Mission Impossible: A Movie That Teaches Us Money Lessons
Mission Impossible films have always been filled with amazing villains, from the pretty Sabine Moreau to the evil Owen Davian. In this latest installment, Esai Morales plays Gabriel, who wants to be the god of the Internet. But the scarier part is the sentient Internet itself, known as "The Entity."
As you watch Tom Cruise running across Westminster Bridge, swimming around floating torpedoes, and jumping into icy waters, you might wonder: If all the nukes are deployed at the same time by The Entity and all people are destroyed, who will it rule over? But you’re distracted by the magnificent set pieces, making it popcorn time at the movies again!
Ethan Hunt and his IMF team have to neutralize The Entity, which has been threatening the world with nuclear destruction. In the previous film, Ethan stole the key to the source code, but this time he has to dive back into icy waters and into a Russian submarine to get the drive. The bad guy has stolen the poison pill because he wants control of The Entity. This time, Ethan has help from the gorgeous Paris and the pickpocket Grace, and Simon Pegg’s Benji knows how to find a hat for the final climax in South Africa.
It’s an action flick, so suspend your disbelief! What money lessons can this slow to start but mad fun movie teach us? Trust Ethan to save the day (and the world!) If you’re a skeptic, you’ll swear in the first hour of this three-hour saga where everyone praises Ethan Hunt, they steal a shot from Top Gun. But I digress. Ethan breaks the rules, is wanted by his own agency for breaking those rules, is accused of murdering his own boss, and unable to prove why… But he saves the day, the damsel in distress, is able to show up in tuxedos to parties and hang from airplanes and tall buildings, offering moviegoers a reason to cheer when the bad guys are defeated.
When it comes to your money, isn’t your personal money manager like your Ethan Hunt? Always looking out for you? Tom Cruise may have brought parkour to the big screen, but your money manager makes sure your money grows by anticipating dips and troughs in the market and also pulling you along when the market is riding high. It’s not corny to equate your money manager to the IMF agent called on again and again to save the world.
It was immensely satisfying to hear Ethan beat up a would-be assassin, emphasising each word of the sentence. In the film, we see how misinformation pits one group of people against another, fomenting hate. An apt story of our world where we rely heavily on information gleaned from the net and find ourselves in silos.
In such times, we must keep an eye out for information that manipulates money markets. And yes, there are financial decisions you could take reacting to that information or set investments on automation mode, which may not always work to your advantage.
Trusting your personal finance manager becomes very important, and the fees you pay for a human assistant in decision making might be better for your finances than just relying on information available on the internet. Automation is good, but having your own personal Ethan Hunt who uses automation wisely is better. Find one for yourself who will swim through a scenario littered with torpedoes!
Tom Cruise’s hair looks a little scary at the beginning of the film, but his fitness and the stunts will make you forget that odd unkempt look. You decide that you’re going to start on a fitness regime starting tomorrow. At the end of three hours, you forget that you have been vanquished by the entity that took the shape of a big tub of cheese and caramel popcorn.
