In an age of creation-by-committee, the film has devolved into an excretive product beholden to a perfect flaccid formula. Our biggest movies have become nameless forgettable products slinking into the forefront of streaming platforms. Our stars are now faces stuffed into preview icons with stark titles, each one crafted in hour-long photoshop sessions and triple checked by marketing teams to meet virality metrics. 

The blockbuster is a misnomer, there is no more block and no more bust. Theaters are a semblance of their former ubiquity. Revenue is nestled into calculations of monthly subscription, divorced from any real financial incentive beyond backroom deals. Everything movies once were is now a specter in the shadow of the internet, vying for decaying attention. Yet, there are a few massive titans left from a greater age which uphold the church of the spectacle. One such titan is Tom Cruise, and one such spectacle is the Mission Impossible franchise.

I watched Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning this weekend. The franchise is of particular interest to me, part of a curious phenomenon that occurs when an entrenched star manages creative control over their own character through sheer financial success. With each sequel exceeding the previous in incredulous acts, the characters become pantheonic figureheads in an illogical dreamlike existence. The film is the second of a two-part finale, one in which Tom Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt battles an AI superintelligence called the Entity with the hopes of preventing global nuclear holocaust.

The most fascinating element of the Mission Impossible franchise is Tom Cruise’s constant crusade in mythologizing himself as an infallible messianic figure. Ethan Hunt is an inherently perfect character, shedding his humanity with each sequel in favor of expressionless nobility. Side characters no longer even make any attempt to counteract Hunt’s efforts, simply trusting him as the singularly responsible savior who is right about everything. Even deuteragonistic foils fall in line with barely any reluctance or resistance. The ongoing gospel Ethan Hunt preaches is one of illogical trust. He rails against the inherent Prisoner’s Dilemma that nuclear warfare and global conflict presents, urging all parties to trust one another and go against every basic human incentive of risk mitigation as a defense mechanism against an enemy defined by its ability to make perfect mathematical predictions.

The Entity is a compelling concept for an ultimate antagonist. The shadowy AI superintelligence acts as both a literal plot device and a symbolic enemy of the creative elements that make up the foundation for good movie making. When Ethan Hunt fights against the Entity by doing daredevil stunts, Tom Cruise mirrors his battle in physical metaphor. He seems to say “Look, AI will not replace movie makers because it can’t do THIS” before doing free dives 5000 feet underwater or backflipping off of a biplane.

More than just an existential threat to creativity, AI threatens the comprehensibility of reality to the average boomer. It cannot be understated that Tom Cruise, despite his youthful vigor upheld by Scientological witchcraft and multimillionaire plastic surgery, is technically a boomer. He is a 62 year old man who carries with him all of the facets of pre-internet civilization. His franchise is pilfered from a Cold War era TV series, its plots are derived from a sociopolitical narrative dependent on a simplistic us-vs-them framework defined by decades of centralized media. Before the storyline clumsily hamfists a Skynet plot where the AI Entity takes control over nuclear arsenals, there’s an interesting element where the biggest danger it poses comes from infiltrating cyberspace to proliferate thousands of deepfaked footage to spread misinformation and incur societal instability.

The Entity is the ultimate boomer boogeyman, it personifies the inscrutable nature of AI as a concept and puts a face on the countless number of botted Facebook accounts which send geriatrics into convulsions every day through ridiculous deepfaked videos and artificially astroturfed comments. Throughout the film, countless thralls reveal themselves by attacking Hunt. They take on blank expressions and act like mindless henchmen cultists, proclaiming the omnipotent wisdom of the Entity as the future ruler of the world. 

Tying into the messianic symbolism of the story, there is a scene where Hunt’s team encounters an ominous metal box, opening up to reveal a VR pod where Ethan Hunt’s archenemy Gabriel could interface directly with the Entity to receive orders, information, and visions of the future. One of Gabriel’s former enforcers turned good whispers into Hunt’s ear cautioning him from using the machine because “it changes people.”

