Mission: Impossible

Ebert gave MI3 2-1/2 stars, which is like zero from a critic with actual standards.

http://filmexperience.blogspot.com/2006/05/history-of-missions-impossible.html

http://nypress.com/19/18/film/ArmondWhite.cfm

J.J. Abrams
Director - filmography
(In Production) (2000s) (1990s)

Star Trek XI (2008) (announced) (attached)
The Good Sailor (2007) (pre-production)

Mission: Impossible III (2006)
... aka M:I-3 (USA: promotional abbreviation)
"Alias"
- Authorized Personnel Only: Part 1 (2005) TV Episode (minor segments) (uncredited)
- Authorized Personnel Only: Part 2 (2005) TV Episode (minor segments) (uncredited)
- The Telling (2003) TV Episode
- Almost Thirty Years (2002) TV Episode
- Truth Be Told (2001) TV Episode
"Lost"
- Pilot: Part 2 (2004) TV Episode
- Pilot: Part 1 (2004) TV Episode

"Felicity"
- Todd Mulcahy: Part 1 (1999) TV Episode
- Friends (1999) TV Episode

i like how they dispensed with that in the first one but they've really painted themselves into a corner

No Barbara Bain, no cred

I really liked the first one and have seen it a few times, wasn't bothered about the second one and saw a wee bit of tit when it was on the telly once, not really interested in the third one and don't mind whether I see it or not

(lotsa reviews say PSH doesn't get much meat in this)

Did anyone ever watch the 2nd one more than once? is there a point?

too true - cf. Malkovich, Dennis Hopper, tons of others.

(exception = Pacino in Dick Tracy!)

Terence Stamp?

I liked Malkovich in that Eastwood pic.

Kneel Before Zod = teh classic, of course.

for example, (ignoring the plot) Timothy Dalton & Robert Davi in License to Kill.

xpost Warner is classically trained, right? Also did outstanding voicework in Baldur's Gate 2 as the villain.

also, Peter Cushing in SW

(OK, how about solid actors who get to use more than 5% of their chops playing big baddies? I think Brandauer and Malkovich qualify here.)

we can pretty much rule out sharon stone.

X-Men movies are great, kingfish otm for why too. (next one's gonna BLOOOOOOWWWWWW)

Ming the Merciless
all the bond books were written in the 50s, etc

??? That's the best Bond movie by fucking miles. The "realistic"-not-really acting served the "realistic"-not-really plot perfectly. Wayne Newton as televangelist providing cover for Davi drug op? GREAT.

A character basically hissing "I'm evil" can usu be taken about as seriously as that Colbert critic announcing "I'm a funny guy..."

Next MI: Cruise vs Montalban as Khan. "You will be ber-ried a-li-ive..."

some good, some bad, some retarded plot twists, and some simon pegg(who's good in his two scenes as fumbly britishes computer guy)

otm! the only scene in this movie that actually felt like "mission impossible" was the aforementioned vatican city sequence, which happened to be the most entertaining part of the movie.

many xposts - Irons is great in Die Hard With A Vengeance!

well, the thing is, i don't think you need them to be all that non-descript e.g. Ving Rhames is great in his role, which is admittedly just being a Ving Rhames-type incarnated as an operative. There's plenty of value in a well-contructed team of folks doing something; like a semi-crazy helicopter pilot, a tough mechanic/driver/demolitions expert, a smooth-talkin' chameleon/covert ops type, and a cigar-chomping leader who loves it when a plan comes together.

For instance.

Actually looking at IMDB now it appears he was involved in all three. Still the second one was pretty awful.

this is of course baring in mind

A) it stared and was produced tom cruise

B) it was the third part in a franchise where ultimately very little can change between films (bar the love interests of course)

C)i haven't seen 24 which from my limited knowledge of this seemed to bare a passing resemblence too

Of course much redundancy if you have seen the first two series of both 24 and Alias, and was kind of like True Lies without the misjudged gags (so in that way a lot better). Also, it might be a lot like TV series, BUT IS A FILM with plus and minuses of that.

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/archives/2006/05/upside_of_taps.php

how do i get literary referece?

If you want to see a really good Spy Film, watch Munich. Its gotta be the best one ever. Action packed, edge of your seat kinda stuff.

lots of very entertaining set pieces, well-written, suprisingly well-directed, well-acted

and it has my crush from kiss kiss bang bang in it!

just for the delivery

haha - at first I read this as Wallace Shawn, which is even funnier. kinda.

I do think this is the first movie where I was genuinely amused by the "action-movie-one-liners" in a way that didn't seem as if I was appreciating them for ironic or camp value. they were just funny and cheesy and great. not so great that I can remember any of them right now though.

Its a cop out because they didn't show the theft. if its the ordinary part of a heist sequence.. well make it EXTRAordinary. the screenwriter's couldn't think of an interesting way to do it, so they decided that the interesting way to do it would be to not show it. I say thats a cop out.

