Who knew the latest ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie would be so polarising?
Call the Mission: Impossible franchise what you will, but ‘polarising’ it is not. Crowd-pleasing. Long. Extremely loud. Full of stunts. Tom Cruise. All of these descriptors fit the bill, but from its humble beginnings in the mid-1990s, it’s been the definition of a middle-of-the-road blockbuster franchise that just about anyone can get on board with. If summer blockbusters aren’t your thing, you’ll probably skip it when the opportunity arises, but there is nothing inherently divisive about it.
So why, following its Cannes premiere on Wednesday, were critics so divided about the supposed final instalment of the series, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning? Reprising his role as IMF operative Ethan Hunt, Cruise is at it again, accepting an impossible mission involving a world-destroying AI programme called ‘The Entity.’ As usual, the actor has made headlines for his stunts in the movie, and he even went to the trouble of standing atop the BFI last week to the thrill of the 24-hour news cycle.
The Final Reckoning was screened ‘Out of Competition’ and is expected to kick off the summer blockbuster season later this month when it gets a wide release. If you were to guess how critics might respond to it, you’d probably base your answer on previous instalments in the series. They will praise the stunts and the scale of the whole thing, but offer a lukewarm to negative assessment of the plot, character development, and runtime.
When the reviews hit the internet, however, many of them were distinctly less equivocal than that. Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian gave it five out of five stars. So did The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin. Neither of these men is easy to please, nor are they inclined to adore big-budget studio fare. But lest you think they were the toughest critics to crack, David Ehrlich of IndieWire panned the film as disjointed and flat, and even went so far as to invoke the word ‘heartbreaking.’ Similarly, David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter condemned it as tantamount to self-parody.
Film critics are just people, of course, and as such, are highly subjective about the movies they watch. But the polarising reviews for such a benign and, dare I say, vanilla franchise are surprising. So, is this so-called-but-probably-not-actually final Mission: Impossible film that galvanising, or is the combination of Tom Cruise plus the Grand Théâtre Lumière just so darn exhilarating that it demanded a passionately decisive response?
Cannes is known for its emotion-filled screenings. Walkouts are common. Some films have inspired dozens of audience members to flee the theatre, and one even sent more than a hundred of them running for the exits. Then, there are those notorious standing ovations. Remember The Artist, that silent French musical about the dawn of Hollywood that somehow won the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’? It received a 12-minute standing ovation. Kevin Costner’s widely maligned epic Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 got a nine-minute ovation, tipping the film well past the three-hour mark. Last night, Final Reckoning got eight minutes, the same as the 2022 Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness.
In other words, Cannes audiences can get pretty carried away, even the ones filled with cynical movie critics. It’s likely that the average moviegoer who is not breathing the rarified air of the French Riviera will feel exactly the same about the latest Ethan Hunt hijinks that they’ve felt about all the others. You’ll dance out of the theatre if you’re a fan. If you’re not, it probably won’t change your mind. That said, you may as well check it out for yourself, preferably on the biggest screen possible.
