Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning moved the franchise further into sci-fi territory with the introduction of The Entity. The malevolent AI is the first non-human antagonist Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has faced; sure, he’s dealt with a nuclear football and something called the Rabbit’s Foot, but those threats were always tools for flesh-and-blood villains to wield. In Dead Reckoning, it’s the Entity calling the shots. It knows everything about Ethan — his past, present, and future — and how to leverage it all against him. His last adventure pushed him to the brink, leaving him (and the audience) on a precarious cliffhanger.
Evil AI is a common genre trope, but it’s taken nearly 30 years for the Mission: Impossible franchise to embrace it. Now, that exploration will continue with The Final Reckoning, the next (and possibly last) chapter. The upcoming film picks up about two months after the events of Dead Reckoning, priming Ethan for his rematch against the Entity and its henchmen. As previous trailers have already teased, this fight will be big. It’ll also take the franchise further into the realm of science fiction, forcing Ethan to embrace the very entity he’s trying to defeat.