Not a totally unsastifying cop out because the movie moves from good scene (rooftop swinging and shootout), slight lull in action while team waits in van, to good scene (parachuting stuff) that seems more exciting because of previous lull. But it was a missed opportunity that I as a audience member might have liked to see. Of course, I seem to be in the minority on that point.

i liked the shorthand of not showing the heist. it was great at keeping the tension up as the audience is waiting around w/ the IMF crew, not knowing exactly what's going on inside. I thought that it was one of the moments of economy in flick, since we didn't need to seen more heisty stuff(the Vatican took care of that), and as i mentioned, the tension was kept just by helplessly waiting outside.

some of the things that pissed me off was usual Action Movie Stupidity(i.e. a defib that took 30 secs to charge, the team apparently not having the ability to close a huey door, using a defib on your head i accept, using 3-phase 220V power lines, less so, etc)

The chopper chase thru a field of windmills was a great setpiece.

you can tell when tom is Acting becuase he tries very, VERY hard to turn on the "intense."

i was happy that the asian chick didn't have to be Stock Asian Chick.

billy crudup looks weird w/ short hair.

they did the Collateral thing of occasionally switching to green-tinged DV whenever something Dramatic or Actiony was about to happen. Lots of off-center, semi-shakey extreme close-ups, too.

Anybody get a "Escape from NY" vibe of the hero w/ ticking bomb in his head that can only be deactivated with two paddles injecting a charge?

I liked it a lot, but it felt endless at times because everything was telegraphed so far ahead, and some of the action pieces could have been shorter. I wish action directors would chop a few minutes off of each setpiece, you really wouldn't notice it, but the movies would be paced so much better.

The team was awesome, Seymour Hoffman was awesome, Cruise was about as good as he always is.

MI:3 gadgets >>>> anything Bond has worked with recently.

you can tell when tom is Acting becuase he tries very, VERY hard to turn on the "intense."

he's good at it though! it's funny, the crazier and more publically-reviled the guy has gotten the more i've been enjoying his performances.

Its still a cop-out though. You haven't exactly refuted that point, you're just calling it by a different name. As an in-the-moment audience member I went right along with the whole thing. No doubt about it, it was well done. It was only afterwards, when discussing it that it really bugged me.

x-post in MI3 i think its more like 2-5 minutes of a heist that wasn't shown.

and i think O12 is mostly a movie about watching good looking people be charming and stylish. and it works on that level. as a heist movie.. not so much.

Action Movie Audience goes to see Action Movie to see Action Movie Shit. Action Movie Director decides to pass up perfectly good opportunity to show Audience some Action Movie Shit in order to show... less Action Movie Shit. Its not a matter of seeing everything that takes place during the time period. Its about seeing every Action Moment that Action Movie Star gets involved in.

Its not a cop-out because someone was afraid (what does making an action movie have to do with courage?) to put it in there, its a cop-out because someone was too lazy/unimaginative/unskilled to put it in there.

How are the moments of satisfaction mutually exclusive? Instead of seeing the heist, we get the Asian woman and Raskolnikov praying and Ving Rhams being Ving Rhames, plus the aforementioned juke.

And the moments of satisfaction are mutually exclusive because the present moment of satisfaction is derived from the absence of the other scene. You could still have everthing that is shown in the movie, there should just be a scene before that scene showing the Heist.

in Europe! with lasers! and Cherry Jones! and meta-joeks!

http://www.cinemovies.fr/images/data/films/Pfilm36321250802778.jpg

I'm really defending my tossed off comment and minor thought about a movie too much. My argument is also sort of like, "Man that Movie would have been better if all those girls were topless."

uhm.. I really liked that scene where Tom Cruise ran. I was impressed.

-Helicopter chase through windmills was asinine. They are in HELICOPTERS, fly ABOVE the blades. Also, how did they get from Germany to the windmill farm in Tehachapi so damn fast? Note to filmmakers - don't use an easily recognizable landmark and say it's somewhere other than where it is.

-Hooray for Simon Pegg! When's the next Shawn Of The Dead movie?

-The most unbelieveable part of the movie wasn't Cruise, the action scenes, or the over-reliance on masks. It was Keri Russell as superagent Felicity "I couldn't find a guy at NYU so I'll join the CIA."

-Abrams didn't appear to take advantage of film all that well. Much of it was framed like a TV show.

-There's a mole in the organization? This is only the plot of every episode of Alias ever.

-Vatican scene was exceptionally well done. Felt like a different movie all of a sudden. The bridge scene was also great, but like the windmill scene Cruise could have just run around to the half of the bridge that wasn't missing instead of wasting our time by jumping across.

-I like the no-show of the heist too. Reminded me of that Neal Stephenson chapter that ends "everything else was just a chase scene." Negative points for the ridiculous line about "it's the prayer I used for my cat to come home" though.

