They actually tried to rectify that middle finger in this movie but as MJ noted it was shoehorned in and didnt make much sense (or have any payoff either).

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Wed May 28, 2025 4:37 pm I mean Atwell was ill served by this movie's decision to nix romance altogether...along with humor. This movie was so solemn and serious it became unintentionally funny as we referenced in a few places. That didn't play to her strengths either.

It's especially egregious as Dead Reckoning, on my recent rewatch, had some of the biggest laughs in the franchise for me. The whole Rome car chase was full of great gags, almost reminding me of a Roger Moore Bond films at times.



They even utilize an almost-identical car and swipe the same beat of Cruise's incredulous reaction to his getaway vehicle! Still, that scene -- and many others in the film -- generated as many laughs as thrills, keeping things light and entertaining throughout. I know that Final Reckoning is the "last" of the films (at least until Paramount reboots with a different leading man and concept, hopefully dialing back the stunt-show excesses and going for actual espionage again), but why do the last hurrahs of cinematic heroes have to be so moribund and depressing? This one thankfully didn't go full No Time To Die (Cruise, unlike Daniel Craig, saw the value of not killing off the character he's been playing for decades), but still, we go to these films for a good time, we don't need to hear endless, ponderous speeches about Ethan being "The living manifestation of destiny" or whatever. It just sucks that FR was such a disappointment, because it now squanders what DR set up with such sprightly energy and wit. Not to the degree of leaden "part twos" like the third entries in the Matrix and Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogies, but FR's rep is gonna go down significantly over time.

mkaroly wrote: ↑Wed May 28, 2025 1:01 pm Interesting...I know very little about Scientology and always just assumed (incorrectly perhaps) that any religious symbolism in his movies would be tied to Scientology. Is that what it teaches???

I don't know much about Scientology either but I doubt any of the symbols I mentioned would have been intentionally pointing to that religion. And I'm not saying this is the only way to view the movie, it's just nice to see a mainstream Hollywood movie whose screenplay makes use of very old storytelling techniques.

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Wed May 28, 2025 4:41 pm They actually tried to rectify that middle finger in this movie but as MJ noted it was shoehorned in and didnt make much sense (or have any payoff either).

Speaking of a middle finger...what do you guys make of them retconning the Rabbit's Foot from the third movie to now be something extremely important? Is that a middle finger to J.J. Abrams and his stupid mystery box garbage?

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Wed May 28, 2025 4:41 pm They actually tried to rectify that middle finger in this movie but as MJ noted it was shoehorned in and didnt make much sense (or have any payoff either).

I've looked it up and won't reveal it, but boy that's something they should have done in the second film and if they had, maybe I would have given the franchise a chance. An article though does defend the "lack of payoff" thing as more "believable" than showing that character and Cruise suddenly becoming chummy.

https://www.slashfilm.com/1866631/the-f ... 1748026965

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Wed May 28, 2025 10:25 am
That's what I don't understand -- why is THIS the movie that looks like it had pandemic shooting restrictions applied to it? The only thing I can surmise is the announced budget is a smokescreen and isn't as high as they have reported.

Wikipedia claims the budget is between $300 and $400 million, but I can't for the life of me see where it went. So many sequences are shot inside of rooms, or murky, underlit tunnels, to the point where it feels more like something shot during the summer of 2020 or early in '21. Dead Reckoning was shot during this time, and was shut down multiple times by Covid restrictions (leading to Cruise's infamous, Les Grossman-style rant at a couple of crew members ), so I can understand the budget scaling to over $290 million (the laudable fact that Cruise paid members of the crew out of his own pocket to tide them over during the shutdown periods must have been a big chunk of that. Witness how 2022's The Northman was budgeted at $60 million, and ended up costing over $90 million due to being shut down multiple times), but what's this movie's excuse? In terms of "bang for the buck", I can't think of a chintzier-looking movie to be made for this amount of money outside of the MCU.

I bet that's not the actual cost of what ended up on-screen. I totally agree, that movie doesn't look like it cost that or even close. The lack of location shooting is a dead giveaway!

