The end of an era came to the 2025 movies schedule last month with the release of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. Although there’d been rumblings that Mission: Impossible 9 might be in the cards, for now anyway, this is indeed the last appearance of Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, whom we’ve seen save the world over and over again since 1996. And yet, even with all the pull he has in the action franchise, it took some effort from Cruise to persuade writer/director Christopher McQuarrie to include an A+ line in The Final Reckoning: “You’re spending too much time on the internet.”
Ethan Hunt says this while fighting one of the many henchmen unfortunate enough to cross his path during Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, but McQuarrie didn’t include this line in his script and then decide later it wasn’t worth keeping in. Cruise came up with it himself, as the filmmaker informed Empire, saying:
Tom was like, ‘I wanna say this line’. I didn’t get it. I’m like, ‘Please can we just fucking get on with it?’ Tom goes, ‘Just watch this, let me do this thing.’
Considering that Tom Cruise has been a producer on the Mission: Impossible movies, you’d think he wouldn’t have to push so hard to squeeze that one line in. But then again, it’s ultimately Christoper McQuarrie’s movie. Outside of implementing certain studio notes, he’s the one who has final say on how these movies come together, something he’s been doing since Rogue Nation following his uncredited scripting work on Ghost Protocol.
Fortunately for Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie buckled, and it’s a good thing he did because he ended up liking how the line sounded. As McQuarrie put it:
Boy, the first time it played, I turned and was like, ‘Fuck you, dude. OK, fine, you win.’
Tom Cruise has been professionally acting for over four decades, and action flicks are among some of the best entries on his resume (although there are certainly enough movies that prove he’s more than an action star). So I’m not surprised he’s come up with a good gauge on badass lines to say when playing characters delivering a beating on bad guys. I’m sure we could come up with a list of just badass lines Ethan Hunt’s delivered for nearly 30 years.
The exclusion of “You’re spending too much time on the internet” wouldn’t have impacted the overall positive reception of the latest Mission: Impossible movie, including CinemaBlend’s Final Reckoning review giving it 4 out of 5 stars, but I’m still glad Christopher McQuarrie listened to Cruise and threw the line in there. If anything, it’s a good reminder not too spend too much time online, otherwise an IMF agent might call you out on it if you get on their bad side.