When Dead Reckoning Part 1 hit screens summer 2023, the Mission: Impossible gang intended for the next chapter to arrive less than a year later. However, some Hollywood labor unrest delayed the second film’s production so Dead Reckoning Part 2 didn’t arrive until May 2025.

Wait – they didn’t call it Dead Reckoning Part 2? They renamed it Final Reckoning? Huh.

Impossible Mission Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his crew continue their pursuit of a severely disruptive AI creation called “The Entity”. This comes with a ticking clock because the Entity pursues control of the world’s nuclear codes and will launch once it runs all of them if governments don’t bow to its demands.

This sends Ethan and his colleagues around the world to counter this menace. Inevitably, they butt up against many deadly threats along the way.

About that title: when Dead Reckoning arrived summer 2023, it did decently at the box office. However, it underperformed studio expectations and faded pretty quickly.

Some of this appeared to stem from timing, as Dead Reckoning lost ground barely a week into its run thanks to the “Barbenheimer” juggernaut. Barbie and Oppenheimer arrived and the sixth Mission: Impossible film sank in its wake.

Rather than accept that “Barbenheimer” formed a collective cultural phenomenon, apparently the studio felt Dead Reckoning failed to live up to their financial hopes thanks to that “Part 1” in its title. Thus the next chapter became Final Reckoning rather than Dead Reckoning Part 2.

Unburdened by that “Part 2” and given a release slot that lacked obvious competition for a few weeks, Final Reckoning proved the title harmed the 2023 film and the 2025 release brought in biggity bucks, right? Nope.

While Final did make more money than Dead, it didn’t do so in a convincing manner. The 2023 movie nabbed $571 million worldwide and the 2025 flick got $597 million, so those become awfully similar numbers.

There goes the “excuse” that audiences don’t want to see movies they know will lack a concrete ending. I never really bought that anyway given that people flocked to franchises like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings when they knew most chapters wouldn’t formally conclude anything.

As I opined in my Dead Reckoning review, I think the issue stemmed more from a combination of franchise ennui and extended running time. At 163 minutes, Dead Reckoning became the longest Mission to that point and Final Reckoning goes even further to stretch to 170 minutes.

Again, audiences don’t necessarily mind long running times. However, I think the Mission producers asked a lot of audiences to commit to more than five and a half hours of viewing time for two connected chapters in a series that started 29 years earlier that now reached its eighth entry.

Which gets me back to that franchise ennui issue. Granted, eight movies over 29 years doesn’t seem like a lot, but we don’t find much to differentiate the Mission flicks since they focus so intensely on Ethan.

Sure, we get new characters in every movie, but they tend to feel like the subordinates we are. While I suspect fans care about Ethan’s long-time colleagues Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), but make no mistake: the series revolves around Ethan.

Over the years, the Mission movies became more and more cogs in the “Tom Cruise Franchise” than separate entities. It becomes tough to separate Ethan from other roles Cruise has played over the last decade or so, as he appears to have settled into a routine and doesn’t want to challenge that.

So both Reckoning flicks offer the same old same old from Cruise. He plays the dogged hero and indulges in a slew of daring stunts.

This MO pleased audiences for a while but appears to have run a bit stale for the last two Mission flicks. 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick ticked off enough nostalgia boxes to become a success but apparently moviegoers lack the same affection for Ethan.

Again, this likely relates to the fact that Ethan didn’t go away for decades ala Top Gun’s Maverick. As noted, we didn’t get bunches of Mission releases from 1996 to 2025, but we also never went more than six years between those efforts.

Other than the 22 months between Reckoning tales, Mission movies arrived every three to six years. This never allowed folks to really “miss” Ethan like they did Maverick.

It also seems possible the two Reckoning flicks failed to become true blockbusters because they add up to one long five and a half hour movie that easily could run much less time. Both come with screenplays that bury us under seemingly endless exposition.

