If generative artificial intelligence was all the rage back in 2023, when Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One premiered, it’s now practically inescapable — embedded in every app, startup, and subscription service with a login screen. Naturally, this futuristic, energy-hungry, and vaguely apocalyptic technology has wormed its way into the plot of Tom Cruise’s final outing as Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt in Final Reckoning.
Picking up where Dead Reckoning Part One left off, Hunt resumes his pursuit of “The Entity,” an all-powerful rogue AI poised to trigger global annihilation. Arguably the film’s most vexing aspect is this fixation on artificial intelligence, a subject director Christopher McQuarrie grasps only tenuously, resulting in mind-numbingly clumsy dialogue, especially painful for viewers burdened by tech backgrounds. Lines such as “That’s what The Entity wants!” or “Nobody can control it, it must be destroyed!” land more like cheesy riffs on The Lord of the Rings than ominous warnings.