The mystery over that woman still billed in the credits is also so weird it defies description.

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Wed May 28, 2025 8:44 pm The mystery over that woman still billed in the credits is also so weird it defies description.

She's ninth-billed in the opening credits of Dead Reckoning, doesn't have a single line, and is nowhere to be seen in The Final Reckoning. The writers had to have been "saving" her for an expanded role in FR (the trailer shows her breathing into Cruise's lungs underwater!), so that's a dead giveaway the movie was heavily restructured at some point following the 2023 strikes, when they had an incomplete movie and probably had a lot of time to second-guess themselves. I'm almost certain the reveal of Shea Whigham's lineage was also added, because it comes out of nowhere and was not even hinted at in the previous movie. I'd love to see an honest account about the making (and unmaking) of this movie, which seems as fractured and patched-together as anything the MCU has spat out in the last five years. You wonder how the next Fast & Furious movie (if Universal ever makes it, and I'm doubtful at this point) will try to recover from that awful cliffhanger in Fast X. It'd probably be as incoherent as this.

), so that's a dead giveaway the movie was heavily restructured at some point following the 2023 strikes, when they had an incomplete movie and probably had a lot of time to second-guess themselves.

The irony here is that extended production time that gave TOP GUN MAVERICK a chance to become a polished piece of escapist perfection made DEAD RECKONING worse on every conceivable level.

And I think that boils down to the difference between having Kosinski doing MAVERICK but McQuarrie here, who comes off as more of a writer than a director -- always has, and this movie suffers for it, because it's endlessly over-written and over-explained. He's been in interviews admitting they "second guessed themselves" and "listened to the audience" in helping to "shape" the final product -- but if his solution was to waste the entire first hour of this movie on added exposition (what viewer wanted THAT?!?), it shows how clueless he is as a filmmaker...or at the least is someone who is mainly effective when he's got someone else (or a script that's finished) helping to temper his sensibilities. Left alone to his own devices he can mangle the finished product and it happened here.

I'd be interested in seeing the trailer again for those shots with the actress that was tossed. The removal of a love story between Cruise and Atwell in this movie was telling when the whole last installment was pointing towards it. I mean, I expected she'd at least walk off with Hunt at the end -- we don't even get that!

Interesting analysis -- I definitely agree the ending of this certainly DIDN'T feel definitive in any way.

There are two possible conclusions: either Final Reckoning is a bloated, unsatisfying end to an otherwise phenomenal action series, or it’s not the end of the series at all. The choice to include a death-and-resurrection to the truth that Ethan Hunt is the chosen one could indicate that his character arc is not complete. There could be more to the story.

Personally, I am NOT a fan of killing off the lead character of a franchise just to definitively say "It's over" (especially as it so seldom sticks...look at Alien: Resurrection). The Dark Knight Rises was kind of the perfect way to send off Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne is a manner that felt definitive and emotionally/dramatically satisfying without dropping a million bombs on his head.

I agree in general but the rest of that makes some good points. Given Hunt just ends up walking off ALONE at the end of this its not any more satisfying IMO. I mean people were standing around waiting/hoping there was more after the credits because whats there is not definitive. Obviously theyre planning on making another one...perhaps at a thriftier price (which it would have to be)....regardless of whatever Cruise has said. McQuarrie has admitted as much.

Paramount won't let one of its signature franchises die, so they'll probably make one that hews closer to the original TV series (more of a team ensemble, leaning more towards espionage and subterfuge than insane, costly stunts), and, if Cruise sticks around, will relegate him to the "Jim Phelps" role. Considering the obscene, Covid and strike-bloated budgets of the last two, they have to dial it back somehow. There's no reason one of these should cost more than $150 million. Hell, Guy Ritchie made the very stylish and satisfying (and underrated) Man From U.N.C.L.E. for $75 mil, and that's what I'd like to see from a potential new iteration of the M:I franchise.

Like we said the budget makes no sense, it had to have been overruns off the last movie, nothing on-screen looked like it approached that price tag.