Observe: This text comprises spoilers for the Mission: Not possible movies, together with the most recent launch, Mission: Not possible – The Closing Reckoning.
It started on tv in 1966. A Chilly Conflict-era procedural, jazzy and lean, with tape recorders that smoked as messages self-destructed seconds after they had been performed. Mission: Not possible was by no means about one man. It was a crew present, an ensemble constructed round deception and masks, with Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) and later Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) main the cost.
In its Chilly Conflict context, Mission: Not possible dramatized a really American type of idealism: freedom by means of precision and deception within the identify of democracy.
Every week, the crew used disguises, crafty, and thoroughly coordinated sleights-of-hand to undermine dictators, coerce saboteurs, and expose double brokers. The place different exhibits solved crimes with investigative methods and weapons, Mission: Not possible unraveled conspiracies with latex prosthetics and Rube Goldberg-level plot development. It was much less a shootout than a stage play, and the stress got here from the query of whether or not or not the phantasm would maintain lengthy sufficient for the crew to finish the mission.
Thematically, it was a present about management, about technique versus chaos. About order being delicately, even superficially, imposed on a world at all times threatening to interrupt into conflict. It had no central star as a result of, generally, the mission itself—the trigger—was the star. Identification was fluid, and in its Chilly Conflict context, Mission: Not possible dramatized a really American type of idealism: freedom by means of precision and deception within the identify of democracy.
The present ended its unique run in 1973. In 1988, the collection was revived for 2 seasons. A lot of the type remained intact: Graves returned as Phelps, the missions remained as intricate as ever, and the team-centric format was preserved. However the world had modified. These new episodes unfolded within the twilight of the Chilly Conflict and within the daybreak of a extra ambiguous geopolitical panorama. One during which enemies now not wore uniforms, and threats to world peace weren’t at all times backed by clear-cut political ideologies.
If the unique collection had been a Chilly Conflict chess match, the 1988 revival was a prelude to the knowledge age. The emphasis shifted subtly to accommodate the rising complexities of surveillance, bio-terrorism, and cybernetic manipulation. The Not possible Missions Power (IMF) stayed hidden within the shadows, even because the shadows started to warp round them. What remained fixed, nonetheless, was the present’s ethical structure: the idea {that a} small group of devoted people—working with anonymity and ethical readability—might tilt the scales of justice. It was, at coronary heart, a type of trendy parable hid within the trappings of a mission-of-the-week espionage caper.
In 1996, Brian De Palma and Tom Cruise introduced Mission: Not possible to the massive display screen. What adopted was a reinvention that might lead the franchise from cloak-and-dagger theatrics to one thing stranger and extra enduring: a long-form meditation on private sacrifice and the soul of the human in an more and more dehumanized world.
[Hunt] refuses to cede the ethical excessive floor, even when it makes no tactical or sensible sense. And in doing so, he turns into one thing sudden: the final man of religion in a world run by code.
As Mission: Not possible expanded into a movie collection, what was as soon as collective grew to become a bit extra particular person, and what was as soon as intelligent grew to become kinetic. The primary movie performed like De Palma channeling Hitchcock, and was as near the unique collection in tone and execution that the movies would ever get. The second, Mission: Not possible 2 (2000), was operatic and unhinged underneath the deft contact of iconic motion director John Woo. Mission: Not possible III (2006), J. J. Abrams’ directorial debut, gave the collection a beating coronary heart, and Brad Hen’s Mission: Not possible – Ghost Protocol (2011) started to stabilize the movies round an concept that had much less to do with spycraft than it did human constancy within the face of insurmountable conditions.
By the point Christopher McQuarrie took over the franchise for his quartet of movies, starting with Mission: Not possible – Rogue Nation (2015), Cruise’s Ethan Hunt had ceased to be the brand new Jim Phelps and as a substitute grew to become a determine of fidelity in a world fast to shed its pores and skin. McQuarrie’s movies reoriented the collection and made it one thing a bit extra bold. The trademark motion remained, nevertheless it was now in service of character. The plots had been nonetheless labyrinthine, however had been extra involved with exploring how a person like Ethan Hunt survives in a world the place identification and loyalty are endlessly negotiable.
Crucially, McQuarrie reintroduced The Syndicate—a rogue nation of ex-operatives and disavowed brokers led by the soft-spoken Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), mirroring the IMF in each kind and performance however with no ethical compass. Ultimately, Hunt and his crew got a real antagonist: a villainous construction with the identical instruments and ways, however not one of the restraint. In giving Ethan a correct villain, the movies gave him a correct ethic. He was now not merely saving lives, however preserving a manner of being: one during which particular person conscience nonetheless mattered and nobody—nobody—was expendable.
