Greg Tarzan Davis, Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg and Hayley Atwell in “Mission: Impossible – The Final … More
Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is flying into theaters with positive reviews, but the critics’ score is dropping.
Rated PG-13, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning marks the eighth and presumably final Mission: Impossible movie for Cruise after kicking off the franchise in 1996.
The official logline for the film simply reads, “Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.”
The film is a continuation of the events of 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning,” which was originally meant to be a two-part movie. Instead, Cruise and Paramount Pictures reconfigured the sequel and changed the sub-title from Dead Reckoning Part 2 to The Final Reckoning.
In the new film, the artificial intelligence program The Entity is gaining control of all the world’s nuclear arsenals and the world is on the verge of World War III. As such, U.S. President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) convinces Ethan to come out of hiding to find a way to thwart the AI from creating a nuclear apocalypse.
Returning with Cruise for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning are Dead Reckoning stars Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Angela Bassett, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham and Henry Czerny, while Holt McCallany, Greg Tarzan Davis, Nick Offerman and Hannah Waddingham join the cast for the new film.
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning held its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on May 14 and the review embargo lifted the same day.
A combination of early reviews out of Cannes and some critics stateside initially awarded Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning an 89% “fresh” score from Rotten Tomatoes critics based on 87 reviews.
Now, as the film prepares to play in Thursday previews ahead of the film’s worldwide opening on Friday, the RT Critics’ score has dropped. As of this publication, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is still “fresh” on RT, but the collective critics’ rating has dropped from 89% to 79% “fresh,” based on 227 reviews.
The RT Critics Consensus for the new Mission: Impossible movie still reads, “Gargantuan in action, runtime, and scope, The Final Reckoning is a sentimental sendoff for Ethan Hunt that accomplishes its mission with a characteristic flair for the impossible.”
The runtime for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is 2 hours, 49 minutes.
What Do The Latest Reviews Say About ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ Saying?
In the early set of reviews that broke after Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, critics from The New York Times, The Guardian and Variety gave the film “fresh” reviews on RT, while critics from The Hollywood Reporter, the BBC and The Wall Street Journal deemed the final Mission “rotten.”
Among the new reviews from top critics on RT, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gives Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning a “fresh” rating, writing, “This franchise has class. Always has. Plus, it has the virtue, taken as a 29-year entity, of having had a striking variety of directors at the helm.”
Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post also gives The Final Reckoning a “fresh” rating, writing on RT, “An entire generation has grown up learning what a movie is from Mission: Impossible … Cruise has taught them that it isn’t a conglomeration of CGI pixels or green-screen fakery, but something of genuine awe and, at its best, sublime artistry.”
Justin Chang of The New Yorker splats Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning with a “rotten” review, writing on RT, “God knows [McQuarrie] and Cruise have earned their double-decker climax. But, amid the brooding sprawl, I wanted less big-screen doomscrolling, less self-indulgent gravitas, and less of the unspeakably boring villain.”
Adam Graham of the Detroit News also gives the film a “rotten” review, writing on RT, “Final Reckoning produces some of that razzle-dazzle you’re used to, but it’s drawn out with nonsense that feels like the filmmakers struggling with what to make of what they’ve created, or how to neatly wrap everything up.”
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning plays in Thursday previews before opening in theaters worldwide on Friday.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timlammers/2025/05/22/critics-score-drops-for-mission-impossiblethe-final-reckoning/