20 Recent Movies That Made ONE Huge Mistake

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning was admittedly a somewhat middling "finale" to the hit spy franchise for a few reasons, but most of all because it was unnecessarily bloated out with constant flashbacks to prior entries in the series.

In an attempt to tie all of its dangling plot threads together and make The Final Reckoning a movie that intricately united all eight films, much of the story is concerned with peering back over its shoulder at characters, plot points, and even MacGuffins from earlier installments.

The problem is that this requires the film to constantly cut away from the present action to flash up an accompanying visual from the previous movie in question, ensuring the pacing continually grinds to a halt.

The Final Reckoning's opening passage in particular gets dangerously close to feeling like a clip show - a strange artistic choice for a film sold on its spectacle, and considering director Christoper McQuarrie's own noted disdain for fan service.

By fashioning itself as a nostalgic, dew-eyed climax to the franchise, The Final Reckoning lost sight of why it became so popular in the first place, and padded itself out to an excruciating 170 minutes in the process.