Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning Just Teased A Shocking Sci-Fi Twist
If you can’t beat ‘em...
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning moved the franchise further into sci-fi territory with the introduction of The Entity. The malevolent AI is the first non-human antagonist Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has faced; sure, he’s dealt with a nuclear football and something called the Rabbit’s Foot, but those threats were always tools for flesh-and-blood villains to wield. In Dead Reckoning, it’s the Entity calling the shots. It knows everything about Ethan — his past, present, and future — and how to leverage it all against him. His last adventure pushed him to the brink, leaving him (and the audience) on a precarious cliffhanger.
Evil AI is a common genre trope, but it’s taken nearly 30 years for the Mission: Impossible franchise to embrace it. Now, that exploration will continue with The Final Reckoning, the next (and possibly last) chapter. The upcoming film picks up about two months after the events of Dead Reckoning, priming Ethan for his rematch against the Entity and its henchmen. As previous trailers have already teased, this fight will be big. It’ll also take the franchise further into the realm of science fiction, forcing Ethan to embrace the very entity he’s trying to defeat.
The latest trailer for The Final Reckoning sees Ethan facing his destiny head-on. Everyone — including CIA director Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) — agrees he’s the only man capable of saving the day. He accepts his mission to defeat the Entity and bring the world “back from the brink,” but he can’t win this battle without help. The Final Reckoning assembles a cast of new and old faces to assist Ethan, but the most surprising asset is a pod that seems to connect him directly to the Entity.
In a shocking (and appropriately fantastical) twist, Ethan appears to download a whole lot of information at once. He gets glimpses of past misadventures, and even potential futures. How this will assist him — or even what his plan is — remains a mystery, but it can’t hurt to be prepared.
Ethan is a character who refuses to compromise, and Dead Reckoning made it clear that that’s his biggest weakness. He can’t be everywhere, protect everyone, and know everything. Maybe using the Entity will give him the edge he needs to get the job done... as long as he isn’t playing directly into its hand. It’s an intriguing evolution for a franchise that’s explored nearly every action movie frontier. Mission: Impossible has always pushed the boundaries of possibility, but The Final Reckoning might go a step further by fusing man with machine.
