The first reactions to Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning are in, and while everyone has praised its action sequences, there’s one common complaint from the initial reviews.
At the end of the trailers for Mission: Impossible 8, Tom Cruise asks viewers to trust him “one last time.”
It’s a fair request, given every M:I movie is good, if not great; even the second and third entries, broadly believed to be the series’ weakest films, are better than most action movies released in the years since.
This weekend, should they choose to accept, audiences will bid farewell to Ethan Hunt and his IMF crew (with a mighty long runtime to boot). Unfortunately, it may not be a perfect send-off.
Mission: Impossible 8 reviews highlight first hour as a “big ask”
The first wave of reactions to Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning echoes two things: the set-pieces are spectacular, but the first hour is… boring.
“Whatever else about MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — BLAH RECKONING BLAH, the opening hour is an utter disaster. Listen carefully… nobody cares about the stupid MacGuffin,” critic Donald Clarke wrote on X/Twitter.
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has a banger third act, but the first two hours are pretty drab,” Jamie Jirak also tweeted. “If you cut out the first hour of Mission: Impossible we’d be talking,” Offscreen Central’s Kenzie Vanunu wrote.
It’s unclear exactly what happens in this reportedly flawed opening hour, but it’s likely a lot of table-setting; recapping the events of Dead Reckoning (and the rest of the franchise), (re)explaining the Entity, (re)introducing characters, and loads of exposition before the film can pick up any steam.
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning takes forever to start and every scene goes on for too long and there’s too many characters and ideas and flashbacks… But when it’s good, it’s great,” the Piercing It Together Podcast wrote.
Critic Brandon Streussnig described Final Reckoning as a “big old sloppy mess with maybe the best extended set piece they’ve ever done sandwiched in the middle,” and also noted he was “holding on for dear life during that hour like, ‘Are they f**king this up?'”
When is The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 Episode 9 on Hulu?