mission

The crisis in Sudan has become ‘a grave human rights and protection emergency’, the United Nations mission says.

The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan has warned that both sides in the country’s civil war have escalated the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas while weaponising humanitarian relief, amid devastating consequences for civilians.

“Let us be clear: the conflict in Sudan is far from over,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the Fact-Finding Mission, which presented its latest findings to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday.

“The scale of human suffering continues to deepen. The fragmentation of governance, the militarisation of society, and the involvement of foreign actors are fuelling an ever-deadlier crisis.”

The brutal conflict, now in its third year, erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and has killed tens of thousands of civilians and displaced more than 13 million Sudanese, according to United Nations data.

The UN has previously said that Sudan is experiencing the world’s “worst humanitarian crisis”.

The mission found that both sides escalated the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas. In May, an RSF drone strike on Obeid International Hospital in North Kordofan killed six civilians, while earlier this month, an SAF bombing in Al Koma killed at least 15 civilians.

Aid was also being weaponised by the SAF, which imposed bureaucratic restrictions, as well as by the RSF, which looted convoys and blocked aid, the group said.

The mission also documented a sharp rise in sexual and gender-based violence, including gang rape, abduction, sexual slavery, and forced marriage, mostly in RSF-controlled displacement camps.

Member of the Fact-Finding Mission Mona Rishmawi said what began as a political and security crisis has become “a grave human rights and protection emergency, marked by international crimes that stain all involved”.

“It is unconscionable that this devastating war is entering its third year with no sign of resolution,” she said.

Sudan has seen growing instability since longtime President Omar al-Bashir was removed from power in 2019 after months of anti-government protests.

In October 2021, the Sudanese military staged a coup against the civilian government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, leading to his resignation in early 2022.

Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and rival Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the RSF, had shared power after the coup but then started fighting for control of the state and its resources in April 2023.

Last week, the Sudanese Army accused the forces of eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar of attacking Sudanese border posts, the first time it has charged its northwestern neighbour with direct involvement in the civil war.

Egypt, which has also backed Haftar, has long supported the Sudanese Army. Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the United Arab Emirates of backing the RSF, which it denies.

At a news conference Thursday, Mayor Karen Bass made a startling claim.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had appeared at a homeless shelter that day, among other sensitive locations in Los Angeles, she said.

But what actually happened at the Whitsett West Tiny Home Village in North Hollywood remains murky. The shifting narratives reflect the anxiety of Angelenos amid ICE raids targeting immigrants at Home Depots, churches and retail centers.

In L.A., a “sanctuary city” where local officials do not participate in federal immigration enforcement, tensions with the federal government are at an all-time high. After some protests against the raids turned violent, the Trump administration called in the National Guard and the U.S. Marines.

With federal officials keeping the city in the dark on immigration enforcement actions, City Council members and the mayor sometimes rely on the rumor mill.

ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, quickly responded to Bass’ comments, saying they were “false.”

“[ICE] is not in homeless shelters,” the agency wrote on X. “This rhetoric from [the mayor] and California politicians demonizes the brave men and women of law enforcement.”

The Whitsett West Tiny Home Village, which is on city property and is run by the nonprofit Hope the Mission, has beds for about 150 people in shed-like structures off the 170 Freeway near Whitsett Avenue and Saticoy Street.

According to Laura Harwood, Hope the Mission’s deputy chief program officer, people in a car tried to get access to the tiny home village on Thursday afternoon, telling security guards that they were American citizens who wanted to see how their taxpayer dollars were being used. The guards did not admit the visitors, who were wearing civilian clothes.

“This is a really unusual situation. This really doesn’t happen,” Harwood said.

Other employees saw some men looking into the complex from different sides and taking pictures.

A worker at the tiny home village, who requested anonymity because he has family members who are undocumented, told The Times that he was returning from lunch when he spotted two DHS SUVs with tinted windows down the block.

Tiny home staffers were concerned enough that they reached out to City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian, who came to the complex.

“We got reports that some ICE agents were around in the area viewing the location from both the front and the backside entryways,” Nazarian said on Instagram.

Nazarian said that immigration agents appearing at the tiny home village would be a “fear mongering” tactic.

The targeting of interim homeless housing could dissuade people from moving off the street, or push those in shelters to leave out of fear, said Rowan Vansleve, Hope the Mission’s president.

“Last Thursday, ICE entered our city, and provoked the city, by chasing people through Home Depots and car washes and showing up at schools. And today, showing up at emergency rooms and homeless shelters,” Bass said at the Thursday press conference.

Bass’ team confirmed to The Times that she was referring to the incident at the Whitsett West Tiny Home Village.

City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said that community organizations and local elected officials have been sorting through reports of DHS sightings to see if they are credible.

“We have seen situations where people say federal agents are here, and then when someone goes, it turns out they were never there or were gone an hour ago,” Hernandez said.

California’s two U.S. Senators pushed top military officials Tuesday for more information about how hundreds of U.S. Marines were deployed to Los Angeles over the objections of local leaders and what the active-duty military will do on the ground.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla asked the Pentagon to explain the legal basis for deploying 700 active-duty Marines amid ongoing protests and unrest over immigration raids across Southern California.

“A decision to deploy active-duty military personnel within the United States should only be undertaken during the most extreme circumstances, and these are not them,” Schiff and Padilla wrote in the letter. “That this deployment was made over the objections of state authorities is all the more unjustifiable.”

California is challenging the legality of the militarization, arguing in a lawsuit filed Monday that the deployment of both the National Guard and the Marines violated the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which spells out the limits of federal power.

Schiff and Padilla asked Hegseth to clarify the mission the Marines will be following during their deployment, as well as what training the troops have received for crowd control, use of force and de-escalation.

The senators also asked whether the Defense Department received any requests from the White House or the Department of Homeland Security about “the scope of the Marines’ mission and duties.”

Hegseth mobilized the Marines Monday from a base in Twentynine Palms. Convoys were seen heading east on the 10 Freeway toward Los Angeles on Monday evening.

Schiff and Padilla said that Congress received a notification from the U.S. Northern Command on Monday about the mobilization that said the Marines had been deployed to “restore order” and support the roughly 4,000 members of the state National Guard who had been called into service Saturday and Monday.

The notification, the senators said, “did not provide critical information to understand the legal authority, mission, or rules of engagement for Marines involved in this domestic deployment.”

The California National Guard was first mobilized Saturday night over Newsom’s objection.

The last time a president sent the National Guard into a state without a request from the governor was six decades ago, when President Lyndon B. Johnson mobilized troops in Alabama to defend civil rights demonstrators and enforce a federal court order in 1965.

Trump and the White House have said the military mobilization is legal under Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Forces. The statute gives the president the authority to federalize the National Guard if there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States,” but also states that the Guard must be called up through an order from the state’s governor.

Trump has said that without the mobilization of the military, “Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated.”

Days of protests have included some violent clashes with police and some vandalism and burglaries.

“It was heading in the wrong direction,” Trump said Monday. “It’s now heading in the right direction. And we hope to have the support of Gavin, because Gavin is the big beneficiary as we straighten out his problems. I mean, his state is a mess.”

On Tuesday morning, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said city officials had not been told what the military would do, given that the National Guard is already in place outside of federal buildings.

“This is just absolutely unnecessary,” Bass said. “People have asked me, ‘What are the Marines going to do when they get here?’ That’s a good question. I have no idea.”

On Tuesday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sought a restraining order to block the deployment.

The failed mission comes two years after the Japanese start-up’s first moonshot ended in a crash landing.

A Japanese-made private lunar lander has crashed while attempting to touch down on the moon, with its makers officially declaring the mission a failure.

Tokyo-based company ispace said on Friday that its lander, named Resilience, dropped out of lunar orbit as planned and that the mission appeared to be going well.

But flight controllers lost contact with Resilience, which was carrying a mini rover, moments before its scheduled touchdown on the surface of the moon following an hourlong descent. Ground support was met with silence as they attempted to regain contact with the lander and after several hours declared the mission a failure.

The company’s livestream of the attempted landing then came to an abrupt end.

“We have to take seriously what happened,” ispace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada said after the failed mission, as he apologised to everyone who contributed.

