The thesis of the seventh entry of Tom Cruise’s long running Mission: Impossible series can essentially be boiled down to: “A.I. is the Antichrist fr”

…which is such a hilariously absurd and epic literal premise that it leads to so many great bits. Making the new female character “Grace” is as obvious and awesome as naming the last one “Ilsa” just because they went to Casablanca. The literal key to the thing being a Cross is just cool and tips you off from the start where we’re going: Gabriel is called a “dark messiah” who wants to save the whole world by bringing death to everyone on it, and then is betrayed by his Judas in the Pom Klementieff character. It will be interesting to see where they take this idea in Part 2. (In my opinion, this works much better as a Part 1 than the earlier 2023 release Across the Spider-Verse did.)

It also strongly recalls That Hideous Strength, the third entry in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. In both stories, there are two secret organizations, one of which is run by an evil, unseen force that threatens to redefine the concept of good and evil and convenes with science to do so. “The Entity” is the rogue Oyeresu that Gabriel sublimates himself to; like the devil Oyarsa, it is a cold force that encourages “objectivity” but only serves to confuse and corrupt, to make right and wrong increasingly difficult to discern. 

Ethan Hunt is a figure alike to Ransom, as he guides Grace to a “choice” to join the IMF as Ransom guides Jane to become a Christian – even the language used in Dead Reckoning is suspiciously Christian: “At one time or another, each of us was in a similar situation to yours. And each of us was offered the choice. To come with us. And be a ghost.” In other words, to die, to let your past self fall away. When Grace asks when she will get this old life back, they tell her “What life?” What part of your old life was worth holding on to? Earlier the Cary Elwes character says, “What the hell kind of outfit gets to choose what orders to accept?” which sounds exactly like something Lewis would write a character like that to say lol. Comrade Yui notes in his review that it is only a choice like this that the Entity cannot predict – only a significant character change such as one Grace undergoes can the Enemy who preys on the death of the Good be defeated by; in other words, they must be saved by Grace.

Aside from plot similarities, like Lewis’s writing in the Space Trilogy, Dead Reckoning uses its genre elements to highlight the ills of our modern world, how easily we commune with devils without thinking and how important retaining “good” is regardless of the outcome; it has that uncanny ability, like Lewis had, to get to the heart of an issue and state it plainly and clearly without being didactic or exasperating. M:I’s right and wrong is not empty do-gooder humanism, but a real battle for the lives (read: souls) of all those involved. Or maybe the comparison is only because I would love to see Part 2 end with a bear mauling Gabriel.

Either way, this is not new ground for the Mission: Impossible series – this is the direction that McQuarrie and Cruise have been moving in ever since the former took directing control of the franchise. The sixth entry, Fallout, is a very morally conscious film, and is constructed as a series of tests for Cruise’s Hunt where he must choose between saving one life or risk compromising the mission. Hunt, then, essentially becomes a mythic figure, a man who can always make the right moral decision and still end up completing the mission and saving the world. This is a more complicated and more interesting type of story than the M:I films used to be, because it elevates them from the materialistic, exaggerated spy action genre in the line of Bond and Fast Furious to the genuine mythology making of Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean, while remaining set in a world recognizable as our own.