Kulture Korner: Mission Impossible "Dead Reckoning" & "The Final Reckoning"

By: Jungha Kwon, Staff Writer

Credit: IMDb

Credit: IMDb

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) Mission: Impossible —The Final Reckoning (2025) Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie

Written by: Christopher McQuarrie, Erik Jenderesen

Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg THE KELLOGGIAN'S RATING: Dead Reckoning: 4.5/5 Cereals Final Reckoning: 3/5 Cereals There's an old Asian saying about starting strong but ending weak—literally "dragon's head, snake's tail." For me, that perfectly captures the final installments of the Mission: Impossible franchise—Dead Reckoning (2023), the seventh installment, and The Final Reckoning (2025), the final film. Don't get me wrong, both films are good, as their ratings confirm. But while Dead Reckoning had the taste of something special, Final Reckoning doesn't quite deliver on that promise and even threatens to chip away at the franchise's well-earned reputation.

Before diving into criticism, let's check what these films do right. Dead Reckoning in particular takes an experimental approach rarely seen in American spy thrillers. As the trailer reveals, the main villain isn't even human—it's an AI. This isn't the usual story of someone weaponizing technology with malicious intent. Here, the AI itself becomes the threat, making autonomous decisions that endanger humanity. The film leverages this premise brilliantly, deploying creative AI-driven twists and turns that keep audiences on edge. In an era where AI dominates public discourse, the film's timeliness amplifies both its relevance and immersion. What might have felt like pure science fiction now registers as a plausible espionage thriller, making the escalating stakes feel earned rather than absurd, and justifying the lengthy runtime (2 hours and 43 minutes) without sacrificing momentum. Beyond the concept, the film delivers what great spy movies require: spectacular stunts, maximized through sharp direction, and tension that doesn't rely solely on scale. Tom Cruise's commitment to doing his own death-defying action sequences remains one of the franchise's greatest assets, capturing the essence of what makes these films work.

Despite these strengths, Final Reckoning left me disappointed enough to mostly focus this review on what went wrong. As the official franchise finale, it leans heavily on callbacks and connections to earlier films—not just recreating iconic moments but weaving entire storylines back into the franchise's history, complete with surprise cameos. This fan service works emotionally, and as a huge fan myself, I found those moments nostalgic and touching. But objectively, these connections undermine the film's overall coherence. Trying to incorporate every chapter of Ethan Hunt's journey into a separate storyline strains credibility and feels forced at times. The film throws too many surprise reunions at us, and while signature franchise gimmicks make appearances, they're overused to the point of exhaustion.

More troubling is how Final Reckoning abandons the AI villain that made Dead Reckoning so fresh. The innovative mechanics from the previous film vanish entirely, and the AI behaves less like an intelligent adversary and more like a single-minded automaton fixed on one goal. Spy thrillers thrive on the cat-and-mouse tension between a villain's meticulous planning and the hero finding cracks in that plan. Here, we get what looks like careful planning riddled with obvious holes, paired with a protagonist who keeps falling back on old-school methods rather than evolving with the threat. What remains is just déjà vu from earlier films. The contrast in how the two movies treat AI is striking: in Dead Reckoning, a sophisticated intelligence exploits human desire to manipulate and control, posing a global threat; in Final Reckoning, that same AI barely registers as a presence.

Ultimately, while both are solid films, Final Reckoning retreats from the creativity and genre innovation that makes Dead Reckoning exciting. The underwhelming box office for Dead Reckoning and the pressure of concluding a decades-long franchise likely contributed to this pullback. As the finale to a twenty-plus-year franchise, the filmmakers also needed fan-pleasing moments, which are never easy to integrate organically. The result is a movie that claims to be high-tech but falls back on dated formulas.

As someone who loves this franchise deeply, you can imagine my disappointment. A series that consistently set the bar for spy cinema deserved a stronger finish. Still, these are good films worth watching regardless of my critique. Call it a mission only partially accomplished—but one still worth signing up for. Read more film reviews by Jungha Kwon: Piece by Piece