The New 'Mission: Impossible' Is a Familiar Magic Trick Executed to Perfection

The latest in pop-culture news, recaps, and reviews, plus close reads, profiles, interviews, and more from Vulture.com. [Brand Logo]( movie review [The New Mission: Impossible Is a Familiar Magic Trick Executed to Perfection]( Tom Cruise does what he does in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. He is very good at what he does. Photo: Christian Black/Paramount/Christian Black One of the most enchanting aspects of 2018’s Mission: Impossible — Fallout, the last Mission: Impossible film, was the cavalier attitude with which it treated plot exposition. Its opening scenes breezed through a cavalcade of names and organizations and motivations that practically dared you to understand what was going on. This was, honestly, liberating. Don’t worry about why anything is happening, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie seemed to be telling us. Just enjoy the spectacle. This is the movie in which Tom Cruise hangs off a helicopter. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, as suggested by that ominous “part one,” seems to care a bit more about its plot, and it’s not hard to see why. This time, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt isn’t fighting nihilistic terrorists or vaporous international-espionage networks but an all-powerful artificial intelligence known as “the Entity” that has instant access to any and all online networks and can effectively dupe the world’s tech-reliant militaries into fighting one another. It’s a variation on the man-versus-machine theme that Cruise and McQuarrie pursued in last year’s Top Gun: Maverick and a rather compelling metaphor for their well-publicized dedication to old-school action filmmaking and real-life stunt work. It also happens to resonate with our current moment: You can easily imagine the Entity standing in for any number of modern society’s (and modern cinema’s) high-tech bogeymen, [from dead-eyed disrupters to algorithm-obsessed visionaries](. [read more]( The Latest TV Recaps • The Bachelorette: [Spring Breakers]( • Secret Invasion: [Not Great, Bob]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Stories We Think You’ll Like [The 17 Best Non-HBO Shows on Max It’s tricky to navigate, so we did the work for you.]( By Carrie Wittmer [Sex Education Has One Final Test Before ending with its fourth season.]( By Zoe Guy [Ringo Starr on His Joyous Eras With the Beatles, All-Starr Band, and Beyond “With those three boys, we were psychic.”]( [17 Seaside Horror Movies That Make the Beach Terrifying Sure, the beach can be fun, but what if there are sharks in the water? Or if the beach makes you old? What then?]( [The Best Podcasts of 2023 (So Far) The business of podcasts may be in a rough place, but the podcasts themselves are great this year.]( By Nicholas Quah [‘I Don’t Have Space to Be Tired of It’ Lola Brooke had to be a master multitasker to break into rap. Now she’s the new livest one from Bedford-Stuyvesant.]( [Y’all Better Not Turn Dolly Parton Into a Hologram “I don’t want to leave my soul here on this Earth.”]( By Justin Curto [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Today’s Crossword]( 4-Down, Four Letters: “___ A” (film in which Stanley Tucci plays a daddy) Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images A newsletter of TV and movie recommendations. [Sign up]( to get it every week. [Get the Newsletter]( [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe]( | [privacy notice]( | [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on email newsletters, please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, 12th Floor Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2023, All rights reserved