This is the firm’s second failed attempt to soft land on the lunar surface, coming two years after the Japanese start-up’s first attempt to reach the moon ended in a crash landing.

Launched in December 2022, the firm’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 reached lunar orbit but crashed during its final descent after an error caused the lander to believe it was lower than it actually was.

That mission’s successor, Resilience, was launched in January from Florida on a long, roundabout journey. It shared a ride on a SpaceX rocket with Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, which, upon reaching the moon first in March this year, made the US firm the first private entity to make a “fully successful” soft landing there.

The 2.3-metre (7.5-foot) Resilience lander was targeting the top of the moon, where the ispace team had chosen a flat area with few boulders in Mare Frigoris, or Sea of Cold, to land.

Resilience was expected to beam back pictures within hours of landing, before ispace’s European-built rover – named Tenacious – would have been lowered onto the lunar surface this weekend. The rover, made of carbon fibre-reinforced plastic and sporting a high-definition camera, would then have scouted out the area and scooped up lunar dirt for NASA.

Resilience was also carrying a toy-sized red house created by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg. Moonhouse, as the model Swedish-style cottage was called, was intended to be the moon’s first “building”, in a nod to Hakamada’s vision of humans living and working there as early as the 2040s.

But ispace’s now second failed landing has left the Japanese entrepreneur’s vision in doubt. The aerospace company’s next, much bigger lander is scheduled to launch by 2027 with NASA’s involvement.

Prior to Friday’s failed mission, the Japanese firm’s chief financial officer, Jumpei Nozaki, promised to continue its lunar quest regardless of the outcome.

But Jeremy Fix, chief engineer for ispace’s US subsidiary, said at a conference last month that the firm does not have “infinite funds” and cannot afford repeated failures.

Company officials said this latest failed mission cost less than the first one – which exceeded $100m – but declined to provide an exact figure.

Gaza City – As the Madleen sails towards Gaza to try to deliver life-saving aid to its people, little is known about the woman the boat was named after: Madleen Kulab, Gaza’s only fisherwoman.

When Al Jazeera first met Madleen Kulab (also spelled Madelyn Culab) three years ago, she had two children, was expecting her third and lived a relatively quiet life in Gaza City with her husband, Khader Bakr, 32, also a fisherman.

Madleen, now 30, would sail fearlessly out as far as Israel’s gunship blockade would allow to bring back fish she could sell in a local market to support the family.

When Israel’s war on Gaza began, the family was terrified, then heartbroken when Israel killed Madleen’s father in an air strike near their home in November 2023.

They fled with Madleen nearly nine months pregnant to Khan Younis, then to Rafah, to Deir el-Balah and then Nuseirat.

Now, they are back in what remains of their home in Gaza City, a badly damaged space they returned to when the Israeli army allowed displaced people to head back north in January.

Responsibility and pride

Madleen sits on a battered sofa in her damaged living room, three of her four children sitting with her: baby Waseela, one, on her lap; five-year-old Safinaz beside her; and three-year-old Jamal – the baby she was expecting when Al Jazeera first met her – at the end.

She talks about what it felt like to hear from an Irish activist friend that the ship trying to break the blockade on Gaza would be named after her.

“I was deeply moved. I felt an enormous sense of responsibility and a little pride,” she says with a smile.

“I’m grateful to these activists who have devoted themselves, left their lives and comforts behind, and stood with Gaza despite all the risks,” she says of the group of 12 activists, who include Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament.

“This is the highest form of humanity and self-sacrifice in the face of danger.”

Khader sits on another sofa with six-year-old Sandy. He holds out his phone with a photo of the Madleen on it, flying the Palestinian flag.

Madleen has been fishing since she was 15, a familiar figure heading out on her father’s boat, getting to know all the other fishermen and also becoming well-known to international solidarity activists.

In addition to bringing home the fish, Madleen is also a skilled cook, preparing seasonal fish dishes that were so famously tasty that she had a list of clients waiting to buy them from her. Especially popular were the dishes made with Gaza’s ubiquitous sardines.

But now, she can’t fish any more and neither can Khader because Israel destroyed their boats and an entire storage room full of fishing gear during the war.

“We’ve lost everything – the fruit of a lifetime,” she says.

But her loss is not just about income. It’s about identity – her deep connection to the sea and fishing. It’s even about the simple joy of eating fish, which she used to enjoy “10 times a week”.

“Now fish is too expensive if you can find it at all. Only a few fishermen still have any gear left, and they risk their lives just to catch a little,” she says.

“Everything has changed. We now crave fish in the middle of this famine we’re living through.”

Sleeping on a bare floor, newborn in her arms

After the air strike near the family home in November 2023, Madleen’s family’s first displacement was to Khan Younis, following Israeli army instructions that they would be safer there.

After searching for shelter, they ended up in a small apartment with 40 other displaced relatives, and then Madleen went into labour.

“It was a difficult, brutal birth. No pain relief, no medical care. I was forced to leave the hospital right after giving birth. There were no beds available because of the overwhelming number of wounded,” she says.

When she returned to the shelter, things were just as dire. “We didn’t have a mattress or even a blanket, neither me nor the kids,” she said.

“I had to sleep on the floor with my newborn baby. It was physically exhausting.”

She then had to tend to four children in an enclave where baby formula, diapers and even the most basic food items were almost impossible to find.

The war, she says, has reshaped her understanding of suffering and hardship.

In 2022, she and Khader were struggling to make ends meet between Israel’s gunship blockade and the frequent destruction of their boats. There was also the added burden of being a mother with small children and undertaking such physically taxing work.

But now, things have gotten far worse.

“There’s no such thing as ‘difficult’ any more. Nothing compares to the humiliation, hunger and horror we’ve seen in this war,” she says.

A ship named Madleen

Throughout the war, Madleen remained in touch with international friends and solidarity activists she had met through the years.

“I would share my reality with them,” she says.

“They came to understand the situation through me. They felt like family.”

Her friends abroad offered both emotional and financial support, and she is grateful for them, saying they made her feel that Gaza wasn’t forgotten, that people still cared.

She is also grateful for being remembered in the naming of the Madleen, but she worries that Israeli authorities will not let the ship reach Gaza, citing past attempts that were intercepted.

“Intercepting the ship would be the least of it. What’s more worrying is the possibility of a direct assault like what happened to the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in 2010 when several people were killed.”

Regardless of what happens, Madleen believes the mission’s true message has already been delivered.

“This is a call to break the global silence, to draw the world’s attention to what’s happening in Gaza. The blockade must end, and this war must stop immediately.”

“This is also a message of hope for me. They may have bombed my boat, but my name will remain – and it will sail across the sea.”

He openly advocated for the death of then-President-elect Donald Trump, hailing himself as an “assassin” and threatening to shoot the would-be 47th commander-in-chief shortly after the election, prosecutors say.

Those words, left on Facebook posts, are at the center of a federal grand jury indictment. On Tuesday, Yucca Valley resident Thomas Eugene Streavel, 73, pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of making threats.

The San Bernardino County man was arrested Monday just before 11 a.m. by United States Marshals and arraigned the next day inside Central District Court in Riverside.

He’s out on a $10,000 bond and is expected back in court July 28. Streavel could serve up to 15 years in prison if found guilty on all counts.

“This defendant is charged with threatening the life of our President — a man who has already survived two deranged attempts on his life,” said U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in a statement. “The Department of Justice takes these threats with the utmost seriousness and will prosecute this crime to the fullest extent of the law.”

A number listed for Streavel was not answered, and no attorney was listed for him in court documents.

His actions were detailed in a grand jury indictment from May 29 that was unsealed Tuesday.

Streavel posted a variety of threats in the days after Trump’s electoral victory in November, according to the Justice Department.

“[T]rump is a dead man walking for the time being until a patriot like myself blows his [expletive] brains out in the very near future,” Streavel posted on Nov. 6., according to court documents.

Six days later, Streavel posted on Facebook that he was “willing to make America great again and blow his [expletive] brains out,” the indictment says.

There were similar Facebook rants on Nov. 19 and on 28.

