Is Our Fate Written?

Understanding Choice in Mission Impossible

Edwardo Pérez

For all the death-defying stunts and impossible, action-packed scenarios, Paramount’s Mission Impossible film series starring Tom Cruise offers an interesting philosophical thought experiment: If you could save the world, would you?

If you choose to accept, how far would you go to not just save the world, but to save those you love? And what about strangers and innocent people? Do you accept collateral damage? Are you okay with killing anyone to achieve your objective? Is one life worth saving or worth sacrificing? Is your own life worth risking? Are you justified in every action you take? Do you appeal to a Kantian moral imperative? Are you acting out of a sense of duty? Do you use utilitarian logic? Or are you just hoping for blind luck (or fate or chance) to intervene? What happens if you fail? And what happens if you don’t accept your mission? Is it okay to disobey orders and go rogue?

Offering more moral dilemmas than anything Bond or Bourne ever encounter, Mission Impossible’s film franchise isn’t just a thought experiment, it’s a sociological experiment that puts audiences in Ethan Hunt’s shoes (or parachute or motorcycle) and asks them to make the same impossible choices Ethan makes.

Yet, as much as Ethan is the protagonist we’re supposed to root for and agree with (because he’s always proven right, even when he makes mistakes), it isn’t easy to understand Ethan’s choices. Is there a method to his madness? (Because climbing the Burj Khalifa with one glove is just mad!) Does he make choices on a whim? Is he improvising, hoping it’ll all work out? As Henry Cavill’s Agent Walker notes, “hope is not a strategy,” but as Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust replies, “you must be new.” Because, for Ethan, many of his choices rely precisely on hope.

On one hand, Ethan’s better than Batman (as a bruiser and a detective) or Sherlock Holmes, outthinking every foe he faces—from international villains to every government agency across the world, especially the CIA. As Ving Rhames’s Luther notes in Rogue Nation, “Sometimes Ethan is the only one capable of seeing the only way.”

On the other hand, Ethan is sentimental, willing to risk any mission for someone he cares about (and figure out later how to salvage the mission). As Alec Baldwin’s Alan Hunley notes to Ethan in Fallout:

“You had a terrible choice to make in Berlin: recover the plutonium or save your team. You chose your team and now the world is at risk. Some flaw deep in your core being won’t allow you to choose between one life and millions. Now, you see that as a weakness, but I see that as your greatest strength.”

Hunley is right and this makes Ethan, as Vanessa Redgrave’s Max surmises in the original film, “something of a paradox.” He’s cold, calculating, and willing to do anything to achieve his objective, but he’s not without empathy and warmth.

For example, Ethan has no problem threatening his foes with promises of retribution, which he usually carries out (you’ve been warned Gabriel!). Yet he’s also willing to cultivate relationships—he even gets married in the third film and is shown in flashbacks as having retired from field work to become a trainer for the IMF.

So how do we understand Ethan as an assassin who also happens to be a swoon-worthy fiancé, best friend, and mentor?

One way to reconcile both sides of Ethan’s personality is through his love of life—not in a thrill sense and not in a selfish sense (because he’s more than willing to risk his life), but in the sense that Ethan cherishes life itself, as if he were its guardian.

From protecting the lives of IMF agents in the first film to saving the life of an innocent French police officer (who he doesn’t even know) in Fallout to saving the world from nuclear bombs, sinister organizations, double-agents, and a mysterious rabbit’s foot. Not to mention faking his wife’s death (to save her life) and letting himself die (twice!) to save others. Because, as he tells Grace in Dead Reckoning, “Your life will always matter more to me than my own.”

Indeed, through seven films, Ethan wrestles not just with impossible missions but impossible choices as he decides who to save and who to sacrifice to complete his objective. Equipped with a plethora of masks and gadgets, Ethan typically tries to save everyone (even the bad guys). And even though he doesn’t always succeed (RIP Ilsa Faust and Keri Russell’s Lindsey Farris), Ethan never gives up.

In Dead Reckoning, however, the bad guy posing the latest threat to humanity isn’t some evil madman with a bomb. Rather, it’s an evil computer program—a premise that echoes The Matrix and Terminator franchises, as well as Battlestar Galactica (and even 2001: A Space Odyssey). Yet, the scenario doesn’t feel rehashed. Instead, it feels prescient and entirely possible (especially given the predictive algorithms currently driving websites and social media platforms).

Perhaps it’s just where we’re at in our world right now—not just with Sam Altman and OpenAI (and all the myriad possibilities such technology creates), but also with the wars being waged (from Ukraine to Israel), the rise of authoritarianism seen around the globe, the lingering social and psychological effects of the pandemic, and a general malaise (common to philosophers) regarding the future—of humanity, of our world, of anything.

