I'll still go see Final Reckoning, but I'm in complete agreement that Dead Reckoning Pt. 1 lowered the bar to such an extent that I'm not all that excited about this one. Which is a shame because it seemed like McQuarrie and Cruise had a lot of runway left based on their earlier collaborations. Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation are easily my favorite of the Mission Impossible movies (despite the fact that they're both saddled with similarly generic sounding subtitles). Those two movies found the right mix of seriously inventive action with slightly slapstick comedic touches which started to distinguish the Mission Impossible series as a better version of the James Bond formula. I liked the introduction of Jeremy Renner's character, William Brandt. As an actor he elevates every movie he appears in. And Rebecca Feguson as Ethan Hunt's MI6 foil Ilsa Faust was easily the best part of the whole series right up until she was killed off to make room for a far less interesting new love interest.
In retrospect, the series had already started to come apart for me a bit with Fallout -- a movie which had some really strong points (incredibly well-filmed action scenes, Henry Cavill's mustache, every scene with Vanessa Kirby in it, a decent attempt at completing the 'Ethan Hunt as normal guy alter ego' character arc that J.J. Abrams started in MI3) but also some equally disappointing low points (no Jeremy Renner, no heist sequence, an unwelcome return to the series' self-serious origins, most of the plot seems contrived to stitch together otherwise unrelated action set pieces). But even so, Fallout is a masterpiece compared to Dead Reckoning Pt. 1 which just felt like a nearly three hour movie built to show off one incredible stunt. These have ceased to be upscale spy movies and have instead just become an excuse for Tom Cruise to cosplay as Evel Knieval.