Honestly, I don’t know if the Reckoning narrative needs to split into two films at all, much less two really long films. Sure, the story at hand involves the potential literal end of the world, but many other movies take on similar territory and don’t need 333 minutes combined to do so.

With Final, we get an hour into the narrative before it really starts to advance in a meaningful way. Although I won’t claim the opening act involves nothing more than exposition, it feels that way, as it takes an awfully long time for us to find much of the expected big action sequences.

Much of this feels like padding intended to allow Ethan and company to visit a bunch of different locations. I think the filmmakers also believe that a really long movie somehow imparts a great sense of importance and gravity to the story.

But that doesn’t seem accurate. A tale can pack its beats into a much more compact space and still connote the scope of the threat found here.

Which leads me to think the two Reckoning flicks run so long thanks again to Cruise’s ego. He wanted to make them seem like Big Cinematic Events so we wound up with two overstuffed films to tell one pretty simple story.

All these complaints aside, Final Reckoning comes with moderate entertainment – well, at least once you get past that sluggish initial hour. As the movie progresses, it comes with more action and intrigue.

Even there, however, the project dawdles for much of its second hour. Although matters improve in terms of pacing, I still get the impression Final uses far too much cinematic space to convey information it could easily provide in a substantially more abbreviated manner.

Honestly, I think this becomes the biggest issue with Final, as the second of two parts shouldn’t need to give us so much explanation and progress so slowly. I get that Dead required a fair amount of “world building” to dig into the Entity and its threat, but with that out of the way, Final should’ve burst out of the gate like a rocket and been a non-stop ride.

Whereas the opposite becomes the case. Again, I think this reflects the desire of Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie to create a huge epic rather than to simply tell a thrilling tale.

Because they stretch a relatively simple story into two long movies, we end up with two films that extend far beyond their natural boundaries. As mentioned, even with its potentially apocalyptic stakes, nothing about the basic plot of the Reckoning flicks needs to span three hours, much less five and a half hours.

All of this creates frustration because a two and a half hour version that covers the events of Dead and Final could work really well. This second chapter takes far too long to build a head of steam and it seems likely to disenchant viewers with its sluggishness before it finally gets there.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning appears in an aspect ratio of 2.39:1 on this Blu-ray Disc – mostly, as the screen occasionally expanded to replicate the digital IMAX 1.90:1 frame.

Given that Final Reckoning came on the heels of Dead Reckoning and used the same crew, enjoy this lazily cut and pasted rehash of my picture/sound comments about that release!

Sharpness worked well. Virtually no issues with softness materialized, so the movie boasted positive accuracy and delineation.

The image lacked jagged edges or moiré effects, and edge haloes remained absent. Print flaws also remained absent.

Unsurprisingly, the film’s palette favored a definite orange and teal vibe. The disc replicated the colors as intended.

Blacks seemed dark and dense, while shadows appeared smooth and clear. This wound up as an excellent image.

Downconverted to Dolby TrueHD 7.1, the Dolby Atmos audio added great dimensionality to the effort. With many action scenes, the mix used the various channels to create a lively, vivid soundscape.

This meant various vehicles zipped around the room in a smooth, convincing manner, while other aspects of gunfire, explosions and mayhem brought out well-placed material that blended together in a nicely integrated way. The soundfield meshed together to deliver a well-rounded impression.

Audio quality also impressed, with speech that seemed natural and concise. Music appeared vivid and full, with dynamic tones.

Effects fared best of all, as those elements seemed accurate and tight, with crisp highs and deep lows. As I expect from a movie of this sort, the soundtrack excelled.

As we shift to extras, we get two separate audio commentaries, the first of which comes from director Christopher McQuarrie and actor Tom Cruise. Both sit together for a running, screen-specific look at story and characters, cast and performances, stunts and action, editing, sets and locations, and a few other production topics.

After more than four decades as a star, Cruise long ago mastered the art of speaking without saying anything of substance. This trait seems to seep into McQuarrie as well, at least when the two chat together.

