Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is the end of a franchise that turned Tom Cruise into an action hero

As the late David Lynch would insist, suffering is not a prerequisite for great art. True as that may be, the Mission: Impossible films have excelled at making great art from Tom Cruise's suffering.

The eighth entry in the series — ominously subtitled The Final Reckoning — has been teased as the swan-song for Ethan Hunt, the beleaguered secret agent (and transparent Cruise avatar) who's spent nearly three decades sprinting, shooting and skydiving at the behest (or in defiance) of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF), a special-agent unit concealed even from the CIA.

Mission: Impossible's byzantine espionage plots have long been secondary to the attraction of seeing how many ways the world's most hyper-competent secret agent — breathlessly described as "the living manifestation of destiny" – can be physically humbled. To that end, Hunt’s recent escapades have seen him tumble down the Spanish Steps, drowned in an underwater vault, and pinned to the side of numerous airborne vehicles.

At a time when CGI-laden blockbusters have dulled even the most extraordinary superhuman feats on screen, Cruise's fanatic insistence on performing the films' most extravagant stunts makes the films feel thrillingly alive, daring audiences to look away as real blood, flesh and bones are risked for their entertainment. 

How many A-list actors would push to have a real knife held half a centimetre from their pupil, or to perform a motorbike jump so dangerous, the film's financiers demanded it be filmed on the first day of production in case of disaster?

His adrenaline-junkie pursuit of action-cinema realism has not been without personal cost — six years ago, Mission: Impossible — Fallout sold itself on the promise of watching its billion-dollar star break his ankle at the end of a spirited rooftop leap.

An action star is born

Love him or hate him, audiences across the world have kept the theatrical industry afloat by paying to watch the biggest name in Hollywood defy death on the silver screen.

There once was a time, however, when Tom Cruise resisted his destiny as cinema's most maniacally determined action star.

Just when the rip-roaring success of Tony Scott's Top Gun was set to coronate the young actor as a prettier, fresh-faced alternative to the hyper-masc heroes of the Reagan era — the kind who processed his daddy issues to serve his country — Cruise shrewdly stepped away from the genre.

For the next decade, his larger-than-life intensity would instead be channelled into prestige mid-budget dramas. The result was a run of films spanning The Colour of Money, Rain Man, and A Few Good Men, which flexed his considerable acting chops and hoisted him above his peers.

When the first Mission: Impossible (directed by visionary voyeur Brian De Palma) premiered in 1996 — the height of Cruise's stardom — it was only his second action film, and an outlier in his career. As both producer and lead actor, Cruise refashioned the 60s spy serial into a contemporary paranoid thriller, as well as his personal star vehicle.

Fan service, it was not. Considering the kid-glove preciousness with which intellectual property is now treated, it's hilarious and cathartic to watch as the IMF squad is brutally wiped out in the first 30 minutes, (save for Ethan Hunt), while the team leader of the original series, Jim Phelps, is flipped into a conniving villain. The show's fans were understandably displeased, but Mission: Impossible's Cruise-centric, self-aggrandising approach has endured as a unique selling point.

Tom Cruise: The Entertainer

The observation that Tom Cruise only ever plays himself is not only boring, it's wrong. More accurately, each role has revealed, explored, or challenged the different sides of his persona, whether it's Bill Harford's emasculated pervert in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut or the grotesque studio exec Less Grossman of Tropic Thunder.

The fluctuations of Cruise's career can be mapped onto the evolution of Ethan Hunt throughout the years. The cocky rebel of the first film turned into a family man in J. J. Abrams' third instalment; when that failed to convince audiences, who began feasting on his myriad PR blunders, the films dropped any pretence of both protagonist and star being remotely normal.

Brad Bird's 2011 entry, Ghost Protocol, began with Cruise literally cooped up in jail — an apt summary of his dwindling commercial viability in the mid to late 2000's. This was the outing where everything went wrong, submitting Ethan Hunt to a giddily cartoonish set of pratfalls and tech mishaps. The series' inherent exceptionalism — that only Tom Cruise can save the world — persisted, though the actor sensed that his immaculately aging, consummately talented alter-ego needed to be knocked down a peg.

Ghost Protocol was also the first Mission film to bill itself on a jaw-dropping practical stunt: the scaling of the Burj Khalifa, which lays claim to being one of the series' most singularly memorable set pieces.

When audiences lined up to watch the defenestration of Cruise from the tallest building on the planet, it was clear that Tom Cruise the character actor had died — and Tom Cruise the entertainer had taken his place.

The last great action hero?

In 2025, adaptations and mega franchises — not movie stars — are king. Or, as Captain America's Anthony Mackie has bluntly pointed out: "the evolution of the superhero has meant the death of the movie star".

The kind of mature acting showcases that defined Cruise's ascension have become increasingly niche, netting modest returns at best. Promising young actors like Tom Holland may be box-office dynamite as Spider-Man or Nathan Drake, but their star wattage can't draw viewers towards original projects.

When Cruise's Mission: Impossible run is over — at the age of 62, that inevitability draws ever closer — he will have left behind not just the most consistently exciting blockbuster series, but one of the most daring star projects in Hollywood history.

It is worth lamenting what has been discarded in the process. At the risk of discrediting his dedicated action hero performances (Edge of Tomorrow, in particular, deserves a mention), it's been two decades since the actor has taken on a challenging dramatic role, and it remains to be seen whether Cruise can make it in the wilderness outside of the safety net of franchise filmmaking.

Other than a promise to literally shoot a film in space, the only upcoming project on Cruise's slate is an untitled film directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, which recently wrapped — a canny move, considering the director's skill at building showy, Oscar-calibrated exaltations of aging actors like Michael Keaton and Leonardo Di Caprio. (One imagines that Cruise would've volunteered to do The Revenant's bear assault for real.)

Restoring old-fashioned movie stardom to its rightful glory may be his most impossible mission yet, but it'll be thrilling to watch Tom Cruise try.