When I heard Abrams, those were two things I was expecting, and he delivered.

Helicopter chase through windmills was asinine. They are in HELICOPTERS, fly ABOVE the blades.

The helicopter being chased was "trynna lose 'em" among the windmill blades, and I loved the way they established that the windmill blades were massive and threatening before they had a helicopter run into one of 'em. Pretty great scene, actually.

I agree that the wind farm scene wasn't all that hot, but who cares if the wind farm was actually in CA. This is an American movie. If we can export our pop culture, we can export our disdain for geography. For M:I:X, I hope a computer-generated Tom Cruise jumps from the top of the Eiffel Tower onto the Kremlin. California? Is that the one shaped like a boot, or the one that invented clocks?

What, they don't fall over when they are struck by missiles that just missed the good guys, and their blades don't blow up bad guy hellicopters? 'Cause that was the important part. I'm pretty sure they work that way when TOM CRUISE IS KICKING ASS.

Besides, these are German windmills. Didn't the Germans invent them to run their dikes in La Mancha? I suppose you think think THEY DON"T KNOW HOW TO BUILD COPTER KILLING MACHINES IN LA MANCHA.

PWN3D!

Who would play Cantiflas?

http://www.film.ru/img/shots/arnold_schwarzenegger--around_the_world_in_80_days.jpg

The wife pissed me off.

― uptoeleven (uptoeleven), Monday, May 8, 2006 6:17 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nu-uh.

sort of think 1 is better than 3, but only marginally. they should have used PSH more.

love 1, can't remember 3. trying to watch it now but tv reception is going bonkers.

interesting fact: you remember the train roof that Cruise flails about and leaps from in MI1 ? My dad built that roof. yay.

3 is so rad

if 2 had been anywhere near as good the trilogy could be a legit bourne rival imo

besr florida keys bridge attack since true lies

lol @ brontosaurus on this thread

3 is really great yeah

love my argument with brontosaurus.

i can't even remember that scene now

but i gotta see this again soon

oh i remember the bridge attack, yeah that was good.

did cheers cop out by never showing vera?

the big quez

Musgrave: I thought you could get her back. But I wasn't going to let all people, to let Brassel to undo the work I've done. I took action, Ethan. On the behalf of all working families of America, the Army force, the white house. I've had enough of Brassel and his sanctimony. IMF director, he's an affirmative action poster boy. You grabbed Davian like he wanted, then what? Davian is a weed. You cut him down and two more springs he's just like the next day. Arrest him, then what? You use him. Collaborate with him. Then it's Christmas. In 18 hours, the Rabbit's foot will be sent to its Middle East buyer, we've got the Intel to prove that. Then the UN counsil will have an emergency meeting, we're taking a military strike in a week. Then when the sand settles, our country will do what it does best: cleaning-up, infrastructure, democracy wins.

^^ POLITICS

3 rad

Uh:

"Mission: Impossible IV," which once seemed truly impossible, is taking shape at Paramount.

Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams have agreed to co-produce the sequel, which is aimed at a 2011 release.

The return of Cruise to Par itself is surprising in view of the circumstances surrounding his departure in August 2006. Apparently irked by the heft of Cruise’s deal, among other issues, Viacom chief Sumner Redstone abruptly terminated the 14-year relationship between the star and the studio. Cruise’s then-CAA agent, Rick Nicita, termed Redstone’s decision “shockingly offensive and graceless.”

The rift led to Cruise becoming the chief of United Artists and taking a more active role in production decisions. Redstone, meanwhile, has sought to heal the relationship. At a recent appearance, he described the star as “a great actor and a good friend.”

The “Mission” installment would augment Paramount’s formidable array of sequels, which will include “Star Trek 2” and a third “Transformers.”

Work on “Mission: Impossible IV” would inevitably be delayed by the busy schedules of the participants.

Abrams will be responsible for guiding the “Star Trek” sequel, while Cruise recently committed to an untitled pic (formerly called “Wichita”) for 20th Century Fox that will be directed by James Mangold and co-star Cameron Diaz.

And here we go.

Uh.

Damn you for starring in this Jeremy Renner. I liked you.

m:i3 owned hard

no idea what brad bird will do with it tho

a GHOST?!?!

m:i3 owned hard

You mean m:i iii (pronounced "meh")?

m:i iii was ill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDOFVCtIN6E

pretty stoked for this, the ~advance buzz~ is really good, so far M:I2 is the only dud in the series

with you on that 100% my man

"ghost protocol" is such a hilarious video game name

wait I had no idea 3 was any good

i wish it was Ghost: Protocol so they could cram 3 colons in there

"ghost protocol" is such a hilarious video game name

i read that as 'ghost recon'

its pretty good iatee! philly seymo hoffman steals the show

is there an actual team? what bothered me most about 2 was how crappy and nonexistent the team was.

ghost, protocol

i wish it was Ghost: Protocol so they could cram 3 colons in there

― Ayatollah Colm Meaney (Princess TamTam), Tuesday, June 28, 2011 9:32 PM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark

mission: impossible: full sequence

is there an actual team? what bothered me most about 2 was how crappy and nonexistent the team was.