On one hand, I admire the fact Cruise still sits for commentaries, as few major stars do so. But boy, this chat becomes nearly three hours of constant conversation that tells us shockingly little of real value.

Not that we learn nothing along the way, as we get occasional nuggets of value. Unfortunately, these get buried beneath the mountains of happy talk, so this track turns into a a tedious journey.

For the second commentary, we hear from McQuarrie, editor Eddie Hamilton and 1st AD Mary Boulding. All three sit together for their running, screen-specific examination of story/characters and editing, cast and performances, sets and locations, connections to other entries in the franchise, stunts, music, photography and general production logistics.

I blame Cruise for the superficial nature of the first track because McQuarrie works so much better without him. Sans Cruise and along with Hamilton and Boulding, McQuarrie manages to focus much more on filmmaking domains and much less on praise for the project and those involved.

Indeed, this turns into a brisk and lively discussion, as McQuarrie blends well with Boulding and Hamilton. We find a lot of good insights across this engaging chat.

We also get an isolated score track. Presented via Dolby 5.1 audio, it becomes a nice addition, though it seems too bad the music didn’t receive lossless treatment.

All the remaining extras appear on a bonus Blu-ray, and we start with five Behind the Scenes Featurettes. Viewed together via “Play All”, these occupy a total of 17 minutes, three seconds and involve McQuarrie, Cruise, composers Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey and actors Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Greg Tarzan Davis and Pom Klementieff.

We learn about vehicles and technical challenges, stunts, locations, and music. Despite some decent production footage, the “information” provided does little more than praise everyone involved and tell us how amazing the movie is. As such, don’t expect to learn much.

Under “Editorial Content”, we find three clips. A Deleted Footage Montage goes for nine minutes, 35 seconds.

Don’t expect traditional deleted scenes, as this compilation instead offers little bits and pieces cut along the way. None of them feature any dialogue, so even when actors speak, we don’t hear what they say.

As such, the “Montage” becomes less than useful. It just feels like a random collection of sequences that don’t make much sense given their brevity and lack of context.

We can view the montage with or without commentary from McQuarrie. He gives us some notes about why he cut the snippets and makes them more comprehensible than if you watch without his remarks.

Olifants River Canyon occupies nine minutes, 11 seconds and shows raw footage from the sequence in question. We also can check out “Canyon” with or without McQuarrie commentary, which is the only logical way to go.

Without McQuarrie, we just see pretty shots of planes. With his remarks, we get details about what we see, so take that version.

Finally, Biplane Transfer fills four minutes, three seconds and lets us watch material similar to what we get with “Canyon”, and here we get optional commentary from McQuarrie and Cruise together. They add perspective on what we see, though the presence of Cruise inevitably makes the end result less informative than what we find when McQuarrie sits alone.

Under Promo Spots, we get four short glimpses of the shoot that fill a total of three minutes, 23 seconds. These show aspects of stunts and offer some decent clips, even if we’ve already seen similar material elsewhere on the disc.

We finish with four Galleries, all of which present as running montages: “Tom Cruise” (16 images plus text biography), “Christopher McQuarrie” (14), “Collaboration” (24) and “Supporting Cast” (34). Nothing especially interesting materializes, and the Cruise biography becomes a long puff piece.

It remains to be seen if the Mission: Impossible franchise will continue past 2025, but if it ends with The Final Reckoning, then it concludes on a spotty note. Essentially the second half of one exceedingly long movie, it uses far more space than it needs and drags too much to become a winning action thriller. The Blu-ray boasts excellent picture and audio as well as inconsistent bonus features. Final Reckoning take much too long to get where it needs to go and that makes it a sluggish production.

Note that this Blu-ray only comes paired with the movie’s 4K UHD version. Paramount chose not to release a solo Blu-ray for Final Reckoning.

This means Blu-ray fans without 4K UHD players will need to buy this package to get the movie’s BD.