Mission: Impossible —The Final Reckoning has hit theaters, and Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie’s most ambitious Mission: Impossible film to date has stuck the landing. The gargantuan runtime of the film is filled with death-defying stunts, impressive choreography, and an intricate story as Ethan Hunt races against the clock to stop a rogue AI known as the Entity. First introduced in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, the AI program is the focal point of the two films, presenting an antagonist unlike any Hunt has faced before. Interestingly, the antagonistic force in Final Reckoning is eerily reminiscent of Ultron, the main villain in the 2015 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Created by Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, Ultron (voiced by the incomparable James Spader) is a rogue AI who seeks to reshape the world according to his ever-evolving and twisted programming. Age of Ultron was directed by Joss Whedon and received mostly positive reviews, but nowhere near the critical acclaim that the original 2012 Avengers film received or the subsequent Infinity War and Endgame that followed it in later years. As it turns out, Final Reckoning‘s use of artificial intelligence as its main enemy would result in the film telling an improved version of Ultron’s story, albeit through the lens of a more grounded (but still bombastic) action film that focuses much more on the intricacies of fighting against a computer program.
‘The Final Reckoning’s Formidable A.I. Foe Is an All-Encompassing Threat
One of the biggest ways that Final Reckoning improves on the concept used in Age of Ultron is that it doesn’t give the Entity a physical form. In both this latest Mission: Impossible film and Dead Reckoning, the Entity is instead formless, using Esai Morales’ character, Gabriel, as its harbinger. The movie manages to explore the ramifications of an AI taking over the nuclear arsenals of several countries more intricately, as opposed to the throwaway line in Age of Ultron about the titular robot accomplishing the same task. Whereas Ultron posed a more physical threat, The Final Reckoning presents an artificial intelligence attack on multiple fronts, including misinformation, manipulation, and even the prediction of characters’ behaviors, which is much more unsettling.
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Many of Hunt’s interactions with opposing characters involve him pleading with them not to do exactly what the Entity predicts them to do, only for his warnings to amount to almost nothing. The Final Reckoning makes the few characters who listen to his warnings feel like massive wins, as he essentially asks them to go against their nature or better judgment. Overall, it’s a much more effective and personal way to make an AI a malevolent threat. Instead of direct confrontations with the Entity (of which Ethan only has one the entire film), it’s an indirect sort of warfare that feels much more chilling, and shows the wasted potential of a character like Ultron.
Ultron is also shown to have many more human traits, which feel more understandable and approachable, compared to the Entity, which doesn’t display any characteristics or habits. The somewhat unknown aspect of how the AI came to be in the Mission: Impossible films makes it considerably more frightening than what is showcased in Age of Ultron, which also helps to set these last two films in the Tom Cruise-led franchise apart. Ethan Hunt’s back is against the wall more than ever before, with the character much more isolated than in previous films.
The Fight in ‘Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning’ Is as Mental as It Is Physical
The Entity, much like Ultron, serves as a dark mirror to the film’s protagonists. Whereas Ultron is essentially a much more nihilistic Tony Stark, the AI in Mission: Impossible acts similarly to the Impossible Mission Force (IMF), only with selfish intentions. The program can infiltrate anywhere, pretend to be whatever it needs to be, and escape without a trace. The opening scene of Dead Reckoning is the perfect example of how well its abilities are portrayed, in which it tricks the submarine whose source code is in to sink itself without them ever knowing until it is too late. The Final Reckoning can tell a much more compelling version of Age of Ultron‘s story by making it as much of a philosophical battle as it is a physical one.
The main driving force of The Final Reckoning is how the world’s nuclear armaments are slowly falling one by one into the Entity’s grasp. Intercut with Hunt’s globe-trotting escapades is the crisis room in which the U.S. Government’s highest-ranking officials, including the President (played wonderfully by Angela Bassett), grapple with the moral quandary of whether to use their nuclear weapons before the Entity takes control. Ultron’s grasp on the world’s technology was hardly addressed, and it’s in Mission: Impossible that viewers are given a much better look at how the existing systems of government would react to a rogue AI seeking dominance. Moreover, the use of misinformation is eerily reminiscent of the current problems society as a whole faces, as AI continues to grow more advanced.
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The societal reaction to the Entity in The Final Reckoning is another significant aspect that is executed much better than Ultron’s portrayal. The followers of the Entity and those who seek to put it in power are something scarcely considered or addressed in the popular media involving AI. Secret disciples of the Entity ambush Hunt, which leads to even more struggles for the character and paints a grim picture of the depths humanity is capable of. They can’t even trust themselves to put up a united front against something as foreign and unreliable as an ever-evolving computer program. Between the unsettling use of misinformation, the portrayal of government officials infighting about their response to the Entity, and the AI being a more efficient and darker version of the IMF, it’s easy to see how The Final Reckoning tells a better Ultron story than the MCU.
There are also religious parallels that both The Final Reckoning and Age of Ultron utilize, which further emphasize the similarities. Allegories of Noah’s Ark and AI programs being the only things left “alive” are a theme explicitly used in both stories. Only the Entity’s plan to retain itself in hard drives, rather than a physical body, helps make it feel more disturbing and eerie than Ultron’s plans to use a homemade meteor.
‘The Final Reckoning’ Makes Full Use of Its Contemporary and Socially Relevant Digital Threat
Mission: Impossible —The Final Reckoning isn’t without its problems. Much like Avengers: Age of Ultron, the movie has so many ideas that it can feel a bit bloated at times, though it doesn’t buckle under the weight of having to set up future stories like the MCU film does. Still, one thing that Tom Cruise’s latest outing does incredibly well is explore how someone like Ethan Hunt would fare against an AI that relies on people to succumb to their basic instincts. Even in Hunt’s creepy conversation with the Entity at the beginning of the movie, The Final Reckoning conveys the terror of a computer program evolving past its original intentions better than Age of Ultron ever could.
The idea of technology taking over the world has been done time and again, though the complicated hoops that Ethan Hunt and his IMF crew are forced to jump through to bring the Entity down feel particularly unique. Although there are several similarities between this film’s antagonist and the one in Age of Ultron (right down to the design of their digital forms as blue, glowing orbs), it’s the detail-oriented approach and high-concept aspects of Final Reckoning that give the film an edge over its MCU counterpart. It’s also a film that leaves you wondering about the somewhat wasted potential of Ultron in the MCU, and how his digital presence and use of misinformation could have set Age of Ultron apart from every Avengers film before and after it. Mission: Impossible —The Final Reckoning is in theaters now. Avengers: Age of Ultron is streaming on Disney+.