― iatee, Wednesday, June 29, 2011 12:32 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

nah its p much the cruise solo show - that looks to be something they're rectifying with M:I:4:GP

theres definitely team aksh in mi3!!

the whole vatican bit is a classic old-school mission impossible con-game setpiece

I just feel like "mission impossible" is such a team concept

MI3 has team action but its not a team movie, imo

Mission Impossible 5: Dubai Skill Set

so far M:I2 is the only dud in the series

i still think it's john woo's best hollywood film and better than the third one (abrams is such a generic director so far)

kind of funny renner has signed on to do bourne part the fourth... does that mean he stays with the m: i franchise too? worried

xpost

u mad

u maaaaaad

i still think it's john woo's best hollywood film and better than the third one (abrams is such a generic director so far)

― groovemaaan, Wednesday, June 29, 2011 2:45 AM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark

the opinion of a person who hasn't seen Face/Off or Hard Target

still lol to me that the writer behind chinatown wrote so many of these

1st one is a classic tho obv

lea seydoux is a hotty mchothot

New trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl6vmRNAUsE

psyched

same bro

*raises up hand for high five*

dude from the hurt locker!

betcha the secretary doesnt actually die

:D

jiminy fuckin christmas is this gonna own or what

it did not

It was decent, MI:3 was better, tho

Mrs. Thicke seemed like she was going to be really, really great for about 20 minutes and then the action stopped and she really became unbearable

I would watch the shit out of a Jeremy Renner/Simon Pegg buddy action flick

had to laugh at some of the cruise & renner two-shots; i have to think renner was cast because they're both like 5'3"

Mission: Fit In Yr Pocket

3 was definitely better. not really sure why this has such an insane rotten tomatoes score. the girls were pretty smokin though.

also "wait until you see the car" and then the awesome future mobile is stuck in traffic, no -_-

3 was definitely better. not really sure why this has such an insane rotten tomatoes score. the girls were pretty smokin though.

lol, I think possibly the answer to sentence 2 may lie in sentence 3

also I got shamed by my wife when I accidentally referred to Mrs Thicke as "John Legend's girlfriend"

at some point I will remember/look up her name

whut, is Mrs Thicke some kinda Diana Rigg vixen?

pretty much, yes

MI4 is the best in the series by a country mile, i dont think ive enjoyed a hwood action movie this much in a few years

perfectly paced, the dubai sequence - from the tower scaling to the meetings to the sandstorm chase - was really remarkable. bird's a natural storyteller. the tower climb was terrifying in IMAX, i was grippin my arm rests for dear life the entire time.

there's a lot of nitpicks to be made, but again the pacing is so good that they mostly don't occur to you until the movie's over. the villain didnt amount to much, but that was fine because the focus of the movie was on the team itself (its truer to the show than any of the other movies, in that respect) and the tension comes from what i guess you would call the escalating circumstances - everything going totally wrong at every turn, forcing them to work as a team and think laterally.

movie had exactly the right tone too. fun and freewheeling without crossing the line into cornball or undercutting the tension. it was a good change of pace from the overdetermined seriousness of the previous 2 flicks. pegg was pretty funny imo

i agree that the process-stuff of figuring out solutions to things was excellently done

i was also really struck by the beauty and quiet of the sandstorm foot chase, and the screenwriterly humor of having his goggles for it

the lightness of tone and the very movie-ness of the villain didn't really do it for me, but i did get a kick out of nyqvist's taped speech in favor of nuclear war

MI4 is the best in the series by a country mile

― maghrib is back (Hungry4Ass), Tuesday, January 3, 2012 1:20 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

exploding iphones at dawn u monster

i agree that the process-stuff of figuring out solutions to things was excellently done

i liked how they set the stage for this by having him bang on the phone booth in the beginning

the lightness of tone and the very movie-ness of the villain didn't really do it for me, but i did get a kick out of nyqvist's taped speech in favor of nuclear war

― goole, Tuesday, January 3, 2012 1:24 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i think ive been seeing a lot of mixed reactions. i guess it was just exactly what i wanted; i also suspect that the dubai stuff left me feeling really generous about everything else. tom cruise sprinting down the side of the world's tallest building is the kind of big-time spectacle that i go to these sorts of movies hoping for, and rarely get

lol lag∞n are you ice cr?m

yeah duh

anyway i liked it but not as much as the 1st 2, kinda wish i had seen it in imax

maybe its time for marathon impossible

I would see it in imax, it really would have been meh for me without it.

lets duel like in MI2 when they jump off their motorcycles and hug each other midair

*removes magic climbing glove, slaps face*

i tried to see it in imax btw but it was sold out, rip my mi4 experience

yeah the IMAX is pretty crucial on this one

so I should watch this eh

you might dig it! there's not a lot of hot manass in it though, so that might be a concern

wow, and I thought the Producers Guild nominations were the nadir of today's film action.