In the earlier instance, he wrote, “Let me put a bullet right between the ears of your president-elect…That’s my purpose for living,” according to the indictment.

He later posted, “I’m praying for a successful assassination of your president-elect.” He then added, “my life’s mission is killing the worthless LOSER [expletive] and my mission starts tonight so watch yourself trump [sic], you are a dead [expletive] and I am your assassin,” court documents show.

Streavel’s posts extend to before the election, when on Oct. 15 he wrote, “today is the perfect day to blow his brains out and I’d love to be the one to pull the trigger.”

The Secret Service is also investigating the matter.

“The type of rhetoric and threats made by this defendant are similar to those that led to an attempt on the President’s life last year,” said United States Atty. Bill Essayli. “There is no place for political violence or threats of violence in the United States.”

Trump was injured in a shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13. The shooting left one rally attendee dead and two critically injured, and the unidentified gunman was killed by the Secret Service, according to that agency.

At Trump’s West Palm Beach, Fla., golf course on Sept. 15, a Secret Service agent scoping out the area one or two holes ahead of him saw the muzzle of an AK-47-style weapon pointing out of the tree line on the perimeter of the course.

Trump was unharmed in the second attempt on his life in two months.

Chinese state media says the mission aims ‘to shed light on the formation and evolution of asteroids’ and the Earth.

China has successfully launched a spacecraft as part of its first-ever mission to retrieve pristine asteroid samples, in what researchers have described as a “significant step” in Beijing’s ambitions for interplanetary exploration.

China’s Long March 3B rocket lifted off at about 1.31am local time (18:30 GMT) on Thursday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest China’s Sichuan province. It was carrying the Tianwen-2 spacecraft, a robotic probe that could make China the third nation to fetch pristine asteroid rocks.

Announcing the launch, Chinese state-run news outlets said the “spacecraft unfolded its solar panels smoothly”, and that the China National Space Administration (CNSA) had “declared the launch a success”.

Over the next year, Tianwen-2 will approach a small near-Earth asteroid some 10 million miles (16 million km) away, named “469219 Kamoʻoalewa”, also known as 2016HO3.

The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the asteroid, which researchers believe is potentially a fragment of the Moon, in July 2026. It will then shoot the capsule with rock samples back to Earth for a landing in November 2027.

If successful, China would become only the third country to carry out such a mission after Japan first fetched samples from a small asteroid in 2010, followed by the United States in 2020.

The People’s Daily state-run newspaper described the mission’s purpose as an “endeavour to shed light on the formation and evolution of asteroids and the early solar system”.

The newspaper quoted Shan Zhongde, the head of the CNSA, as saying that the mission represented a “significant step in China’s new journey of interplanetary exploration”. He added that the mission was expected to yield “groundbreaking discoveries and expanding humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos”.

The mission has multiple goals over the “decade-long expedition”, according to Chinese state media, including “collecting samples from near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3” and “exploring the main-belt comet 311P”.

It will also aim to measure the “physical parameters of the two celestial targets”, including their “orbital dynamics, rotation, size, shape and thermal properties”.

The samples will be used to determine the “physical properties, chemical and mineral composition and structural characteristics” of asteroids, according to researchers working on the project.

As a quasi-satellite of Earth that has orbited the Sun in a synchronised path with the Earth for nearly a century, 2016HO3 has a diameter of between 120 feet (40 metres) and 300 feet (100 metres).

China has swiftly expanded its space programmes and embarked on several landmark missions in recent years, including landing robots on the far side of the Moon and collecting humankind’s first-ever samples from the area in June last year.

China is also running its own Tiangong space station in orbit – the only operational space station other than the International Space Station (ISS) – after the US barred it from participating in the ISS.

In April, three crew members landed back in the country’s north after spending six months on board Tiangong in what was the longest-ever mission in space by Chinese astronauts.

Beijing has also invested heavily in planned crewed missions to the Moon that would see Chinese astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030.

The US has also stated its aim to put astronauts back on the Moon for the first time since 1972, with NASA planning to launch its Artemis 3 mission in 2026 at the earliest.

This story is full of spoilers for “The Last of Us” Season 2, especially the finale.

Season 2 of HBO’s “The Last of Us” ends with the ultimate cliffhanger (seriously, if you have not seen and do not want to know, please stop reading right now): An Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) vs. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) face-off in which only Abby has a weapon. As Ellie cries out, a gun goes off and … we are sent back in time to Day 1, Abby’s viewpoint.

So if any of y’all were looking for some kind of closure, emotional or narrative, well, you have got a bit of a wait.

The episode itself played out like a mini-epic. Picking up where last week’s mostly flashback episode ended, Ellie returns to the theater to find Jesse (Young Mazino) tending to Dina (Isabela Merced), who got an arrow through the leg, courtesy of the Seraphites, in Episode 5. When Dina refuses an anesthetic slug of alcohol during the proceedings, Jesse gets the wind up. As he and Ellie then set out to find Tommy (Gabriel Luna), he (kinda) tricks Ellie into revealing Dina’s pregnancy.

That admission only adds fuel to the tension between Ellie, with her obsessive need to make Abby pay for killing Joel, and Jesse, who is angry at Ellie for putting her personal desire for revenge above the needs of the community back in Jackson. High words are spoken before the two split up, with Jesse going to search for Tommy, Ellie to continue tracking Abby.

After a frankly weird hero’s journey in which she braves stormy seas and faces execution by the Seraphites, Ellie makes it to the abandoned aquarium to find Abby. There she surprises Mel (Ariela Barer) and Owen (Spencer Lord), two of the former Fireflies who were with Abby when she killed Joel (Pedro Pascal). When Owen reaches for a gun, Ellie fires, shooting him through the throat. The bullet also, alas, hits Mel, who reveals her advanced pregnancy and, as she bleeds out, begs Ellie to cut the baby out. Horrified, Ellie can do no such thing, and Mel dies even as Jesse and Tommy show up.

Ellie (Bella Ramsey) also has to battle the elements in “The Last of Us” Season 2 finale.

(Liane Hentscher / HBO)

It’s a powerful and terrible scene. Upon their return to the safety of the theater, Ellie is, understandably, very shaken and appears to be rethinking the wisdom of her revenge tour when Abby shows up and kills Jesse (sob). As Ellie takes responsibility for Mel and Owen’s deaths and struggles to explain, we see her original fury reflected in Abby’s face. She points the gun at Ellie, a shot rings out and the story resets on Day 1 of the outbreak.

The Times’ Lorraine Ali, Tracy Brown and Mary McNamara discuss the finale and the season that came before it.

McNamara: As someone who has not played the game but has watched a lot of television, I am going to make the wild guess that Ellie is not dead. Not that I expect to discover this for quite a while, as the final scene indicates that Season 3 will be giving us Abby’s backstory before bringing us (one hopes) back to the theater and the series’ present.

This finale, like much of what preceded it, felt both rushed and oddly slow. This season has been very much (and at times too obviously) focused on Ellie’s growth, as a person and a main character. And with the exception of her love for Dina, I’m not sure how much is there. That Ellie is relentless has been made abundantly clear; ditto the fact that she is confused about her purpose in life. But I admit I was relieved when Jesse read her the riot act about how this mission of vengeance put so many people in danger, including and especially the woman Ellie claims to love.

The stakes in Season 1 were very clear — get Ellie to where she can be used to make a cure — even if they were subverted in the end. This season, the main tension appears to be more about Ellie becoming mature enough to accept that not all heroes have to make dramatic sacrifices or win a blood feud.

That’s a fine message, but it required a lot of attention on her emotional growth, which honestly seemed to occur mostly in the final few minutes, while offering only tantalizing slivers of the larger forces around her. How do you introduce a crazy cult and not offer any real explanation for it? How do you enlist Jeffrey Wright (or for that matter, Hettienne Park) as WLF commanders and then give them so little to do? Not to mention poor Mel and Owen, who are sacrificed, apparently, merely to broaden Ellie’s worldview.

I realize that some of this is about staying true(ish) to the game, which I understand offers different viewpoints, but even with the action-packed finale, it’s hard not to feel like Season 2 was simply a preamble to Season 3. What do you think, “Last of Us” player Tracy Brown?

Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) remains a mystery in “The Last of Us” Season 2 finale.

(Liane Hentscher / HBO)

Brown: I have to agree with you, Mary — the finale’s pacing felt a bit awkward as it barreled its way toward the perspective shift into Abby’s side of the story that will likely be the focus of Season 3, while also trying to pack in familiar moments from the game. I also think you’re feeling a version of the confusion and frustration that “The Last of Us: Part II” players felt when Ellie and Abby’s showdown at the theater abruptly cut to something completely different and you’re suddenly being forced to play as the character you’ve spent hours trying to hunt down.

In the game, up until that cliffhanger, you’ve primarily been playing as Ellie outside of a few sequences before Joel’s death. Players don’t learn much about the Washington Liberation Front or the Seraphites or their conflict until they get to Abby’s side of the story. And when you’re playing a game, you’re used to knowing only as much as the character you’re playing as and learning more about any enemies as you go. You’re also much more mission-oriented — as great as a game’s story is, you’re main focus is gathering as much information as you can to accomplish your goal. The mission and the themes are a bit more straightforward in the first “Last of Us” game.

In “The Last of Us: Part II,” there’s a bait and switch. You start the game’s main storyline playing as Ellie, with the assumption that your mission is to get revenge, only to find yourself suddenly playing as Abby. Because “Part II” is more about an exploration of trauma and cycles of violence, Abby and her story have to be more than something you learn about as Ellie. In the game, the perspective shift is essential and revelatory because, navigating any discomfort while playing as Abby is part of the experience. It’s something dependent on the unique way players become attached to characters they play as.

In television, stories can unfold differently. Because audiences are not playing as Ellie, they can be introduced to Abby’s ties to the events in Salt Lake City and characters like Isaac (Wright) much sooner than in the game because we’re not locked into one point of view. And that freedom brings its own challenges. I should also mention that as acclaimed as the franchise is, “Part II” was a bit more divisive among players too. Lorraine, what did you think about the finale?

Ali: You’ve both expressed many of the same feelings I have about the finale and about Season 2 in general. Does that mean I can have the night off? If I took my cues from Ellie, I’d do just that. Ellie predictably put her own interests above everyone and everything else, which didn’t leave much room for an interesting story twist or character growth in the Season 2 finale. To Mary’s point about pacing, Episode 7 spent precious time hammering away on what we already know: Ellie’s need for revenge put everyone who cares about her in danger. Poor Dina. The only way Jesse was getting that crossbow bolt out of her leg was pulling it straight through. The credits are nearly ready to roll by the time Ellie realizes her single-minded quest is as barbaric as Abby’s killing of Joel, but not before she gunned down a pregnant woman.

Tracy, I wonder if the trouble the show had picking out where to spend its time is partly a game-to-TV adaptation problem. You mentioned the shifting perspectives in the game, of players seeing the world through Ellie’s and then Abby’s eyes. But serieswatchers are a passive audience and that left the show with a lot of options to tackle and/or leave out. The finale’s hopscotching from scenario to scenario appeared like it was born out of duty rather than purpose. Ellie’s choppy boat ride, the rogue wave washing her ashore, her capture and release at the hands of the cult — all were colorful and dramatic but felt abrupt and even extraneous to the story. That said, the decaying Costco storefront was a nice touch even if it was totally random.

Lastly, I loved the Seattle-centric soundtrack and poster choices of grunge bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. But a lot of great female bands came out of the Pacific Northwest too, and I can’t help but feel the feral screams of 7 Year B— would have been a perfect soundtrack for Ellie’s rage. So what do we all think about the last moments of the finale, which set us up for Season 3?

Jesse (Young Mazino) is not too pleased with Dina (Isabela Merced) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in “The Last of Us” Season 2 finale.

McNamara: I love the granular music criticism, Lorraine! For the life of me, I could not figure out what to make of Ellie’s brief capture by the Seraphites, which felt a lot like finale padding — don’t forget the crazy cult in the woods about which we know nothing yet! — or even her “Twelfth Night”-like near-drowning. (“What country, friends, is this?”)

I can see how the switch from Ellie to Abby might work in the game — you’ll never understand your “enemy” until you walk a mile in her shoes — but for a series to flip viewpoints seasonally (as opposed to episodically) is a big ask for viewers, especially those not familiar with the game.

With the exception of Ellie and Dina’s burgeoning relationship, much of this season felt like a big teaser reel for Season 3. Ramsey is a talented actor, but the task of carrying the show by portraying a recognizable teen on a complicated existential journey in the middle of a life-or-death adventure tale is a formidable one, especially without the benefit of an older, wiser guide/co-star. But then no one said adapting a game to a series would be easy.

As for the final moments, well, as I said, I don’t think Ellie’s dead, though Jesse certainly is, which is tragic — he and Tommy were the real heroes of Season 2. I am intrigued by the “Day 1“-ness of the final scene. I always like when postapocalyptic tales take the time to explain how it all went down. So I will be counting the months to see what happens next, which I suppose is what every TV writer wants.

Brown: I’ll refrain from spoiling Ellie’s fate here, even though the game with the answer came out in 2020! But I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the cut to Abby’s “Seattle Day 1” signals the show is likely sticking to the structure of the game — meaning Season 3 will tell Abby’s story, following the former Firefly for the same three days that Ellie has spent in the Emerald City leading up to their violent reunion. If the show stays true to the game, we won’t be seeing what happens to Ellie following that cliffhanger gunshot until the story reaches that part of “Day 3” from Abby’s perspective. Sorry, Mary!

I was a bit surprised when I realized the show was going to follow this same route, especially after it introduced Abby’s backstory so early. One of the perks of television is that it’s possible to follow the multiple storylines of more than one character, so I thought the show might try weaving Ellie and Abby’s narratives a bit more. One benefit of following the game’s road map, though, is there are distinct breaks in the overall story to build seasons around. (I’m calling it now that the Season 3 finale will be around their clash at the theater again.)

Back to Lorraine’s point, I do think that some of the struggles of this season comes down to the choices around which game moments to give space to. Some game-to-TV moments were very successful, like Joel taking Ellie to the museum for her birthday in Episode 6. Others, like Ellie taking that boat to get to the aquarium, were a bit less successful. Ellie getting tossed around those waves was a great nod to that sequence in the game, but on the show, it wasn’t as clear why she even needed to hop on the boat to begin with.

We’ve all mentioned how Dina and Ellie’s relationship has been one of the highlights of this season. Without spoiling anything, what I am most curious about is how Ellie’s excitement around Dina’s pregnancy and becoming a dad is going to affect the story to come. How about you, Lorraine, is there hope for “The Last of Us” to win you back?

Ali: There is always hope, Tracy, even in the blighted, rotting, fungus-filled world of “The Last of Us.” My meager hope for the Season 3 opener? That Ellie emerges a survivor, and her comeback scene is set to Pearl Jam’s “Alive.”

A chaotic blue alien and the high-flying escapades of Tom Cruise propelled the Memorial Day weekend box office to record heights, giving relief to theater owners still struggling from a post-pandemic malaise among moviegoers.

Walt Disney Co.’s live-action film “Lilo & Stitch” hauled in $183 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada, according to studio estimates, placing it in first place. It’s the biggest Memorial Day weekend opener ever, not adjusting for inflation, topping “Top Gun: Maverick,” which debuted with $160.5 million in 2022.

Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media’s “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” brought in $77 million domestically for second place. “Final Destination Bloodlines,” “Thunderbolts*” and “Sinners” rounded out the top five this weekend.

The two new studio blockbusters were big overseas, too. Globally, “Lilo & Stitch” collected $341.7 million including domestic ticket sales. The worldwide tally for “Mission: Impossible,” the eighth in the series, was $190 million.

Aria Clark fills up her Lilo and Stitch cup with slushy before going into the movie with her mom, Lexi, and brother Leo at AMC Century City.

Historically, the holiday has been one of the biggest moviegoing weekends of the year, serving as a springboard for the busy summer months. But since the 2020 pandemic and the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023, it has become a less reliable indicator of the theatrical business.

