The Final Reckoning, Perhaps

Nora and I went to see "The Final Reckoning" a couple of weeks ago. For those of you who have not been following the last few Mission Impossible movies, this is supposed to be the last in the series.

First, we enjoyed the movie, although I felt that it was not quite as good as the last two, "Fallout" and "Dead Reckoning".

If you are planning to see the movie, you may want to wait until doing so to read the rest of this post, as I will discuss the ending. Not that it isn't easy to guess the ending of any these movies, as Ethan Hunt always catches the bad guy and/or averts world catastrophe.

One of the reasons I didn't enjoy the movie as much as some of the previous efforts was that I thought there were some moments when the movie plodded along, especially the extended time spent in the submarine.

Also, while so many of the exploits of Ethan and his team seem fantastical, the plan in which Hunt is to be rescued by the rest of the team as he floats in the frigid water under the Arctic ice, a rescue which requires exact timing and loads of luck, seemed unrealistic, again, even for this series of movies. Also, the rescue itself was not really displayed on screen; he is floating, presumably lifeless, underwater one scene then is being given mouth to mouth on an ice floe the next scene.

I mentioned this movie in my last post, in relation to our changing relationship with technology, AI in this case. This highlights another hard-to-believe scenario as we are supposed to accept that the only way to defeat The Entity, as the evil AI technology is called, is to act in a completely unpredictable way as any logical approach, any rational plan, will have already been predicted by The Entity, and therefore been addressed, before it even happens.

There is a bit of uncertainty among Hunt's team, when they wonder if The Entity had allowed Hunt to figure out where the key to disabling it was located, so that it could take it from him thereby eliminating the only plausible way to defeat it, but Hunt is, if nothing, the always positive action hero who believes that by gaining access to the key and allowing the Entity to acquire it is exactly what needs to be done to win the day. 

If The Entity was a person, one might call that playing to its over confidence, or bravado, or pride that no one could possible outsmart it.

In some ways, that could be a nice moral, be careful of technology, or a person, who claims to always know the best path, to always be the smartest person in the room.

When Grace, one of Hunt's teammates, suggests that perhaps they should try to control The Entity, rather than destroy it, I was impressed by Ethan Hunt's response in which he asks her who could be trusted to control such extreme power. I was further impressed when, after she answers, you, he immediately dismisses the thought, hopefully, in recognition that such power should never rest in the hands of any one person. Again, nice lesson considering the rhetoric emanating from the White House.

Sadly though, after a plan that requires Grace to react in the "blink of an eye", about 100 milliseconds, The Entity is captured in a hand held holding devise created by the Luther character, who, unfortunately, dies in the movie before he can witness the success, or failure of the mission.

I say sadly, because the device is given to Ethan Hunt, despite his claim that he didn't want it, and contrary to what everyone in authority is told, that The Entity was destroyed.

Since this is Hollywood, I assume that last scene leaves the possibility of another Final Reckoning in the future.

As I mentioned above, the Luther character dies in the movie. But at the end, there is a message from him to Ethan that he had recorded before he died. It is presented as a message that he made specifically for Ethan, knowing that when it was played he would be dead. It is a message of hope, that he had no doubt that Ethan would prevail because, as sappy as is sounds, he is a good man. Someone who has a history of actions that, at times, created the possibility of large scale death, but which were done to save just one person, often his wife who appears on and off in the series, or one of his teammates.

I took it as the belief, by Luther, that precisely because Ethan would risk many lives to save just one, he always knew that Ethan would prevail. That too many people justified the sacrifice of one, or the few, to save the many, as opposed to fighting with all one's strength to save each and every person because once it is accepted that this person, or those people, can be left to die, it is a short step to playing god and picking and choosing without conscience.

Again, analogous to the current administration's rounding up of all illegal immigrants to catch the really bad ones. It doesn't matter how many innocent lives are ruined in the course of that plan, as long as some criminals are removed from our country. Guilty until proven innocent one would think is not very American, but since when does the current president care about honoring the foundations of our country that has made it great.

Anyway, The Final Reckoning is certainly worth seeing as there are a number of thought provoking lessons that one could discern from the story, despite portions of the plot bordering on the truly impossible.