Just poor Sawyer. xp

poor, poor sawyer cut down in his prime

the entire Dubai sequence was fantastic, yes

we got a lot of lols at Tom Cruise leaping at things and slightly missing them

i liked that he was too short for the eye scanner on the train

the dubai stuff probably hurt the rest of the movie. none of it worked as well as that. (parking lot was cool but felt a lot like the car plant scene from the last movie).

i still liked the kremlin infiltration a lot, and the prison escape. the party in mumbai is the kind of thing i like but im not sure was pulled off too well

one thing i thought was incredibly dopey but sorta charming were the hokey music cues, like in an old cartoon where they'd play the oriental riff if the setting was asian. so you get this booming tetris music in russia, and in mumbai its suddenly some bollywood thing with the MI theme mixed in a little. real saturday morning cartoon stuff

any Weather Girls for shots of Tom's cleavage?

i liked that he was too short for the eye scanner on the train

This part made me openly lol.

The number of critics beating the "see this in IMAX!!!!" drum (universal, really) almost convinced me, but thankfully a) I had these flashbacks to the "OMG! Avatar!" hype and b) my go-to-the-IMAX bud backed out due to his primal aversion to Tom Cruise. Dunno if I'l get around to seeing this at all.

the party in mumbai is the kind of thing i like but im not sure was pulled off too well

didn't help that the billionaire mark was played like a peter sellers sketch

its a way better experience than avatar, but i understand your trepidation

avatar was just relentlessly stupid, this movie has some wit and energy to it. be not afraid. i didn't pay for imax and i had a pretty good time.

I think it'd be fun to see a movie in IMAX where the star was life-sized and he was just sort of dropped into this giant, overwhelming world.

Well, this is a movie about a pint-sized guy dropped into an ordinary-sized world. Is that close enough?

Guessing the Dark Knight 6-minute opening was shot in IMAX as well?

Yes, it was.

i thought this was pretty good. i liked that it had lots of throwbacks to the first mission impossible (which is still much better than this) even though it tried to 'fix' what was supposedly wrong w/ the first one -- like having the plot carefully explained to the audience through unnecessary exposition from characters.

also the actors in this don't touch the incredible character acting from jean reno or ving rhames or jon voigt or vanessa redgrave

and my final criticism was that a lot of times the fight sequences went on far too long -- the suspense set-ups and that sort of thing were great, but the parking garage scene didn't make use of the garage set-up the way it could have, and there's nothing cheaper than when they repeatedly bang the main character's head against things

but despite these drawbacks i really liked this. saw in IMAX, was def worth it.

So this was serviceable. So this is Cruise's first huge hit since WOTW, right? Dunno how it's any better than the others, which weren't bad (I liked the first one well enough; the Vanessa Redgrave-Cruise exchanges are the only convincing sexy male-female exchanges in any Cruise film).

I dont know what it is about that first MI movie but it's one of the few cruise flicks where he seems comfortable in his own skin. maybe it's the de palma touch, but he never makes your skin crawl with the way he can put so much effort into his 'acting' and still not resemble a human being. re: mi4 I really like how he has seemingly grown into a deadpan too-old-for-this-shit persona, it suits him & i thought it was a really good 'star' performance

It says something about Bird and his screenwriters' shrewdness that Cruise gets little dialogue here.

grew up watching the tv show and didn't like the first one: cruise, jon voight sullying jim phelps, killing kristen scott thomas right off

killing emilio was okay tho

Wait, did dude just levitate into the server room using a bunch of freaking magnets!? Wouldn't super strong magnets screw up all the comp... whatever.

i still liked the kremlin infiltration a lot, and the prison escape. the party in mumbai is the kind of thing i like but im not sure was pulled off too well

one thing i thought was incredibly dopey but sorta charming were the hokey music cues, like in an old cartoon where they'd play the oriental riff if the setting was asian. so you get this booming tetris music in russia, and in mumbai its suddenly some bollywood thing with the MI theme mixed in a little. real saturday morning cartoon stuff

― maghrib is back (Hungry4Ass), Tuesday, January 3, 2012 12:01 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^ on this. Gooey slathering of nostalgia, but I dug it. Movie equivalent of boxed mac and cheese, but fucking hell you need that some time.

I found this thread by searching on "Ghost Protocol." Just thought you should know.

Yeah, I really liked this, just caper after caper, and two hermetically sealed packages of Feelings, one of which you can skip if you leave early.

Also not one but two watchable foot-chases!

i watched this on an airplane and loved it.

I love how the sand storm chase scene is basically Brad Bird living out his fantasies to direct Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

Correction, his fantasies to direct James Bond as a Raiders movie.

