The Final Reckoning (...it better be)

A scriptwriter takes it "personal"

Take a look. That’s the Tom-face that green-lit this film.

I recently sat through ten minutes shy of three hours to endure Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, a fat, bloated, agonizingly slow eulogy to Tom Cruise before he is officially dead. I was willing to let it go until ScriptMag.com caught my eye with an article titled, “What Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Can Teach Screenwriters.”

OMG. Really? The sub head reads, “The latest installment in the Mission: Impossible series boasts a long runtime and massive action sequences, with storytelling tricks we can study.” I’ve been triggered, I’ll confess it right now.

This trope-laden anvil, mislabeled “entertainment,” begins with Cruise staring soulfully into the camera while Angela Basset, AKA Madam President, equally soulful, reads at least a two pages of script that amount to an M:I Ethan eulogy, illustrated with montage of past heroics. Please Ethan, please come back. We need you. Apparently, Ethan is now just too old and tired, or maybe such a dick, that he has to be cajoled to counter the current global extinction event.

Oh yeah, the perpetrator of said world melt down? A big, blue, pulsing, flashing, screen-filling “entity” that can take over the world’s defense systems to destroy most, but not all people in the world. Some people are given lines to pretend, not act, that they think this is a good idea.

Screenwriters Erik Jendresson and director Christopher McQuarrie turn to what has become by now the worn out re-tread of the “Ghost Busters” franchise: Just suck “IT” up and store it in a convenient takeout-sized container. Luther is already soldering components together when Ethan finally gets off the couch.

Never mind the conceit that this omnipotent force can control minds and world-wide energy sources. When the moment of unleashed carnage begins, said entity will want to hide somewhere. So it will seek out a container the size of a salt shaker and allow itself to be captured mere moments before missiles launch-- thus preventing said missile launch—cut to end.

Everyone gets a last moment on screen, including dead Luther (mostly dead when M:IFR opens) who delivers another soulful screed describing the world all sane people want to live in (unless it happens to be in that theater at that moment).

At least I think that’s the story. Along the way, we are witness to every trope you could pay any screenwriter to tell you to avoid. The unique twist this time around is that the Ethan character is often stripped of imagination or power. For example:

Luther is trapped in a room with a bomb that will blow up. Ethan (tired and old) can’t save him, but he can bang on the bars to show how upset he is with the situation – then run.

Ethan must pull his old team together. When he finds them, he must beg them (“please, please”) not to kill each other.

Next we meet bad guys and rivals from past films. In a genealogy that rivals the Bible, all characters are introduced with clips from past movies. That’s pretty much the first couple hours.

Then the “massive action sequences” begin: Ethan goes underwater to reclaim something important (no idea) from a sunken Russian submarine; Ethan recaps the throwback version of “Top Gun” as he and Worst Bad Guy (WBG) fly around in Eddie Rickenbacker-era prop planes. Cruise proves he is not too old and tired to do his own stunts, leaping from his plane to WBG’s and pushing WBG out to his death (as we know he must). Ethan himself appears to fall without a parachute, but we know he has one. Yep, he does. (See the BTS on how to prep for these stunts - much more interesting.)

Other characters so, so predictable:

Madam President will nearly push the red button to begin world destruction. But she won’t do it, despite being yelled at by a room full of important men.

Second Lead gets shot and must be saved from a “collapsed lung.” We all know how to do this by now – grab the ink pen that doesn’t have ink in it but does have a sharp point (everybody carries one), disassemble it in one swift shake of the wrist and jam it in beneath the second rib. Better yet, have the M:I Team Killer evidence hesitation like, “But what if I kill him?” Coincidentally, the M:I Team Killer is a beautiful blonde in the mode of Sharon Stone, Charlize Theron, Uma Thurman, etc., who never speaks English, but is evidently understood by all.

Back to ScriptMag.com, that started all this by not letting me forget what I hoped would be a very dim memory by now.

The article praised the screenwriters for setting up scenes where characters finish each other’s sentences to show they know what “The Plan” is even though they are across the world from each other. Really? That’s why we have to sit through scene after scene reassuring us audience members that this crack team can communicate? Why not cut 30-45 minutes and let us assume as much.

The next ScriptMag.com laurel goes for “Overlapping Action Climax”. For those who have never thought of it before, “increased stakes…put the audience on the edge of their seat. It also gives you something to cut away to, and build tension that way.”

Yeah, but you kind of need tense situations to build tension. As an audience member whose seat was inclined, I can testify that I was nowhere near the edge. No amount of pounding soundtrack or cross cutting of predictable stake-raising could possibly have made me sit up, actually wake up, as we came to the merciful end of this movie.

In fact, by the end, my response was prayerful: Please, Tom, (please, please) no more. And ScriptMag.com, get your nose out of Tom’s ass.