MISSION: IMMORTALITY

Tom Cruise is a funny chap. Well, not funny as in Joe Pesci in 'Goodfellas' "funny ha ha" but you know, funny as in peculiar. It's now almost become as if his off-screen destiny has become increasingly entwined with that of his characters on-screen with barely any distinction between the two. Last year it was Maverick in the sequel to 'Top Gun' and this year it's Ethan Hunt in 'Mission: Impossible -Dead Reckoning Part One" in which he reprises the role of the IMF protagonist hero of the franchise for the seventh time.  

In my assessment 'Top Gun: Maverick' (2022) was a metaphor for Tom Cruise's one-man mission to save Hollywood from destroying itself by executing a perfectly calibrated operation in which he hit the key targets by delivering big box office entertainment with laser-like precision. This was especially impressive considering the identity crisis that the industry has been suffering from with the insidious fast creep of ideological wokery informing poor 'creative' decision-making across the board.

With 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' Tom is trying to save Hollywood once again but this time it's about him rescuing it from the existential threat of artificial intelligence fast approaching. He's reminding audiences that it is the human jeopardy component of these stories he insists on making bigger and better each time (clearly demonstrated by him doing all his own daredevil stunts) that truly makes cinema the visceral experience that streaming content at home cannot rival.

The central villain of 'Dead Reckoning' is the all-knowing 'entity' a rogue AI that has sentience and can hack and manipulate all forms of military and economic infrastructure on earth as well as human beings. It even has a nefarious agent working to assist its plan for silent chaos with the remarkably unoriginal name of Gabriel. Given the current SAG strikes taking place in Hollywood where the ever-daunting repercussion of AI replacing writers looms large and the numerous headaches of digital replicas of actors with their rights/royalties and consent to be included in contracts usher in a new age of headaches for the business, it seems an appropriate threat for this latest M:I chapter and in fact, for the world at large who pretty soon will lose all sense of where reality ends and entertainment begins.

None of this is to suggest that 'Mission Impossible' is generally anything other than a slightly more cerebral giant box of cinematic popcorn with plenty of suspension of disbelief required throughout its nearly three-hour running time but such is the phenomenon of Cruise these days that it's impossible not to read into these high wire acts as representing something deeper, possibly something symbolic even. I've had little to no interest in most of the previous films in this franchise with the exception of 'Fall Out', but now as Cruise gets older I become more fascinated by his race against the clock of his own inevitable aging. How long can he maintain this illusion of youth before the cracks truly start to show on screen without the help of artificial intelligence to preserve him? And will he then, like Paul Newman, age like fine wine or will he rage against the dying of the light?  

Of course, at this point, it seems inevitable that Ethan Hunt the character on screen will outlive Tom Cruise the actor off it because the real-life 'entity' can make the already indestructible agent digitally immortal. The deep fake Tom Cruise doing the rounds on Tik Tok proves that this is only the beginning of this new ageless phenomenon for screen actors. Pretty soon we'll have Marilyn Monroe starring as the love interest in 'Cocktail 2'. You heard it here first.

Funnily enough, I swerved the opportunity to watch 'Barbieheimer' in any variation of order this past weekend, preferring instead to stick to Cruise's 'Cuprinol' of big-screen entertainment. I understand Oppenheimer's mission is, of course, about the existential dilemma of blowing things up whereas Tom Cruise's/Ethan Hunt's is to stop things blowing up or try and save as many people as he can so that we, the audience, can for a few hours put off any concerns about our own mortality. Though as I write this I wonder if this is entirely true. Tom Cruise's epic death wish stunt of riding a motorcycle of a mountain into a ravine is in some ways a reminder of the mortal shadow that follows at every turn where we commit to action so is perhaps not so dissimilar to Oppenheimer. Both men in their own ways believe they are trying to save the world and both men believe they have to carry the full weight of that responsibility on their shoulders. Oppenheimer struggled. Tom doesn't and will not!

It's also interesting to observe the curtain being slowly brought down on the last of the traditional movie stars and action heroes. Back in 2021 they finally killed off James Bond on screen in 'No Time To Die', a cinematic first for that iconic fifty-year-old franchise and it was about as poignant as watching Daniel Craig dance for Belvedere Vodka in the 2022 commercial directed by Taika Waititi which is to say not at all. I also wrote recently about how Harrison Ford's final outing as Indiana Jones in the recent 'Dial Of Destiny' (2023) meant that like most of Western men of a certain age, all he wants to do now is retreat into the past. Ethan Hunt/Tom Cruise, on the other hand, wants to face the future head-on and make sure the human race doesn't destroy itself in the process and there's certainly something admirable and compelling about that.

Of course, being a Scientologist, Cruise believes that he is immortal and that each and every one of us has unlimited capabilities. In this sense, 'Mission: Impossible' is the star's credo and manifesto combined, his mission statement if you will.

And unless one of those stunts goes wrong who are we to suggest otherwise?