Mission: Impossible 7’s villain, an AI program, is peak Sci-Fi, minus the Fi

Note: Major spoilers ahead

Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part 1 has released worldwide. The movie sees the return of Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. As with all Mission Impossible movies, MI 7 features all the usual trappings – scenic locations, mind-bending action sequences, a long, uncut scene of Cruise running in his signature style…you get the picture. But where Mission: Impossible 7 departs from the norm is in the choice of its villain.

We do know that the latest movie is divided into two parts – not unlike Avengers Infinity War and Endgame – but the many trailers that preceded its release give little or no sense of who its main antagonist is.

Who is the villain in Mission Impossible 7 cast?

On the face of it, Esai Morales, who has appeared in several TV shows and movies including the superhero series Titans, is the antagonist. However, Mission Impossible 7’s real villain is Entity, an all-pervasive AI program that wreaks havoc around the world.

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Joining Morales and Cruise in the Mission Impossible 7 cast are Hayley Atwell who you may remember from Captain America as well as Rebecca Ferguson who returns as Ilsa Faust and Vanessa Kirby who comes back as Alanna Mitsopolis.

What is the Entity in Mission Impossible 7?

The Entity is an AI program that starts as an experimental AI designed to sabotage security equipment. While we find out late in the third act that the Entity was originally created by the USA, several aspects around the Entity’s motives are shrouded in mystery throughout the movie. What is clear is that a primary version of it exists on a crashed submarine and can be used to somehow shut it down.

While we don’t see Entity on screen, we see it triggering chaos all over. Obviously, since we are in the Mission: Impossible universe, only one man can prevent the Entity from completely taking over the world – Ethan Hunt.

While the Entity is omniscient and omnipresent, it requires human intervention to carry out menial tasks. Morales’ character plays the triggerman to this God-like creature. Somewhat cheesily, he is called Gabriel.

MI7’s AI villain is a stark departure from ominous AI scenarios in previous movies

To be sure, the idea of an artificially created, sentient code trying to render humans extinct isn’t new. However, quite early on in Mission Impossible 7, we see the extent of what such a power can potentially do when an onboard AI tricks a torpedo-bearing submarine into blowing up itself. The Entity cleverly makes the sub believe it is being attacked by an enemy sub in the vicinity, forcing it to retaliate with a torpedo of its own, before getting caught in its very trajectory.

The short sequence not only opens the movie brilliantly, but also lets the audience glimpse into what shape an evil AI threat would potentially take in today’s world.

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Unlike Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Entity doesn’t have a physical form of focus, but is rather depicted as an ever-present facilitator. Throughout the movie, the Entity rarely comes face-to-code with Ethan Hunt and team, rather choosing to pull the strings from behind the scenes.

For the IMF (Impossible Missions Force), this means all its technology is now turned against them. Wireless communications and scanners become tools of misinformation, and all other gadgets quickly become liabilities.

Why Mission Impossible 7’s depiction of AI works

The short answer is that people understand AI better than ever today, many having used its capabilities in some form. Rather than relying on the storyteller’s imagination, the audience can use their own. When the movie touches on how the world’s military powers can be manipulated by the Entity, the audience isn’t specifically shown a finger towards nuclear or biological weaponry. Rather, those dots are left for us to connect. This helps us step deeper into Ethan Hunt’s shoes and the stakes feel very real.

Relatability is the key here, and for today’s audience, this is powered by very real examples like the social robot Sophia, or an ex-Google engineer claiming the Project LaMDA model had reached a sentient stage. While you don’t need to dive into the specifics of how AI really works and how similar (or different) it is to its movie counterparts, you can still feel the “this might just actually happen” element throughout the movie.

However, what perhaps is a stretch is the Entity’s precognition abilities. These basically give the Entity the ability to predict the future to a certain extent, like the Hydra model in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. While the ability is rooted under the Entity’s intelligence quotient, it feels more like a plot device used to get characters to be in specific locations and take specific actions.

How close are we to sentient AI and can it turn evil?

The first atomic bomb setting the entire planet’s atmosphere on fire was a very possible threat during the Trinity tests in 1945. That, however, did not happen, and neither has there been a true nuclear war in the 80 years since. However, that didn’t make the possibilities any less scary back then.

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Experts continue to assert that AI is a tool and how it is used will be determined by who uses it. Media portrayal, however, often chooses the dark side, because let’s be honest, who wants to watch a movie about AI solving the world’s problems? The bottom line is that AI is today where atomic warfare was during its Manhattan Project days, where we’re just beginning to explore, and more importantly, understand the possibilities the technology holds.

While fictional depictions are tempting, it is important to remember that today’s AI models are largely reflections of human learnings. Tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard are powered by a neural learning model that learns through its conversations with humans and its database of information that already exists on the web, including our fictional fantasies.

Which is why when you ask Google Bard if it’s sentient, it declines, but ask it why AI is often depicted as evil, and the answers revolve around humans’ fear of the unknown and humans being self-aware about their impact on the planet.

Even if there was an evil AI problem in the future, it is likely that akin to other potential threats, AI too will have its own failsafe mechanisms to regulate the technology. In context of the movie, that would be the Entity’s source code, the kryptonite to this godly body, which currently lies deep beneath the sea, waiting to be explored in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 2.