AI may not be as bad as it seems at first glance.
Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt has spent the last six installments of Mission: Impossible fighting terrible villains who wanted to enslave humanity. But in Dead Reckoning Part One, which recently hit the screens, the legendary American spy faces a brand new artificial intelligence threat called The Entity. Ethan must embark on a quest to find the two keys that can stop the technology.
The AI uses the most brutal mercenaries and their methods to carry out its insidious plans. But what if its goal is not at all what it seems to be, and The Entity may actually be trying to save Ethan? Redditor Burnnoticelover has a compelling theory to prove that.
In Dead Reckoning Part One, the AI is aboard the Russian submarine Sevastopol, which is sailing in the Arctic Circle. At this point, The Entity makes contact with something that immediately sinks the submarine. The question is, what could the AI have seen?
The fan thinks that the artificial intelligence saw the order for a preemptive nuclear strike against the USA. The movie repeatedly mentions that The Entity is more dangerous than an atomic bomb, and any country that controls this technology would become the most powerful civilization in history.
The AI realized that Sevastopol was in the Arctic not to test camouflage, but to start World War III. And The Entity knows that as long as it lives, humanity won’t stop fighting until it gets its hands on advanced artificial intelligence.
So, according to the Redditor, The Entity decides to commit suicide, and the only person who won’t take advantage of it, but will help to pull the plug, is Ethan Hunt. The fan believes that if the AI really wanted to destroy the spy to ensure its safety, it wouldn’t have needed to find parts of the keys. The Entity only has to destroy one key to gain independence.
As further proof, the Redditor notes that the AI repeatedly spares Hunt and his team, sends a fake bomb to Abu Dhabi instead of blowing up the airport, doesn’t kill the spy with a drone at the White Widow party, and doesn’t crash Benji’s self-driving car.
The Redditor is convinced that The Entity wants Ethan alive because he’s the only one the AI thinks will be able to shut down the technology and save humanity from a possible war. But the artificial intelligence can’t talk to the spy directly because Hunt just won’t believe it.