“Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” came out last Thursday, and Jalopnik’s resident Tom Cruise Running Enjoyers were all seated on release day to experience the latest and greatest in movie star endangerment. When we all left our respective theaters, though, we noticed a problem. Something was missing from “The Final Reckoning,” something we’ve been accustomed to seeing in nearly every M:I movie thus far. Spoilers for “The Final Reckoning” follow.
In the latest “Mission:Impossible,” Ethan Hunt never rides a motorcycle. A movie that makes a plot point out of characters using dated forms of technology, to avoid the Entity, never puts Hunt on a classic cafe racer or scrambler. This is truly a missed chance for the film that may or may not be the last in the “Mission” series, and it’s one that I feel the need to call out in the pages of this hallowed webbed site. Put Tom Cruise back on a bike.
Nearly every M:I has featured bikes
“Mission: Impossible II” had its hilarious Triumph chase. “Mission: Impossible III” had Hunt on a Bonneville in one scene, for no real reason, but it still counts. “Rogue Nation” had the S1000RR chase, “Fallout” had the R NineT, and “Dead Reckoning” had the dirt bike BASE jump. Only the first movie and “Ghost Protocol” lack bike scenes, but in neither of them is the absence so glaring as it is in “Final Reckoning.”
That chase at the end, with the Jeep Gladiator? I get that Stellantis paid good money for that, but BMW has plenty of cash flowing into this franchise too — remember the R NineT and S1000RR. That chase could easily have been Hunt on an R80 Paris-Daker, a bike with no networked electronics for the Entity to infect, without any major changes to the plot. In what may or may not be the last “Mission” film, it seems wrong not to put Tom Cruise on two wheels. C’mon, Christopher McQuarrie, let the man ride.
