In his first press conference following his election to the papacy, Pope Leo XIV remarked on the need to develop an ethics of artificial intelligence. He likened AI to “another industrial revolution” and posited that it poses “new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor.” Recently, his remarks found support from a more mundane and unlikely source: Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning. The discourse on AI is largely defined by the two poles of ludditism and technological progressivism, but The Final Reckoning restrains us from their puritanical impulses and instead offers another way to approach this new development: virtuous pragmatism.  

In this latest installment of the Mission: Impossible series, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Tom Cruise yet again delivers as protagonist Ethan Hunt, most notably with a series of death-defying stunts on a biplane during a scene evocative of a World War I dogfight. With his vitality on full display throughout the film, Cruise avoids the fate of many action-franchise leads (think Roger Moore in A View to Kill) who come away looking haggard in their final appearance in the series. Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames revive their familiar roles as Benji and Luther, respectively, from the previous movies, and Angela Bassett revives her character, Erika Sloane, from Mission Impossible: Fallout. Previously the CIA director, she is now the president of the United States. Nick Offerman, of Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation fame, also makes an appearance as General Sidney, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  

The Final Reckoning is intended as the sequel to Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning, so its plot picks up where Dead Reckoning leaves off: A super-AI known as the Entity has become sentient and gone rogue, infiltrating global cyberspace and gaining control of the nuclear weapons systems of the world’s nine nuclear powers. Dead Reckoning ends with Ethan retrieving one half of the interlocking cruciform key that activates the Entity’s source code.  

In a prerecorded video message to Ethan at the start of The Final Reckoning, President Sloan announces that the Entity has now caused a global crisis, manipulating global media and even inspiring a Gnostic-type cult of those who believe the Entity will purify the earth via mass human extinction. Here, the Entity’s actions mirror real-world concerns about “deepfakes” and political polarization, albeit at a hyperbolic level.  

President Sloan begs Ethan to return his half of the key and give control of the Entity to the United States. Ever the disobedient hero, Ethan refuses, choosing instead to retrieve the source code and unite it with a “poison pill” designed by fellow agent and techie, Luther, to destroy the AI for good. All the while, Ethan tangles with the Entity’s chief human agent, Gabriel, who threatens global nuclear destruction if he is not given control of the Entity. With this, the stage is set for a great American action thriller. What makes The Final Reckoning so good is that it recalls all the familiar tropes of the action movies of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s—nuclear destruction à la WarGames, malevolent Artificial Intelligence à la HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a morally dubious U.S. government right in line with Dr. Strangelove—but puts them in a fresh new mix. 

The director, Christopher McQuarrie, and his co-writer, Erik Jendresen, situate the AI-driven plot in an explicitly theological context. Early in the movie Benji refers to the Entity as “the anti-God” (also a reference to the 2006 Mission: Impossible III), and in the first few scenes of the movie, the cult members who worship the Entity quote passages from the Book of Genesis about Noah and the Flood. The Entity itself makes biblical references, for example, using the phrase “it is written” when referring to the doomsday prophecy of human extinction. When Ethan, Benji, and the team discuss their plan for destroying the Entity using Luther’s “poison pill,” Benji remarks, “we can deceive the Lord of Lies”—the “Lord of Lies” being a title traditionally ascribed to Satan. The Final Reckoning raises philosophical questions too: What constitutes “reality,” and what happens when “reality” includes a virtual reality that is parasitic on the natural world? Is all AI an unwanted accretion in our lived experience, or can it be integrated in a rightly ordered way? The Final Reckoning avoids giving easy, cut-and-dried answers.  

To the question of whether AI can be destroyed entirely, however, The Final Reckoning answers with a resounding “no.” Once a technology is introduced into the world, it can’t simply be taken out of it. At the movie’s beginning, the viewer is led to believe there are three possible outcomes: 1) The Entity wins and successfully initiates global human extinction, 2) the Entity loses and is safe in the hands of the U.S. Government, or 3) the Entity loses and is destroyed by Ethan Hunt. The viewer is naturally inclined to choose outcome three, given the obvious evil of human extinction in option one and the dubious portrayal of the U.S. government in option two. It’s surprising, then, that the movie ends with none of these options coming to pass. Instead, Ethan defeats the Entity but doesn’t destroy it. In fact, the movie ends with Ethan in sole possession of the Entity’s source code. The proverbial Genie may be back in the bottle, but it can just as easily be taken out again. And the viewer is left wondering, “Is it really possible or prudent for one man to control something called ‘the Lord of Lies’?” Can one person oppose the power of the Devil? (The parallels to The Lord of the Rings are obvious here.) 

It’s not explained why Ethan chooses to keep the Entity, but the fact that he does indicates a certain pragmatism relevant to how we should actually think about AI in the real world. AI is not something that we can just get rid of but rather something with which we have to contend. Indeed, the conclusion of The Final Reckoning avoids a prescriptive and unrealistic moralism (i.e., “This technology never should have been invented,” “We’ve destroyed it for good”) and instead leaves the viewer asking more questions, namely “We have this technology, now what?” There is a certain satisfying honesty in The Final Reckoning because it doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. In a culture awash with ideology, the fact that The Final Reckoning’s grappling with AI is not actually final may be its greatest strength.