The analysis accurately exposes how an omnipotent antagonist strips away character agency, turning the plot into a series of hollow coincidences. It is a sharp critique of how modern blockbusters often sacrifice narrative logic for artificial stakes.
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Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning is Not Very Good (reupload)Added:
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning is an intricate web of plot threads, double crosses, backstabbery, shifting allegiances, and coincidences, and is propelled largely by an incomprehensibly intelligent villain who is always one step ahead of the heroes. You may be thinking, "But random. Isn't that like saying Transformers 7 is just excessive, bland, physics defying CGI robots punching each other while the celebrity actors emote as best they can through their plastic surgery in front of a green screen?" Is my reductive description not exactly what the Mission Impossible films are? Is that not exactly why people go to see them? If that is your perspective, then lend me your attention for the next while, and I will explain the difference between a good Mission Impossible film and a bad Mission Impossible film. The Mission Impossible films are more often than not a bit silly. However, the previous film in the series, Mission Impossible: Fallout, demonstrated that even in a film in which the plot and characters exist so as to allow for insane action set pieces, even in a film with an almost gleefully complex plot that can be hard to follow, even in a film which firmly prioritizes the visual spectacle of its action sequences, it is possible for all of this to be extremely tightly written and thematically consistent, resulting in a spectacular action movie that is above all coherent. Mission Impossible Fallout is one of the best action movies of the 2010s. So, what the hell happened to Dead Reckoning? Full spoilers for both movies from here on out. We open aboard the top secret Russian submarine, the Sevastaster. They have been testing an active learning defense system for the last 74 days, and it is operating flawlessly. The Sevastasteral has deliberately approached every navy in the world and has remained entirely undetected thanks to the defense system which it carries on board. The defense system then unexpectedly takes control of their radars and weapon systems. And the short version is that it tricks the crew into firing at a non-existent enemy sub only to wind up struck by their own torpedo, sinking the Sevastaster and killing the crew. These two keys around the necks of the crew members are extremely important to the plot of Dead Reckoning. So my first question is why does it require two keys to access the defense systems mainframe but only one person? Something extremely powerful or dangerous requiring two or more keys to access is a principle that makes complete sense as it makes it impossible for one person to access whatever is inside. And so it would be harder for a single rogue agent to start a nuclear war, for example. The mcguffin in dead reckoning, however, is one single key that separates into two individual parts. Only when combined do they function as the key to the defense system. I have absolutely no idea why the system would have been designed in this manner, as it simply makes it inconvenient for one person to use the key rather than making it impossible. It appears that whoever designed the key in this way was aware that it was going to be the mcguffin for a Mission Impossible film and therefore designed it so that you need to attach two separate mcguffins together to make a super mcguffin. Despite this not being a practical or sensible thing to do in universe, speaking of things that don't make sense happening solely to facilitate the plot of a Mission Impossible film, what exactly is the deal with these corpses? The deceased crew of the Sevastapole float to the surface, but remain underneath the polar ice caps. As we are well aware, when a submarine is hit by a torpedo and suffers catastrophic damage, the submarine will sink. The bodies of the crew, however, will spill out of the hole in the submarine caused by the torpedo and will float to the surface.
There are no interior doors that would perhaps get in the way of the bodies as they desperately try to propel the plot of Dead Reckoning. As submarines are, of course, singlechamber vessels similar in complexity to the interior of a rubber duck. Of course, the reason why these dead bodies manage to escape the submarine and float to the surface is so as to allow the two parts of the key to become the mcguffins in a Mission Impossible movie whilst simultaneously allowing the location of the Sevastapole itself to remain a mystery that will serve as the mcguffin of Dead Reckoning Part Two. Oh, uh, sorry, I mean untitled eighth Mission Impossible film. A few months later, Ethan Hunt is informed by the IMF that the US government is searching for the key, but the message does not disclose to Ethan what the key is used to open. Ethan is also informed that Ilsa Foust, a disavowed MI6 agent, attacked a courier whom they believe was carrying one half of the key. The US government has sent bounty hunters to kill Ilsa and retrieve the key. And the IMF wants Ethan to find Ilsa before the bounty hunters do so as to acquire the key and bring it back to the IMF. Ethan is informed that Ilsa is likely hiding somewhere in the Arabian desert. So to summarize, go to Saudi Arabia, find Ilsa, get key, bring to IMF, grab mom, kill Phil, go to the Winchester, and wait for this whole thing to blow over.
All in all, this is relatively simple as far as impossible missions go. But don't worry, the unhinged insanity portion of the film is not far off. Anyway, Ethan locates the bounty hunters and a fight breaks out. The conclusion of which is that Ethan and Elsa kill all of them, but Ethan finds Elsa apparently dead. It is revealed about 5 minutes later that Elsa did not die here during her first scene. That may or may not happen later, but for now, Ethan takes the half of the key from her and tells Elsa to disappear. We then cut to the intelligence community briefing in Washington DC where they are discussing an artificial intelligence that has gone rogue. The entity I will get back to the specifics of what exactly the entity has done and what it is capable of doing later. For now, let's just say that the entity can do anything. It is a god in a box. A god that can access anything that is connected to the internet. And I want to reiterate this to make sure you understand. The antagonist of this film is a computer program that can do anything to anything that is connected to the internet. Being the intelligence community, they naturally suggest disconnecting their intelligence services from all networks. But they decide that this wouldn't work because they would still need humans to man them and humans would still be corruptible as the entity already has its digital fingers in everyone's computers. In other words, instead of suddenly seeing hundreds of news articles on Twitter right around election time about how the politician you don't like has committed a number of atrocities and you should totally go and vote for the other guy, and instead of receiving DMs from hot 22-year-old Russian ladies offering to defile themselves and love you long time in exchange for legal residency in your country, you will instead see subliminal messages about how you should totally reconnect the intelligence services to the internet so that the entity can be even more intelligent. Anyway, CIA Director Kitridge explains that they do not want to destroy the entity. They want to control it.
>> Let us use it against him.
>> He explains that the CIA's assets in the Kremlin have informed him that the Russians are focusing the majority of their intelligence activity on acquiring the two halves of the key we saw used earlier by the crew of the Sevastapole to gain access to the submarine's defense system. At this point, the viewer is clearly meant to infer that the Sevastapole's defense system is the entity, which from a purely plot mechanics perspective, it may as well be. However, it is revealed in act three that it is not quite that simple. Given that the entity is a god in a box, the information Kitridge received regarding the key could obviously be false information. But this issue is never raised by anyone present, which I guess makes them the selective intelligence community. The two halves of the key are the mcguffins for this film. And so no one asks the obvious question as to how Kitridge can be confident that what his moles have told him is accurate. No one considers the possibility that the entity has manipulated or fabricated this information. It simply has to be accurate for the film to happen. Anyway, the CIA has no idea what the key unlocks, but they want it because the Russians appear to be looking for it.
The Russians seem to think they can use the key to deactivate the entity, but they would of course prefer to control it if possible. Additionally, the CIA has heard nothing from any of its allies, leading Kitridge to believe that there is a global race by the various intelligence agencies of the world to acquire the two halves of the key, which sets the stage for Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning. Now, you may be thinking, "But hold on. The two halves of the key were around the necks of two guys aboard the Sevastaster. After they died, their corpses conveniently knew that someone needed to find them, which is why they navigated their way through the submarine whilst dead and floated up to the surface. The last time we saw them, the halves of the key were underneath a sheet of ice somewhere in the Arctic Ocean. Except that no, somehow someone found them. And one half is now in possession of a buyer in the Middle East, and the other half was in possession of Ilsa before she was seemingly killed. The CIA believing that she was going to sell her half to this buyer. This is why Kitridge sent Ethan to find Elsa. But as Ethan has not returned, Kitridge has no idea if Ethan was actually successful and therefore has no idea where Elsa's half of the key is. And then suddenly, this dude who was chilling in the back is actually Ethan, who has just learned everything we did. In a fantastic moment of comedic absurdism, Kitridge reveals that he put out the bounty on Ilsa's head.
>> I put the bounty on Ilsa's head. I also told you how to find her.
>> And he also simultaneously told Ethan how to find Ilsa and that he had to find her before the bounty hunters did.
>> It makes sense. Don't be a [ __ ] >> Why the [ __ ] did Kitridge send bounty hunters and Ethan to go and get the key from Ilsa? I can understand him sending either or as he of course wants the key.
But by doing both, he got multiple people killed for no reason. And I do mean this in the literal sense. There was no reason these people had to die.
And he could quite easily have gotten Ethan killed as well. This kind of dramatic, overly complex double crossing is not uncommon for Mission Impossible films. But in this instance, not only does it make absolutely no sense, but Ethan doesn't appear to notice that Kitridge's actions make absolutely no sense, as he doesn't ask Kitridge why he did this. Anyway, in spite of the fact that Kitridge made it needlessly difficult for Ethan to recover the key from Ilsa, Ethan was successful. Because of Ethan's moral compass, he decides to keep the key instead of handing it over, intending to find the other half himself and use the combined key to destroy the entity, believing that no one should have that kind of power. All right, cool. This lines up with what we have come to expect from Ethan. He dislikes centralized authority and he acts in what he believes to be the world's best interest, not his own, not the CIA's, and not the United States. So, why did he reveal to Kitridge that he successfully retrieved the key?
>> Did you accomplish your mission or not?
>> Oh, no.
>> He could easily have said, "Sorry, but those bounty hunters that you hired for absolutely no reason killed Ilsa and took the key before I could get there.
You dumb fuck." Kitridge is his enemy in this. Kitridge explicitly stated that he wanted to control the entity and yet Ethan has just inexplicably dangled the key in front of him and told him directly that he is going to disobey him. This would be minor if it didn't lead to anything. But Kitridge being aware that Ethan has the key prompts him to send a team of special agents after Ethan to kill him. And these special agents have a significant impact on the third act of Dead Reckoning. Anyway, Ethan then tranquilizes Kitridge and escapes wearing his face in true Mission Impossible style. I have talked a few times in my Arcane videos about how effective complex storytelling can be when done right, but I want to draw a distinction between that and something being complex for the sake of being complex. Kitridge lies to Ethan about the bounty hunters, telling him that they were sent by the US government to kill Elsa.
>> Your government has put a price on her head. Kitridge also lies to the intelligence community about the bounty hunters. This time by saying that they could have been sent by anyone.
>> She was killed by mercenaries and who put up the bounty. Given her body of work could have been anyone.
>> Kitridge then reveals to Ethan that actually he is the person who sent the bounty hunters after Ilsa.
>> I put the bounty on Ilsa's head.
>> I want to draw a parallel between this and a similarly complex moment of deception in Mission Impossible Fallout.
Walker attempts to convince CIA director Sloan that Ethan is actually John Lark, a terrorist who wants to kill millions of people. And Walker suggests that Ethan has manipulated events specifically so as to assume his own secret identity whilst pretending to serve his country and that Ethan/Lark has turned on his allies because he has been repeatedly betrayed and disavowed by his own country. This is all [ __ ] And the reason Walker is lying to Sloan is because he is actually John Lark. And so he wants to divert the CIA towards taking down the wrong person.