Also liked the entire IMAX cinema audience jerking forwards at Tom Cruise's re-entry into the hotel.

yeah, Vanessa Redgrave and Brian De Palma!

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, May 5, 2006 9:58 AM (6 years ago)

Ah, the good old days, when Morbs pretended like he was fond of De Palma.

jerking it to IMAX tom cruise

I watched the first Mission: Impossible, the DePalma one, recently. They really took the "impossible" part more literally, in that I don't think half the things in the film are in any way physically possible. The newer films are more "Mission: Very Highly Improbable" in comparison.

It was also painfully obvious that it wasn't yet a Tom Cruise franchise at that point, as all the team mission bits felt like a team effort, not just a handful of people doing specific tasks enabling him to succeed in the one important thing. I think that's what I didn't buy about the last one -- you're supposed to care about wtf Renner's character is worried about, but any time Cruise is on screen the camera gravitates toward him.

you're supposed to care about wtf Renner's character is worried about

I don't know that this is ever the case in any film Renner's in! Tho I haven't seen him as Bourne, jr.

I feel kind of sorry for the guy, he keeps getting stuck with roles where you don't really care about his character's motivation. In MI4 his goal is to... keep it together and succeed while not feeling like a bad person? In the Bourne one his role is to survive, but only because Bourne triggered the manhunt. His plot arc is literally that he is trying to survive and somehow not lose his intelligence.

New one was great imo. Bringing back the blond spy dude with the mask from the first movie was really amusing and unexpected.

4>1>3>2

i agree with that ranking

4 was too brad bird-y, needed more sombre and grim deaths

4>>1>>>>>3>>2 imo

i agree with omar's more precise ranking as well

2 isn't terrible imo just out of place in the series and woo is all wong for the material. i liked the villains, dougray Scott and Richard roxbrough. Everything else was mediocre.

all wong

Roxburgh. Also I swear I didn't mean that apparent racial slur.

:(

PSH was the best villain, wish he was in more of the movie

the villains are pretty forgettable in a lot of ways, I guess psh was the only one who was a more formulaic (not a negative) charismatic action movie villain.

the villain in 4 is not believable at all. PSH was properly detestable.

I think 1 is pretty tight but voight is a little ridiculous in the role. his character's scheme is so half-assed.

instinctively i wouldve put 1 over 4 but i havent seen it in a while. feels weird that this series ended up being so good?

1 seems really ridiculous if you watch it now. I know it's Mission Impossible, but the entire helicopter in a train tunnel sequence is silly.

it's been a while but I think the first's the better movie tho fourth is pretty fun. I've probably only seen first and fourth.

instinctively i wouldve put 1 over 4 but i havent seen it in a while. feels weird that this series ended up being so good?

― max, Sunday, October 28, 2012 12:00 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

i actually give cruise a lot of credit for that, he usually knows to try and work with the right people

1 is a movie that i wasnt sure would still hold up (i used to love the Untouchables too but blegh now), but its still a good time. my favorite scene is actually the restaurant conversation between cruise and henry czerny (that guy's criminally underused) that ends with the exploding fishtank. so tense! so de palma!

Despite being all Abrams-ish I liked 3

yeah absolutely, cruise made the right moves to make 3 and 4 good, and did it w/out just trying to bourne-ify the movies a la bond

3 is cool. love hoffman in it, but fishburn gets to have a lot of fun too. so does billy crudup! i enjoyed the attempt to make it a more emotional/personal story. mi2 sorta tried that too but it just didn't work; woo's style of taking small moments and dragging them out in an infinity of slo-mo and furrowed brows was torturous when applied to scenes/relationships we dont care about. and his action got pg13'd, clearly for the worse. apparently there was like a 3 1/2 hour cut which i would perversely love to see, even though More Movie is the last thing mi2 needed.

yeah absolutely, cruise made the right moves to make 3 and 4 good, and did it w/out just trying to bourne-ify the movies a la bond

― max, Sunday, 28 October 2012 16:46 (12 minutes ago) Permalink

he found a few good men to help make them

i havent seen Alias so i think abrams' bag of tricks didnt seem worn out to me at that point too

Watching MI2 for the first time and christ this movie really hates Thandie Newton.

i really wanted to like rogue nation (i love this series! i loved jack reacher) but i didn't :((((((( like why do u have the most up for doing his own stunts leading man of all time and have the main set piece be obviously cgi....why do the stakes feel so low....why is the car chase 4x less exciting than jack reacher...why isn't having a compelling villain a priority for movies like this...every scene with alec baldwin and/or jeremy renner could have been excised...idgi guys

wow i might've loved it as much or more than Reacher, which i saw multiple times in the theater... it doesnt beautifully skirt that ridiculous/awesome line which is what gets me hooting thru most of Reacher, but its got more heart... McQ's made 2 of my favorite action movies of the last decade at this point

i loved that mcquarrie couldnt resist reacherfying Ethan Hunt a little... not too much, but that alec baldwin speech about him being the living manifestation of destiny, so perfect, so reacher. at the same time it keeps rolling with that weary/humble angle on EH that they had in Ghost Protocol and which blends really well with cruise's intensity & charisma, he's never been more likable than in these last 2 m:i's