Ethan Hunt climbs into the module and immediately has his hands and legs bound by electrocuting metal restraints while VR goggles bombard his glowing eyes with an overwhelming onslaught of infodense messages. A blue star creeps towards the frame, graphically extending outward into infinity and flickering to the rhythm of the Entity’s booming speeches. Despite its cheesiness, the scene seems to depict a Lovecraftian element, Ethan Hunt being faced with Satan himself trying to corrupt him in a manner which can only be overcome through sheer power of will.

The most interesting part of the film with the deepest symbolic connotation occurs when Ethan Hunt must dive deep into an arctic ocean crevice to enter the ruins of the Svestapol, an experimental Russian nuclear submarine which the Entity destroyed to escape into global cyberspace. Ominous hymns play while Hunt descends into a crushing abyss, faced with massive leviathan submarines. The Svestapol represents a Dante’s Inferno descent into hell itself, acting as a massive steel labyrinth of petrified corpses and errant nuclear torpedoes toppling haphazardly while Hunt must find the spherical center to retrieve the Macguffin hard drive which holds the key to stopping the Entity once and for all.

The nuclear war element of the film is particularly interesting because, like the AI plot, it coincides with the very real resurgence of nuclear existentialism. Anxieties over Israel’s Samson Option as conflicts with Hamas flare, India and Pakistan engaging in full scale war, Ukrainian drone strikes wiping out Russian launch capabilities, all of these global events push us closer to a state of reality our parents and grandparents once found commonplace. During the submarine sequence, the massive missiles threatening to crush Ethan Hunt as he dives out of the way seem to act as a microcosm of the film’s larger conflict. They loom over him as the threat of global holocaust looms over all of civilization.

In typical Mission Impossible fashion, complications force Ethan Hunt to rip away his high tech diving suit and free dive ascend thousands of feet to the surface, drowning just under the arctic ice sheets only to be saved by his teammates, finding him through impossible measures. The technohell Blade Runner-esque shadowy metal submarine aesthetic is juxtaposed against a bright arctic morning, pillowed in a portable white decompression chamber while the pseudo love interest cuddles Hunt in relieved admiration while he peacefully awakens. 

If the “Christ enters hell after death to defeat Satan and ascend to heaven” symbolism wasn’t intentional, then its suggestion is made all the more impressive. The theme is somewhat repetitive across the franchise, almost every film has some scene where Ethan Hunt is rendered unconscious, if not basically legally dead only to be resurrected by loving teammates upon whom he has placed an inhuman level of trust in their competence. 

Tom Cruise seems to want to manifest this in real life, touching death as closely as possible through each of his daring stunts. A common joke amongst fans is that Tom Cruise wants to die and each Mission Impossible movie is his attempt at an actor’s Valhalla, wiped off the face of the earth while performing his own daredevil stunts, each one increasing in scales of danger that would make Jackie Chan blush. There’s almost a zeal on his face when he does behind the scenes interviews, intimately understanding the sheer anxiety that director Christopher McQuarrie and the entire crew must feel knowing their jobs are entirely dependent on Tom Cruise’s continued existence.

A number of Mission Impossible tropes are mirrored in real life, centered around the dynamic of Tom Cruise being the most important person in the room. Inexplicably, characters will repeatedly state that Ethan Hunt is the only person in the world they can trust to control [Macguffin of any film] and save billions of lives. Global catastrophe is curtailed against near certain probability only and solely because of Ethan Hunt’s willpower and capabilities. If the fictional universe of Mission Impossible is cosmically interpreted as the craft of its creator’s imaginations, then indeed the “universe” itself hinges on Tom Cruise as the star power and financial backing of the series’ continued existence.

This is made obvious during the filming of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning during COVID era restrictions, where Cruise was caught in a minor scandal screaming at film crew for disobeying strict mask regulations. He justified his vitriol as a crucial necessity for enforcing the mandate, not out of any particular ideological compunctions but as a ward against any possible risk of the production being shut down during an economically strenuous time for the cinema industry as a whole. Indeed, Hollywood was dangling by a thread during Coronavirus quarantines. I’m not qualified to judge whether Mission Impossible really did anything to “save cinema” but it was one of the biggest blockbuster films to undergo production while most others were furloughed.

