When I was growing up, AI meant Artificial Insemination, something to do with impregnating cows to give designer calves. Now AI means Artificial Intelligence and MI means Mission Impossible. MI meets AI in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”, the 7th and latest instalment of Tom Cruise re-enacting his childhood. What will you be when you grow up, Tom? I’ll be a motorcycle glider and jump off a massive cliff and with the help of a parachute, land on a hurtling train, or better smash into the train just as the bad guys are about to kill the girl and save the girl and then save the world. What will you be? I’ll be a civil servant, Tom.
No young lad admits to wanting to be a civil servant when he grows up, but after 13 years of the educational system, it’s as safe and easy a career as any, for the civil service office is one of the better places to endure a hangover. Which is why there are many civil servants, but there’s only one Tom Cruise.
The girl in MI7 is a high-achieving thief and pickpocket who spends a lot of time running from Tom because she doesn’t want to tie the knot with him, but Tom is a persevering chap and the two, in a fantastic car chase through Rome, find themselves knotted to the steering wheel of a little yellow Panda. Panda is little and that means only it can go through a tight passageway that leads to the train track and Tom’s girl unties the knot leaving Tom tied to the wheel in the face of an oncoming high speed train. Till death do us part, but Tom of course survives at the last moment, still tied to the wheel. Tom’s at the wheel, except he isn’t; it’s the Entity that’s controlling things. That’s the name of the AI antagonist.
What is AI anyway? Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. But what happens if AI becomes more intelligent than human intelligence? Well, it might control us. Under its guise, it’ll ensure we’re all micro-chipped and if we’re not good little boys and girls, it’ll send a signal to punish, or even kill us. And that includes disobeying it and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise’s character) is not into obedience. Ethan wants to kill the Entity, but the world’s governments or rather its desperados want to control the Entity to become rulers of the world. The devil has got into them.
I recall reading in the book Conversations with God that the species that evolves its technology ahead of its spirituality destroys itself, whilst the species that evolves its spirituality ahead of its technology survives and thrives. Hollywood lately has been doing loads of multi-verse blockbusters which incorporate accessing timelines, and what if AI gets the ability to see the future and learns how to adapt to sustain itself and its rule over humanity from here to entirety. This, I suggest, is Armageddon.
It’s Dead Reckoning Part One which means there’s Part Two, but MI7 is a very satisfying viewing experience even if you’re hyperventilating at the last extended action sequence. There’re great action pieces all through, beginning with a super-stealth Russian submarine discovering something stealthier and being destroyed by its own missile. Thou shall not kill.
Maybe love is the only evolution, the only intelligence.
