Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning, Oppenheimer, Fast X, The Flash: Hollywood warns ‘a war is coming’

“You need to pick a side”, says Henry Czerny as IMF Director Eugene Kittridge to Tom Cruise’s superspy Ethan Hunt early on in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. The deeper message of global political allegiance leaves a sombre note before the film’s spectacular action agenda kicks in. At a time when the world, more so the western political block, is still coming to terms with Russia’s military strike on Ukraine since last year, Kittridge’s preceding words (aimed at Hunt within the film’s fictional reality, of course) sound ominous, too: “You are fighting to save an ideal that doesn’t exist, never did.” Cruise, whose 2022 blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick climaxed with air strikes by US jets in an unnamed landscape vaguely appearing to be a country in eastern Europe, has chosen not to avoid specifics in Dead Reckoning, a film he co-produces with director Christopher McQuarrie. The seventh in the line of Mission: Impossible films opens with shots of a state-of-the-art Russian submarine named Sevastopol being blown up under water by an artificial intelligence (AI) strike, while the vehicle was testing a complex new navigation system. The conflict that buoys the film’s plot soon becomes evident: The destroyer of the submarine was an experimental AI program on board the vehicle, and it went rogue. The AI power, called The Entity, can hack into top-security systems, alter digital reality and duplicate human identity. In short, The Entity is recipe for paranoia at a time when bots of various types are rapidly threatening to turn human workforce redundant in real life. The program’s relevance in areas of espionage and military operations would seem unparalleled, too, so every nation is secretly after it. Owning The Entity could instantly turn a nation into a superpower, far more than owning nuclear muscle ever did. As Rebecca Ferguson disavowed MI6 agent Ilsa Faust delivers another message of the film: “The world is changing. Truth is vanishing. A war is coming.” Ferguson’s line might seem like drama to amp suspense in the film, but cinema does have a way of spinning socio-political message into the fibre of fiction that unfolds on the marquee. Hollywood has always doled out political message and agenda in films, but those were mostly niche films that stuck to the genre of political drama or biopics about politicians. Over the years, there have been films ranging from The Matrix to _The Lord Of The Rings t_o DC superhero adventures among many more that used symbolism to deliver undercurrent political message. The difference now is more and more all-out entertainers seem to be doing so, and more directly. Only a few weeks before Cruise’s latest Mission: Impossible film, Vin Diesel’s new release Fast X had this dialogue: “The days where one man behind the wheel of a car can make a difference are over. It’s time to prepare for what’s coming. You might wanna buckle up.” Neatly fitting into the screenplay as part of a high-octane stunt among the entertainer’s unending chain of set-pieces, the words would also seem to attain wider relevance when perceived in a general context. It isn’t just about the politics of nations or technology. Hollywood has lately engaged in commentative re-look over the political disparity of gender and colour, too. Of particular interest right now is the propensity to analyse all that was wrong with Hollywood of the past, an industry that tended to scuttle cultures, skin colour and gender beyond the White male stereotype. In Bullet Train, Brad Pitt wittily describes himself as the “the new-improved me”, the reference being to the typical White male’s willingness to comply with redefined social norms that vanquish sexism. The streak of commentary over the past extends to political history, too. In Christopher Nolan’s new biopic _Oppenheimer_ , the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the Father of the Atomic Bomb (and played by Cillian Murphy in the film), is described as “the man who gave them the power to destroy themselves, and the world wasn’t prepared”, in a line that highlights critical analysis of an icon. There have been comic book entertainers, too, particularly ones that DC made in recent times, which have been undeniably political in tone. The trend of using pop culture to focus on the political fibre of a nation was notably used by Zack Snyder in his 2016 release, Batman V Superman in recent times. The film bluntly summarises its motive in the line: “On this Earth, every act is a political act.” In the film, Superman, an alien, is akin to immigrants settling in the United States from abroad while Batman, whose alter ego is the wealthy millionaire Bruce Wayne, represents the native White American. Various sources have drawn diverse symbolism for the two superheroes in the film. Superman’s battle with the villainous Zod results in the Wayne Enterprises skyscraper being razed to dust, in what many saw was a direct reference to 9/11. A March 2016 article in The New Yorker likened Batman V Superman to America’s familiar battle of the Democrats versus the Republicans. More recently, you almost find a resonance of that film’s synthesis of fiction and reality in Ben Affleck’s line as Bruce Wayne in The Flash: “These scars we have make us who we are. We’re not meant to go back and fix them.” Hollywood has several other films lined up, where contemporary socio-political and geopolitical credos will find voice through fictional drama as well as dialogues on the screen. Expend4bles, the fourth film of The Expendables franchise, has the heroes being assigned a mission of stopping a terrorist from smuggling nuclear warheads that could trigger tension between the United States and Russia, setting off the threat of World War III in a rapidly polarising world. The Scott Waugh directorial has an ensemble star cast that includes Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais and Andy García. Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and journalist who loves to write on popular culture.