“The calendar thinned out a little bit, particularly post-pandemic,” said Eric Handler, media and entertainment analyst at Roth Capital. “You just didn’t have the depth that you used to have. But it’s good to see that there’s two big event movies this year.”

“Lilo & Stitch” and “Mission: Impossible” also largely catered to different audiences, lowering the risk that audiences would pick and choose between similar films. Box office grosses have typically done better with more genres in theaters.

The reported budget for “Lilo & Stitch” was $100 million, while “Mission: Impossible” reportedly cost $300 million to $400 million to produce, placing it among the most expensive movies ever.

Movie goers attend showings of “Lilo & Stitch” at AMC Century City.

The strong showing on Memorial Day weekend adds to a solid spring at the box office. Powered by films including Warner Bros. Pictures’ “A Minecraft Movie” and Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” domestic theatrical revenue for April totaled $875 million, close to the pre-pandemic average of $886 million for the same month from 2015-19, Handler said.

Then in May came Disney and Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts*” and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Final Destination Bloodlines,” which have kept up steady business at theaters.

“This spring has been so good for the box office, it usually means the summer is going to be strong,” said Kimberly Owczarski, associate professor in the department of film, television and digital media at Texas Christian University. “Last year, we didn’t have those big tentpoles in April and early May that usually start the season. Because we’ve had that, people are in the moviegoing mood.”

Last year, the holiday weekend grossed just $132 million, making it the worst Memorial Day weekend box office in nearly 30 years. Films like “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and “The Garfield Movie” brought in about $30 million each that weekend, a distinct difference from the mega-hauls that blockbusters traditionally gross during Memorial Day weekend.

KK McDermott attends a showing of “Mission: Impossible” at AMC Century City.

The slow start last year to the all-important summer movie season made distributors and exhibitors anxious. It wasn’t until Disney-Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” debuted in mid-June that the box office started to turn around.

This year, however, a seemingly strong lineup of familiar blockbusters for most of the summer has given industry insiders optimism.

Sony Pictures’ “Karate Kid: Legends” comes out at the end of the month, followed by Lionsgate’s “John Wick” spin-off “Ballerina” in early June. Other anticipated releases include Universal Pictures’ live action “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Jurassic World Rebirth,” Disney-Pixar’s original animated film “Elio,” Warner Bros.’ “Superman” and Disney and Marvel Studios’ “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”

That’s boosted hopes for a stronger overall theatrical business this year.

Analysts say the 2025 domestic box office could gross an estimated $9.2 billion to $9.5 billion, which would be an improvement on last year’s $8.7 billion. More importantly, it’s higher than the 2023 box office total of $9 billion, which would indicate continued growth and a “true recovery,” Handler said.

However, those numbers still pale in comparison with pre-pandemic box office totals, including $11.4 billion in 2019 and $11.9 billion in 2018.

Moviegoers head to showings of “Lilo & Stitch,” one of this Memorial Day weekend’s biggest films at AMC Century City.

Even before the pandemic, theaters were starting to see declines in attendance, a trend that accelerated during COVID-19 when people got used to staying at home and watching movies on streaming platforms. As the pandemic and the strikes decreased the number of movies in theaters, and the length of time between a movie’s theatrical debut and its availability for home viewing shortened, theaters lost more of the crucial business of the casual moviegoer.

“When the content is good, people show up,” Handler said. “The content cycle is favorable right now, and hopefully we’ll see that continue through the next two years.”

Esai Morales is on a death-defying mission to make Tom Cruise’s life impossible, yet again, in the latest installment of the “Mission: Impossible” action film franchise. Titled “The Final Reckoning,” the movie was released Friday.

Morales reprises his role as Gabriel, an assassin liaison set on carrying out a dangerous mission for Entity, an artificial intelligence system gone rogue, whose capabilities render it a danger to human society. This role dates back to the first “Mission: Impossible” film in 1996, as a murder Gabriel committed was the impetus for Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) to join the Impossible Missions Force.

“I have to look at Gabriel as the star of his own movie,” said Morales in a video call. “I play these characters with as much humanity as I can.”

Although for most of the franchise Gabriel is presumably dead, audiences are introduced to Morales’ character in the 2023 summer flick, “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.” Besides shouldering responsibility as the main antagonist, which involves risky stunts opposite veteran adventurer Cruise, Morales also made franchise history as the first Latino lead in the action series.

The Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican actor is best known for his role as Bob Morales in the 1987 Chicano film “La Bamba” and as Jesus “Chucho” Sánchez in 1995’s “Mi Familia” — both of which been added to the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress. Morales is also known for his roles as Joseph Adama in the “Battlestar Galactica” prequel spin-off of “Caprica,” as well as Camino del Rio in Netflix’s “Ozark” and villain Deathstroke in the DC “Titans” series.

“The thing I love about ‘Mission: Impossible,’ with Gabriel, is that you don’t know he’s Latino,” Morales said. “It doesn’t focus on race. It focuses on the race to get the key!”  

Likewise, the release of the last two “Mission: Impossible” films was a dash to the finish. Directed by Christopher McQuarriel, filming spanned five years with some stops along the way due to the COVID-19 pandemic, plus the 2023 strikes by members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) and the Writers Guild of America. Additional costs due to inflation brought the total budget of the Paramount Pictures movie up to $400 million, making it one of the most expensive films of all time.

Morales considers its release a momentous occasion — and a “graduation” of sorts.

“All those obstacles are like the pressure that creates a diamond out of coal,” he said. “I hope that the audiences feel what I felt and continue to feel when I watch the film.”

This interview has been edited for clarity and shortened.

 How did you prepare physically and mentally for the role in ”Mission: Impossible”?
I was asked if I was physical and I said, “Actually, yeah.” I love playing tennis so my conditioning is really good. During the pandemic, I [would sneak] into the ocean at dusk and I would swim at night for hours at a time. It was kind of scary. Then [I got] to London and met some of the finest stunt people who do fighting, acrobatics, knife fighting, boxing. The thing is to get your reflexes in shape, because sometimes you have to do take after take and you don’t want to gas out.

Mentally it’s a lifetime of preparation. It’s not like I can study the life of Gabriel, so you apply what you can about your own character and characteristics under imaginary circumstances. Some of it comes from the ether… from the ether going after Ethan [laughs]. It’s an instinct and a lifetime of seeing movies, including the “Mission: Impossible” movies. They work hard. One of the most comforting things they instill is [that] “we’re not gonna leave until we get it right.”

Cruise is known for his gutsy live-action scenes. What was it like to join him on these scenes?
It’s thrilling. I couldn’t think of anyone else whose hands I’d want to put my well-being in, because look at his track record: He’s still alive and extremely healthy, and he doesn’t take these things lightly. He’s extremely strict about safety. Life is inherently risky. If you’re gonna take other risks, it’s best to take them with people that have survived and thrived for decades doing the same.

There’s a death-defying scene up in the air that was being teased a lot in this press run. What was going through your mind as you were up there?
After the initial prayers and thanking God, the universe and the angels, who and whatever has kept me alive and blessed me with an amazing life so far… You’ve gotta let go and let God, as they say.

What impact has this franchise had on your long-term career?
 It’s a blessing. I got the job during one of the most trying times of my life — and everyone else’s. I hope it’s not all downhill from here. I’m just grateful because I got to work on something at this scale, with these kinds of collaborators.

I am hoping that the work I continue to do leads to meaningful roles and characters that enhance the human condition for having watched it. I wanna do things that make people feel good about being human. Even if I’m the bad guy, somebody’s gotta play the bad guy. Right?

But is Gabriel really the bad guy?
Not in this actor’s eyes. For me, I have to look at Gabriel as the star of his own movie.  Wars are not fought by people who feel they’re gonna lose them.  So I play these characters with as much humanity as I can.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic and Hollywood strikes impact production of this film?
I am on the board of SAG-AFTRA. I did feel the impact of both COVID-19 and the strikes. I mean, it was not easy, it was not fun. It’s still not easy. We still have to deal with new media or new technology, speaking of AI. The production stuck together. When you struggle with adversity, it makes you stronger.