During the pandemic, some people were deemed essential workers. Yet, given the very real nature of artificial intelligence (which can do any job, even creative jobs), is anyone essential anymore?

In the Mission Impossible universe, even the IMF doesn’t seem essential. Like Bond’s MI6 being replaced by computer surveillance in Spectre, the IMF is essentially a former agency in Dead Reckoning, an agency no one in U.S. Intelligence wants to talk about, and an agency Cary Elwes’s Director of National Intelligence doesn’t even know about. (This echoes how the IMF was disavowed in Ghost Protocol and decommissioned in Rogue Nation, leaving Ethan and his team to act on their own).

Even Ilsa is somewhat cynical, telling Ethan in Rogue Nation, “We only think we’re fighting for the right side because that’s what we choose to believe.”

One outcome would see the story of humanity could go down the path of Star Trek, where we shuffle off the mortal coil of pursuing wealth (eliminating hunger, poverty, and the need for cooking), and take to the stars in a quest to learn about the universe and our place in it.

However, another outcome, as Dead Reckoning posits (like its many predecessors), would see humanity as the victim of its own creation.

In Dead Reckoning, the creation threatening humanity is an artificial intelligence known as The Entity, a sentient program whose plan is carried out by a character known as Gabriel (played by Esai Morales), who functions as a messenger/messiah for The Entity as well as a personification of The Entity. Other than being ruthless and remorseless, what makes Gabriel terrifying is his knowledge—of people’s pasts and especially of their futures.

As Gabriel explains, “You have no idea of the power I represent. Thousands of quadrillions of computations per millisecond subtly manipulating the minds of billions while parsing every possible cause and effect, every scenario, however implausible, into a very real map of the most probable next. And with only a few changes to the present, the future is all but assured.”

While this quote could easily be something Agent Smith (or the Architect) says in The Matrix, the similarity between Dead Reckoning and The Matrix also extends to the debate between Morpheus and the Merovingian.

Morpheus believes that everything begins with a choice, but as the Merovingian argues, choice is an illusion. For the Merovingian, there’s only cause and effect. For Gabriel, there’s a probable next that writes our fates. For both the Merovingian and Gabriel, the philosophical perspective they seem to embrace is causal determinism, which is the idea that our choices and actions are part of a causal chain of events determining an outcome. If this is so, then the choices Ethan makes aren’t really choices made of Ethan’s free will. Rather, they’re links in a causal chain leading to a specific result.

Of course, while Ethan accepts his missions, he doesn’t accept fate or predetermination because his job (and his philosophy) is to achieve the impossible (usually through hope, teamwork, kickass stunts, and running really fast). For Ethan, this means finding ways to change whatever outcome might seem unchangeable (even if it means jumping a motorcycle off the top of a mountain or hanging off the side of an airplane).

Perhaps this is why Ethan is described in Dead Reckoning by Shea Whigham’s Intelligence Agent Jasper Briggs as “a master of infiltration, deception, sabotage and psych warfare,” as well as “a mind-reading, shape-shifting incarnation of chaos.” Or, as Hunley puts it in Rogue Nation:

“Hunt is uniquely trained and highly motivated. A specialist without equal, immune to any countermeasures. There is no secret he cannot extract, no security he cannot breach, no person he cannot become. He has most likely anticipated this very conversation and is waiting to strike in whatever direction we move. Sir, Hunt is the living manifestation of destiny, and he has made you his mission.”

What’s significant about Hunley’s description is that it’s Ethan who is inevitable. And perhaps this is why The Entity is afraid in Dead Reckoning. For all its ability to predict the future (to a high degree of probability), its computations clearly conclude that Ethan possesses the greatest threat to The Entity’s existence.

Ethan’s threat doesn’t just come from his ability to think and see likely scenarios (seemingly as fast as a computer). Rather, it comes from Ethan’s free will, which is incompatible with determinism—because if our lives follow a predetermined path, then we aren’t free to make any choice (nor are we morally responsible for the choices we think we make). In other words, while The Entity might manipulate a causal chain to lead to a certain outcome, Ethan’s freedom to choose diminishes the outcome’s certainty.

As Kittridge tells Ethan in Dead Reckoning, “Our lives are the sum of our choices.” And this could be interpreted either way—we’re either free to make our choices and write our own future, or the choices we make ultimately lead to a fated outcome. Either way we get a sum, an outcome.

But which is it? Is Gabriel correct? Does The Entity know the future because it’s already written and nothing Ethan (or any of us) does could change it? Or does Ethan have free will? Are we the sum of our choices? And what does that really mean?

In Dead Reckoning, it seems as if Gabriel is correct. Various characters, including Ethan, end up choosing what The Entity predicted they would choose (a plot that echoes Rogue Nation’s Solomon Lane, who seems to predict everyone’s actions and appears to be Ethan’s equal). While this fits with causal determinism, it also resonates with fatalism.

