything he can on screen. And for those keeping score: yes, he does run in this film. Seeing this film in an RPX theater with Dolby Atmos sound, like I did, or an IMAX screen, is the suggested method to get the most out of this film.

Returning to the IMF team for this possible last mission is Grace (Hayley Atwell), Paris (Pom Klementieff), Benji (Simon Pegg), and Ethan’s partner since the original film, Luther (Ving Rhmes). As the stakes are raised, it makes sense that we must say goodbye to fan favorite, Luther, after losing Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) in Dead Reckoning. The death of Luther felt earned and was in service of the mission. Fans (as well as Ethan in the film) are treated to a fitting and poignant goodbye in the last few minutes of the film to truly send off this original character in style.

The film is also stacked with some great call-backs to previous installments as well as some new faces. Returning again are Kittridge (Henry Czerny), Briggs (Shea Whigham), Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), Denlinger (in flash-back-Cary Elwes), President Sloan (Angela Bassett), and with the biggest and most fun suprise, going back to the original film, is the resurfacing of William Donloe (Rolf Saxon). If you don’t remember who that is, The Final Reckoning will remind you. His reemergence provides a nice laugh, but his character also is given a great chance at redemption 30 years later. New cast members who are joining the latest adventure are Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), Nick Offerman (The Last of Us, Parks and Recreation), Katy O’Brian, Tramell Tillman (Severance), and Lucy Tulugarjuk, who as Donloe’s wife does a great job stealing some scenes where her character actually doesn’t have to say much at all.

Mission: Impossible as a series, like the tag line for The Final Reckoning, is a sum of its choices. The franchise itself as largely been top-tier entertainment from start to finish, especially with its highs (Mission: Impossible III, Mission: Impossible-Fallout) and even with its lows (Mission: Impossible 2). While the first 5 films chose to utilize a formula of bringing in different directors (Brian De Palma, John Woo, J.J. Abrams, Brad Bird, and Christopher McQuarrie) and different stylistic tones, the last 4 films have been a choice about creating a cohesive narrative and vision with Tom Cruise finding that in frequent collaborator/writer/director Christopher McQuarrie.

While the focus has narrowed, and the stakes have certainly continued to grow for Ethan Hunt and the IMF under McQuarrie, there is something to say about the fun and looseness of the early entries which were seen more as self-contained missions that different directors could sink their directorial and stylistic teeth into before handing off the proverbial baton to the next director. This allowed more of the side-characters to shine in their own way and demonstrate how the IMF team as a whole was the sum of its collective parts. Both choices had their strengths and their weaknesses, but with the box office Fallout (intended M:I pun) of Dead Reckoning, it may be that like Marvel films, audiences are tiring of having to do so much homework of watching previous entries to enjoy the latest one.

The fun in the later entries, however, were always more about the set pieces that Cruise would use to wow the audiences with nearly impossible spectacules, that he was actually doing himself. A random and incomplete list of these include: the CIA vault break and helicopter/train sequence in the original Mission: Impossible; the rock face and motorcycle sequences in Mission: Impossible 2; the base jump from the Shanghai building in Mission: Impossible III; the Burj Khalifa sequence in Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol; the A400 plane stunt and underwater sequence in Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation; the Halo Jump and helicoptor sequence in Mission: Impossible-Fallout; and of course the motorcycle cliff jump and subsequent parachute chase to catch a moving train in Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part 1.

If this latest film is truly the culmination of 30 years of Ethan Hunt’s missions, then Mission: Impossible as a franchise has drawn in some of the most talented people to populate its cast and crew. For the cast, just look at the names of people who have appeared (in no way exhaustive): Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Anthony Hopkins, Billy Crudup, Rolf Saxon, Adreas Wisniewski, Simon Pegg, Michelle Monaghan, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Alec Baldwin, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Hayley Atwell, Jon Voight, Jean Reno, Kristen Scott Thomas, Emmanuel Beart, Vanessa Redgrave, Thandiwe Newton, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Maggie Q, Aaron Paul, Lea Seydoux, Paula Patton, Josh Holloway, Henry Cavill, Wes Bentley, Pom Klementieff, Mariela Garriga, Tom Wilkinson, Indira Varma, Cary Elwes, Greg Tarzan Davis, Shea Whigham, Rolf Saxon, Emilio Estevez, and many, many more! Having already mentioned directors earlier in this piece, the list of composers includes Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Michael Giacchino, Joe Kraemer, Lorne Balfe, Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey, and even the M:I theme song was interpretted early on by U2. You could also read a who’s who of both individuals and companies doing the stunts, special effects, writing, and other categories that contribute to pulling off the impossible missions of these films.

While Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning has all of the trappings of a series farewell and wrap up, it also serves as somewhat of a soft reboot. Both McQuarrie and Cruise have indicated that more missions are brewing, with Cruise saying he’d like to keep making them (Mission: Impossible films) well into his 80’s ala Harrison Ford and the Indiana Jones films. I’m not sure he’ll be able to keep up the stunt work well into his 80’s (I’m not betting against him either), but I could envision seeing Ethan Hunt settling into the role of team leader ala Jim Phelps who handled logistics and turned it all over to his team to execute. It could suit him…eventually. Speaking of Jim Phelps…we learned of a new tie-in to that classic M:I character in this latest installment that could be mined in the future.

With the way the IMF team joins together in Trafalgar Square at the end of this film, we could easily see Ethan, Benji, Paris, Grace, and Degas becoming the face of the new IMF team and franchise moving forward in all new adventures. With the highest stakes of any Mission: Impossible film finally being dealt with in The Final Reckoning, let’s hope that this opportunity for a soft reboot allows Cruise to get back to some stand-alone missions that brings back some of the espinoge and fun of the earlier entries, while continuing to hold the bar high for the visual set pieces that make watching these films on the largest screen possible so appealling. Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning is a fitting end to a 30-year franchise that still feels as fresh and as relevant as ever. Despite its clean wrap-up of 30 years of missions in this latest film, it appropriately sets the stage for more impossiblely fun missions to take place in the future…should Cruise and company choose to accept it!