Without a Sacred Context: Human Exceptionalism is Enough in the Mission: Impossible Franchise

We must necessarily be modest about what we can achieve without a sacred context. – Carl Trueman

In his D.C. Lecture “The Hour for a New Humanism,” Carl Trueman says, “what it means to be human has today become highly contested.” Trueman offers four reasons for this highly contested fundamental. Those reasons are that human beings have been: Dismantled, Disenchanted, Disembodied, and Desecrated. Weighing Trueman’s lecture with the Mission: Impossible films, a franchise that spans thirty years, will be the focus of this essay.

First, Trueman states that Dismantling occurred when our anthropology got stripped from its teleology, a teleology described by Thomas Aquinas, yet “summarized,” according to Trueman, “most brilliantly…in the first question and answer of the Westminster shorter catechism. ‘What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.’ Humanity was defined by a purpose that transcended the desire of any individual. Man had ends that defined him, some natural, some supernatural.” Trueman points to theories of evolution as a main cause for the Dismantling of humanity and “the notion of human exceptionalism. When man has no God-given end at all, chief of otherwise, he really has no stable or distinct nature,” says Trueman. Next, Disenchantment, Trueman says that “personal significance is altered” by way of the industrial society and the bureaucratic state and the sexual revolution — all which “tilt strongly towards treating people as just one more commodity…lacking intrinsic value.” Third, without intrinsic value and with “the more our human interactions are mediated via handheld technology…the less important is bodily interaction.” Lastly, such bodies become prey to Desecration. The Unborn, those born with conditions, those living with conditions, and the aged can be expedited from this life to whatever awaits them because mere bodies are really only materials over which we have mastery and over which we take precedent.

As this conflict over what it means to be human ratchets up, a film franchise has offered an anthropology tied to a teleology that countervails the four negative points described by Trueman—almost, at least.

Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning (2025) marks the eighth installment of the franchise, and it brings the franchise to an end. A thirty-year trek, in which one character, played by the same actor, appears in each film, puts the story on a level similar to that of the Odyssey. Since 1996, Mission: Impossible has demonstrated an enchantment with humanity. It accomplishes this through the main character’s physical, mental, and ethical resilience, which he lays on the line for his country, his world, and, most importantly, for his team, whom he loves, whom he calls his friends. The number one way to bring pain into Ethan Hunt’s life is to go after his friends. In addition, for the theater production of the last two films, Tom Cruise, who plays the role of Ethan Hunt, as well as producer, in every Mission: Impossible movie, recorded a thank you for those who came out to the movie theater to see the films as they were meant to be seen: on the big screen and among fellow movie goers.

Although I saw the first Mission: Impossible in 1996 on VHS, which I rewound immediately and rewatched, rather than on the big screen, among fellow movie goers, the first Mission surpasses its progeny. The sequels deserve higher marks for their action sequences and stunts, which have catapulted Tom Cruise into an action star cosmos all his own. However, the story of the first Mission exemplifies elegance, muscularity, and intellect without veering into melodrama or taking on semblances of every Marvel or James Bond movie. And while the sequels outgun the first in action and stunts, the first still has the Wire Harness Scene, which illustrates finesse and minimalism, for there’s no musical score in that scene. Everything slows down. Yet the intensity rises. Again, an elegant film, and the best one of the Missions.

The entire Mission: Impossible franchise can be viewed as an odyssey in human exceptionalism. This is doubly fascinating when considering Carl Trueman’s insightful D.C. lecture, in which he states that human exceptionalism has taken a beating and been cast away like a false myth.

However, Mission: Impossible, especially The Final Reckoning, seems to place all its truth in human exceptionalism alone. The human is sacred, perhaps, and if so, we are the pinnacle of that sacredness. No eternal, divine authority (or being) surpasses us.  

Trueman’s lecture contains counsel for grappling with ideas that lack a sacred context, such as those espoused in the closing remarks of Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning. These comments reveal what I’m calling an expatriation from God.

Some ancients believed in human exceptionalism, yet they kept that exceptionalism moored to Divine Authority. Consider the following lines from Antigone, written by Sophocles around 422 B.C., in which the Chorus praises humanity while keeping the gods in first place: “Many the wonders but nothing is stranger than man…/ Clever beyond all dreams/ When he honors the laws of the land and the gods’ sworn right’/ high indeed is his city.”

Another writer from antiquity had this to say about humanity: “O LORD our Lord…who has set thy glory above the heavens…/ When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and stars, which thou hast ordained;/ What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”

The closing remarks of Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning summarize the Mission story. (They are delivered in a voice over monologue, a technique with a rich heritage: films such as Se7en, Bravheart, and A River Runs Through It all use this technique in their conclusions.) But Mission’s last words, while highlighting human exceptionalism, hem the story in humanity alone, one without a sacred context:

Life is not some quirk of fate. This was your calling. Your destiny. A destiny that touches every living thing. Like it or not, we are masters of our fate. Nothing is written. And our cause, however righteous, pales in comparison to the impact of our effect. Any hope for a better future comes from willing that future into being. A future reflecting the measure of good within ourselves. And all that is good inside us is measured by the good we do for others. We all share the same fate. The same future. The sum of our infinite choices. One such future is built on kindness, trust, and mutual understanding, should we choose to accept it. Driving without question towards a light we cannot see. 

By whom are we called? Who has fashioned our destiny? Who or what is the light we cannot see? Based on the above monologue, it seems we are called by our fellow man. The light we cannot see is our own goodness. We can behave as though we are sacred yet ignore or deny a higher sacredness.

Reflecting on every Mission: Impossible film, one will find no positive reference to God or the sacred. The first movie employs the Bible, specifically the book of Job, as a code, as a means to hide an identity and deliver a treasonous message. The last film also references the Bible by citing Noah and the flood, but the reference is espoused by radicals who want to see humanity washed off the face of the earth and without absolution. The most supernatural element of the franchise appears in the last two films, Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning. The supernatural element is called the Entity, and it’s a tyrannical artificial intelligence power seeking to control everyone and everything on earth. (The Entity seems quite similar to another tyrannical deity, named Sally, in the Tom Cruise film Oblivion, in which Cruises’ last words to that tyrant are, “F@*^k you, Sally.”) Submission to a tyrant is slavery, and the Mission franchise does vigilant work to oppose tyranny. But the Mission: Impossible franchise looks to humanity itself for its salvation. Thinkers such as Sam Harris contend that sacred language and rituals were necessary in the early stages of human evolution but now must be laid aside like the sin that so easily besets us.

This yokes humanity with a power we cannot hold. It puts us upon a wide bridge that promises a teleology, but the bridge is cut from its origins and, consequently, from its teleology. Humanity, then, stands on something that will either plummet into doom or go adrift into despair. We must love our neighbor, and the Mission: Impossible story seems to amplify this idea. But that idea, which is a commandment, is always linked equally to another idea, another commandment: to love the Lord thy God with all our heart, soul, and strength. We need our fellow man. And we need God.

Again, though, the Mission franchise must be commended for its human exceptionalism. At least the last words of Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning spur the questions above, and when such questions are asked, a conversation has a chance to happen, a conversation that Trueman says could lead towards a new humanism, one where human exceptionalism recognizes its glory comes from a sacred, eternal hand.

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