You consider yourself an honorary Chicano, particularly because of your role as Bob Morales in “La Bamba.” What memories come to mind when you think back to that role?
 So many, but the incredible irony or synchronicity or synergy that a role with my [last] name on it would be one of the most remembered. They’d say, ‘That has your name all over it.’ Well, this [role] literally did. When people wanted me to focus more on Ritchie, I wanted to bear witness and lend my pain to the role of Bob [Ritchie Valens’ brother].

I don’t know where my career would be without that film and a few others. When you have the ability to be with the person you are portraying, first of all, it’s an extreme amount of pressure because they’re there and you’re not them. And it’s like you’re gonna pretend to inhabit their being and their life. You don’t wanna mess up. But [Bob and I] were able to bond and have a few beers and really kick back, and I was able to absorb Bob’s biorhythm. I absorbed his Mexicanismo, [the same way] Anthony Quinn portrayed “Zorba the Greek.” [Whenever] he went [into] a Greek restaurant, plates would crash in honor of him and his portrayal … and he is a Mexican Irish actor.

 I think a lot of people forget that you’re Puerto Rican because you play the Mexican role so well.
I’m proud to be Puerto Rican, but I’m so secure in it that I don’t feel like I have to wear my banner on my head. I just want my work to speak for itself. We have to embrace that which has toughened us and has given us character and has given us something a little extra yearn for and live for.

There are many Latinos in sci-fi films. I’m thinking of you in “Caprica.” There’s also Diego Luna and Adria Arjona in “Andor,” Zoe Saldaña in “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Pedro Pascal in “The Mandalorian,” Ricardo Montalbán in “Star Trek …” What do you think of space roles introducing Latino actors to new audiences?
 How about to their own audience? We make up 25% of the movie-going audience, at least. It’s a wise decision to include people that in the past were overlooked. We were overlooked. So to put in all the great people is serving your market and representing them. It’s long overdue but extremely welcomed.

Is outer space the gateway to more Latinos in mainstream roles in rom-coms or action?
I would like to see that. I would like to see us play more central characters, people that we can grow to learn, grow to love and feel for, because I think that’s what movies do. They let you inside the heart of your lead characters. And you just can’t help but to love them, you know?

Tom Cruise has starred as the lead in the Mission Impossible series for eight films and with the final instalment now in cinemas, fans can refresh their memories on TV tonight

One of Tom Cruise‘s award-winning Mission Impossible movies is airing on TV tonight (Saturday, May 24). It comes just days after the eighth and final movie in the series, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning was released in UK cinemas.

Many fans will be heading to the pictures to see the film this bank holiday weekend, and if you want a refresher on what’s happened previously, Channel 4 has you covered tonight.

The channel will be airing the seventh film in the series, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning which was released in 2023. The film sees Ethan Hunt seek to destroy the Entity, a powerful AI, in order to keep its dangerous power away from corrupt governments.

Channel 4 will be airing the film at 8pm on Saturday, and will run all the way up until 11.10pm. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning runs for 2 hours 50 minutes.

Fans were left waiting years for the highly anticipated seventh instalment of the movie to be released – after it was pushed back a number of times due to the Covid pandemic.

It was originally set to be released in 2021, but due to the pandemic, was pushed back to 2022. However, fans were left waiting yet another year when it was pushed back once again to 2023.

The film received two Oscar nominations for Best Sound and Best Achievement in Visual Effects. The movie also won number of awards including a Saturn Award for the Best Action/Adventure Film.

The movie has mixed reviews from fans, although some hail it as the best in the series. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, one fan penned: “I’ve watched all of them and mission impossible dead reckoning part 1 is the best film in the series,” as another agreed: “MI Dead Reckoning (Part 1) gets my vote for the best of the Mission Impossible Films.”

However, others weren’t so impressed with the movie, as one penned: “Dead Reckoning Part 1 was a huge step back. Worst since MI:2,” as another disappointed fan penned: Dead reckoning part 1 is… Ok you know what, I’m calling it, while the 7th film is a good action film, it is the worst mission impossible film.”

Earlier this week, the Hollywood star made headlines after he was asked an awkward question about Father’s Day on the red carpet after being estranged from his daughter Suri.

“Father’s Day is just around the corner,” an E! News reporter told the star. She then followed up by asking: “What would an ideal Father’s Day look like for you?”

Visibly taken aback, the Hollywood star looked to the side as he said: “You know…” After a pause, he then continued: “Just having fun, man. Making movies, big adventure, having a great time,” before the interview came to a close.

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

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If you are only going to be in one part of a movie, it’s best if it’s the most memorable part. For example, a thrilling set-piece that sets the template for an entire franchise.

So it was for actor Rolf Saxon, who appeared as a befuddled CIA analyst in the very first “Mission: Impossible” film. The sequence, in which Tom Cruise dangles from the ceiling of a stark white vault room to infiltrate the computer system overseen by Saxon’s character, is now the stuff of action-cinema history.

From a throwaway punchline in that 1996 film — exiling Saxon’s William Donloe to a remote radar station in Alaska — comes one of the most unexpected storylines in the new “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.” His part in the new film is substantially larger and provides the film with some of its emotional heft, making Saxon’s return as Donloe a triumph. (A rather memorable knife makes a comeback as well.)

For Saxon’s work in the first film, he was in the same physical space as Cruise but their two characters never interacted and had no dialogue together. So a moment late in the new film when Donloe makes a heartfelt expression to Cruise’s Ethan Hunt of what his life has been like all these years in Alaska provided relief for the character of Donloe — and for the actor portraying him too.

“It was something I was hoping for, and then it happened,” says Saxon, 70. “It’s a great scene. Working with one of the biggest movie stars in the world, that’s kind of cool too.”

Rolf Saxon in the first ‘Mission: Impossible’ from 1996.

(Paramount Pictures)

Finally sharing a proper scene with Cruise also gave Saxon some insight into the reason Cruise has been one of the world’s biggest movie stars for more than 40 years.

“There’s no question why he is,” Saxon says. “The energy that he personally brings into a room, I’ve never witnessed before. It’s focused, it’s practiced. I know this sounds like I’m supposed to say this about him, but it’s true. This guy’s unbelievable. And he does those effing stunts.”

Saxon is impressed, too, by the real-life mission Cruise is often vocal about. “His whole raison d’être is to enhance the industry that’s given him so much and bring people in, bring them back to theaters. And I just applaud that on my feet.”

Rolf Saxon as William Donloe in the movie “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”

(Giles Keyte / Paramount Pictures)

Having had a steadily successful career between his two “Missions,” Saxon lives in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California but was recently on a Zoom call from New York City the day after attending the new film’s U.S. premiere there. It was Saxon’s second time seeing the movie, having also attended a premiere in London just a few days earlier.

Born in Virginia, Saxon studied acting in England, where he would land parts in numerous British TV series as well as assorted film and theater roles. Throughout his career he has also done voice-over work for video games, including the “Broken Sword” series, and was the narrator for the American edition of the popular children’s show “Teletubbies.”

According to Saxon, much of the business of what Donloe does onscreen in the first movie directed by Brian De Palma came from an unexpected interaction on set.

“I was given the script,” he recalls, “I read it and I thought, OK, there’s not a lot to do here. And then one day I was messing around on set, joking around, there was some downtime. And I got a tap on the shoulder from the first [A.D.], who said that Brian De Palma wanted to have a word with me. And I thought, ‘Uh-oh.’

“And I walked over and he had a very stern demeanor. Great guy, but he just always looked angry and he said, ‘You’re playing around on set.’ I said, ‘Yes, Mr. De Palma.’ He said, ‘Could you do that again?’ I said, “Sure, of course.” What am I going to say to say, no? He said, ‘OK, after lunch, we’re going to have you messing around onstage. We’ll film that.’” All of Donloe’s memorable physical mishaps — the vomiting, the double take — were Saxon improvs.

The vault sequence has become one of the signature set-pieces of the first film, seemingly lifting from both the silent heist in “Rififi” and the spacewalk of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and setting a stunts-centric guide for the franchise to come. To perform the scene, Cruise spent hours in a harness suspended from the ceiling.

