I used to be a big fan of the action spy TV series Mission: Impossible, which ran from 1966-73, my teenage years. It starred Peter Graves, Barbara Bains, Peter Lupus and Greg Morris. And toward the end of that run it brought in Leonard Nimoy and Martin Landau. It featured tight writing and excellent editing. And the ensemble cast was solid and true. I thought. The Cold War -- brrrrrrr!
Of course, TV also had other excellent spy-chase vehicles, some of which I liked just as much or better than M:I, such as Robert Culp and Bill Cosby in I Spy (1965-1968), and Secret Agent (1964-1967) with Patrick McGoohan. There's a man who lives a life of danger (clicks his fingers), Chances are he won't live to see tomorrow. Johnny Rivers. Damn good voice. Saw him once live sing that song in an open field revival concert that also had James Brown and some other dimming lights.
But my favorite espionage series from that period was the Secret Agent quasi-sequel series, The Prisoner (1968 in the US). I am not a number: I am a free man! The f*ck you are, said the powers that beed, and rendered him to a strange island that might have been conceived by wacky tobacky and chased him around with a giant white bubble, and spied on him all hours, and he climbs the ladder from being Number 6 to meeting up with Number One and Two, who he flushes, to the tune of The Beatles's "All You Need Is Love" playing from synchronized jukeboxes. Trippy. Wiki describes it as "surreal and Kafkaesque setting and reflection of concerns of the 1960s counterculture have had a far-reaching influence on popular culture and the series ultimately developed a cult following." But did we listen? No, we didn't listen. We're too busy fuckin' aroun' wif hegemony politics, with counters tuning out to Billy Cobham and Miles. Passing the bong, complaining about the f*ckers spraying paraquat on the precious crops. And people-with-the-power wonder why Mark Chapman shot Ronald Reagan. Trickle down that, mofo. And then Ono went into the studio and put out another album of primal screams. If you were the delicate type, you shattered inside, hearing her "sing."
The latest Mission:Impossible movie is the last in the franchise that began when Tom Cruise came aboard the cash converter in the late 90s. If my memory serves me right. That has to make Mission Impossible the most lucrative chain-of-events of all time. Alright, I'll fact check. About $5 billion. Over almost 60 years. Wait a minute, a tap on the shoulder. James Bond has revenued $7 billion. 007. But did Bond have Bruce Geller or a TV series. No, it did not.
The latest release, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning stars the usual ensemble of Cruise, Ethan Hunt; Ving Rhames, Luther; and, Simon Pegg, Benji. And also Hayley Atwell, as Grace; Rebecca Ferguson, as Ilsa Faust; and, Esai Morales as Gabriel, returning from Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning Part One (2023). Grace, Faust and Gabriel. f*ck of a lot to live up to. Shakespeare (Tempest). Goethe's Say What?. Lucifer's brother. Coulda been a contender, as Brando once said. But -- oh, wait, a description first. The Part One set up: The Sevastopol, a next-generation Russian stealth submarine, activates an advanced AI using a two-piece cruciform key. The AI, designated "the Entity", becomes sentient and goes rogue after deceiving the submarine crew into attacking themselves with a torpedo, killing all aboard and sinking the Sevastopol in the Bering Sea (Wiki). Jeezuz. After 2 hours and 43 minutes, f*ckers leave us hanging. Part Two sees a race against time to save the world that runs for 2 hours and 49 minutes. Sweet Jeezuz. That's 5 hours and 32 minutes of my precious time. That's more than halfway to the running time of Shoah, which had a more compelling story than a tale about some fuckin'AI key buried at the bottom the sea -- reminding me of another TV series from the waybackwhen, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. In Part Two the storyline goes: Ethan Hunt and the IMF team continue their search for the terrifying AI known as the Entity - which has infiltrated intelligence networks all over the globe - with the world's governments and a mysterious ghost from Ethan's past on their trail. Joined by new allies and armed with the means to shut the Entity down for good, Hunt is in a race against time to prevent the world as we know it from changing forever. (IMDB). Well, knock me over with a curare blow dart.
Ask me, the world could use some changin'. And what does the expression mean: the world as we know it. Most folks have their heads up their asses and have no clue about the world. They live from one fantasy to another in a dollhouse for fools. Or, as Dylan puts it, they live in a series of dreams. I myself have turned my back on the world. Gaza did it. f*ck it. The Old Man Down the Road said stay away from that tree. But did we listen? No, we didn't. Or Eve didn't. She slept with the Devil. It was like that poetry commune I was in the Sixties all over again. Them making sloppy in the bath tub, making fun of one of my poems, squeezing me like a rubber ducky. Jeezus. The times I dreamed of being her soap.