This ethic crystallized most clearly in McQuarrie’s sophomore outing, Mission: Not possible – Fallout (2018), arguably the franchise’s first true sequel when it comes to continuity and emotional consequence. In that movie, Hunt’s defining trait apparently emerged as refusal: his refusal to permit one life to be traded for an additional, his refusal to decide on the “higher good” if it means leaving somebody behind. He isn’t a utilitarian hero. He’s an ethical absolutist working in a morally ambiguous world. And that is what makes him each harmful and pretty singular as a contemporary motion hero.
By the point Mission: Not possible – Useless Reckoning (2023) arrived, the collection had outgrown its Chilly Conflict DNA. The menace was now not human, nor was it a nation-state or rogue company. As an alternative, it grew to become systemic, manifested within the type of The Entity, a sentient synthetic intelligence unbound by nation, logic, or materials constraint. It couldn’t be assassinated or reasoned with, it might solely be resisted and refused.
With Mission: Not possible – The Closing Reckoning (2025), the collection leaves behind the espionage thriller and enters into fantasy. The Entity turns into an omnipresent pressure, invisible and omniscient, able to rewriting info and one’s notion of actuality itself. It capabilities, within the theological register, as a god—or, a minimum of, a parody of 1. It sees all, is aware of all, predicts all, and calls for nothing lower than give up. Into this courageous new world steps Hunt—not as a selected one, however as a person who chooses. Who refuses to cede the ethical excessive floor, even when it makes no tactical or sensible sense. And in doing so, he turns into one thing sudden: the final man of religion in a world run by code.
His mission turns into about disproving The Entity and its algorithmic determinism, and as a substitute proving {that a} man can nonetheless select rightly, even when wrongness is cheaper, safer.
If The Entity is the machine-god of the brand new age, then Gabriel (Esai Morales), its emissary, is the prophet of inevitability. He’s named, pointedly, for the angel of annunciation. However right here, the excellent news is inverted. There isn’t any incarnation, solely calculation. No freedom or grace, solely foreknowledge and the knowledge of a future already written. Like some darkish prophet, he preaches the gospel of the closed loop: all outcomes have already been computed and all resistance accounted for. His religion lies not in God, however in a machine that may simulate omniscience and sees not folks however possibilities. His name is to not repent, however to surrender.
It’s right here that Mission: Not possible enters theological territory. The Entity turns into a metaphysical menace. It spells the top of which means, the annihilation of selection. Its promise is a wonderfully ordered future during which human company is a relic, a bug within the system. It’s Gnostic in its depth, apocalyptic in its scale, and blasphemous in its certainty.
The Closing Reckoning hits theaters with Hunt’s ethic given eschatological weight and significance. There’s a key second, early on this movie, when Ethan encounters the Entity and is given a imaginative and prescient of the world’s destruction. His mission turns into about disproving The Entity and its algorithmic determinism, and as a substitute proving {that a} man can nonetheless select rightly, even when wrongness is cheaper, safer. It turns into about declaring why the unpredictable human nonetheless issues.
The ultimate mission—if, actually, The Closing Reckoning seems to be Hunt’s final experience—is surprisingly theological, marshaling a case for the soul itself, saying that in a world of false prophets and digital gods, the human nonetheless has one thing to contribute—one thing unquantifiable and dignified. Beneath the highly-publicized stunts, the spectacle, the masks, this franchise has developed into a mirrored image on selection—the delicate and irreducible company of a single human being confronted with overcoming inconceivable odds. “Our lives are the sum of our decisions,” a line echoed throughout McQuarrie’s final two movies, is much less a philosophical apart than it’s a thesis in and of itself.
And in a cinematic panorama overrun with multiverses, retcons, and algorithmically generated inevitabilities, that emphasis is quietly radical. Hunt runs, jumps, climbs, dives, and hangs on for pricey life to show that it nonetheless issues that individuals select in any respect. He dangers all the things to say that ethical readability is not out of date, and that is all wrapped in a package deal that takes some actually pointed photographs on the digital age during which we discover ourselves.
What started in 1966 as a glossy spy procedural has, over practically sixty years, change into a contemporary fantasy in regards to the sacredness of company in an age more and more hostile to it. It turns into much less about finishing the mission, and extra about why a person retains selecting to just accept it—when he doesn’t must, when it received’t save him, and when the protected guess is to say that the result is already written.
The mission has ceased to be about stopping a bomb or unmasking a mole. It has change into about defending what makes people human: the ability to decide on the appropriate factor just because it’s the proper factor, even at nice value.
And in the long run, that may be probably the most inconceivable mission of all.