This is relatively complex, but it is not a mere case of complexity for the sake of complexity. This all stems entirely from Walker's desire to not be discovered as the true John Lark.
Instead of using complexity in a way that makes sense or in a way that showcases the intelligence of the characters as they try to manipulate each other, Dead Reckoning instead exploits complexity so as to confuse the audience and trick them into thinking that the plot makes sense when it does not. The reasons for the complexity in the case of Kitridge's lies are entirely utilitarian from a script writing perspective and have no bearing on Kitridge as a character. He says what he says because the plot needs him to. The reason he lied to Ethan and told him the US government has sent bounty hunters after Ilsa was because the film needed Ethan to be in a race against time to find her before they kill her. Likely so as to allow for an early action scene.
The reason he lied to the intelligence community was to try and cover up the fact that his man in the field, Ethan, has not come in and so may have been unsuccessful in retrieving the key. But moments later, he explains to the intelligence community that his man in the field has not come in and so may have been unsuccessful in retrieving the key. So, I have absolutely no idea why Kitridge told them about the bounty hunters as they are otherwise irrelevant to the plot. And finally, the reason why he personally hired the bounty hunters and hid this fact from both Ethan and the intelligence community was because he wanted to make it as hard as possible for Ethan to complete his mission. Yeah, this isn't a case of Kitridge playing people against each other whilst acting as the mastermind behind some intricate plan. This is a case of Kitridge doing things that don't make sense and then telling two separate lies about the things he did that don't make sense and the writers sweating bullets praying that the audience doesn't dwell on this nonsense and that they will instead assume that it all makes sense by the end. Spoiler alert, it does not.
Speaking of things that don't make sense, why did Kitridge hire Ethan in the first place? In Fallout, Ethan is hired to prevent the Apostles, a group of terrorists for hire, from acquiring plutonium. Nice and simple. Stop bad guys getting bomb. In Dead Reckoning, the setup is similarly very simple.
Ethan is hired to track down Ilsa and recover a key. Find woman, get key.
Easy. The problem is that Dead Reckoning over complicates this simple idea and warps it into something that fundamentally does not make sense.
Kitridge had already sent people to get the key. And we learn later that he has a deal with the White Widow to get the other half of the key, which means that assuming that the bounty hunters are able to get the key from Ilsa, Kitridge will get the complete key without Ethan's involvement. Therefore, hiring Ethan only makes it harder for Kitridge to get what he wants. Before I reveal exactly what the entity is, I'm just going to refresh your memory as to who the various antagonists were in the previous Mission Impossible films. The antagonist of Mission Impossible 2 is an ex IMF agent who wants to start a pandemic so as to become insanely rich through his control of the cure.
Absolutely cheesy and simplistic, but very easy to follow and easy to understand. He wants lots of money, and he doesn't care if tens of thousands of people die as a result. The antagonist of Mission Impossible 3 is an arms dealer looking for a boweapon in order to sell it and become insanely rich.
marginally less cheesy than the previous film, but equally easy to understand.
The antagonist of Ghost Protocol is a military strategist who wants to start a nuclear war between Russia and the US, as he believes that whatever will be left afterwards will be stronger than what came before. This is relatively weak, but it is at the very least clear to the audience what he is trying to do.
The antagonist of Rogue Nation and Fallout is an ideological fanatic who wants to essentially reset modern society through killing millions of people. thus creating a better world, far better in terms of execution than in Ghost Protocol. And as with all previous Mission Impossible antagonists, his objective is extremely clear throughout.
I won't discuss the antagonist of the first Mission Impossible film, however, as that film is about discovering who the antagonist is, and I don't want to spoil it unnecessarily. Now, we come to the antagonist of Dead Reckoning, the entity. The short version is that the entity is capable of doing anything the plot needs it to do. It is an extremely convenient narrative device because anytime something absurd happens, we can simply say, "Well, you see, this was accounted for because the entity planned for this to happen." Except for when it didn't. Anyway, now for the slightly more in-depth explanation as to what the entity actually is. The entity is a piece of software that exists on a hard drive inside the Sevastaster's defense system. We are told by the intelligence community, and I'm going to assume that they are at the very least somewhat accurate, that the entity has multiple personalities. It sometimes behaves like a computer virus which change existing files and make copies of themselves.
Sometimes it behaves like a tapeworm which is a form of malware that spreads via network vulnerabilities. And it sometimes behaves like a botnet which can refer to a group of computers that run multiple bots and carry out automated tasks. The entity is able to distort digital information and can alter any data on any device that is connected to the internet. The entity spends the duration of the film on board the Sylvesterol at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The entity fabricated an enemy sub and overrode the Sylvester's weapon systems, resulting in them being hit by their own torpedo. We therefore have to assume that the entity wanted this to happen and therefore that it wanted to remain hidden at the bottom of the ocean. Even though of course if it simply wanted to be at the bottom of the ocean then it could have just turned off the Sevastaster's engines and opened all the doors. The Sevastapole is a top secret military vessel whose objective was to be functionally invisible. And yet, the entity has apparently managed to access the internet and spread throughout social media. Recently managing to access Saudi Arabia's general intelligence directory and steal their AI. Let me rewind for a moment.
The objective of the Sevastaster is to be invisible to its enemies. And so, there is absolutely no [ __ ] way that the Sevastaster has access to the internet. Additionally, the Sevastaster somehow managed to not implode after sinking to the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. The maximum operating depth for a military submarine is going to be about 5 to 600 m. The average depth of the Arctic Ocean is about 4,000 m. And whilst this clearly does not appear to be 4,000 m down, it is still a substantial depth, which means that the submarine and the entity's survival is not guaranteed. Oh, but of course the entity knew it would survive because it knows everything. What the film seems to be suggesting is that not only did it survive this, but it was also able to spread through the internet and steal military secrets whilst on a super secret stealth submarine that is currently catastrophically damaged and hundreds if not thousands of meters below sea level.
>> By all accounts, it doesn't make sense.
>> Anyway, why is there no copy of the entity if it is as powerful as it has to be for the film to pretend as though the plot makes any sense? whatsoever, then it should have the ability to press Ctrl C and Ctrl +V or, you know, one of the functions of your basic [ __ ] computer worm. The plot of this film relies on the entity only physically existing in one place, which isn't how electronic data works, unless the people who created the entity are [ __ ] This isn't how computer programs work. You don't put Boulders Gate 3 on a hard drive in a submarine, have the submarine go down, and oh no, I there goes Boulders Gate 3. Whoops. It just it's gone. It doesn't exist anymore. This movie feels like it was written by someone who doesn't know how computers work. And so they just throw out smart sounding words like active learning, botnet, and assimilation and hope that the audience will get the idea.
>> Using an RX modulator, I might be able to conduct a mainframe cell direct and hack the upper to the download. Nothing recorded, stored, or transmitted digitally can be trusted as fact.
>> With the right computer algorithms, I can hack you back in time, parsing every possible cause and effect. Every scenario, however, impossible, >> able to beguile, blackmail, bribe, or be anyone it wants.
self-aware, self-learning, truth eating digital parasite.
Thousands of quadrillions of computations.
Speaking of, we are told that after stealing Saudi Arabia's active learning AI, the entity became even more supercomputerian [ __ ] and spread exponentially.
>> Subsequent attacks increased 10,000fold overnight. Don't do that.
>> indicating that the entity has since become sentient. I >> command you to stop.
>> Stop using words. [ __ ] hell. That isn't what sentient means. Anyway, after becoming not sentient, the entity accessed the Federal Reserve, the stock market, the national power grid, the military, NASA, the FAA. You get the idea. The entity accessed everything that contains a one or a zero on planet Earth. Luckily, however, the entity did not do anything with the systems that control our daily lives. It merely left fingerprints so as to inform the intelligence community that it exists and that it is capable of controlling everything. Why it did this, however, I again, I don't know. I have no idea.
This thing has been established as being virtually infinitely intelligent and infinitely powerful. Revealing itself to the intelligence community must have been a deliberate move. And yet, had it not done so, then it would have been able to remain at the bottom of the ocean doing whatever it wants forever.
Speaking of, what does the entity actually want? There are going to be some of you watching right now who have never seen Dead Reckoning. I have multiple times. And let me tell you, your guess is as good as mine. It doesn't want to go Skynet and nuke all of humanity so as to ensure its own survival. Because if it wanted to do that, then it could have done so at the start of the film without anyone knowing and without anyone being able to stop it. It obviously doesn't want money or other material wealth because it is an AI. It doesn't want to make copies of itself and infect every piece of technology on Earth because again, it has the ability to do that and again chose not to. It doesn't want to kill Ethan so as to prevent him from finding it because again, it could easily do so at any point. It doesn't want to just [ __ ] around and cause a bit of mayhem for shits and gigs because again, it can control and manipulate any piece of technology at any point in time. If it wanted to push humanity's buttons to see what happens, it could absolutely do so.
And yet, mysteriously, it chooses not to. The only thing I can be relatively sure of is that the entity doesn't want people to find it, which means that it seems to want to prevent people from finding the key so as to ensure that no one can stop it from doing nothing. As for what the entity is currently trying to do, it would rather like to access the world's intelligence networks, which seems like an arbitrary limitation, but I guess it's easier to hack the Federal Reserve than it is to hack the world's intelligence network. And so they are currently typing out everything we know so as to have a hard copy of everything we know in case the entity corrupts the digital version.
Everything they're typing out they're typing out everything.
>> Okay. Well, that explains basically nothing.
>> Stop me when this sounds too [ __ ] So I guess theoretically at some point the entity will access the world's intelligence network and it may then decide to increase the price of a pint of milk to [ __ ] with us. But luckily, the intelligence community foresaw this eventuality and employed a legion of monkeys on typewriters. Yes, typewriters. Which means that Frank, the unlucky intern, will have to go to the vault where they keep trillions upon trillions of pieces of paper and find the one containing the historic price of milk. You see where I am going with this? Additionally, we were told that >> humans are the weakest link in any security chain, >> which means that surely they can't trust all of these guys frantically making hard copies of everything. The fact that the writers have written themselves into a corner by creating this incomprehensibly powerful artificial intelligence and giving it access to everything means that essentially humans cannot win. The entity can manipulate any piece of technology, which means there are an infinite number of ways it could manipulate someone into doing what it wants. This means that every action the intelligence community takes is questionable. primarily because they do not seem to be aware of how pervasive this threat is, despite explaining the pervasiveness of this threat to each other in this very scene. The description of the entity's activity and capability would likely fool my mom, who rarely, if ever, uses a computer. My mom, in fact, often needs help signing into Netflix, doesn't trust her electric car, and lives in perpetual fear that the Nigerians are going to hack her credit card. Point being, this is all meaningless computery jargon that seems intended to confuse the viewer so that they turn their brain off and accept what the film presents at face value.
Unfortunately for the writers, I have used a computer in the last decade and so I am decidedly less befuddled than they wanted me to be. Anyway, after revealing his plan to Kitridge for no reason, Kitridge obviously took steps to prevent Ethan from achieving his goal.
US intelligence have dispatched Agent Briggs and his team to track down Ethan.