Tom Cruise’s campaign for films, especially theatrical productions is starkly displayed during every introduction to a Mission Impossible film made in theaters. He and his chosen director, Christopher McQuarrie, briefly thank the audience for attending their film and encourage them to see more movies in theaters. It’s actually somewhat touching and personal, a sincere thank you to the audience for their patronage. Yet, the subtext of the message betrays some anxiety towards the industry itself, fading into a husk of what it once was under the pressures of economic decay, the dilution of quality due to streaming platform models, and migrating attention share towards short form content.

It’s clear Tom Cruise wants to save films. He is a monolith descending down from the golden era of past success, a surviving member of the old guard that reigned during a time when films had more talent, more creativity, and more freedom to experiment or take risks. Tom Cruise is also aging more gracefully than any of the other action hero giants that labor on past their prime. Arnold and Stallone both betray the ardours of time and a life of cycling steroids, opting for lower budget flashy cash grabs that milk the nostalgia from a tone of action films which no longer can truly be made sincerely.

Some like Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson lean into directing, while others like Bruce Willis must succumb to the inevitability of biology. Many more pass away, leaving few behind to carry the mantle of a brighter time. Hollywood’s soul lies in those who carved a name for themselves too large to be shackled by the desolation of the committee. Of the greats still living, and of those who were truly stars in the action genre before the 2000s, Tom Cruise will be known as the last who carried the brightest torch until the end.

Despite what you may think of Mission Impossible, possibly even classifying it as a global product pandering to that perfected refined family friendly slop formula, it contains a scale and spectacle which will scarcely be replicated in the age of AI. We will look back at crews cobbling together larger-than-life action stunts in the same way we look back now at golden age 20th century productions gathering tens of thousands of extras or building entire fake cities for cinematic epics. I see the Mission Impossible films as a glimpse of something at least partially real, even if the rawness has long since faded away in place of financialized perfected formula. 

In attempting to convey Ethan Hunt as the Jesus Christ of feds, Tom Cruise reveals at the very least a subconscious goal in being the Jesus Christ of film. He steers away from the temptation of relatable humanity and seeks to portray idealistic perfection in his roles. While hubristic, there’s something honorable in the endeavor. You cannot say that Tom Cruise isn’t trying his hardest. 

The past decade of Cruise’s filmography has almost exclusively featured him as larger than life protagonists in big franchise productions, each one curiously connotating him as an analog anomaly of exceptional capacity in a world of digital mundanity. Ethan Hunt frequently sheds his equipment to pull through dangerous situations with sheer physical prowess. Maverick in the Top Gun sequel is a dusty artifact as the past that still exceeds any of America’s youngest prime pilots, returning to the ancient F-14 to defy Russian superjets. Jack Reacher notably sheds the use of any technology to remain an anonymous turboweapon of violent capacity, opting for cash only transactions and interstate bus rides. 

Tom Cruise seems to cling to a pre-internet existence in his roles, establishing sheer force of presence in an invitational manner. He’s not saying “I’m better than you because of this, I’m living a life we can all choose to live together.” He invites you into the theater. He compels you to throw the cell phone away. He desires a more human form of existence that was once normal and familiar to him. He wants to turn back time itself, return to an elevated level of being that rejects digital atomization. 

In this manner, Tom Cruise is like Icarus trying to touch the sun itself. He presents, ironically, an impossible mission. Yet, I cannot fathom anyone more fitting to try and reach this state than Tom Cruise. My mind compels me to wish him a peaceful retirement, at least an easier pace where he can play character roles or explore his acting capabilities as side characters or villains. 

But, my heart desires Tom Cruise’s ultimate role. One last spectacle to go out in a blaze of glory, a fitting climactic end before time inevitably catches up to him.