I just rewatched 1 and saw 2-4 for the first time over the past week. I didn't remember much caring for the first one at the time (which is most of the reason I never saw the others, and I think I may have unfairly lumped it in with De Palma's lackluster mid-'90s stretch of films) but it was quite good. If I'd seen 2 at the time, though, it would've likely ended my interest in the series just as decisively as it was quite bad. It could've just as easily been a parody of a Woo film (all of his signifiers, poorly and laughably employed). 3 and 4 were pretty great junk, though. I'm glad they finally put the emphasis back on the team dynamics in 4 and I hope it carries over into the new one.

mi2 and face/off share so many things that made me woah at the time and make me cringe now....lyfe

canks recommendation is the highest praise and will be treated as such

fuckin nailed it

so much fun

why isn't having a compelling villain a priority for movies like this

crazy talk Harris was vvg here

There were some good moments, felt like the Syndicate could have been a little bit more ominous but I liked the casting of the players and the origin angle

I did realize upon walking out that they could have changed all of Renner's dialogue to "derp IMF derpy doo" and it'd be the same film

that's not plot that's merely breathing space. movie knew this and put more emphasis on eyebrow placement than exposition movie otm

This was pretty great, yeah

y y y

I'm not sure cruise has ever been funny before? or is it just a better drafted positioning of his usual character into joeks?

nb lestat dancing with the corpse that time excluded, but that's was def laughing at not with

loved this. was skeptical of the 'best mi yet' claims cuz i thought it very unlikely ghost protocol could be topped but this may beat it. was extremely impressed by rebecca ferguson, very much hoping she comes back or gets another action movie. thought kenan did a great job as the villain.

lol

as antagonists go i'd have this guy only behind hoffman (or voight in the first one but the first one is kind of an outlier in that there isnt' a big bad they're going against, the antagonist isn't apparent until nearly the end)(loved the callout to the breakin in the first one in this one also). also liked out he went out more than any of the others, the sheer animal hate and contempt, more satisfying than hoffman getting taken out by a car or dude falling down a garage.

The villain reminded me of Tim Heidecker. I kinda wish it had been.

I really really liked the part at the opera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb49-oV0F78

yes

i'm a tiny bit worried by the slight vv serious your past will come back to haunt you Skyfall/Spectre vibes the trailer opens with but the rest of it looks good and Rebecca Ferguson is back on a motorcycle so I'm down.

excited for this

it's kind of amazing how this series seems to fly under the radar, there's just so much noise out there about so many franchises and reboots and this just keeps on trucking and making money without making a huge splash anymore. it manages to add new characters and it still doesn't feel too overcrowded (probably bc they also cut loose a few characters when needed.) i can't think of another series that has essentially gone as long as this where the first three films are (possibly!) inferior to the next three. i'm making a major assumption on FALLOUT based on the above alone, but the skill with which 4 & 5 were executed gives me good cause for optimism.

Ferguson reminds me of Amy Ryan a bit.

I'm 100% in for a second McQuarrie-directed chapter

yeah the last MI movie was everything that Spectre wasn’t (ie enjoyable, great)

not that there’s a direct relationship between the two franchises but they occupy a similar fandom i think. but yr cache is spies gadgets & chases the best way forward is NOT stupid

MI films also have the advantage of not slowing down to turn into a grim kitchen sink dramas about the past and families.

M.I. franchise >> Bond franchise

I'm 100% in for a second McQuarrie-directed chapter

― mh, Tuesday, February 6, 2018 12:19 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same

I never saw the last one but they've done a pretty good job of maintaining the right tone, yeah. Neither stakes-free nor portentous

i can't think of another series that has essentially gone as long as this where the first three films are (possibly!) inferior to the next three

feels right to me. i have affection for 1 and 3 but ghost protocol & rogue nation felt like considerable upgrades in characterization and complexity

agreed that this is better than the bond series even though it's sort of an unfair comparison. there are so many bond movies! and yet so many of them suck

MI2 is hilariously bad

3 was overrated 4 a good solid comeback 5 was just excellent

1 was great 2 was huge fun but fell apart upon rewatch/over time

OTM to say that it is better than bond and def doesn't get credit it deserves as a series

Esp when u include Knight and Day and Jack reacher which yknow u should

MI is definitely, inarguably superior overall to the bond movies made over the same period, there's no question (though Casino Royale is the best single film)

MI1 is an extremely good cold-blooded DePalma action movie but my enjoyment of it is more objective than subjective.

