'Mission: Impossible' 8: God, Grace & The Last Movie Star

Just before Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning began, the theater showed a video with star and producer Tom Cruise addressing the audience, thanking them for coming to see the film on the big screen, as it was meant to be seen.

Down the row from me, a moviegoer answered back, “We love you.”

From the looks of MI:TFR‘s weekend box-office take — $77M domestically, $204M internationally, a record for the series — that sentiment is shared worldwide.

The Eighth — and Final (?) — Film in the Mission: Impossible Franchise

Impossible Mission Force Agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team — tech-turned-field-agent Benji (Simon Pegg), computer-wizard Luther (Ving Rhames), pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), and former foes Paris (Pom Klementieff) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) — are again battling the “truth-eating” AI called The Entity.

Evil Gabriel (Esai Morales) is back, as are all the various politicians, military types and government officials that Ethan regularly impresses and infuriates in equal measure.

And that sunken Russian submarine that everyone’s looking for? It may not be entirely secure in its perch on the sea floor.

But, I wanted to know, “Does God make an appearance … again?”

Back in 2023, when the previous film, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, came out, I did a big rewatch of the series to prepare and noticed a whole lot of religious references, some of them overtly Catholic.

You can click on the link in the last sentence — or this one, where the story was recently reposted to the company blog I edit — to see my rundown of what I found in five-and-a-bit of the first seven movies.

And if you’re wondering if it all continues in film number eight … does it ever.

Obviously, Cruise is a very public Scientologist, but he has a Catholic background (that’s also in the earlier post). That being said, I wouldn’t presume to speak for Cruise or whatever belief or mix of beliefs he has.

But whether it’s just making use of dramatic symbolism or springing from the effect of a long-ago Catholic baptism, the stuff is in the films.

To begin with, if you’ve seen Dead Reckoning, you already know the fate of the world rests on a cruciform key, rendered in gold with jewels.

Explaining the Gordian Knot of a plot of the 2-hour-50-minute The Final Reckoning would take nearly as long as the film itself, so I’ll leave that to your viewing of it to figure out, but here are just some of the religious references I found.

The Faith-Related Bits of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning

“It is written.” Something Jesus says. And, “Nothing is written.” (OK, that’s from Lawrence of Arabia.)

The President: The Entity has inspired a doomsday cult with acolytes devoted to ridding the world of corruption through human extinction.

Male Cultist 1: And he said unto Noah, “Behold…”

Female Cultist: “…I will bring a flood upon the Earth to destroy all flesh.”

Male Cultist 2: The children of the atom shall rise from the ashes.

Female Cultist 2: And the Entity will help them rebuild.

Ethan: The Anti-God.

The team must go to an island in the Bering Sea called St. Matthew (it’s real, BTW), where lives a man in need of redemption.

A St. Christopher medal makes a cameo appearance.

Degas: Why would it [The Entity] wanna survive? What does it stand to gain from wiping out all life on Earth?

Donloe: A question Noah and his family must’ve asked just before the flood.

Benji: The Anti-God thinks it’s God. (Benji is also fond of exclaiming, “For God’s sake …)

Ethan: We can deceive the Lord of Lies.

And what ultimately saves the world? Grace.

What, you say, that’s it? That’s all? Hey, as I said two years ago, none of this stuff needs to be there. And for sure, nothing goes into these movies unless Cruise gives his imprimatur. So, whatever’s there, is there on purpose.

And what’s the purpose, you ask?

Ask Cruise. I’m just watching the thing.

Overall, the film’s themes center on love, loyalty, self-sacrifice, friendship, resisting the siren song of evil, and the ability of one person, and humanity itself, to rise above and choose something other than destruction.

Not bad for a big-screen summer blockbuster.

The Navy Thing

Oh, and just for fun, the film name-checks an actual U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, the nuclear-powered, Nimitz-class USS George H. W. Bush — and got to film on it.

From ChannelNews.com.au:

Tom Cruise and the cast spent three days aboard the USS George H.W. Bush, a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class carrier, during active training operations in the Adriatic Sea.

Supported by US Navy and Air Force Special Operations, the crew also filmed with tiltrotor CV-22 Ospreys and even a Virginia-class submarine.

Before people get all bothered thinking this is a political statement, my guess is that it just happened to be the carrier available at the time.

After all, Cruise recently spent time on an aircraft carrier — and made the Navy look really good — in Top Gun: Maverick. The Navy even did a video about it.

Is The Final Reckoning Worth Going to See?

I think so. In this gig, I see a lot of movies, but I don’t pay for most of them. I paid for this one, and I’d pay for it again (same with the last MI movie, and Top Gun: Maverick).

There is some critical grousing about the film, that there’s a lot of exposition, and it drags in the middle. Yeah, OK, sure, but I still had a great time. And the large audience I saw it with cheered and clapped at the end.

Vox populi, vox Dei.

Tom Cruise, the Last Movie Star

Unlike too many in the film industry today, Cruise knows what he’s good at, he knows what his fans want, and he’s not afraid (or ashamed) to give it to them.

Cruise seems to have a rather singular personal life — to say the least — but his relationship with the screen and his audience is rock-solid. He very much wants movies to survive, and he’s willing to risk life and limb to get people into the theater.

As Japanese game creator Hideo Kojima said on X:

Went to see “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” in IMAX. It begins with Tom greeting the audience and ends with a glance he throws our way. This wasn’t a film about Ethan Hunt saving the world from the threat of digital domination — it was a film about Tom Cruise, putting his life on the line in a desperate struggle to save cinema itself, which is slowly vanishing from the world. It was the movie of a man who lives and breathes film. I still want to see him keep making the impossible, possible. I hope this series continues. At 61, I’m proud to be a follower of Tom, who’s 62.

If going to see movies in theaters does disappear, it certainly won’t be Tom Cruise’s fault.