Ethan Hunt is Dead
On 05/23/22, an exceptionally odd movie trailer was unleashed upon the unsuspecting masses. The film? Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, heavily rumored to be the swan song of Ethan Hunt. Played with reckless abandon and an insatiable death wish by one Thomas Cruise Mapother the 4th, Hunt has long established himself as one of the most viscerally entertaining action icons in cinematic history. He is seemingly unkillable, or so we thought. But what if I told you that Ethan Hunt is already dead; that this new (and final) entry in the series will involve him navigating the spirit world, a la Dante’s Divine Comedy, in search of blissful, eternal rest with the woman he loves? The clues are everywhere. Allow me to present them to you.
First, let’s rewind back to the miraculous ending of Mission: Impossible — Fallout. Hunt’s team is faced with a literal ticking clock, a nuclear device about to explode. They are standing by to disarm it, but first Ethan will need to secure the detonator, guarded by Henry Cavill and his infamous mustache. Long story short, Hunt and Henry Cavill soon find themselves climbing up a sheer cliff face, the detonator resting on an outcropping above them. Ethan, for all of his pre-established rock climbing prowess (see the opening sequence of John Woo’s seminal MI: 2), clearly will not be able to reach it in time. When the editor climatically cuts away Ethan has a great deal of cliff left to traverse, and only fifteen seconds left to do it. We shift our focus away from Ethan, Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust cuts the wire, and the screen flashes white, signifying the blast. It’s over. They’re dead. Every last one of them.
Except they can’t be, right? And so they’re not. This is a major Hollywood blockbuster with Tom Cruise at the helm, a time-tested franchise full of beloved characters. There was never any doubt that Ethan would magically reach the detonator and save Ving Rhames, oft known as America’s Sweetheart following the untimely death of Mary Pickford. It seemed impossible, but impossible is what Ethan Hunt does. It’s in the title of the franchise after all.
But let’s look at this sequence more closely. What happens after that suspicious fade to white? Just about the happiest ending you’ve ever seen. After everyone who’s not the villain (who is upset, as you might imagine) breathes their euphoric sighs of relief we cut back to Cruise, exhausted, lying at the edge of the cliff. He is now some distance from the camp where his friends are waiting. Presumably, if the nukes were to go off the blast would take a few seconds to arrive, enough time for Hunt to get comfortable and embrace the infinite. We see him look up at the sky, contemplating all that he has just endured. We enter his point of view as the image goes hazy, Ethan’s consciousness slipping away. The last thing he sees, before yet another suspicious flash of white, is a helicopter, arriving to take Ethan to his reward.
From there it’s all about closure. Hunt learns that the villain is in custody, that his beloved Impossible Mission Force will be safe in the trustworthy hands of Angela Bassett. He gets confirmation that Ilsa cares for him, that his lovable team has not exploded, that all is right with the world. Most interesting, Hunt has a downright utopian conversation with his estranged ex-wife, Julia. He tells her that he’s sorry, that “what happened here” was all his fault. Tears are welling in his eyes. She tells him “Nothing happened because you were here. And I sleep soundly at night knowing you always will be.” Always. Ethan asks Julia if she’s happy, and she confirms it. What a relief. What a way to part. They embrace one final time, Ethan haloed in heavenly light, framed by a gleaming white hospital pillow.
So what did happen here exactly? Is Ethan sorry because he put his wife in danger, or because he couldn’t save her? Is his brain showing him what’s real, or what he needs to see?
With all of that in mind, consider the title of the film. Fallout is what remains after a nuclear blast, the vestiges of death and destruction that linger in the air and poison the land. What is fallout without an explosion? And what if the film is implying that what we will see in its wake is nothing less than the twisted impact of the nuke’s detonation?
Enter Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning. Let’s begin by breaking down some of the… odder moments in the trailer:
At 27 seconds in Ilsa Faust, haloed in that familiar heavenly light, presents Ethan with a key shaped like a crucifix. In voiceover, the man who is presumably the film’s villain tells Ethan “This is our chance to control the truth, the concepts of right and wrong, for everyone for centuries to come.” Centuries? At 53 seconds in, Ethan and the bad guy stand up at exactly the same moment, perfectly mirroring each other’s actions, staring at each other intensely. We see numerous anachronisms throughout the trailer. At 0:39 we see what looks like a torpedo of antiquated design, and at 1:33 we see a man diving beneath the water while wearing a helmet that bears an uncanny resemblance to a WWI gas mask. At 1:05 Ethan is unnervingly attacked by a woman in old-timey garb, her weapon moving too manically to be easily identified. At 1:20 Ilsa is embroiled in a duel, wielding a badass sword cane to counter her opponent’s knife. That doesn’t seem like a fair fight. At 1:38, a steam locomotive sails off a cliff. There are a lot of trains in this trailer, each of them relentlessly hurtling Ethan towards the inevitable. So many of the trailer’s shorts are backed by voids of gleaming white and desert tan, all of them barren and clean and bright and empty. What does it all mean?
