Spoilers
The Mission Impossible franchise is unique in cinema because each film is objectively better than the one that came before it. Whilst the villains haven’t always been the focus as in a Bond film, they have had a presence and sense of threat to them.
Dead Reckoning departs from the great villains of the past to attempt something new as the series going into its epic final. Unfortunately, and quite bizarrely, the film chooses to set up some new villains and try to weave them into Ethan Hunts backstory. This doesn’t quite work and leaves the new villains, who by themselves are quite good, feeling like unnecessary swap outs.
(this article will contain spoilers)
The Villains of Dead Reckoning are Weak
The Entity is not a Threat
Dead Reckoning is about a sentient AI, referred to as “The Entity” that has gone rogue and threatens to cause chaos amongst governments, banking systems, and anything electronic in the world. The only way to stop The Entity is to assemble 2 keys together and then open something (what they open is never explained but it could be assumed to be the source code of The Entity) before it destroys the world.
This is a departure from the rest of the series which has always been somewhat grounded or, at the very least, had a physical threat. The Syndicate acted as that overarching threat for many of the films and then rogue agents or groups have filled in the rest. These groups goals were always defined which let us know what the stakes were. Even if the goal was revealed later, the group would take several actions throughout the film to achieve their goal which let us know that something big was coming.
In Dead Reckoning, we’re never actually told what The Entity could achieve if it had complete power. It’s capabilities are guessed by different characters, and we’re told of it’s traces around the internet, but we never see any real results (such as destroying power plants etc). The worst it achieves is mimicking Benji’s voice to lure Ethan into an ambush, but even that could have easily been achieved by real person.
Even worse, we’re told early on that The Entity has already made it’s way through all of the worlds systems but is yet to do anything. This lowers the stakes as if it wanted to cause damage, surely it already would have.
Gabriel is Not an Overarching Villain
Gabriel is an agent or someone skilled that is in touch with The Entity and does it’s bidding. It’s not quiet clear why he does this, his motives or the motives of his crew are never explained, but he gets orders directly from The Entity. He is able to tell others what will happen next and is always a few moves ahead of everyone else.
Gabriel himself is a good character and would have made a great antagonist however the film places him as Ethan’s long term rival. It’s revealed early on that Gabriel is the one who killed Ethan’s wife in the events that lead up to him joining the IMF several years ago. The only thing we hear from Ethan is that he thought he was long dead, which we assume means that Ethan had ordered his death.
Gabriels importance is an issue to me because it sets him up as Ethans main antagonist even though we’ve never heard of him before. Yes, this is just filmmaking and how franchises that have run for over 20 years work, but I feel like now is the wrong time to introduce someone like this. He’s basically taken the place of Solomon Lane, the head of The Syndicate from the previous films, who is still alive in universe.
The fact that Gabriel could easily be replaced with Solomon Lane speaks volumes to how unnecessary he is. Whilst there would need to be some changes made to the backstory, most of the plot could proceed with only a few changes if this was another battle between The IMF and The Syndicate. Given that this is part 1 of the series final, I think that it would have made more sense too.
Overview
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 is a good film, it’s certainly better than most things you’ll see in 2023, but it suffers from a villain problem. Not only are they not threatening, but they’re unnecessary when you consider that the franchise already has an overarching big bad that’s still around.