Overwhelming clichés in new ‘Mission Impossible’ movie balanced out by well-shot action scenes

Graphic by Isabelle Wang

Ethan Hunt protecting the female leads.

“Mission Impossible: The Dead Reckoning Part One” feels like a competition between directors to fit as many clichés as they could into one movie. The film, originally released in July and now streaming on Amazon Prime, follows a stereotypical group of misfit bandits called the Impossible Mission Force (IMF), with the average daredevil supported by his two brains of the operation. 

Tom Cruise, a famously youthful 61, began playing his roles in the 8-part franchise in 2000. In the latest installment, he stars as Ethan Hunt, the sporty, good-looking male lead who always saves the day. Hunt’s group of friends including Luther and Benji, who are the brains behind his operation, and the female protagonist Ilsa, who matches Ethan in his physical abilities. 

Grace, a new character in the Mission Impossible series, is a pickpocket who gets roped into Hunt’s shenanigans because she has half of the key. They work together to save the world from an all-evil Artificial Intelligence (AI) entity, which only the antagonist Gabriel can understand. If the AI got into the wrong hands, it would cause the world to break into chaos. The IMF needs to get two parts of a key that controls the entity and destroy it. 

Though this movie is packed with action, it also includes too many frustrating clichés. First of all, why can’t the main character ever save his female counterpart? 

This movie follows the damsel-in-distress trope, but having the main female lead die because her savior (Hunt, in this case) was late to the party can get really annoying. In the movie, Isla dies because Hunt couldn’t find her in time, yet her death didn’t contribute anything meaningful to the story. Her death only let the movies introduce another female lead, Grace, before writing her off as well. So far, six women have been removed from the series. 

Secondly, there is no reason Ethan has to choose between the two female leads. During a bridge fight scene between Gabriel and Grace, Ethan is made to choose between either saving Isla or Grace. He should’ve chosen Isla because Grace is a new character who is nothing more than a thief running away from all her problems — in fact, she doesn’t want to be involved with the IMF at all, whereas Isla is a dedicated member. 

My third criticism is how Grace always runs away from her problems even though she is supposed to be a strong female lead who is capable of fighting villains, yet she is presented as someone who runs from her problems every chance she gets.

Her original occupation was being a pickpocket, but she gets involved in the battle for control of the AI Entity by stealing the AI Entity key. Now she faces the option of joining the IMF and living as an unknown hero or dying. 

Instead of just cooperating with Ethan, she wreaks havoc everywhere she can — she steals the key from Ethan and makes the mission impossibly over-complicated; half the movie documents them stealing the keys from each other. 

The keys controlling the AI entity adds yet another cliché. With the main plot revolving around the evils of the AI entity, it has come to my attention that AI has always been framed as “evil” or something that turns bad. Why is that? AI has been useful to our everyday lives so far, except for the inconvenience it causes to English teachers. Also, in what world is AI going to be controlled by a single key? That’s too overpowered and only slightly unrealistic. 

Having a computerized antagonist that can’t be visualized also annoys me because I can’t pin a face to the villain. The audience is just sitting there, imagining some AI computer screen that is about to control the world. It would be just as fine to have a villain turn around in their chair and reveal all their evil plans since I appreciate how that cliché adds a humorous, but nice touch. 

Despite all these clichés, I’d still say the movie’s action sequences are amazing. There is always a scene where the main characters start running from a car, into a car, and Tom Cruise motorbiking off a cliff and jumping onto a train. 

With the main action of the movie taking place in Europe, the movie provides an aesthetically pleasing background the entire time. The action is still well executed, with every fight being suspenseful until the final moment. It’s obvious that this movie had a large budget when it came to the filming aspect — just not scriptwriting. 

I’d give it 3.5 Falcons out of 5. Even with all its shortcomings, the movie is still interesting enough to watch because it adds enough suspense between the falling trains and stunt scenes that my brain can still be interested in 2 hours and 43 minutes.