Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning Features The Best Action Scene In The Entire Franchise

Spoilers follow.

One of the strange quirks of the nearly three-decade-old "Mission: Impossible" franchise of action films is that while the series is known for its amazing, jaw-dropping setpieces, the climaxes of these films aren't always the most notable part. "Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol," for example, has the incredibly tense sequence in which dedicated IMF Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) scales the side of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai ... but that setpiece occurs in the middle of the film, and the movie concludes with a fight sequence in the middle of a high-rise parking garage. The original "Mission: Impossible" is well-known for its deadly silent CIA break-in sequence, which also occurs at the midpoint. While its ending scene on the fast-moving Chunnel is well-done, that sequence has always paled in comparison to the image of Cruise dangling on a wire and barely avoiding slamming onto the pressurized floor. 

Before now, perhaps the best closing sequence of the series came in the 2018 film "Mission: Impossible – Fallout," in which Hunt has to chase down the anarchic terrorist John Lark (Henry Cavill), first by climbing up a rope and then commandeering a helicopter ... all while that helicopter is in mid-flight. But that was then. With the arrival of the eighth film in the series, "Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning," we not only have the film that ends the strongest, but we have the best action sequence in the entire series. The old Ethan Hunt was content with just climbing up a helicopter while it was soaring through the mountainous skies. The new Ethan Hunt raises the stakes, by hanging onto one biplane in the forests of South Africa and then jumping onto another one, all while thousands of feet in the air, and all while his reconfigured IMF team tries to help him save the world.

Even Ethan hanging off the helicopter in "Mission: Impossible – Fallout" isn't the first time that Tom Cruise has hung off the side of a plane for the entertainment of the masses. The most famous example came in the opening scene of the 2015 film "Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation," in which Ethan was hanging for his dear life on a very large plane as it took off. But that scene, as heavily promoted as it was in the marketing, was awfully brief. Some audiences may have wondered if the same would be true of the climactic stunt in "Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning," considering how much of the ad campaign has centered around the image of Cruise on two different biplanes in the middle of the jungles of South Africa. But what makes this sequence so superlative is that it's expansive and encompasses two critical pieces of the climax.

Ethan and his IMF team are in South Africa because they've got one last chance to stop the evil AI known as the Entity. The Entity wants to take over all of the world's nuclear weapons, and has gotten its digital hands on those of eight of nine world leaders. All that's left is the United States, and there are only minutes before it can effectively hack in and bring about a veritable Armageddon on Earth. At the same time, the nefarious Gabriel (Esai Morales) wants to regain control of the Entity and has set a less world-destructive bomb outside the Doomsday Vault in South Africa. (That vault is so highly protected that the Entity wants to abscond there once it gains control of the U.S. arsenal, because it would be protected from the devastating aftermath.) While Gabriel and Ethan both want to put a "poison pill" into the Entity, Gabriel wants to do so to control it for his nasty purposes, whereas Ethan wants to destroy it. Gabriel is able to escape a firefight before the bomb goes off, and he and a henchman take two separate analog biplanes to head to safety. Ethan gives chase, while the rest of his makeshift team tries to trap the Entity in the Doomsday Vault while stalling the bomb from killing them all.

Director Christopher McQuarrie is able to masterfully balance the two separate planes of action here; there's plenty of tension on the non-Ethan side all by itself. It's not just that the team is trying to stop a bomb from killing them, and it's not just that they're trying to capture the Entity before it unleashes hell on Earth. Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) would be handling the tech ... except he gets badly wounded, meaning that the newly reformed Paris (Pom Klementieff) has to be a would-be surgeon to treat his wound and ensure he doesn't die on them. That also means that the beautiful and wily pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell) has to break into the Doomsday Vault's technical system at Benji's instructions, and also grab a McGuffin-esque drive that would trap the Entity ... but she can only grab it during a hundred-millisecond window (AKA within the blink of an eye), or else all fails.

And that's only if Ethan is able to grab that aforementioned poison pill from the outlandishly evil Gabriel, who can't help but laugh at the sight of our hero dangling from a biplane to stop him. Plot machinations aside, what makes this sequence so breathtaking is the same thing that has made other big action sequences in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise so unique. Yes, there's no doubt some level of digital trickery at play in the slew of images of Tom Cruise hanging thousands of feet in the air at every possible angle on two rickety planes. Even for a guy as talented and physically capable as him, there would have been safety measures in place that don't come through in the final product. But the length and extent of this sequence along with the long shots captured via IMAX cameras makes it so whatever VFX may be involved are so effectively blended into the practical image that it's terrifyingly seamless.

The other aspect that makes this final sequence so exciting is how it manages to both echo past entries in the series and feel totally distinctive by itself. Again, this is not the first time we've seen Ethan Hunt hanging off a plane, and it's not the first time his IMF team has been working breathlessly down to the millisecond to avert total destruction. The sequence also includes a satisfying death that feels somewhat reminiscent of how Ethan's first true villainous counterpart, his old boss Jim Phelps, died in the 1996 original. There, Jim's body is mangled when a helicopter on which he's hanging slams into a train track. Here, Gabriel attempts to escape via parachute but is dragged into the plane's body and his own face is mangled pretty grossly.

And even if the references didn't feel deliberate, the sequence would stand out because of how Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie came together once more to create jaw-dropping, outrageous, absolutely death-defying stunt work simply to entertain those they'll never meet. As is noted in our review of "Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning," this is not a perfect film, and its first hour is particularly jumbled and messy. It takes a bit too long for this film to get going, but once it does, it delivers in spades.

Tom Cruise has done seemingly everything in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise to entertain audiences, to make them gasp in excitement, to thrill them, and to terrify them with the limits of what the human body can endure. "The Final Reckoning" pushes Ethan to a limit we may not have realized was possible before now. The end result is the rare case of when the marketing really can't do justice to what's in the film itself. Yes, you've seen the images of Tom Cruise hanging off a plane here, but you really haven't experienced the sequence until you see it in full for yourself. Just when we thought he couldn't top himself, he went out with the biggest possible bang.