20 Recent Movie Twists That Fell Completely Flat

15. Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning - All Those Retcons

Out of the five great Mission: Impossible films - namely, everything since Ghost Protocol - The Final Reckoning was probably the weakest, but the backlash it's received from many fans has been wildly excessive. It's still a kick-ass action film by any reasonable standard, although people were right to bash its ridiculous moments of fan-service. This took the tiresome 'Everything is connected' trope to the absolute limit. 

A US agent hunting Ethan Hunt and co turns out to be the son of Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), the villain of the first movie. It is said that the movie's villainous AI entity was created from code contained within the Rabbit Foot MacGuffin in Mission: Impossible III. The Kremlin bombing in Ghost Protocol is retroactively claimed to have been specifically directed to kill Hunt, rather than an effort to frame the US government as was portrayed in that earlier film. 

And, most pointlessly of all, a CIA analyst who Hunt snuck past in the original film makes a bizarre return and reveals that he kept the knife Hunt dropped during that heist. All of this felt like a forced, inorganic way to tie all the films together and remind audiences that this was a series finale even though there are plenty of other things this movie could've and should've done to hammer this home. Namely, more character deaths and a less open final scene. 

Still a very good film though, flaws and all.