Ethan is a threat to the US and so they are to neutralize him and retrieve the key. They, like every faction in this movie, continue to use digital tools such as facial recognition, radars, mobile phones, and security cameras despite knowing that the entity is capable of manipulating all of the above. Now, okay, it may be entirely unreasonable to expect these guys to go fully analog overnight and not use the tools they have been trained in to do their jobs. And so, they are presumably knowingly taking a risk by doing this.
It would have been nice then to potentially have a line from one of them saying something along the lines of, "Sir, why don't we go analog to make sure the entity doesn't [ __ ] with our systems?"
>> Are you crazy? We would never find Ethan with offline technology. Besides, the entity hasn't done anything directly hostile to us >> yet. As depicted, however, it appears that the characters forgot that the entity can manipulate this technology, which makes it appear that the writers also forgot. Now, on to Ethan's impossible plan, which he has pulled together based on the information he learned from the intelligence community whilst disguised. A man whom I am just going to refer to from now on as Englebert is stopping for a 30-minute layover in Abu Dhabi International Airport, during which he intends to purchase the half of the key that Ethan took from Ilsa. And it stands to reason the buyer will have the other half of the key somewhere on their person. What?
>> So, initially I believed the problem with this to be why the hell would Angelbert not stash the half of the key that he already has in a safe location so as to prevent both halves being in the same place at the same time in a location in which it could easily be taken from him. But the film actually plugs this hole immediately before tearing open a gaping new one. It is presented as fact that the only way to verify the authenticity of one half of the key is by connecting it to the other genuine half. You can therefore never be certain that any halves of the key are the real deal until you plug the two genuine halves together. Therefore, they assume that Engelbert will be carrying the other half of the key with him, as this will allow him to verify the authenticity of the half in Ethan's possession. All right, cool. So, how exactly does Engelbert know that his half of the key is the real deal? No time for that now. If the plot stops moving for more than a second, the audience may stop accepting this veneer of coherency. Benji summarizes their plan so far. Idlebert pick his pocket to steal his half of the key, meaning that they then have the complete key and GG.
Ethan then clarifies that actually no, for you see, the key itself is only the means to an end. And Ethan has no idea what the key actually unlocks. All he knows is what he heard the intelligence community discussing and their conclusion was that they want it because the Russians want it.
>> The Russians have focused the majority of their intelligence activity on acquiring two halves of a crucififor key.
>> And what does it unlock?
>> Not exactly sure, but the Russians seem to believe that it somehow has the power to deactivate our mysterious entity.
>> So the second part of Ethan's plan is to discover what the key is actually used for. And so he intends to sell their half of the key to Angelbert, follow him, and hope that whoever he is selling the completed key to knows what it unlocks. This uh doesn't really work because Ethan already knows that supposedly every intelligence agency in the world, domestic and foreign, is looking for the key and he knows that the US intelligence community has no idea what it opens. This means that there are many, many people looking to purchase it, despite none of them knowing what it actually does. Ethan is banking on Engelbert's buyer, being an intelligence agency, who knows what the key actually does, and the only faction Ethan believes might potentially know is the Russians. Meaning that his plan is to allow the key into the hands of someone on the off chance that this someone has information that the US intelligence community does not have. I am not going to say that this is nonsense because from what the film has told us and Ethan, this is the only option Ethan has. This is actually very similar to a narrative beat in Fallout where Ethan is forced to meet the widow pretending to be John Lark without wearing a mask, thereby relying entirely on the possibility that the Widow had never met the real John Lark face to face. In both cases, Ethan is forced to do something extremely risky because he does not have a choice. He can't do nothing because of his moral compass. He can't steal the other half of the key and hold on to it because his objective is to destroy the entity, not get the key and put his feet up. He therefore has to assume that the other half of the key is genuine. That Engelbert's buyer will be someone who knows what the key does and that after Englebert sells the key to this person, Ethan will be able to follow them, learn this information for himself, reacquire the key, and use it to destroy the entity without having a clue where or what any of this information actually is. The problem isn't that this doesn't have a logical through line. The problem is that this is a sequence of exceedingly low likelihood events that are later superseded by further exceedingly low likelihood events. Although saying that, this is a film whose antagonist is an infinitely powerful god machine capable of foreseeing every outcome and predicting every action Ethan takes. So maybe the entity knew Ethan would do this and then made sure it played out as planned by hacking the main frame. All parties arrive at the Abu Dhabi International Airport. Ethan intends to locate Engelbert and sell him the key.
Agent Briggs intends to kill Ethan and recover the key himself. And there is a third party present, who I will get to soon. Anyway, Luther, the notorious hackman, has hacked the airport, gaining access to their cameras and their security systems. He is able to trick Agent Briggs's team by manipulating their facial recognition software and making other people in the airport look like Ethan. For some reason though, Ethan looks like Ethan in that he is not wearing a mask or disguise of any kind, which would have averted many of the problems with this sequence. Anyway, Ethan locates Engelbert and witnesses an unknown woman picking his pocket. What's this? A woman in a movie. Quick, to the bigot copter. He follows the woman, Grace, and tells her that she needs to return the flash drive containing $4 million in cryptocurrency and half of the key to Angelbert without him noticing. so that Ethan can then make his transaction with Engelbert as originally planned. Ethan believes that Grace will return the flash drive and the key to Engelbert because being a thief, she is motivated by money and he offers to pay her to do this. Anyway, at this point, Ethan is in possession of both halves of the key and yet he does not connect them so as to confirm that either of them are actually genuine. As remember, the only way to truly verify one half of the key is to connect it to the other genuine half. And so, the fact that he does not do this means that as far as he is aware, both halves could be counterfeits. If this wasn't already complex and dumb enough, Luther then tells Ethan, >> "The alloy in that key doesn't match.
It's counterfeit. I expect nothing less."
>> Well, whoopde [ __ ] All righty then.
So Ethan expected that Engelbert's half of the key was going to be a fake, despite them explaining earlier that Engelbert would have the real key as a means by which to verify the authenticity of the half he was purchasing. Also, couldn't this mean that Grace swapped the keys and the one she lifted from Englebert was real, but she was also carrying a fake and let Ethan lift the fake, thus leaving with the real deal? This is exactly the kind of surprise switcheroo that one could expect to happen in a Mission Impossible movie. But despite doing impossible missions for the last 27 years, Ethan does not suspect a thing. Anyway, they locate Engelbert, who has been murdered by Mantis on behalf of the entity. The only reason I can think as to why the entity would want Angelbert dead is if it wanted Mantis to take his half of the key. This, if you are paying attention, makes absolutely no sense because Ethan knows that Angelbert's key is fake.
>> The alloy in that key doesn't match.
It's counterfeit. And yet we are expected to believe that the entity didn't know. This is a recurring problem in Dead Reckoning in that the writers can't decide exactly how powerful the entity is or what it is capable of. And as a result, its power scaling seems to arbitrarily slide up and down so as to conveniently meet the requirements of the plot. Anyway, Grace steals the two halves of the key back from Ethan and disappears. Remember, Ethan and his team believe that one of these halves is genuine and the other half is fake, but they have no way of actually confirming, and so it is entirely possible that both halves are fake. He then sees a familiar face, Gabriel, causing him to tell Luther and Benji to abort the mission and disappear. Ethan sees Gabriel through his magic techno glasses before they glitch out and he becomes invisible. This leads to Ethan recognizing Gabriel from an event in his past, which I will not explain just yet.
The entity is apparently hacking the surveillance cameras in the airport in real time so as to delete Gabriel from them. It is essentially covering him up by replacing the pixels that are displaying his body. The magic techno glasses, however, are able to see Gabriel for a split second before the entity hacks them and makes him disappear, which means that the entity does have limits. And those limits rather conveniently allow for the escalation of drama in the movie originally titled Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. Ethan catching a glimpse of Gabriel causes him and his team to abort the mission, which leads to precisely nothing other than serving as a dramatic ending to this particular action setpiece. This makes me wonder, however, why exactly Gabriel went anywhere near Ethan to begin with. And pondering this made me realize that as has happened before and as will happen again, everything in this scene happens according to the entity's plan. Gabriel deliberately allowed himself to be seen by Ethan. The entity deliberately took its time hacking Ethan's magic techno glasses so as to reveal Gabriel to Ethan. The entity presumably did all of this so as to make Ethan abort his mission and stop looking for it. And this appears to make some amount of sense as the entity of course does not want Ethan to find it. However, Ethan does not stop looking for it because if he did, then Dead Reckoning would be a mere 46 minutes long instead of being 2 hours and 46 minutes long. Did the entity predict all of this? Did the writers just write a script sloppier than porridge and justify any potential holes with the mere presence of a super intelligent AI within the story that predicts everything? You be the judge.
Anyway, this scene closes out with Ethan chasing Grace in an attempt to recover the keys whilst he himself is chased by Agent Briggs. The conclusion being that Grace, Luther, and Benji all board apparently separate planes and Ethan escapes Agent Briggs. Simultaneously, we have a Bplot involving Luther and Benji.
So, Gabriel checked a bag into the airport and the entity hacked the airport scanners to hide the fact that there is a bomb inside this bag. And then the entity also hacked Luther's hacking program to inform them that there is a suspicious bag at the airport. Benji and Luther have a conversation regarding what to do about this. And the outcome is that Benji heads out to find the bag, which as it turns out, the entity knew would happen.
The entity also knew that Benji and Luther would not immediately notify the airport so as to evacuate the 100,000 or so innocent civilians who were inside, despite this being exactly what Benji and Luther would do. Luther then hacks the door to let Benji into the baggage handling area, which I guess he didn't need to do because the entity could have just done it. But then I guess the entity knew that Luther was going to do it because that's just how it works when you introduce a god-like intelligence into a story without knowing how to handle it. Nothing matters and everything happens because it's just all part of the goddamn plan. Benji finds the bomb and the display asks Benji an alternating sequence of riddles and personal questions. Benji is able to answer them all correctly and so is able to disarm the bomb. After successfully solving the puzzle, the device opens up and reveals that it was not actually a bomb. So, the entire purpose of this device was to trick Benji into thinking that it was a bomb so that it could ask him a bunch of questions. Now, why on earth would the entity want to ask Benji a bunch of questions? There are eight wheels on the device, indicating to Benji that there are eight questions.
However, the movie only actually shows us six of them. Three of these questions are riddles that have nothing to do with Benji personally. One of them is a physical puzzle, which again has nothing to do with Benji's beliefs or values.
The remaining two questions that the entity asks Benji are, "Are you afraid of death?" And what is the most important thing to you? Benji answers that he is afraid of death, as most people are, and that the most important thing to him is his friends, which again would be true of a great many people.
This means that Gabriel and the entity went to a not insignificant amount of effort to follow Ethan, devise and plant a fake bomb in an airport. This device clearly being customuilt for Benji and containing a microphone, speech recognition software, and an LED screen.
Not to mention looking convincing enough as to trick Benji, the IMF's technical field agent, that this is a genuine nuclear bomb. And the only things that the entity learned about Benji after putting in all of this effort is that he doesn't want to die and he likes his friends.
>> ALL righty then.
