Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning ★★★☆☆

It's been about a month since I saw this one, so I had to read the Wikipedia article to remember the plot. I also started the review for the previous movie the day after I saw it, but didn't upload it till today, so I forgot an important part that I'll put here. In the previous movie, they killed off Ethan Hunt's love interest, and it seems like they only did that to introduce a new one that he has in this movie. I take major points away for that. But in this movie, the stunts are great, but the thing that made the last movie good, having the villain be a smart, almost prescient AI, is almost completely discarded here, even though the story continues with the same plot line. This movie was built for nostalgia, and I think it worked as far as that goes, with plot elements from many of the previous movies getting threaded into this movie and tied up in a neat way. There was a meta commentary about how each of the movies raised the stakes for Ethan Hunt, who constantly doubles down on gambling more and more lives to save the lives of the people he loves, leading up to this final gamble of the entire world's future. I think this also worked for this movie. I'm giving this movie 3 stars, but I waffled back and forth between 3 and 4 stars.

Ultimately, if you want to know if it's worth watching the full series, I would say yes, and this movie, though not the best of them, is a solid ending to the series, satisfying enough as endings go. If you just want to watch the best of the best Mission: Impossible movies, then watch Mission: Impossible, M:i:III, then Mission: Impossible - Fallout, and end it there. I don't think you're missing too much. But you could add the last two to that list. They're really not bad.