As Robert C. Solomon explains, determinism “insists that whatever happens can (in principle) be explained in terms of prior causes,” while fatalism “insists that whatever happens must happen” without the need for a “causal chain” (66).

Gabriel might believe the future is written, but the causal chain doesn’t matter as much as the outcome. For example, while everyone is trying to find a cruciform key (which could be used to control or shut down The Entity), Gabriel isn’t concerned about obtaining the key because he already knows he’ll get it. As he explains, “The key will come to me tomorrow on the Orient Express bound for Innsbruck […] the completed key will lay itself at my feet, provided someone dies tonight […] it is written.”

As Gabriel elaborates, the person who must die will either be Grace or Ilsa, and as the narrative plays out, Ilsa dies and everything happens exactly as Gabriel said it would. The outcome occurs despite the choices made by everyone involved.

However, having advance knowledge of the outcome and the significant events that lead to the outcome, it seems that Ethan is able to simultaneously allow the outcome to occur while also changing it (which is what he does in Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and Fallout). Gabriel gets the key and Gabriel disappears—but not until Gabriel and Ethan fight (on top of a moving train!) and, thanks to some slight of hand pickpocketing, Ethan is able to swipe the key without Gabriel knowing (he’s certainly surprised when he finally realizes what happened).

Of course, like the spinning top in Inception (does it fall or remain spinning?), the question we’re left to ask at the end of Dead Reckoning is: Did Ethan really change the outcome?

Did he? Or did The Entity know that Ethan would ultimately end up with the key? Was it fatalism, determinism, free will, chance? Was it the sum of a series of choices? Was it the most possible next?

Given the rest of Dead Reckoning’s narrative, which emphasizes the aspect of choice (affirming the other six films in this regard), it seems that Mission Impossible ultimately embraces the concept of free will. If this is so, then Ethan did fool The Entity and Gabriel, producing a different outcome by using the same causal chain.

What’s significant is that Ethan makes a series of choices in every film and many of them are consequential. Yet, in Dead Reckoning, we’re told that the most important choice Ethan ever made was “The Choice.”

As we learn, IMF agents (like Ethan, Luther, and Benji) are given “The Choice” at one point in their lives—after doing something where the only other options are prison or death. Ethan gives Grace (a criminal who is likely facing prison or death, given her actions) the same choice and she eventually chooses to accept, joining the IMF by the end of the film.

Of course, this echoes the famous “should you choose to accept” line repeated every time an IMF agent is offered a mission. And in Dead Reckoning, we also learn that IMF agents are given the discretion to reject a mission if they feel they cannot ensure the mission’s outcome—which suggests a different spin on free will and determinism, where IMF agents make a choice based on a desired and guaranteed outcome. And this leads us back to where we started.

If you were given the chance to save the world, and you had the freedom to choose (and ensure the outcome), what would you do?

In Rogue Nation, after outlining Ethan’s options regarding how he could deal with the villain Solomon Lane, Ilsa presents Ethan with an alternative. Consider the dialogue:

ETHAN: And option three?

ILSA: Come away with me. Right now.

ETHAN: And what happens to Lane?

ILSA: Forget Lane. There will always be another Lane. And there will always be people like us to face him. We’ve done our part and now we’ve been cast aside. We can be anyone, do anything … it’s only a matter of going.

It’s an interesting option, one that momentarily shakes Ethan, because Ilsa is totally worth running away with and because she’s right. As she tells him in Fallout when they meet again, “you should’ve come with me.”

Of course, Ethan chooses to go after Lane in Rogue Nation, and Ilsa dies two films later in Dead Reckoning—unless her death is faked, which is likely, given Ethan’s past behaviors. Yet, it begs the question of what would’ve happened if Ethan had chosen Ilsa. Would choosing a life with her have made any difference? Would Ethan have ended up facing The Entity anyway? Would Ilsa still have died?

While these questions (and many others) can’t be answered until the next film (or at all), perhaps Ilsa’s perspective offers the best summary of Mission Impossible’s philosophy: whatever choice we make, it’s only a matter of going, or of doing. We can run toward our fate or walk away. Either way, the choice, if we choose to accept it, is ours.

Edwardo Pérez: In his youth, perhaps as a result of watching way too much television (because cable was all Gen Xers had before the internet besides Atari), Edwardo was certain he hailed from a mythical planet (like Spock or Mork). While he’s hopeful he might eventually find his origin world (or at least a portal to the Land of the Lost), Edwardo bides his time teaching English, continuing to learn and grow as a human, contemplating the myriad “what if’s?” of existence, and marveling at the wonders of life his wife and children constantly reveal.

References:

Solomon, Robert C. “Nietzsche on Fatalism and “Free Will.”” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 23, Spring 2002, pp. 63-87.