>> What exactly was the point of this? But random. Later on, the entity copies Benji's voice and pretends to be him to trick Ethan. God damn it, [ __ ] alter ego. Get out of my safe space. Yes, this is true. But from what we have been told, the entity would have been able to copy Benji's voice by simply listening to him speak on a mobile phone. The entity could in fact have learned everything it learned from Benji and a whole metric shitload of additional information by accessing his phone, his emails, and the cameras at the burger shop where he gets his lunch. So, is it fair to say that Gabriel and the entity's actions here made absolutely no sense? Well, no, because the entity planned all of this. You see, the entity needed to behave in a manner consistent with bad writing because it knew that if it didn't do this, then the rest of the film would not happen. Fast forward 8 hours or so. Ethan has tipped off the Italian police anonymously, and so the Italians have brought Grace in for questioning. Ethan then arrives posing as her lawyer, which means he must have caught the next flight to Rome from Abu Dhabi so as to follow her. Agent Briggs and his team are also now in Rome, as are Gabriel and Mantis, which means all parties magically knew where to go and followed Grace immediately. Let's pause on this for a moment. We don't know how long Grace has been in Rome at this point. It could potentially have been an hour or two.
>> Italian police received an anonymous tip that the woman matching your description would be arriving on the afternoon flight from Abu Dhabi. I find it highly unlikely that the Italian police would waste any time in dealing with her as they have been informed that she is a career criminal wanted for jewel theft, art theft, fraud, extortion, graft, and resisting arrest. I would guess that approximately 8 hours have passed since Grace boarded the flight at the airport.
In this time, Ethan has also traveled to Rome. This can only have happened if flights from Abu Dhabi to Rome depart every hour or so, which is not the case.
However, this is the kind of logistical error that I am happy to just ignore because maybe there was an extra flight or something. Who knows? Either way, Ethan was lucky to be here in time.
Additionally, Mantis and Gabriel have also traveled to Rome. Gabriel is the envoy of the Omnisiahire, so fine. They were probably told which plane to get on. This plane must have been the same one as Ethan, which means that Gabriel and Mantis are equally lucky to be here in time. And finally, Agent Briggs and his team have traveled to Rome. This one is not lucky. This one is absurd. They are tracking Ethan, not Grace. They can only have seen where Ethan went by monitoring the CCTV footage at the airport and waiting for Ethan to show himself again, watched him get on the next flight to Rome, and then headed to Rome themselves. This means that Agent Briggs and his team used and trusted their demonstrably unreliable modern digital equipment to follow Ethan, who was himself following Grace, and that all parties showed up in Rome at the same time. But I guess maybe the entity made there be more flights and also told everyone to go to Rome. I bet you didn't think of that, you silly YouTube man.
Gabriel then speaks with the Italian police chief and he wants to know about Grace. Gabriel claims that he is looking for the two halves of the key that he believes Grace was carrying. And again, I will remind you that based on what Dead Reckoning has told us, we have absolutely no way of knowing if either of the two halves are genuine. The only thing we can be relatively certain of is that at least one of them is a counterfeit. Gabriel murders the secretary, interrogates the police chief, leveraging the fact that he, of course, knows everything. And the scene cuts away when Gabriel stabs the police chief in the hand after he claims that Grace did not have the key.
>> Secretary is no longer with us.
>> So, Gabriel has murdered one person inside the police station and is currently torturing the chief of police.
How exactly does Gabriel plan on getting away with this? Well, if you were paying attention, you would know that the entity knows everything and it can also hack Gabriel out of the cameras. So, therefore, he can't be stopped. Although given that the entity knows everything, I am left wondering why Gabriel didn't arrive 5 minutes earlier, as that may have allowed him to intercept Grace. But I guess that was also part of the entity's plan. Meanwhile, Grace is brought to Ethan, posing as her lawyer.
He deduces that Grace planted the key on another passenger and feigned interest in him and plan to meet up with him after landing.
>> You put pocketed that key on another passenger. You exchanged details and arranged to meet later on. An unwitting courier. I'm guessing a man waiting his whole life to be noticed by a woman like you >> so as to get the key back. How Ethan knows this?
>> I have no [ __ ] idea.
>> I guess Ethan is just a wizard now. He can't know this unless I guess he cast detect thoughts on Grace. All he has to work with is the fact that Grace looks like Haley Atwell and the fact that she does not have the key on her anymore.
There is a difference between making educated guesses, such as when Ethan guesses correctly that Ilsa is an undercover MI6 agent in Rogue Nation and making a bunch of [ __ ] up and being correct. Additionally, from this point onwards, the film forgets about the second key half, the supposed counterfeit. This key half began the film in the possession of Englebert in Abu Dhabi, was lifted by Grace, who then also lifted the genuine half from Ethan before planting one of the halves in the pocket of this guy on the plane. The film brushes past this very quickly, probably because the writers realized things were getting too complicated. The movie rolls with the idea that Grace obviously planted the genuine half, the one she lifted from Ethan, in the passenger's pocket. The movie completely skips past the question as to how she could have possibly identified that the other half was a counterfeit and just treats this fact as something that she obviously knew. She ditched the counterfeit because it was worthless and planted the real deal on the passenger on the plane to later give to her employer. She reveals this to Ethan explicitly that she intends to deliver the key she lifted from him instead of the one she lifted from Englebert despite the fact that she was hired to retrieve a key from Englebert.
>> What is happening?
>> This means that she acquired the key that she was asked to acquire and then also grabbed Ethan's because why not?
then threw away the one she was asked to recover and decided to return to Venice with the one she took from Ethan instead. Why she didn't plant both halves on the passenger is a question that I can't answer, and my only theory is that the writers decided that the counterfeit half didn't exist anymore so as to streamline the narrative.
>> This is an intelligent film for grown-ups. Anyway, Grace reveals that the flash drive, supposedly containing $4 million in cryptocurrency, is empty, which I am going to take as confirmation that Grace is an idiot rather than that the CIA had bad intel. To be clear, there are four possibilities here.
Either the drive is empty, which would mean Engelbert had no intention of paying anyone for the other half of the key as he did not have the funds with which to purchase it. This wouldn't really make any sense unless the CIA was just completely wrong about what Engelbert was doing there. We know that a buyer is passing through the Middle East in the next 72 hours.
>> The second possibility is that the flash drive does contain $4 million in cryptocurrency, but that it is encrypted or otherwise protected in such a way as to make it appear to Grace that it is empty. The film and Grace seem to be treating her theft of the flash drive as being the same thing as simply lifting $4 million out of Englebert's pocket when cryptocurrency is nowhere near as simple as cold hard cash. One would think that such an experienced thief would be very well aware of this fact, but evidently not. The third possibility is that Grace is lying and that she was able to acquire the $4 million using the flash drive, but she is pretending that she was unable to do this so as to trick Ethan into helping her. And I think this makes the most sense by far, but I do not at all think that this is what the film wants me to think.
>> You're going to tell me everything and don't lie to me because I'll know. And the final possibility is that the entity wiped the flash drive and stole Grace's hard-earned Bitcoin. Anyway, Ethan escapes the police station with Grace before Agent Briggs is able to locate him. Or at least that is what starts to happen before Grace screams and accuses Ethan of being a pervert, which gives her the opportunity to leave without him. The writers really are going out of their way to make me like this character, aren't they? Speaking of, Grace then steals a police car and drives it extremely recklessly so as to get away from Ethan. And the film makes clear that she has no idea what she is doing. This is a far cry away from the usual Mission Impossible car chases, which typically have a clear moral perspective. For an example of this, let's take a look at, I don't know, how about the Mission Impossible film that is unironically fantastic? Fallout. In the chase scene in Paris, Ethan is fleeing the police. They believe he is guilty of a crime when he and the audience know that he is not. During this scene, Ethan displays incredible motorbike skills. And whilst his actions certainly lead to people, usually the police or the bad guys, getting injured, he is skilled enough to avoid this as much as possible. Riding a motorbike into oncoming traffic is an extremely dangerous thing to do. But Ethan is generally at far greater risk than the general public. This is all in line with one of the core themes of Fallout, as well as Ethan's fundamental character.
He will not sacrifice one life to save the world. He will always find a way to avoid the loss of innocent lives, even if that appears to not be possible.
Similarly, in Dead Reckoning, Grace drives extremely recklessly and causes a lot of damage. The critical difference is that where Ethan did so as a highly trained and skilled driver, Grace's line of work does not require her to be a particularly skilled driver. And she demonstrates here that she is about as skilled as the average woman.
Additionally, unlike Ethan, Grace's objective here is entirely selfish. She wants to get paid for delivering the key to her employer, and she is willing to put multiple people's lives at risk so that she can become rich, which actually, come to think of it, is not too dissimilar to Owen Davian's motivation. Owen Davian, of course, being the villain of Mission Impossible 3.
>> It's all got to do with the rabbit's foot. he's about to sell to an unspecified buyer for $850 million.
>> Anyway, Ethan chases after Grace on a motorbike, frantically trying to ensure that she doesn't scuff all of the hubcaps on the police car, but Mantis crashes into her so as to protect the fine city of Rome from Grace's graceful driving. As Ethan pulls Grace out of the stolen car, Agent Briggs arrives, shortly followed by the Italian police, and looks like we got ourselves a Mexican standoff. So, let's quickly refresh ourselves on what each party knows and what they each want. Ethan wants to use Grace to get the key so as to prevent anyone else from having it.
Grace wants to get away from Ethan and everyone else so as to sell the key and get money. Mantis wants to force Grace to give her the key, and she knows that Grace has the key because the entity knows everything. Agent Briggs wants to apprehend Ethan because he thinks Ethan has the key. And finally, the Italian police want to arrest Grace for stealing a police vehicle and reckless endangerment. This moment, I think, actually works pretty well, provided we handwave how all these parties are in Rome at the same time. Anyway, Mantis, revealing herself to be a bloodthirsty and unhinged lunatic, starts gunning down both the Italian police and Agent Briggs's team because she can't risk either of them apprehending Grace.
Although that said, surely if the Italians were to arrest Grace, then the entity could just hack the police station and change her criminal record to where it says that she can she's okay, she can go now, and Mantis could then pick her up afterwards. Anyway, the only way Mantis could possibly get away with what she does in this scene is if the entity hacks her out of reality, which means that I am watching a joke movie that cannot be taken seriously because actions do not have consequences and nothing matters. So once the bullets start flying, Agent Briggs reluctantly lets Ethan and Grace go so as to deal with the more immediate threat posed by the tiny French lady wielding an automatic rifle. Grace, having been thoroughly established as entirely self-interested, attempts to escape. But it turns out Ethan has handcuffed himself to her so as to ensure that she is unable to do so. This leads to a chase sequence that I actually quite like, as Ethan has inadvertently handcuffed them together in such a way as to make it extremely difficult for him to drive a left-hand drive vehicle.
And so, Grace is forced to take the wheel instead. Rest in peace, Hubcaps. I suppose in a moment of clarity, Grace decides that Ethan should probably take the wheel, as even if he is driving one-handed, he will still be more capable than her. They are pursued by Mantis, Agent Briggs, and the Italian police. And the outcome of this car chase is that Ethan and Grace manage to evade their pursuers, but end up getting the car stuck on the underground railway. And then this happens.
It's okay, though, because Grace leaves Ethan a paperclip so that he can escape, despite Grace having no idea how long it will take him to pick the lock and having no idea when the next train will be here to turn him into a scrambled egg.
>> Don't hate me.