Well, let’s start with Ilsa. We see her, angelic lightning and all, hand Ethan that oddly cross-shaped key. We see her again at 0:59. The rest of the crew is dressed somberly, all in black, except for Ilsa whose purple shirt stands out in sharp relief, the only pop of color in the otherwise dismal frame. Ethan, Benji and Luther look miserable, as if they’re attending a funeral, but Ilsa looks confident, staring determinedly into the horizon. Clearly, Ilsa is Ethan’s Virgil, his guide to the afterlife. Throughout the series, Ilsa has been exceptionally clearheaded, decisive, strong-willed. Unlike Hunt and his crew, who are in denial in light of the horror they’ve just experienced, Faust can see the situation for what it is. She’s dead, might as well make the most of it.
At the beginning of the film Ethan’s mind is still making excuses, still unwilling to accept the pain of his failure and the finality of his demise. It’s a little like The Sixth Sense, if you replace Dr. Crowe with John McClane. At the end of the trailer, we see Ethan drive his motorcycle off a sheer cliff, one that looks suspiciously like the location of the final fight in Fallout. And even if it’s not the exact same cliff that hardly matters. The cliff is not literal, it’s symbolic. It’s Ethan returning, in his mind, to the scene of his death. When he throws himself off, Ethan is accepting his fate. This is one fall that Ethan will not survive, not traditionally. He will crash to the ground, not splintered and broken but enlightened. Much like Vanilla Sky’s climactic leap of faith but inverted, Ethan will use this jump to decisively abandon the world of the living, to embrace his new reality as a dead man. This jump is Ethan throwing open the door to the other side.
The old-fashioned torpedo? The crazy lady’s clothes? The sword cane? The weird gas mask diving helmet? Elements like these will flood the film once Ethan’s story stops being literal and becomes a journey of the mind. Once Ethan untethers himself from his former reality, time (as he has known it) will cease to have any meaning. History will erratically converge, timelines will collapse into each other… and Ethan will meet himself. Old. Embittered. Unwilling to let go. What to make of that odd shot in the trailer of the two men standing simultaneously, a living mirror? What of the man’s proclamation that they will be able to control the laws of their reality, something as nebulous and vast as its very conception of right and wrong, for centuries to come? I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but centuries are a long time. It’s almost as if the man is telling Ethan that they can create the rules for this world, that they are Godly in this place, and what world could be so malleable to the nature of one man’s will but a world of the mind? What is the connection between these two men? What is their conflict?
Here is the plot of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning: At first, Ethan Hunt is just going about business as usual, performing impossible missions and saving the world. Ilsa finds him. She wants to tell him the truth, because only then can they start their new life together in the infinite. However, she sees the trouble that Ethan’s having processing all of that grief, the weight of that responsibility. She knows that coming right out with it will break his mind, causing him to sink even further into denial, so she gives Ethan the crucifix key. He can turn the lock when he’s ready. Ethan distracts himself with car chases and train derailments, even picking up a new love interest along the way. It’ll be easier to ignore what Ilsa’s saying if Ethan shifts his focus to Haley Atwell, who doesn’t constantly remind Hunt of his own horrible death. She’s perfectly willing to go along with the farce, probably because she (like this entire world) was stitched together from the broken pieces of Hunt’s shattered psyche. And yet… there’s a part of Ethan that knows. That’s the part of him that shows Haley the key. What could this mean? What could it open? No time to think about that, there are bad guys to foil!
Eventually, Ethan learns the truth. He is his own villain. His inability to let go, to forget his guilt and trauma and embrace eternal bliss with Ilsa, has manifested as this bitter older man. Later in the trailer, we see Cruise battling what appears to be the villain’s main henchman atop a train. Ethan is playing out this scenario in the only way he knows how, the only way his brain can manage. After all, there is always a criminal mastermind, always a dastardly henchman, always a grand action setpiece for a finale. The setup of the bout is clearly mirroring Ethan’s climactic fight with Jon Voight from the final act of the first film. What a way for Hunt’s story to come full circle, for him to find peace. What a way to kill the past.
And now, with all of that in mind, consider the title of the film. Dead Reckoning? Sure. Ethan’s dead, and he’s reckoning. He’s reckoning with his own demise, reckoning with that awful moment where he failed his friends, reckoning with his inability to let go and leave the world to its own devices even after he has surrendered his corporeal form and left this Earthly plane… Dead Reckoning? More like Reckoning with Death.
