Friendo: “I too have now seen MI:7 twice. One of the things that jumped out at me was that maybe, just maybe the AI ‘Entity’ had evolved to the point where it surmised that war is unnecessary (like the computer in John Badham‘s War Games) and therefore in the beginning sequence in the Russian submarine it’s trying to kill itself and bury the sub.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the payoff in the sequel.

“I also enjoyed the nod to Silence of the Lambs when Tom Cruise calls out Haley Atwell‘s “Grace” for trying to compensate for her “orphaned background with fine clothes and blah blah”, sort of like Anthony Hopkins‘ Hannibal Lecter chiding Clarice Starling about ‘your good bag and your cheap shoes…you look like a rube…a well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste.’

“And I know you loved that moment when Cruise and his motorcycle leapt over a wall in a field, just like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.

“After it ended I polled a few audience members and they were mostly happy, although some said they weren’t sure they needed to see the sequel. ‘That’s a lot of hoo-hah for a key’, one guy told me. ‘They got it. Now what…they’ll have to go and find the lock?”