From Dead Reckoning to Gospel Living: A Mission: Impossible Review

Dr. Grafton-Cardwell & Dane Bundy
Jun 5
4 min read

Editor's Note: This article was previously published by the CiRCE Institute. You can read it here!

By Patrick Grafton-Cardwell & Dane Bundy

With the rare combination of acclaim from critics and audiences, strong box office profits, and a magnetic lead who continues to deliver mind-blowing stunts even into his sixties, the Mission: Impossible film franchise is one of the most impressive franchises in modern cinema. The latest installment, Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), not only met our high expectations but offered something that action films rarely do: thoughtful and affirming engagement with the Christian faith.

Dead Reckoning is the seventh installment in the franchise and the first part of two films, the second of which, The Final Reckoning, is scheduled to be released May 23, 2025. Dead Reckoning paints a scenario in which a rogue AI force, called the Entity, threatens the world when it sinks a nuclear submarine and later, as a character in the movie describes it, begins to “make truth disappear” by reshaping much of the images and text online.

Almost immediately, the story presents us with religious symbols. When news of the submarine comes to light, world powers rush to control it by acquiring a two-piece cruciform key. The cross, we come to understand, is key to “unlocking” the Entity and saving the world. We, of course, follow the IMF (Impossible Mission Force) led by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), a man whose name means “enduring hunt.” The key to getting the cross is through a woman named Grace (Hayley Atwell), and the path to saving Grace is letting go of hatred and embracing loving self-sacrifice.

The important question here is this: What are we to do with this imagery? We want to avoid reading too much into it. The mere presence of Christian symbols or imagery does not mean the film affirms the Christian faith. Leland Ryken in The Liberated Imagination offers a helpful tool to think about religious imagery. Instead of thinking of art as either Christian or not, he recommends examining the way it engages or dialogues with the Christian story on a continuum. (See this article by Dane Bundy for the CiRCE Institute for an in-depth look at this approach.)

Ryken identifies three points, or ways, on the continuum: The first way is through allusion. A film may include churches in the background or an actor may have a cross around his neck, but these carry little importance or thematic significance. They are merely props on the set. The second is an inclusive engagement, in which the film highlights themes or ideas that overlap with the Christian faith but are not exclusive to it. The third way is through an exclusive engagement. Here the film interacts with themes or ideas that are exclusively found in Christianity and does so in a manner that upholds the faith.

Our contention is that Dead Reckoning engages with the Christian faith in an exclusive way. We are not arguing that the filmmakers are Christians or that Dead Reckoning is a Christian film but that the film utilizes Christian references in a way that affirms the gospel. The most obviously meaningful imagery in Dead Reckoning supports the thesis that in a world where truth is disappearing, the only way to recover it is through grace and the cross. This is an exclusively Christian message.

The main evidence this is true is the fact that the entire plot of the film turns on the struggle between two sides to gain the cross. The symbolism is multifaceted here, but it very clearly mirrors the ways that the powers and principalities of the world simultaneously attempt to dominate each other and assert dominance over the cross of Christ. In the movie, every world government is trying to gain control of the cross, but their motivations are impure. They want the cross so they can control—and weaponize—the Entity. The Entity wants control of the cross so that it can run rampant with no one to stop it. Only the IMF wants the cross for the reason that we, the audience, intuitively know is the right reason to pursue the cross: for the life of the world.

In this pursuit of the cross, however, Ethan faces personal turmoil. His main adversary is a man from his past, a dark messenger named Gabriel who killed a woman important to Ethan—Marie. (There is a kind of inverted Christian symbol here as well: As Gabriel the archangel announced to Mary the birth of Christ and so inaugurated the beginning of salvation history, Gabriel the antagonist killed Marie and so inaugurated the beginning of Ethan Hunt’s history.) For Hunt, the hardest personal challenge in the film comes at a point when he must choose between vengeance or gaining the cross and saving Grace. Hunt chooses to let go of vengeance and hatred, “setting aside all wrath”1—as the apostle Paul might describe it—to instead pursue and save Grace and so gain the cross. To gain the cross, Ethan adopts the way of the cross, telling Grace at a poignant moment, “Your life will mean more to me than my own.”

As we anticipate the release of the second part of this story this month, we look back on the release of Dead Reckoning two years ago and say that it identifies some real anxieties in our culture. People are anxious about losing touch with truth. They worry about the character of those who govern and the existential risks to those of us who are governed. What Dead Reckoning tells us through its symbols is that in the face of these anxieties, the way forward is to pursue grace through the way of the cross. Given how clear these symbols are in the film and how exclusive the message is to the Christian faith, we expect something similar in the sequel.

Patrick Grafton-Cardwell is an Orthodox Christian, a husband, a father of three young girls, a high school teacher of rhetoric, and a dabbler in all things humanities. He has a PhD in philosophy with a specialization in aesthetics and philosophy of art. Patrick teaches at Regents School of Austin and writes at https://easterlyargosy.substack.com/.