“I mean, it was a long time,” says Saxon. “And they’d bring him down sometimes, but he’s that guy. He does what needs to be done. I was in the room a number of times with him, while he was filming it, but [our characters] never were supposed to meet.”

Saxon recalls that while shooting the first “Mission” film, he and Cruise shared a makeup room at the studio in England. One day the woman who did Cruise’s makeup wasn’t there because her son had an accident at his school. As soon as Cruise heard the news, he called his private on-call doctor and sent him to attend to the boy.

“And he hung up the phone, said, ‘Shut the door,’” remembers Saxon. “And he said, ‘This stays between us. If this comes out, it’s somebody in this room. I’m going to find out who it is and that’ll be your last day on the film.’ He wanted no publicity. He did it for this lady and her son. And the boy was fine, he was mildly concussed. When she came back the next day, there was a massive bouquet of flowers, saying ‘Welcome back.’ And then nothing was ever said of it again. That’s the kind of guy he is. And it took me two years before I would tell that story.”

Saxon had never had reason to encounter Cruise in the intervening years, because, as he says, “I’m an actor but I’m not a star.”

Director Christopher McQuarrie, standing, gives notes to the cast, including Saxon, on the set of “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”

(Antonio Olmos / Paramount Pictures)

The call for the new film first came in January of 2022, and Saxon began shooting on the film in August of that year, finishing in July of 2024. (Saxon’s casting was announced via director Christopher McQuarrie’s Instagram in March 2023.) This time around, Donloe becomes a vital part of the team and is in the middle of the action at the film’s climax. In his years in Alaska he has even married an Inuit woman, Tapeesa (Lucy Tulugarjuk).

“The feeling on this set was one of warmth and inclusivity — welcoming,” says Saxon. “I was on it for almost three years, but people were on it for over five years. This schedule for the filming was very erratic, and [McQuarrie] kept very calm. McQ and Tom, they worked very much in tandem. I loved coming to work every day. Not that I didn’t with Brian’s stuff, but this was just a joy, and I was much more a part of it than I was in the first one. I was much more part of the team, the core group that was working.”

For “The Final Reckoning,” a sequence meant to take place in Alaska, with a team of agents arriving to the remote cabin occupied by Donloe and Tapeesa, was actually shot in Svalbard, an archipelago north of Norway.

“We were staying on a ship,” says Saxon. “We went to Longyearbyen, which is the furthest most populated area in the world. Then we took a six-hour ride north on the ship, parked on the glacier. And that’s where we lived for two weeks. Polar bears, walruses, reindeer and us. It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my life.”

The cave sequence that is part of the movie’s action finale is set in South Africa but was shot in the Middleton mines in England’s East Midlands.

“This was in many ways a dream job,” says Saxon. “The people I’m working with, the thing I’m working on and the places I got to go to work. It’s just like, what would you really like to do? Here it is.”

Hayley Atwell, left, Simon Pegg, Tom Cruise, Rolf Saxon, Lucy Tulugarjuk, Greg Tarzan Davis and Pom Klementieff in “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”

(Paramount Pictures)

From his initial conversations with McQuarrie, Saxon knew that his part would be significantly larger than in the first film. But even then it developed over the course of production. McQuarrie informed him that some scenes Saxon initially shot were no longer going to be used and due to rewrites, the actor would now be part of the climactic finale.

“He said, ‘We really like what you did, but we’ve had a story alteration, so we can’t use that. So we’re going to put you in in other ways,’” says Saxon. “And that was kind of like, ‘Oh, no’ and ‘Oh, yeah’ at the same time. Which is kind of the way this worked the whole way through.”

Among the actors in his scenes this time out, Saxon had previously worked with Simon Pegg on the 1999 British sitcom “Hippies.” He also discovered that he and Hayley Atwell had attended the same drama school in London, though some years apart. Also returning was Henry Czerny, whose character in the initial film sent Donloe to Alaska in the first place.

NEW YORK — MAY 19 2025: Actor Rolf Saxon for the movie “Mission: Impossible- The Final Reckoning” posing with the knife from the original Mission: Impossible film, photographed at the Museum of Moving Image

(Justin Jun Lee/For The Times)

As to whether he had ever imagined returning to the franchise, Saxon holds his arms out wide, saying, “Just a little dream.”

He adds, “I thought about writing Chris or Tom, ‘Dear Tom, here’s what I think we could do with Donloe.’ Or, ‘What about this with Donloe?’ And at one point, after listening to a friend, I drafted a letter to him. The next day I woke up and I thought” — he mimes wadding up a piece of paper and tossing it away — ‘That’s never going to happen.’ And then years later, bang, it did.”

Saxon said he has never been recognized by anyone for the part of Donloe. (That is likely about to change.) If pressed, his favorite of the “Mission: Impossible” films has remained the first one. Up to now.

“I suppose closure is one way of putting it,” says Saxon. “It’s been much more fun, this one. The other one, I did my job and I enjoyed doing it. But this one I got to really investigate. It’s like remounting a production onstage, or coming back to a project you did 20 years ago, 30 years ago and getting to redo it with what you know now, particularly with the excitement of a larger part. It’s fantastic. It’s another reason this is such a gift.”

May 21 (UPI) — Education Secretary Linda McMahon, testifying before a House subcommittee on Wednesday, defended a 15.3% leaner budget from last year as part of the department’s “final mission.”

President Donald Trump‘s budget request would cut funding to the Education Department by about $12 billion to wind down the agency. The House bill allocated $30.9 billion and the Senate version $31.9 billion.

She said her top priorities are support for charter schools, which would receive a $60 million funding increase, as well as improving literacy rates and returning education to states. Charters schools are the only ones with a budget funding rise.

“The fiscal year ’26 budget will take a significant step toward that goal,” McMahon told legislators on the House Committee on Appropriations’ education subcommittee. “We seek to shrink federal bureaucracy, save taxpayer money and empower states who best know their local needs to manage education in this country.”

As Republicans supported her plans, Democrats blasted her.

“By recklessly incapacitating the department you lead, you are usurping Congress’ authority and infringing on Congress’ power of the purse,” Rosa DeLauro, of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, said.

She decried cuts for higher education.

“Your visions for students aspiring to access and pay for college is particularly grim,” DeLauro said. “Some families do not need financial assistance to go to college, but that’s not true for the rest.”

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, of New Jersey, also blasted states gaining greater authority.

“I’m asking you, do you realize that to send authority back to the states, to eliminate your oversight, to eliminate your accountability, to eliminate your determination as to resources going to schools that are teaching public schools that are teaching underserved communities, this will result in the very reason that we had to get the involvement of our government in this, and that’s a yes or no,” she said.

“It isn’t a yes or no, but I will not respond to any questions based on the theory that this administration doesn’t care anything about the law and operates outside it,” McMahon responded.

Coleman said: “From the president of the United States conducting himself in a corrupt manner to his family enriching him and himself corruptly … I’m telling you, the Department of Education is one of the most important departments in this country and you should feel shameful [to] be engaged with an administration that doesn’t give a damn.”

McMahon said she is not trying to remove 8% to 10% that goes to states, and instead moving programs to other departments.

She described her agency as a federal funding “pass-through mechanism” and other agencies could take over the job of distributing allocations from Congress.

“Whether the channels of that funding are through HHS [Health and Human Services], or whether they’re funneled through the DOJ (Department of Jusrtice], or whether they’re funneled through the Treasury or SBA [Smal Business Administration] or other departments, the work is going to continue to get done,” McMahon said.

Plans are to move the student loan programs to the SBA, which McMahon was the administrator during the first Trump administration.

The reductions include eliminating two federal programs designed at improving college access for disadvantaged, TRIO, and low-income students, Gear Up, at a cost of $1.6 billion. Also, the federal Work-Study Program would shift responsibility to states, and funding would be eliminated for Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants to undergraduate students.

And funding would be reduced 35%, or about $49 million, for the already-scaled back Office for Civil Rights, which investigates harassment and discrimination on college campuses and in K-12 schools.

The budget shifts funding from programs supporting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

She said full funding would remain for Title I-A, which allocates funds to schools with the highest percentages of children from low-income families, and those with the Disabilities Education Act for free public education and support services for children with disabilities.