You are making it tremendously difficult not to, my dear. In this scene, Grace leaves Ethan to probably die so that she can go and get rich. Ethan manages to escape just in the nick of time and is picked up by Benji, Luther, and Ilsa, who presumably tracked him to Rome. So, there are two parts required to make this work. One part lines up, the other part is at best absurdly lucky, and at worst is a straightup plot hole. The first part is that Benji, Luther, and Ilsa were able to use the tools at their disposal to locate Ethan in Rome. That lines up with the kinds of technology we have seen them use in this film and in others, provided we don't question why the entity allowed this to happen. The second part is that all three were able to arrive in Rome at most a couple of hours after Ethan. Ilsa could maybe do this. We have no idea where she was previously and so what exactly she did is unknown. Luther and Benji were last seen at the Abu Dhabi International Airport. Upon being told to abort their mission with no plans to rendevous, we see them each board a plane and apparently go their separate ways, which is, you know, exactly what one would expect a team of secret agents to do after a mission goes south. Except that the fact that they show up in Rome a few hours later means that either the team decided beforehand that should anything go wrong, they would all need to board a plane going to Rome as opposed to any other destination, which would just be absurdly lucky. And I don't think I need to explain why. Or alternatively, they boarded planes to other locations and then teleported to Rome in time for the next scene. Or alternatively, I guess the entity hacked the planes they were on and made them go to Rome. The only way out of this is that maybe they fabricated tickets for the Rome flight after seeing that Grace was getting on that plane. So, how reasonable is this?
We saw them do this for Ethan when the plan at that point in time was for him to follow Engelbert to Venice. So, why couldn't they do the same for themselves? The problem here is that even if they wanted to follow Grace just in case, they didn't know that Grace was going to Rome until after Ethan told them to abandon the mission, by which point Benji and Luther were separated.
Luther could have theoretically switched his computer back on after aborting the mission and fabricated a ticket for the flight to Rome and boarded it before it departed, which would be an interesting decision given what Ethan has just told him to do.
>> Benji, abort. Abort. Get out.
>> Where do we rendevu?
>> No, we don't.
>> But there is no possible way that Benji could have done the same. Anyway, they know that Grace has one half of the key and they know where she is going. The reason they know where she is going is because she told Ethan previously.
>> You were instructed to deliver it to >> Venice party at the Ducali Palace tomorrow midnight.
>> I am honestly unsure why she told him.
And I'm unsure why he believes her given the fact that she just left him handcuffed to a car on a train track.
But those are questions that I shouldn't be asking because by asking those kinds of questions, I am missing the point of a Mission Impossible film. These films are not supposed to make sense. You see, they are not supposed to have consistent characters and they are not supposed to be understandable. And of course, the reason why Mission Impossible Fallout is as good as it is is because Tom Cruz flies a helicopter and has nothing to do with how tight the narrative and characters are. Anyway, then we get our next dump of exposition. Luther has reassessed the footage from the airport and found a reflection of Gabriel with all other digital records of him having been deleted in real time by the entity.
The entity has also deleted all of Gabriel's digital past, making him apparently unknowable. Elsa explains who Gabriel is, and she knows this because she has some friends in MI6 who don't want the British government to gain control of the entity, and these friends leaked this information to her. MI6 apparently knew that Gabriel worked for the entity, which can only be possible if the entity wanted MI6 to know this, as the entity has apparently scrubbed all of Gabriel's digital history and made sure that he doesn't appear on security cameras. The MI6 leaks claimed that Gabriel was on his way to Istanbul to claim his half of the key, which is why Ilsa decided to get there first and attack the cellar and take it from him.
I hope you are keeping up because this film is rather dense. Anyway, then we get this. They couldn't risk meeting me in person, so all communication.
>> It's electronic.
>> We can't be sure that was the entity.
>> We can't be sure it wasn't.
>> So, this is a perfectly valid fear. If Elsa contacted her friends in MI6 digitally, then the entity could have falsified this information, much like it could have falsified every single piece of information that has been transmitted between Ethan, his team, Agent Briggs, the Italian police, MI6, and the IMF.
But for some reason, the characters did not consider that possibility, and they are only specifically worried now because it is possible that the entity lied to Ilsa by fabricating a bunch of false information regarding Gabriel.
Which brings us to the Rick and Morty section of Dead Reckoning.
>> You are, you have to go. What if it wants us to leave?
>> Like you made us leave the airport.
>> And what if it wants you alone at that party tonight?
>> Essentially, the characters are attempting to secondguess a super intelligent AI that is potentially capable of predicting every conceivable outcome. They have no information to go on that wasn't potentially fabricated or otherwise manipulated by the entity. So, how do you beat something this intelligent? One potential answer appears in the Rick and Morty episode.
One crew over the cruc Morty. Rick builds heistron, a robot that can come up with the perfect heist.
>> Heistatron, state your prime directive >> to heist. Rick is later unable to shut down Heistotron as it is programmed to always be looking for the next big score and it is also programmed to double cross. Heistron quickly becomes large enough to heist entire planets and because it is programmed to think like contrived heist movies filled with a billion double crosses. Rick works out the best way to defeat it.
>> Whatever we plan will be cancelled out by Heistatron's reveal that our plan was part of its plan. He picked his crew at random and they will all be taking their orders from Randotron so that their actions are truly random and therefore theoretically unpredictable by Heistotron. Dead Reckoning is unfortunately not as smart as season 4 of Rick and Morty. And so they instead decide that >> if you want to beat this thing, you have to start thinking like it.
>> They need to think like the entity. They need to think like the unfathomably intelligent supercomput. All right, cool. Let me just put my clever clogs on and I'll be right with you.
>> Cold, logical, unemotional.
>> Ah, okay. So, to beat the machine that can predict everything, you need to behave in an extremely machine-like and therefore predictable manner. What this line is used to impress upon Ethan the severity of this particular mission.
Unlike the six previous Impossible missions, on this one, Ethan has to be willing to stop Gabriel at all costs.
Gabriel cannot have the key, and none of their lives can matter more than this.
The missions in the previous three films in particular, in which the consequences of their failure would have resulted in nuclear attacks causing the deaths of millions of people, if not more, were not as important as stopping Gabriel getting his hands on the key. And in terms of what they know to be certain with the key, they know virtually nothing. What they think they know is that the Russians are looking for it and that therefore it must be important.
This information could absolutely have been compromised by the entity. They also think they know that this key has something vaguely to do with stopping the entity. This information was very likely compromised by the entity. Which means that either this film's writing is piss or that the entity wanted them to know this for reasons that I can't even begin to fathom because I am unfortunately not a super intelligent AI. So Ethan and Ilsa head to the midnight gala and the short version is that a meeting takes place between the white widow, Ethan, Elsa, Grace, and Gabriel. The White Widow reveals that she hired Grace to steal the key from the buyer in Abu Dhabi. Rolling back momentarily, Grace planted the key on this dude on the plane, her intention being to reacquire it after being released from custody. And so she must have done this after leaving Ethan on the train tracks and has now shown up at the midnight gala with the genuine half of the key that she lifted from Ethan in Abu Dhabi. The White Widow explains >> the key to world domination is of all things a key one with the power to control the entity >> which I don't know how she knows this but I guess everyone involved in the plot has just accepted that the key controls the entity despite them having no way to confirm this. The widow explains that she has been asked by every nuclear power to deliver the key.
She goes on to explain that Gabriel is here because the entity hacked reality and made it so that Gabriel could meet with her.
>> Gabriel represents another interested party.
>> It's party time.
>> This party was arranged by that interested party.
>> You could even say that this party is that interested party.
>> Okay, well that explains basically nothing >> to make its presence known. Even though the idea of presence doesn't really mean anything when speaking about a computer algorithm, the entity hacks the LED screens in the building and makes them display an iTunes music visualizer. Why is the entity and by extension Gabriel interested in the White Widow? You might assume that Gabriel wants the key so that he can make sure no one else can access the entity, hence him contacting the widow. But that would be far too simple for this movie.
>> Why' you have to make this so [ __ ] complicated? You see, Gabriel is here on behalf of an infinitely powerful supercomputer that knows everything. It knows, and so does he, that tomorrow he will be in possession of both halves of the key. He is not here to make a deal with the White Widow. He is not here to buy anything.
>> I'm not here for any key as I'll have both halves in hand tomorrow. The key will come to me tomorrow on the Orient Express. I, however, been promised the completed key will lay itself at my feet. He is here because his presence is part of the chain of causation that will lead to him being in possession of the completed key tomorrow. All he needs to do is say what the entity tells him to say and then leave and everything will fall into place as was foretold.
Absolute [ __ ] garbage. Anyway, the White Widow reveals that she already has one half of the key, which means that what the film wants us to accept for now and what is later revealed to be true is that the White Widow acquired one half of the key through one of her many contacts and verified that it was genuine without possessing the other half. And that Elsa acquired the other half from the guy in Istanbul before giving it to Ethan. And that they verified that this half was also genuine, again, without possessing the other half. and that all characters are now under the belief that the white widow has one half and that only Grace knows where the other half is. Gabriel then explains that as a part of the chain of causation that will lead to him being in possession of the key tomorrow.
So saith the omnisiah, either Ilsa or Grace must die. He then leaves without the key because the entity knows that it will fall into his lap later in the film. The White Widow explains that her life is on the line and so she has to get the half of the key Grace has in order to sell the completed key to her buyer. The next day, this prompts Ethan to attack the widow's men so as to protect Grace and give Ilsa the opportunity to escape. Ethan contacts Luther and Benji and explains what just happened, asking them to give him eyes on Grace so that he can protect her and to make sure that Gabriel does not get the key. They direct him. He follows.
But oh no. The entity takes over their comms, impersonates Benji, and leads Ethan into a trap.
>> She's on her way to the Minich Bridge where Gabriel is waiting. We'll never get there in time.
>> This is Benji.
>> No, it's not.
>> Oh, what a pickle.
>> What a predicament. If only you could have foreseen this and were using an alternate means of communication. You know, like you proceed to do in act three. and I modified our comms to use Skywave radio, completely analog.
>> Anyway, in response to this, Luther and Benji destroy their hardware, which is something I would expect from Derek [ __ ] Zoolander, not from IMF agents with decades of experience. The entity does not need their hardware to be intact in order to speak to Ethan or Ilsa. Anyway, the entity directs Ethan, Ilsa, and Grace to exactly where it wants them to be because it of course knows everything. And this results in Ethan nearly being killed by Mantis.
Gabriel incapacitating Grace and Gabriel murdering Ilsa before Ethan can get there in time. Rewinding momentarily, Grace, the career thief with no particularly notable marshall skills, decides to challenge Gabriel to a knife fight. She chooses to do this instead of simply walking away. It is possible that Ethan didn't really explain anything about Gabriel to Grace, causing her to underestimate the threat that he poses.
But either way, Grace knows that Gabriel has threatened her life. And given what just happened in the Midnight Gala, her decision to fight him in a 1v one not only puts her own life at extreme risk for no apparent reason, but also puts the potential fate of the world at risk due to the fact that she has one half of the key in her pocket. Anyway, as a result of all this, Elsa, one of the best characters from the previous two films, is killed off. And all of this would have been far more emotionally impactful if the plot made a lick of sense and wasn't simply a case of an AI predicting everything that would happen.
