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Eight movies. Five directors. Three dozen character actors. Two dozen exotic locales, each one of them the perfect background for globetrotting espionage. A dozen action set pieces. A half dozen peeled-off masks. One best-of-show brawl set in a public bathroom. Numerous car chases, motorcycle chases, helicopter chases, explosions, collateral-damage relationships, and falls and near-falls from both modest and great heights. Too many running scenes to count. So, so many running scenes.

For nearly 30 years, the Mission: Impossible franchise has managed to take the bare-bone elements of spy thrillers, summer blockbusters and the classic screen trifecta of thrills, spills and chills, and supersize them for maximum adrenaline fixes. And despite all the number-crunching above, it really boils down to a single man. Tom Cruise took on the role of Ethan Hunt — Impossible Mission Force (IMF) MVP, rogue agent, master of disguise, savior of the geopolitical status quo, ill-advised air traveler — back in 1996 as just another gig in between playing literary bloodsuckers and “show me the money” sad sacks. In 2025, he exits the film series having claimed the title of the last superhuman movie star alive, an industry unto himself. Cruise used these M:I movies to prove he was willing to risk life and limb in the name of entertaining you. Take him out of the equation, and all you’d have are expensive looking Bond-lite flicks based on an old TV show.

All good things must come to an end, and while the guy with the need for speed isn’t going gently into the night just yet — coming soon: Tom Cruise in Literal Outer Space — he’s ready to retire the brand on a high note. Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning wears its swan-song vibe on its sleeve, right down to the title. But it’s not going out without a victory lap. Or two. Or 22.

Kicking off with the first of several montages devoted to the series’ highlights, villains, femme fatales, former girlfriends, shoot-outs, showdowns, past cast members, potential extinction-event MacGuffins and the kinds of stunts that have made Cruise an insurance-liability nightmare, this capstone is as much about honoring the past as it is ensuring a world under constant threat has a future. You may be tempted to rewatch the septet of entries that preceded this long goodbye (with the emphasis on long; despite clocking in at a shade under three hours, it often feels like its running time exceeds the combined length of all the previous M:I films). Don’t worry. The movie itself provides refresher supercuts before the opening credits’ signature fuse starts burning, all the better to catch you up so it can cut to the actual chases.

Specifically, Final Reckoning wants to remind you about everything that happened when we last saw Hunt keeping things from descending into chaos, i.e. 2023’s Dead Reckoning — Part One. (That one was also directed by Christoper McQuarrie, who’s settled into become the franchise’s resident shot caller.) So there’s this sentient AI program called “The Entity.” It wants out to wipe out humanity, has inspired a death cult willing to do its bidding, pumps out nonstop misinformation, and “wants us scared and divided” so it can render good people helpless. In other words, the Entity has a bright future in politics and is likely the No. 1 contender for becoming the GOP’s Presidential candidate in 2028.

Per fictional screen POTUS Angela Bassett’s introductory monologue, the deus ex machina sunk the Russian sub that it called home and infiltrated cyberspace. Now the program is determined to seize all of the major nuclear arsenals of the world and bid Homo sapiens farewell. The key to preventing that is, well, a key. Luckily, Ethan has the key. What he doesn’t have is drive containing the Entity’s source code, which is still on that sub at the bottom of the Bering Sea. Nor does he have “the poison pill” that will end this digital reign of terror. That belongs to Gabriel (Esai Morales), the film’s flesh-and-blood nemesis named after the biblical angel heralding a new age. Hunt’s mission: Find the source code, find Gabriel, keep it from the U.S. government — because no one should have that much power at their beck and call — and try to avoid situations that will get him killed in the process. That last order will naturally be the toughest one to follow.

The usual suspects, in the form of old IMF comrades Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), are around to help. So is master pickpocket/major love interest Grace (Haley Atwell) and ex-henchperson-turned-ally Paris (Pom Klementieff). Pain-in-the-ass federal agents Briggs (Shea Whigham) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) also show up, as does a host of other recurring and recognizable mugs: Henry Czerny, Hannah Waddingham, Nick Offerman, Janet McTeer, Holt McCallany. A deep-cut character from the original M:I becomes a huge mover and shaker in the back half here. Easter eggs are everywhere. This is a series that loves making famous faces scowl while delivering long reams of Exposition: Inevitable dialogue almost as much as it loves indulging Cruise’s death wishes, and Final Reckoning falls in line with that overall operative. You should never underestimate the power of Angela Bassett being allowed to go full sound-and-fury on pages of dialogue. As for the new faces, the movie does double duty in proving that Tramell Tillman’s smooth-operator act from Severance can translate beautifully from TV to motion pictures, and that the off-the-charts screen presence Katy O’Brian displayed in Love Lies Bleeding was no one-off fluke.

But who are we kidding here? They’re all bit players supporting the name above the title. This is nothing if not the Tom Cruise Daredevil Show, blown up to staggering IMAX levels of grandeur. You’re paying to see the 62-year-old star go to ridiculous lengths to demonstrate what he’ll do to still make 21st century blockbusters feel like events. Ethan Hunt must save the world. Cruise has a higher purpose: He wants to save the movies. And if that means jumping out of planes, holding his breath underwater for dangerous amounts of time, climbing the sides of cliffs and/or careening off mountains on motorcycles, Mr. A-List will do it. Most of the set pieces are callbacks to the series’ history of putting Cruise in peril and demonstrating his ability to stay in extraordinary fighting shape. The lung-bursting plunge into deep sea waters is reminiscent of the dive in 2015’s Rogue Nation. A torture sequence brings to mind Mission: Impossible III (2006), which morphs into an Atwell-aided melée similar to two-by-two fights involving Vanessa Kirby and Rebecca Ferguson in previous entries.

All of these are mere amuse-bouches in preparation for the main course, in which Hunt manages to stowaway on a biplane, commandeer it, then jump onto a second biplane and hang on to the wing while swooping up to 8000 feet. Cruise, naturally, performed the stunt himself. Unlike the previous Mission: Impossible‘s various, vertigo-inducing showstoppers, this one is left for the last act, and it’s worth the wait. Not even the endless crowing about this daredevil feat in the marketing campaign leading up to the Cannes Film Festival premiere (and the movie’s release on May 23rd) can suck the exhilaration and sense of awe of watching this extended jaunt through the wild blue yonder. For all of the bleeding-edge tech paranoia and state-of-the-art thrillmongering on display in three decades worth of M:I thrillers, it takes an aerial dogfight that might have graced a movie 100 years ago to leave you breathless. That’s entertainment! Somewhere, stunt pilot Dick Grace is slow-clapping Cruise right now.

“It’s all been leading up to this,” characters keep repeating ad nauseam, and you get the feeling that, having now delivered one big try-to-top-that gesture, Cruise can let Hunt rest and bask in the glory of a mission well-accomplished. He’s in his sixties now, and though the gent is in incredible shape by any standard — see: a fight scene that plays out with Cruise wearing nothing but athletic briefs — not even Xenu can stop him from aging. He’s determined to keep the franchise from self-destructing. Mission: Impossible — Final Reckoning feels like a conclusion to 30 years worth of proving that yes, you still can conjure up a certain vintage strain of Hollywood magic. It also feels like the end of an era. We will still get “Tom Cruise movies.” Just not like this, not from a movie star of his magnitude, assuming they can even manufacture another singular figure like him in the age of perpetual, cut-rate content. But hey, anything’s possible.