How does a long-running action franchise keep raising the stakes? If one follows the Mission: Impossible rule book, it’s about stunt work.
Previously, Tom Cruise climbed up the world’s tallest skyscraper and clung to the side of a plane taking flight.
In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, he speeds off a cliff with a parachute.
The movies don’t usually check off the other box to keep the tension going: killing off a beloved, major character.
And when it comes to an action series, there may be nothing worse than a lackluster farewell when this scenario plays out.
Unfortunately, it’s what happens to Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson).
What makes it baffling isn’t so much the character’s death, but the narrative choices leading up to it and what happens after.
Here lies agent Ilsa Faust, whose death is utterly unsatisfying.
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