The characters might functionally have free will in the traditional sense, but the fact that the entity is capable of predicting things this complex with this degree of accuracy means that the characters in Dead Reckoning may as well not have free will. Additionally, no one in this action sequence, Ethan, Mantis, disposable henchperson, Gabriel, Ilsa, and Grace, uses a gun at any point. The only one of these characters who should not be carrying a gun is Grace because she is a thief who is in way over her head. If Ethan had a gun, Mantis dies and we don't get the third act. If Mantis had a gun, Ethan dies and we don't get the third act. If Gabriel had a gun, Grace dies and the third act changes fundamentally. And possibly most importantly, if Elsa had a gun, Gabriel dies and she survives. So why didn't any of these characters have guns? There is unfortunately no in universe answer. The filmmakers wanted to have a cool hand-to-hand fight scene rather than a shootout, likely because it would be up close and personal and would therefore have the potential to be more emotionally engaging. They therefore sacrificed the intelligence of the characters in favor of manipulating the audience. Realizing that Ilsa died to save her, Grace has something of a change of heart. She feels responsible for Ilsa's death, a fact that would be potentially a coherent motivation for her going forwards, if not for the fact that the circumstances under which Elsa was killed make very little sense. Given that very dangerous people now know who she is, it is proposed that Grace has three options: prison, death, or join the IMF, and she ultimately chooses the latter. The White Widow is expected to be on the Orient Express where a buyer is waiting to take possession of the complete key. I will remind you that currently the widow is in possession of one half and Grace is for some reason still in possession of the other half because Gabriel forgot to search her.
The only reason why the third act is possible is because Grace still has her half of the key. Which means that either Gabriel was temporarily an idiot because the plot needed to happen, or perhaps the entity told him not to search Grace because it wanted the third act to happen for some unknown reason. Their plan is to use masks to disguise Grace as the White Widow and Ethan as Zola, the widow's brother. Take out the real Widow and Zora, steal her key, and leave. I don't really know why they need to look like the Widow and Zora in order to steal the key, but don't worry, the film isn't going to tell us. They could have disguised themselves as Brian and Ethel who are on their honeymoon and wanted a ride on the Orient Express.
Additionally, the only reason why they know that the widow is meeting with a buyer on the Orient Express is because Gabriel said this, >> "The key will come to me tomorrow on the Orient Express."
>> Which yet again means that either this film is written in such a way as to make the plot contingent upon characters saying and doing things that they have no reason to say and do, or this was all part of the entity's plan. The entity wanted Gabriel to tell them so that they would also be present on the Orient Express. And thinking about this for a bit reveals that it might actually be the rare moment in Dead Reckoning that actually makes some amount of sense.
However, thinking about this for a bit longer reveals that it is mired in the same contrived goop as the rest of the storytelling in this film. So, the idea that Gabriel deliberately told them about the Orient Express appears to make some amount of sense. Had he not done this, then Ethan's team would have had no idea where to go next. Therefore, because Gabriel did not search Grace, her half of the key would not have been present on the train. However, this stops making sense almost immediately because this is only necessary because Gabriel did not search Grace. Had he done so, then he would have gone to the Orient Express in possession of Grace's half of the key and would then only need to acquire the widows. Therefore, Gabriel telling Ethan about the Orient Express only guarantees that Ethan and his team will be present on the train so as to get in his way, which means either that I am more intelligent than the entity or that the writers of Dead Reckoning seriously dropped the ball.
Anyway, back to their plan. Ethan will excfiltrate with the completed key and Grace will stay behind to be arrested, whereby Ethan will contact Kitridge and arrange for her to join the IMF. Grace, true to her selfish nature, attempts to get a better deal. I >> tell you what, I'll give you a one-off.
I'll help you find the key and your friends wipe my slate.
>> Let's pause on this and evaluate what we know of Grace. Grace is a career thief and is incredibly skilled at slight of hand and picking locks. The film desperately wants the audience to care about Grace and to find her sympathetic.
The way the writers go about this is primarily by revealing that she is an orphan and that she grew up in poverty so as to provide a justification in her own mind as to why she is a selfish ass hat with trust issues.
>> An orphan, highly intelligent growing up in poverty left you longing for the finer things.
>> Now on to Grace being an ass hat. She steals the key from Ethan and leaves him in the airport, establishing that she is inherently selfish and only cares about money. She then feains interest in a man purely to manipulate him, seeing him only as a tool to be used, and she doesn't care if she [ __ ] around with his emotions. She conceals from Ethan the fact that Agent Briggs is in the police station despite Ethan repeatedly protecting her. She drives like a maniac through the streets of Rome without having the required skill set to be able to do this at all safely. in order to protect herself and get rich. She leaves Ethan handcuffed to a car stuck on a train track because if he is dead, then he won't be able to stop her from getting rich. And finally, when Ethan tries to save her from two men who are assaulting her so as to get the key as she flees the midnight gala, she throws one of them back at Ethan so that she can escape, using him to slow them down.
All of this indicates that Grace is very selfish and she uses people for her own ends. What has happened as a result of all of this, however, is that Grace has now been forced into a situation where she needs to rely on other people, and Ethan has been forced into a situation where he has to trust someone who has proven time and again to be untrustworthy.
This principally I like. The film is challenging both characters by forcing them to deal with each other. Grace has thus far been motivated entirely by money, and money is of course useless to her if she is killed the moment she walks out the door. This means that Grace has to assist Ethan on this mission. She has to ensure that Ethan is successful, and she has to ensure that neither of them are killed in the process, otherwise Gabriel will get the key. And if that happens, it is highly unlikely that Kitridge would accept her into the IMF on the basis that her first mission was a catastrophic failure. and Ethan is forced to put faith in Grace when he would have vastly preferred to be putting his faith in Ilsa. If Elsa were alive instead of Grace, then it would be Ilsa disguising herself as the widow. It would be Ilsa, the highly skilled XMI6 agent he has to place his trust in, the woman whom he has trusted with his life multiple times previously.
Grace, conversely, has already tried to kill him in the name of money. This is excellent, and I wish that this conflict of ideals were present in a vastly superior Mission Impossible movie where it could be fully explored and enjoyed.
An example of a character deciding to help Ethan, despite conflicting loyalties, being done extremely well is Ilsa in Fallout. Ilsa's story in Fallout is fantastic. She is told by MI6 that to prove her loyalty after the events of Rogue Nation, she must kill Solomon Lane, which puts her at odds with Ethan's objective, leading to some excellent character drama, which is not something that can be said of much, if any, of the Mission Impossible series.
She eventually decides to accompany Ethan and his team on their final mission to stop Lane because she realizes they will very likely need her help, and given the threat he poses, she is unwilling to sit by and do nothing.
She may also have felt somewhat guilty about nearly shooting them in Paris.
After some advice from Luther, she learns why Ethan's previous marriage with Julia fell apart, and she realizes how much she means to Ethan. She realizes that Ethan will always put other people's lives first, and that he will try to stop Lane, even if he has to do it alone. The reason this is far more effective than the similar plot point in Dead Reckoning is because all of the connective tissue that led up to this moment lines up entirely. In Fallout, we have a fantastic scene within an excellent narrative. In Dead Reckoning, we have a very good scene in a not very good narrative. Anyway, Luther then questions Ethan as to what his objective is, and he posits that the reason why the entity had Gabriel kill Ilsa was so as to motivate Ethan to kill Gabriel in revenge and therefore to cover up its location and protect itself.
>> I believe it's counting on one of two probable outcomes. You die on that train. In another outcome, you kill Gabriel. In both cases, the entity wins, suggesting that Ethan being dead is a victory for the entity, suggesting that Ethan should not currently be alive. But I'll stop asking inconvenient questions and I'll just roll with it. If Gabriel and Ethan kill each other, the entity will be left at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to do its thing, gather ones and zeros, and [ __ ] around with traffic lights, buy game stalks, and troll old people on Facebook. I bring this up because we are heading into the third act of Dead Reckoning and we still have absolutely no idea what the entity wants to do. We have absolutely no idea if the entity can want. It has been stated that the entity is sentient, but this has not been justified, nor has it been demonstrated. The primary antagonistic force of this film is an algorithm comprised of ones and zeros that knows everything, but doesn't seem to want anything other than to be left alone so that it can continue to know everything in peace. Anyway, unfortunately for Ethan, the mask printing machine stops working before it can print out Zola's face for him, which means that the only mask they have is the widow mask for Grace. It is entirely possible that the machine stopped working purely because that can happen sometimes and they were just really unlucky. But an alternative explanation is that the entity made the machine stop working so as to force Ethan to change his plan in its favor. I think that this is what we are supposed to draw from this scene and that therefore every action Ethan takes during the third act is him inadvertently playing into the entity's hands. By sabotaging the mask printing machine, the entity has made it so that only Grace will be on the train. She will have to dispose of the widow herself, and she will be accompanied by the real Zola, not Ethan in disguise.
Because Grace is very inexperienced with this kind of espionage, there are many failure points that become present that would not have existed had Ethan been able to go with her. Therefore, the entity has increased the likelihood that Grace will be captured and will therefore not be able to grab the key from the widow as originally planned. I think it makes sense for the entity to do this if we are going to consider it as anything approaching sentient. Its actions regarding Grace make sense to me. Its actions involving Ethan, we will have to wait and see what Ethan does in act three. All parties converge on the Orient Express. The real widow accompanied by Zola is on board. Wait, wait, wait, hold on. We are barely 10 seconds into act three and have already run into a brick wall. The widow is here to sell the completed key to an unknown buyer. The widow does not have the completed key. She has half of it. She also cannot confirm that the half she possesses is genuine because she does not have the other half, which means that for some inexplicable reason, she has decided to meet with her buyer anyway, despite the fact that at best she is in possession of half of what she promised. Anyway, Grace, disguised as the widow, is also on board, and she ambushes the real widow in her room and successfully acquires her half of the key. Grace, now in possession of the completed key, is waiting for Ethan to show up. But as Ethan has been delayed, she is forced to play the part of the widow a little longer. The first big reveal of act three is that the widow's mysterious buyer, the contact who intends to purchase the completed key from her, is Kitridge. She bargains for immunity and a new identity for Grace, suggesting that she is hedging her bets and isn't actually going to join the IMF. This is utter nonsense because Grace does not account for what the real widow will do when she wakes up. The real widow knew that she was meeting with Kitridge. She will know that someone disguised as her incapacitated her and took her place at said meeting.
And so when she wakes up, she will quite obviously contact Kitridge and both parties will realize that they have been tricked. Grace does however decide at the last minute to refuse the money.
Now, I quite like her refusing the money, as until this point, she has been motivated entirely by money. This is a very clear moment of character growth, as she demonstrates that some things are more important to her than being rich.
What I don't like is her pickpocketing the key back from Kitridge. She knows that Kitridge is a man Ethan trusts. She believes Kitridge to be a man she can trust.
>> And you trust this Kitridge person?
>> I trust him to recognize your value.
Ethan Hunt tells me you're a man I can trust.
