Does Tom Cruise deserve a movie that his future worshippers would not be wrong to think of as a hagiography?

Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is best understood as a quasi-religious text. The Final Reckoning is the eighth entry in a long-running series that has undergone many creative changes since the Brian De Palma original in 1996. In the latest installment, directed by Tom Cruise muse Christopher McQuarrie (and written by McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen), series constant Ethan Hunt (Cruise) gets a forced apotheosis.

In Dead Reckoning, to which The Final Reckoning is a direct sequel, the excessive focus to the point of near-worship of Cruise’s Hunt was already evident. “In Cruise we must trust,” I wrote of that movie’s approach to the character. Dead Reckoning set Hunt and his team against an artificial intelligence called “the Entity” and its human agents, who sought domination by following its calculations and predictions. They were a direct contrast to the improvisational, spontaneous, and Hunt-centric method of Hunt’s team in the IMF, the off-the-books spy agency that has been central to the series.

The Final Reckoning takes this to the next level. Deference to Hunt is nearly universal, from the president of the United States down to the lowliest Navy grunt. His sheer charisma persuades anyone initially skeptical to take his side. Villainous characters, who worship the Entity, are an exception to this. Yet in the sequel, antagonist Gabriel (Esai Morales), a vengeful, crafty, and mysterious figure out of Hunt’s mostly unexplored past, has lost the Entity’s favor; it appears now to prefer Hunt. Pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), introduced in the prior film, believes Hunt alone might be capable of controlling the Entity, whereas Hunt wants to destroy it.

There’s a deliberate yet clumsy effort in The Final Reckoning to cobble elements of prior installments together to create a coherent overarching narrative. A lingering mystery from Mission: Impossible III gets a resolution nearly two decades later. One character turns out to be the son of a prior installment’s villain; he ultimately reconciles with Hunt. Another character, punished as a result of Hunt’s actions in the first movie, ends up thanking him because of how his life worked out for the better. Hunt becomes an agent of providence. So: Hunt miraculously and repeatedly saves the day while cheating death, sustains an entire worldview through his actions, and has a devoted group of close followers who — though they have their own merits and moments — rely ultimately on him. What does that sound like?

Amid this worshipful treatment of Hunt/Cruise, there is also a movie. The first hour-plus of it is short on action and heavy on — laden and leaden with — exposition. The transformation of the Mission: Impossible series in these last two movies from twisty, fun spy romps to metafictional tributes to themselves (and really to Cruise) have weighed Final Reckoning down. Much of what takes place on the ground often struggles to achieve the same level of kinetic flair as previous installments. That makes two extended scenes away from the ground — one underwater, the other in the air — the highlights of the movie. They are two big-screen spectacles that are in themselves worth the price of admission.

Tom Cruise deserves much credit for working to keep theatrical moviegoing alive (if it is to live) — so much so that he repeatedly threatens his own life, if you believe the trade press. He may deserve to be called one of the last true movie stars. It’s less clear that he deserves a movie that his future worshippers would not be wrong to think of as a hagiography.