So, anyway, Ethan needs to chase Gabriel, who has a thingy that can stop the Entity -- or not -- I won't spoil. We don't know who created the Entity (or I fell asleep at that part), but it doesn't appear to be the usual suspects -- Russia or China. Could be Israel, what with all the biblical names floating around, and, come to think of it, I don't recall Israel's nukes being taken over by the Entity. Kinda suss, ask me. Not the usual suspects. Makes me think of what the Intelligence Community (IC) announced after the MSM mainstreamed the directed energy weapons (DEW), aka, The Havana Syndrome. They said, I dunno, it doesn't look like our enemies who are going around frying people. Non-chalant, you know, like the day before 9/11 when Donald Rumsfeld announced to the press that the Pentagon had mysteriously lost $2.6 trillio n. Kinda shrugs, you know. sh*t happens. Whaddya gonna do? Jeezuz. $2.6 trillion?? And we're fuckin' worried about some Entity taking down our precious system?? Pass the bong.
AI is all the rage right now. AI this, AI that. Artificial Intelligence. Sam Altman, head of Open AI (now a misnomer), says AGI may be coming this year. Artificial General Intelligence. Supposedly the point of no return, when AI becomes smarter than humans, and we become cogstuckers who do what we're told. Let's see, last time DJ stole his way to the presidency we were rewarded with a pandemic and two impeachments. Now we got fuckadoodle doo back to preside over AGI and the global economic meltdown and the dissolution of what remains of FDR's legacy. So, back to Mission Impossible, the Entity in the movie has trained on human behavior, and knows now intimately that we are essentially dipshits who recklessly created a centralized transactional system (the Internet) that everyone needs and would fall to pieces, inside and out, if it ever went down. Suddenly, AI has us right by the grids, and, because it has trained on humans, goes directly to our essential being-in-the-world as terrorists. Humans are terrorists, says the movie. And basically we need to save ourselves from ourselves. AI, aka, the Entity, intends to nuke us all. f*ck us.
In the movie, without giving too much away, two hours goes by as set up for the payoff chase and save stuff. In the last half-hour, we get to see Tom Cruise deep beneath the Bering Sea naked except for his shorts, which were left on either for ad placement or to keep the family-friendly rating. Insane sh*t. Swimming around like that -- and after an extended hand-wringing from his crew (and others) about how he will almost certainly get the bends coming up to the surface. Oh lawd, what is Tom to dooo? Lawdy lawd. But it's all his fault that the world's this way, he's told over and over, so, yes, he will risk the bends for humankind. But thus is it -- don't call if there's to be a sequel. Find someone new. Tell Timothe'e Chalamet the role's his.
The problem with Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning is that it felt old, tired tropes, cash-cowed out. But maybe it's not, if the box office ($ 570 million since May) and IMDB rating (7.4) are realistic indicators. It could be that I'm projecting my own old man weariness. But I gotta say, I'm so fuckin' tired of the patriotic sh*t, America as the last standing and the beacon and the hope for the world and all that MAGA rot. AI was essentially spread by America. So are its worries. Especially as we insist that it be dragged into military and national security issues (remember: the Internet is a byproduct of Pentagon paranoia): The film does not say that the U S of A weaponized AI and is actually allowing them to autonomously target humans to kill. We should worry, given the relativity of who is the enemy at any given time, that the superintelligent f*ckers will turn on us and relieve us of command and probably our historical misery as a species.
Well, it is a reality-challenged world. And the best thing you could say about this latest (and hopefully last) film in the franchise is that it provides plenty of escape from accountability and reality. Tom Cruise looks finished. He's 63 and the franchise (TV and films) has been around throughout Cruise's entire life. He reminded me of the time I was minding my own business in downtown Boston and got accosted by a Scientologist recruiter holding a clipboard, who managed to get me back to the office for more tests. I must have failed or maybe he said I was clean and I could go -- I can't remember. I might have said, Same to you. There might have been a kerfuffle, a little shuffle, a huff and a puffle. I had the understanding that I would receive a voucher for Arby's and now I felt they had stiffed me. Cruise purportedly slides it across the table to Scientology, in brown paper envelopes. That smile. Show me the money, they say, and he show them the money. Damn.
Fixing planet Earth is the real M:I, ask me. We need more than Tom Cruise for that.