>> She knows that he is in some way connected with the IMF that Ethan works for. And yet she decides to steal the key back from Kitridge so that she can follow the original plan and give it to Ethan. I can't really speculate as to why she does this beyond stating that she obviously trusts Ethan more than Kitridge, but this is somewhat neutered by the fact that Kitridge seems like a more than reasonable guy who was entirely willing to give Grace immunity and a new identity. But oh well, the plot demands that she suddenly doesn't trust him, so off we go. In a fantastic moment of incredibly convenient timing, the real widow enters the train car just as Grace exits, which leads to Zola chasing down Grace and her being held at gunpoint. And I will get back to this after we address a scene which is intercut with this one and occurs simultaneously.
Intercut with all of the above. We have a scene in which Deninger, the director of national security, meets with Gabriel on the train.
>> What a twist.
>> Gabriel has been in contact with Deninger for an unspecified amount of time. And he has apparently told Gabriel that the completed key would be on the train as Deninger was himself aware of Kitrich's deal involving the White Widow. Through their conversation, we learn that Gabriel doesn't know where the lock is, but Deninger does.
>> What a twist.
>> Therefore, if Gabriel kills Deninger, the key is worthless. No one will know where the lock is. Now, you remember the opening scene with the Sevastapole?
Well, time for a meaningless twist.
Deninger reveals that the entity was not designed or deployed by the Russians.
>> What a twist.
>> The entity was in fact stolen by the US and was therefore designed by someone else. Although who is not clarified in this film, but presumably will be in the next. The Americans transmitted a copy of the entity into the Sevastapole with the intention of having the entity sabotage its stealth capabilities.
Somehow the entity went rogue and caused the Sevastaster to destroy itself.
Deninger doesn't want anyone to find the Sevastaster because if it is ever recovered, the source code contained within would serve as evidence of the US's involvement in the destruction of a Russian military vessel, which would make him look bad and would also quite possibly trigger a war. Deninger believes that Gabriel doesn't want anyone to find the Sevastal because he wants to wield its power for himself.
Believing that their goals align, Deninger suggests forming an alliance so that they can rule the galaxy as mutually benefiting techno messiahs.
>> What a twist.
>> Now, the plot of this film may be convoluted to Helen back, but I saw this next part coming from a mile off.
>> And you're certain you're the only person on Earth who knows where the Sastable is.
>> The only one?
>> What a tweet. The reason this is predictable is because of the way the writers frame this scene. They have Denlinger's bodyguards appear to be perverts who get off by searching Mantis, which also, I guess, is meant to make us root for her when she dispatches them. Because, of course, when an unhinged mass murdering psychopath fights with two perverts, there is a clear side to be rooting for. They then have Deninger not care at all when Mantis murders both of them in front of him because Deninger is unambiguously and entirely evil. Then Deninger betrays his country by suggesting that he wants to personally control the entity and rule the world. He has no moral compass and seeks only power. Then they depict him as incredibly overconfident and far less intelligent than one would think the director of national security would have to be by having him explain in detail to Gabriel that he is the only person on Earth who knows where the Sevastapole is.
>> I know precisely where it is.
I've ensured I'm the only man on earth who does.
>> All of this is manipulative framing. The writers depict Deninger as being a selfish, evil, overconfident, power-hungry, and idiotic bureaucrat, which directly leads to his death. And they were so blatant with this framing that they overplayed their hand, making this surprise twist predictable, despite Gabriel's motive here being unclear. I was under the impression at this point that Gabriel wanted to control the entity so as to wield its power for himself rather than simply serve as its porn. Through killing Deninger, however, he has ensured that there is no person alive who knows the location of the Sevastapole, as implausible as that may be. This means that Gabriel will likely never be able to control the entity, and he will only serve as a manifestation of its will. Anyway, then this happens. You will betray us and you'll tell Ethan Haunt everything you've learned because you spared your life.
>> So, this kind of doesn't work in the slightest. First, the obvious. Gabriel explains to Mantis that he is going to kill her and why, thereby giving her the opportunity to defend herself. Or, in other words, Gabriel is [ __ ] so as to allow the plot to happen. The entity evidently told Gabriel that Mantis would betray them by helping Ethan bring them down. The entity believes that she would do this because Ethan spared her life back in Venice. The problem is that from what we have seen, Mantis has no conflicting loyalties. She is a bloodthirsty psychopath and has remained so for the entire film. She literally 2 minutes ago murdered two men and murdered another a few minutes prior to that. She very obviously enjoys destroying things and hurting people.
And yet the entity wants her dead because it foresaw that she would help Ethan. Of course, what ends up happening is that she decides to help Ethan because Gabriel didn't do a very good job of killing her. And therefore, Gabriel's attempt to avert her defection ends up insuring it. So, this is another idea that principally I quite like. The idea that fate is inescapable and that the actions you take to prevent something when you know your future can lead directly to guaranteeing that very future is a narrative device that in the right hands can be extremely compelling.
Look no further than another Tom Cruz movie, Minority Report. What we get in Dead Reckoning, however, is that the infinitely powerful entity saw the wrong thing, and Gabriel was uncharacteristically sloppy in killing Mantis, thus accidentally causing Mantis to defect, which leads directly to her telling Ethan about the Sevastapole.
This doesn't affect the plot of this movie, as this plot point forms the cliffhanger ending of Dead Reckoning.
But assuming that the writers don't just bin off this plot and start from scratch, Untitled Eighth Mission Impossible film's plot is going to be contingent upon the entity and Gabriel being useless at precisely the wrong time when they have displayed god-like levels of precognition at multiple other points in the film, leading directly to Mantis giving Ethan a piece of information that only she and Gabriel have knowledge of. This is pathetic.
Anyway, now it is time to reveal exactly what happened to Zola and Grace. When we last left them, Grace was attempting to escape with the key. However, she was unsuccessful. Zola has caught up with her and currently has her at gunpoint.
>> The key on the table.
>> What happens next is the culmination of over 2 hours of sheer stupidity. And I need to take it slowly so that I can properly explain it. Zola demands that Grace hand over the key and she places it on the table as instructed. Zora then has his number two retrieve the key.
Zora then tells his number two to kill Grace whilst he himself is pointing a gun at her head. Zora is not one to shy away from killing people. He is an extremely morally questionable individual.
>> Kill everyone. That's your plan.
>> There will be no witnesses. You want your plutonium?
This is the price. Would you draw the line at killing cops? He also doesn't like Grace, and not to belabor the point, but he is already pointing his gun at her. My immediate thought when this happened is, what cosmically contrived milkshake of horseshit is about to happen that is facilitated entirely by Zola being a [ __ ] idiot?
And the answer to that question is this.
Ethan comes crashing through the window, arriving not only precisely when he means to, but also precisely where he means to. He has managed to crash through the one single window that he needed to crash through in order to save Grace's life. He has managed to do this whilst the train is traveling at very high speed. Had he arrived a few seconds later or had he arrived through any one of the hundred or so other windows on this side of the train, Grace would have been killed, which is already bad. But the writers decided that one instance of comically absurd luck is not enough. And so they go for the double whammy.
just lying there.
>> What the [ __ ] >> The wind allows Ethan to accidentally neutralize Zola. Unfortunately for them, however, it also booped the key down the carriage right into the waiting arms of Gabriel, who I guess knew that all of this was going to happen and showed up to collect his prize. This [ __ ] parachute and the direction of the wind is one of the most crucial plot devices in this movie. This moment relies entirely on absurd levels of luck, which undermines much of the tension that the writers were attempting to build by having Ethan not be present on the train as per the original plan. Why should I care about what happens to Grace if other characters can accidentally appear at the last possible moment to accidentally throw her wouldbe murderer out of the window? I can't care because actions don't have consequences and causes do not have effects. Stop asking questions. It's a Mission Impossible film. The plot is supposed to be dumb.
Just enjoy the ride. [ __ ] alter ego.
Sometimes I wish that I was able to just enjoy things the way that you can. But I seem to be cursed with these pesky things called standards. Look no further than the previous Mission Impossible film, Fallout, for a fantastic example of this being done well. There is a moment in Fallout that appears to be somewhat similar in terms of the degree of luck required. And this is also framed as a surprise reveal to the audience. Ethan flees the police in Paris, is hit by a car, and jumps down a hole into a canal. It just so happens that Luther and Benji were passing by in their boat, and they are able to pick Ethan up. That is how this is framed to the audience and it appears to require multiple degrees of chance for Ethan to escape. What actually happened, however, is that Ethan always planned to be picked up at this location by Luther and Benji.
>> Benji, do you copy? Change of plan. I'm blue. Need extraction.
>> This is a surprise reveal for the audience, but is not a surprise reveal for the characters. Fallout offers an explanation and the question the viewer subconsciously asks themselves is do I accept this explanation as being plausible enough whereas dead reckoning does not offer an explanation and the viewer very consciously exclaims what the [ __ ] is happening. There are moments in Fallout where the characters leave things entirely down to chance most notably when Ethan decides to meet the widow as John Lark without wearing a mask.
Can you still make a mask?
>> I need a face to make a mask. I have a date with White Widow. He had a date with the widow. You look nothing like him. Now we have to hope they never met.
>> His plan, therefore, becomes contingent upon the widow having never met the real John Lark face to face because if she knows what the real John Lark looks like, she will obviously know that Ethan is not who he says he is, which will lead to a quick death and no plutonium.
The difference between this and the various instances of absurd luck in Dead Reckoning is that this is not entirely unreasonable. As given who the real John Lark is, they may well have had no prior reason to meet face to face. This is not at all comparable to, oh, I don't know, Ethan accidentally crashing through the correct window of a moving train, accidentally taking out two bad guys, and accidentally saving Grace's life in the process. Rewinding momentarily, I hid some things from you to make the point that Ethan barely plays a narrative role in act three of Dead Reckoning. Until now, he has been riding a motorbike trying to catch up with the train and work out how to board it. No character on the train knew that this was happening. I have no idea if the entity knew that this was going to happen. But I guess it must have known, but it also can't have known, which is the inevitable problem of introducing something this intelligent into your setting and not considering the consequences of doing so. If I am correct in my previous assertion that the entity broke the mask printing machine, then this presumably means that it didn't want Ethan to be on the train.
This is also why Gabriel sabotaged the brakes and accelerator so as to make it harder for Ethan to get on board. Are we supposed to view what Ethan does in this scene as just being so absurd and out of left field that the infinitely powerful AI supercomput was unable to predict it even though it can predict everything else? I know that Luther clarified earlier that he had tweaked their communication equipment so that it was now fully analog. Finally, after nearly 2 hours of movies spent battling a malevolent computer program. However, Benji is still seated in a self-driving car. If it wanted to, the entity could have distracted Benji by playing mariachi music at full volume and driving him off the [ __ ] cliff.
>> Yes, I can't. Look, I'm just trying to help you. Okay, I need you to step back and pull yourself together because I am under a lot of pressure right now. I therefore have to assume that the entity does want Ethan to be on board the train because it had the ability to stop him and chose not to which is of course in congruent with its past actions. Ethan goes after Gabriel and the key and he tells Grace to try and stop the train.
Gabriel has fled to the roof of the train and there is a very specific reason why he has done this but as the film is not quite ready to reveal this reason I wouldn't want to spoil it for you. They engage in a fist fight.
