Tom Cruise Takes a Self-Important Victory Lap in 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning'

Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt is getting a bit of a god complex.

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It's not exactly his fault after defying death and completing impossible missions time and time again.

But in "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning," out Friday, there's a breathlessness to the naive trust from his growing band of disciples, including the U.S. president (the formerly skeptical Erika Sloane of "Fallout," played by Angela Bassett), and Paris (Pom Klementieff), the once delightfully fun maniac assassin who has been reduced to brooding French philosopher.

In a series that has often been best when it's not taking itself too seriously, these dour developments start to feel a little unintentionally silly. And, for at least the first hour, it's all we have to hang onto.

Perhaps, this is part of the point in pitting a human man against a parasitic artificial intelligence set on inciting nuclear extinction, something we're meant to believe has been brewing in some way since the beginning of the franchise. You can almost see the behind-the-scenes wheels turning: Gravity is kind of a prerequisite when this much is on the line, and when so much pain has been taken to link 30 years and seven movies that were certainly never meant to be connected by anything other than Ethan Hunt.