“Here we are today with a Department of Education that was really stood up in 1980 by President Carter,” McMahon said. “We’ve spent over $3 trillion during that time, and every year we have seen our scores continue to either stagnate or fall. It is clear that we are not doing something right.”

On March 20,, Trump signed an executive order directing McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”

Six days earlier, the agency announced a workforce reduction that would cut nearly 50% of employees, 1,315.

The department, already the smallest Cabinet-level agency before the recent layoffs, distributed roughly $242 billion to students, K-12 schools and universities in the 2024 fiscal year. The fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

CANNES, France — Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt arrived in France in 1996’s “Mission: Impossible” clinging to a high speed train through the Chunnel, pursued and nearly skewered by a helicopter. It was, as the French might say, une entrée dramatique. In 2018’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” he leapt from an airplane to plummet four-and-a-half miles down to the glass roof of Paris’ Grand Palais and now, for the big finale of his franchise, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” he’s come to conquer the Cannes Film Festival.

One boisterous fan outside the premiere shoved her Chihuahua at Cruise so he could see it was wearing a pink sweatshirt with his face. Another brandished a DVD of 2000’s “Mission: Impossible 2,” arguably the worst entry in the series. Cruise took a photo with her anyway. “Le selfie!” the red-carpet announcer cried.

The series hasn’t been kind to its French actors: Emmanuelle Béart was shot, Jean Reno blown up by exploding chewing gum, Léa Seydoux kicked out of a window at the Burj Khalifa. (Pom Klementieff, whose character’s name is Paris, has survived to co-star in this eighth entry.) Yet, you didn’t have to parler français to glean the excitement on the ground.

This is only Cruise’s third trip to Cannes and it took him nearly half an hour to walk the 60 yards of red carpet, an exhausting amount of waving, even for someone lauded for his cardio. He took care to acknowledge everyone who’d come to cheer, even trotting back down a few steps to make eye contact and thump on his heart for the fans in the corner flank.

In 2022, as part of the lead-up to “Top Gun: Maverick,” the blockbuster that would defibrillate the pandemic box office, Cruise received an honorary Palme d’Or and a salute from eight zipping French jets. During his first visit, for 1992’s “Far and Away,” times were different and he felt free to be outspoken, telling the press that the then-recent Rodney King verdict “sickened me.” Today, he seems to feel the weight of championing the theatrical experience, just as Ethan Hunt is repeatedly forced to shoulder the burden of saving the world. Neither of them truly has the freedom to “choose to accept it.” More than any of his movie star peers, Cruise seems aware that someone has to symbolize an increasingly bygone era of filmmaking, to be this century’s Charlie Chaplin.

The vibe before the screening of “Final Reckoning” was a bit bar mitzvah. The DJ alternated between dance-floor classics — Kool & the Gang, Joan Jett — and remixes of Lalo Schifrin’s pulsating “Mission: Impossible” theme, one by four beatboxers who mimicked police sirens, another classed-up by a live saxophone and violins. This year’s big Cannes fashion headline is that women are no longer allowed to wear “voluminous” frocks on the steps. Nevertheless, Hayley Atwell, who plays Grace, a pickpocket-turned-secret-agent, wore a gown on the daring end of puffy. Red with large flares at her hips and ankles, she resembled the vintage biplane Cruise dangles from in the film. He could have clung onto her elbow for a teaser.

But when the movie started, the mood turned funereal. This farewell to Ethan Hunt begins with a three-decade-spanning montage of Cruise that could double as the intro to his inevitable honorary Oscar. “I want to thank you for a lifetime of unrelenting and devoted service,” Angela Bassett’s President Erika Sloane tells Ethan in the opening minute. Later, she slips him a code with an important date — May 22, 1996 — which also happens be the day the “Mission: Impossible” franchise launched. The whole film is a panegyric: big speeches and weighty moments with very little sense of play. Tonally, it starts with an ending and keeps on ending for the next 2 hours and 49 minutes.

The eight “Mission” films can be cleaved into two groups. The first four made a point of swapping directors and moods and even Ethan’s core identity: Brian De Palma made him a jaundiced naif; John Woo, a hot-blooded flirt; J.J. Abrams, a devoted husband; Brad Bird, a near-mute human cartoon. The last four are all helmed by Christopher McQuarrie (who’s co-written this script with Erik Jendresen) but neither has added much to his personality. We’re told, over and over, that Ethan is a gambler and a rule-breaker — and paradoxically, that he’s the only human worthy of our trust, an odd thing to say about a spy who wears masks of other people’s faces like party hats.

Of all the “Mission: Impossible” films, this is the only one that needs you to remember what happened in the previous entry, 2023’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” which introduced an all-knowing AI villain called the Entity and its equally unemotional minion Gabriel (Esai Morales) that made a fun foil for Cruise himself, as a sinister duo that values digital trickery over human sweat. Now, the Entity intends to annihilate humanity in four days unless it can be taken offline by a key that accesses a gizmo in the Arctic Sea that connects to a whatsit that Ving Rhames’s weary Luther is attempting to invent from a makeshift hospital bed somewhere in the subway tunnels of London. A grunting Cruise batters a goon while huffing, “You spend! Too much time! On the internet!”

That last film managed to introduce Atwell’s Grace and collect the key while still enjoying a sense of play, like an axle-cracking Fiat chase through Rome and flirtations manifested via close-up magic. Here, the plot weighs everything down. Not just the threat-of-extinction stuff, which includes Bassett’s POTUS debating which American city to blow up as a preemptive gesture, but by its own irritating God’s-eye omniscience that rarely allows the suspense to spool out in the present. The editing is always cutting to the past or the future. There’s flashbacks to things that happened five minutes earlier and flash-forwards to how a stunt could look instead of just getting on with it.

Just as exhausting is how the entire cast trades lines of exposition to explain Ethan’s daredevil feats before he actually does them. There are almost no conversations, only premonitions and plans delivered in bullet-points like a group research project. No one steps on anyone else’s dramatic pauses. They may as well be reciting how to build an IKEA Billy bookcase. I can’t think of anything more thrill-stifling, even with cinematographer Fraser Taggart lighting everybody’s eyeballs to look so shiny that the actors continually appear on the verge of tears. Still, even within those limitations, Simon Pegg is delightful as Hunt’s longtime tech-whiz teammate Benji, as are new and returning ensemble members Tramell Tillman, Lucy Tulugarjuk and Rolf Saxon, the latter of whom plays a throwback character once threatened with manning a radar tower in Alaska — a punishment that did, in fact, come to pass.

But Cruise is reason audiences will, and should, see “Final Reckoning” on a large and loud screen. His Ethan continues to survive things he shouldn’t. (One too-miraculous rescue attempts to distract us from asking questions by inserting an out-of-place close-up of Atwell’s heaving bosom.) Yet, what I’ve most come to appreciate about Ethan is that he doesn’t try to play the unflappable hero. Clinging to the chassis of an airplane with the wind plastering his hair to his forehead and oscillating his gums like bulldog in a convertible, he is, in fact, exceedingly flapped.

The flight chase is fantastic. It’s what Isaac Newton might have made if he’d demonstrated velocity by placing an apple in a bucket and whipping it in circles. But even its exhilaration gets bested by a centerpiece underwater sequence in which Cruise scuba dives alone in silence suffering stunts that you cannot believe. I couldn’t tell you how long he swam — at some point, my heart stopped — but there are images of vertical sheets of water and the star in shivering, fetal isolation that felt like the franchise wasn’t just trying to top itself, but hoping to best “Titanic” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

As the sound design rumbled with queasy creaks over shots of a submarine teetering on the edge of a deep-sea cliff, I found myself thinking most of all of that famous sequence of a frozen shack sliding off a cliff in Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 “The Gold Rush,” which celebrates its centennial anniversary this fall. By coincidence or grand design, a gorgeously restored “The Gold Rush” was also the first movie screened at this year’s Cannes. If there’s a Cannes in 2125, maybe it’ll play a 100-year-old Tom Cruise classic. It won’t be this “Mission: Impossible” over the first, third or fourth. Regardless, I bet the fans will still be cheering.