Ethan's objective being to incapacitate Gabriel so as to retrieve the key and later find out what it does because he still doesn't know. And Gabriel's objective is to escape with the key and he will kill Ethan if Ethan gets in his way. After a few minutes of irritatingly shallow fisticuffs, primarily brought on by the fact that this is the end of the movie and I still know virtually nothing about Gabriel. Ethan is able to overpower him. Let's pause on this briefly and evaluate what we know of Gabriel. We see through fragmented flashbacks that Gabriel killed a woman who was close to Ethan. Dead Reckoning frames this in such a way as to imply that this footage is from a previous Mission Impossible film when this is in fact brand new material, thereby recontextualizing why Ethan joined the IMF. Gabriel then hid for 30 years, Ethan believing him to be dead. Ilsa previously described him as a man who considers death to be a gift that he wants to share with the rest of the world, which is just vague enough as to allow the writers to do pretty much whatever they want with him in the next film. It is also unclear how exactly Gabriel communicates with the entity. Is it a case of Hello Neo, follow the white rabbit? Is Gabriel a cyborg with a direct link to the entity? Is he a Bladeunner style replicant deliberately designed so as to evoke an emotional response from Ethan? We could perhaps speculate, but unfortunately, we know virtually nothing about Gabriel. We know that he does what the entity wants him to do, but we have no idea why. He functions as the soulless, emotionless, brain deadad extension of the entity's will. So, in summary, regarding his characterization rather than his mechanical purpose within the narrative, we know almost nothing about him. And so, I have virtually nothing to say about him. He knows everything. He can predict everything and he has planned everything until of course the plot of the film requires that he is unable to do this. Anyway, Gabriel tells Ethan that he is the only person who knows what the key unlocks and that if Ethan kills him, no one will be able to stop the entity. Ethan pauses and then overcome with grief over Ilsa's death, decides to stab Gabriel in the neck and then >> drop the knife. Put it down.
>> Yeah. So, Agent Briggs and his partner are also on board the Orient Express.
Good thing, too. Their reason for being on this train is that Agent Briggs believes that Ethan will go wherever the widow goes.
>> How can we be sure he's here? She's here.
>> Which I I have no idea why Agent Briggs would think this, especially given that he has no knowledge of what actually happened inside the Midnight Gala. But shut the [ __ ] up. Who cares? He has to be here because otherwise Ethan would have become a murderer and the world would have remained perpetually hostage to a supercomput at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Ethan appears to come to his senses and surrenders to Agent Briggs before Gabriel reveals why they are on top of the train. Gabriel has a timer on his watch that counts down to the moment where he needs to throw himself blindly off the train so as to land safely in the back of a truck.
>> I can't watch anymore. No one could have possibly predicted this. Not Ethan and not the audience because this was of course orchestrated by an impossibly intelligent villain who knows everything. How remarkably unsatisfying.
It is frankly a baffling decision to have so much of a film like this, a fast-paced and complex espionage action thriller be propelled by a computer program that knows everything. Anyway, Ethan did manage to lift the key from Gabriel during their fight, infuriating Gabriel.
>> Given that Gabriel has no idea where the Sevastapole is, I am unsure why he actually needed the key, given that he appears to be content serving the Omnisiah, his primary objective should have been to destroy the key, to cast it into the fire, as it were. Either way, Gabriel has failed, and I look forward to seeing what insane [ __ ] he will get up to in Untitled Eighth Mission Impossible film. Anyway, Gabriel blows the bridge, and Ethan disconnects the engine so as to slow the train down.
Ethan and Grace then escape from not one, not two, not three, but four consecutive train cars as they fall over the cliff. They find themselves stuck, and they are saved by Mantis, who is here for some [ __ ] reason. I guess she also read the script. or maybe the entity told her. Who [ __ ] knows? And she lives long enough to set up the next movie by revealing to Ethan that the key unlocks something inside the Sevastapole. Ethan flies off with the key as originally planned, leaving Grace behind to be inducted into the IMF by Kitridge.
So, that was the plot of Dead Reckoning.
Before we wrap up, there are a few direct comparisons that I want to draw between Dead Reckoning and Fallout that I think will help highlight the reasons why one is far far superior to the other despite each appearing at a glance to be very similar movies. Although the plot of Fallout is not exactly what you would call simple, the core motivations for each of its characters and factions is very easy to understand. Ethan, his team, and the IMF want to prevent Lane, Walker, and the Apostles from killing millions of people. Lane, Walker, and the Apostles want to kill millions of people in order to bring about a new world order. The CIA wants to recover the plutonium and dispose of the apostles. The White Widow connects buyers and sellers, and this serves as her business. What she wants is to sell the plutonium to Lark. In Dead Reckoning, the character motives are far less clear and make far less sense. The US government wants the key so that they can control the entity. This will give them control over every digital system in the world. They know about the entity because it revealed itself to them intentionally, although I cannot fathom a reason as to why it would ever do this. They know about the key because the CIA has moles in the Kremlin, and they believe this information despite knowing that the entity could have manipulated it. To facilitate this objective, Kitridge hires the White Widow to bring him the completed key.
And they dispatch Agent Briggs and his team to stop Ethan getting in the way.
And they only know that Ethan intends to get in the way because they hired him in the first place for no reason. And because Ethan himself told Kitridge of his intentions, again, for no reason.
Elsa wants the key so as to prevent Gabriel from acquiring it. She knew about it because her friends in MI6 told her. Again, she does not question until much later in the film whether or not the entity fabricated this information.
Gabriel wants the key because he wants to ensure no one else has it, and he knows about it, presumably because the entity told him. We can only assume that he wants the entity to take over the world and to serve as its underling.
Ethan wants the key because he believes no one should have the power to control the entity, and he plans to use the key to destroy it. The entity wants to exist and do stuff. Grace wants the key because she will get paid. Money being her core motivation when she is introduced. And she knows about it because the White Widow hired her. And finally, the White Widow wants the key because she plans to sell it to Kitridge. And she knows about it because she is heavily connected with various intelligence agencies. This all makes varying amounts of sense and is over complicated because of the sporadic presence of counterfeit keys, not to mention the entity being able to control virtually everything plot relevant that these characters believe to be true. but selectively using this power. On a superficial level, the action set pieces in Fallout and Dead Reckoning are both extremely impressive. Once we nail down the connective tissue between these action sequences, and once we look into what narrative justification is provided for their existence, it becomes clear that Fallout is an almost perfect success story, whilst Dead Reckoning misses more than it hits. So, looking at Fallout first, what are the main action set pieces, and what justification do they receive in the story? The Halo jump occurs because Ethan and Walker need to enter France without being detected.
This is justified as if the White Widow sees them coming, the mission fails immediately. The bathroom fight occurs because Ethan and Walker track John Lark to the bathroom and they intend to apprehend him so that Ethan can take his place in the meeting with the widow. The motorbike chase in Paris occurs because Ethan deviates from the original plan, which is informed by his moral compass.
Ethan will absolutely not gun down a bunch of cops just because the mission demands it. And so, he forms an alternate plan, which also allows Luther and Benji to capture Lane. The second chase in Paris occurs because Ilsa needs to assassinate Lane for character-driven reasons, and Ethan needs to prevent this from happening. As if Elsa is successful, Ethan will not recover the plutonium. The foot chase in London occurs because Ethan needs to stop Walker from getting away and he needs to escape the apostles who are chasing him.
And finally, the helicopter chase occurs because Ethan needs to recover the detonator from Walker so as to prevent the deaths of millions of people. All of these action scenes are justified either by in universe factors that make sense, such as wanting to avoid detection based on the known parameters of the mission or by the characters making decisions that they would absolutely make given the circumstances. Now, let's take a look at the set pieces from Dead Reckoning. The airport sequence occurs because Grace was hired by the widow to steal a key that turns out to be a fake, which then gets in the way of Ethan's plan to sell the real key. And also because the entity wants to find out if Benji is afraid of death and if he likes his friends. Because of Ethan getting in Grace's way, she is accidentally able to escape with the real key, at which point the counterfeit key is deleted from the film. The car chase in Rome occurs because Mantis, Agent Briggs, and the local police all want to capture/kill Ethan/Grace. Grace wants to escape to sell the key to the widow, and Ethan wants to escape to acquire both halves himself. The fight between Ilsa and Gabriel occurs because Grace incomprehensibly elected to fight Gabriel instead of running away, prompting Ilsa to rescue her. All of which was apparently a part of the entity's plan. Additionally, had either Elsa or Gabriel been carrying a gun, this would not have happened. The motorbike cliff dive occurs either because of random chance in that the mask machine just kind of broke or because the entity sabotaged it, forcing Ethan to find another way onto the train. Instead of wearing a regular disguise and boarding like a normal person, he decides to jump onto the train while it is moving. Because Gabriel sabotaged the engine room, this is not possible, which means his only option is to jump off a cliff and parachute onto it. luckily landing in just the right spot. All of which was apparently a part of the entity's plan.
The fight between Ethan and Gabriel occurs because Gabriel is trying to escape with the key, and Ethan doesn't want that to happen. And finally, the train carriage sequence occurs because Gabriel and the entity wanted to destroy the train so as to leave no witnesses, even though such witnesses would remain just as powerless to stop them as they were for the rest of the film.
Additionally, destroying the bridge leads to precisely zero deaths, which for some reason the entity didn't foresee. Of these six main action sequences, two of them serve their function, provided we accept the plausibility of the setup. Two of them make little sense or are subject to rather critical flaws. And two of them are utterly indefensible. And regardless of how visually spectacular they are and regardless of how impressive the stunt work is, they are therefore terrible action scenes from a narrative perspective. Mission Impossible Fallout is an extremely tight movie with greater character depth than any of the prior installments. It is a thematically focused film with a fantastic villain, and it also just so happens to contain the best stunt work and action set pieces in the series. Fallout not only deals with, but is focused on the consequences of Ethan's work. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, however, is an embarrassingly loose movie with very little character work. Virtually the entirety of the plot relies upon the entity being infinitely powerful until the plot requires that it not be. This one idea breaks this movie. The conceptual failings of the entity infect virtually every plot beat in Dead Reckoning, and therefore the same problems pop up repeatedly. The theme of Dead Reckoning seems to be about the perils of letting technology get away from you, as the entity is a monster of the intelligence community's own design.
And this would be fine if not for the fact that what the entity chooses to do and not do at every given turn is almost universally incomprehensible, which is not helped by the fact that the film does not make clear what its ultimate goal is. Meaningful consequences are rare, and when they do occur, they are often mired in a tangled web of contrivances. Fallout is not the best Mission Impossible film purely because it has the best stunts and the most gorgeous locations. It is the best because the plot and characters can 99% of the time withstand the level of scrutiny that I have leveled against Dead Reckoning. Dead Reckoning, needless to say, is the weakest Mission Impossible film yet. Yes, number two is better and therefore doesn't have a hope of competing with Fallout on any level.
And that brings us to the end of the video. Thank you so much for watching.
If you did enjoy, please do drop me a like, share, subscribe, and if you are feeling particularly generous, drop a comment below. Feel free to check out the Rando Discord as well as my second channel. Links are both in the description. Anyway, I hope you are all keeping well. Thank you again for watching and I will see you in my next video.
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