For better or worse, we do need to acknowledge just how impressive it is for a franchise to last 30 years and have no downright bad films.

“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is the eighth and (appropriately titled) final film of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. Tom Cruise returns one last time as superspy Ethan Hunt, who sets out to locate a sunken submarine that houses the key to stopping a rogue AI. Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, and Angela Bassett all reprise their roles from previous films while Christopher McQuarrie, who directed the previous three installments, also returns.

Ever since I saw “Ghost Protocol” (the best one) back in 2011, the “Mission: Impossible” series has grown to become one of my favorite franchises. There are no bad films (the only “meh” installment is the second), which is very impressive for a series that has spanned five Presidential administrations, and I like how (for at least the first five installments) each installment has its own style and flair, often representative of the time of its release. I eagerly awaited “Final Reckoning,” and even if it largely plays like a drawn-out fanfic finale, it still has enough thrills and impressive stunt work to be worthy (enough) sendoff to Cruise’s famed franchise.

The “Mission: Impossible” films have become renowned for their stunts, with Tom Cruise famously performing his own. While previous films include scaling the Burj Khalifa and halo jumping over Paris, this film has two big ones: navigating a sunken sub and a biplane chase. Both have moments of intensity, and the dedication to the craft cannot be denied (the guy seated next me was hyperventilating), but they both also overstay their welcome a bit. I have no problem with set pieces lasting a while; “Rogue Nation,” “Fallout,” and “Dead Reckoning” all have chase sequences that go on for over ten minutes. The difference is those are in constantly-changing locations and the pace doesn’t relent. Here, we spend 20 minutes watching him struggle to climb aboard a flying plane; exciting stuff in bursts but not when stretched so thin. That being said, the sequence in the middle of the film where Cruise locates a sunken submarine on the ocean floor plays largely like a sci-fi horror film, and big credit goes to the sound department for creating such an eerie atmosphere.

The first hour of the film is actually kind of baffling, because it is full of exposition dumps and archival footage from previous films, none of which is really necessary when we’re eight films into a franchise. Most anyone watching “The Final Reckoning” surely watched “Dead Reckoning,” and it’s safe to assume they also watched the rest of the franchise, too. If they were going down the “Avengers: Endgame” fan service finale route it would have been cool to include previous actors or an abundance of fan-favorite bits like the masks, but instead the film shows (on multiple occasions) old clips of old bad guys or Cruise stunts, and it makes you think that Cruise and McQuarrie either don’t trust their audience to remember previous events, or want to be self-congratulatory of their franchise. It gets to the point of parody when characters begin to round-robin complete each other’s sentences and show flashbacks of interactions we saw just literal moments earlier, and given the film’s grim mood it comes off as too cheesy.

I’m a big fan of Cruise as an actor and appreciate his dedication to the art of movie making (just gotta ignore *that* one thing about his personal life). His Ethan Hunt continues to have some moments of dry humor, though the charm that he’s shown in the previous seven films is largely absent. And sure, part of that is because of the end of the world doom and gloom nature of the plot, but part of what makes the “Mission: Impossible” films so much fun is their ability to weave humor and levity into even the most serious, action-filled sequences, and that’s largely gone here.

A complaint I had about “Dead Reckoning” is the filmmakers’ decision to make the big bad guy a rogue evil AI (known as “The Entity”), a topic that was already played out in 2023. Now, two years and Hollywood strikes later, not to mention the real-world problems that AI is creating, it really is just tiring to pitch the “artificial intelligence is dangerous and could end the world!” when the same studios making these movies are implementing AI into all our media. I also think Esai Morales is such a vanilla nothing burger of a villain, with no backstory or charisma, and this film doubles down by having him be the one Ethan must face off against in the climax. The film introduces doomsday cults that support the Entity, and it would have been so much more interesting seeing Cruise have to stop terror attacks or actual individuals, instead of having beef with a faceless computer.

I know I spent most of this review pointing out flaws in the film, and maybe it’s because I was a bit surprised by how sloppy it is compared to McQ’s previous run. The more I sit on “The Final Reckoning” (and write about it), the more I just realize how easily-fixable many of its problems are. We didn’t need visual flashbacks to previous films like a YouTube fanfic video, though I appreciated some of the retcons and callbacks (including one that retroactively makes the third film, which is under-appreciated despite an all-time great villain performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman, become arguably the most-important of the whole series). Time will tell if this is actually the final installment of the franchise and Cruise’s action swan song (I hope it is, if only to see him return to grounded dramas), but if this really is the end then while it isn’t quite a whimper, it certainly isn’t a bang.

Critics Rating: 7/10