MI2 is a ridiculous movie which is kind of amazing, I actually remember hardly anything about it other than being somewhat bored and somewhat impressed by the full Woo treatment and how it failed w/that material.

MI3 felt kind of cheap to me for some reason. I never like to dis films for seeming like TV shows but it felt like a very special episode of Alias. However I did LIKE it.

Haven't seen the JR movies but Knight and Day is horrible

also idk if i'd consider any m:i movie as great as on her majesty's secret service. yet

MI is definitely, inarguably superior overall to the bond movies made over the same period, there's no question (though Casino Royale is the best single film)

― Simon H., Tuesday, February 6, 2018 1:00 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah otm

that said it would be nice if Mads got a turn as an M:I villain since they're arguably the series' weakspot

Casino Royale was made by an exceptional filmmaker in total sync w/his star which i think is also what the MI films have mostly had going for them.

vs Daniel Craig sniping subtly in the press about the last couple films + whatever the hell happened on Quantum of Solace.

We should poll the hollywood movies affected by the writers' strike of that year.

Tom Cruise has this career spot now where he's either a superhuman in action films who is unbothered by normal human concerns (MI, Jack Reacher) or a self-questioning protagonist who has to find a fundamental truth in a science fiction film (Oblivion, Edge of Tomorrow) and it's pretty funny.

Casino royale falls to shit at crash scene

MI5 is better imo

Do any of the M:I movies have a moment (such as the television series almost always had) where Martin Landau rips off his phony face and he grins in triumph at fooling the villains yet again? Asking for a friend.

Plenty of them but it might not mean as much to you as none of them are he

Ought I to go straight to rogue nation and see how well it sits with me before sampling the others?

First one is a good starting point then three to five in order if it lands imo

imo you could start with any of them as long as you grasp the basic premise

imo the thing that's the most wild about the second one, other than it being a misfire in tone, is that Dougray Scott was stuck on the set because the production went long, and was replaced by Hugh Jackman in the X-Men film

lots of opinions today, sorry lads

i tend to think of the first three as standalone films in a way, they all present vv different Ethan Hunts and they're each in service to the style of the director (DePalma's more Hitchcockian flair, Woo's OTT doves and duality thing, JJ Abrams' expensive TV pilot trademark) whereas 4 and 5 feel a bit more in line w/each other and 6 feels like the first direct sequel to the previous installment.

i would start w/4 tbh (not a judgement on the first three, not completely, i just prefer the last couple.)

Dougray Scott i actually think was extremely good in MI2, he made for a vv good despicable villain. he'd probably have rather ended up with Hugh Jackman's career obv.

most definitely

ironically, of the three, Tom Cruise is the only one with the right height to play Wolverine as envisioned in comics

as long as you grasp the basic premise

my sense of the basic M:I premise is that it aligns with the usual premise of spy/cloak and dagger entertainments, which is that the viewer has entered a fantastic world that superficially resembles current reality, but where no rules apply, the villains have limitless ambitions and resources, and the heroes have almost as few constraints as the villains do, because as ever, the world hangs in the balance. the good guys always win, but the outcome is in doubt to the final moments.

that about right?

there's an agency called the IMF

they do impossible missions

this message will self-destruct in ten seconds

oh, right. no worries. I saw dozens of the original series on a b&w cathode ray tube TV back when it was new, and the opening the theme music is still burned into my synapses.

wow the new one looks gorgeous

ok, I just watched the trailer

McQuarrie truly understands that what we want to see is Cruise running into things at high speed. Finally, someone who gets it

I also just discovered that there is an Imagine Dragons song that has an opening riff that sounds a lot like the Mission Impossible theme that they interpolated into the theme in the trailer, which... is about perfect for 2018 imo

Could def treat 4 as a reset and start there alright

http://www.youtube.com/watch?151=&v=XiHiW4N7-bo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiHiW4N7-bo&t=1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiHiW4N7-bo&t=

ugh anyway new trailer!

I'm still waiting for one of these movies to fulfill the promise of its title, with Cruise just resignedly sighing mid-mission and saying, 'sorry, guys, this one just isn't possible.'

guys never ever forget

ethan hunt is

the living manifestation

of destiny

the greatest line, delivery, theme and foreshadowing of a future end-of-days fantasy that has ever been

otm

I haven’t been more excited for an action film since Mad Max Fury Road.

same. i’ve rewatched the first four over the past few weeks

if i contributed to 2’s bad rep in the past i apologize

Mega stoked for this

loved two first time round but every subsequent watch it got more and more a parody of everything that made john woo quite awful

two is ok but it's from some alternate universe where the series was going to be about experiments in tone by different directors and not a spy caper/chase scene rollercoaster

dmac otm, hollywood never really seemed to know what to do with him (the immortal face/off excepted obv)

I was looking forward to this but some of the reviews (incl some of the positive ones) make it sound pretty tiresome tbh

2 is just bad, guys. It's just bad. The rest pretty much own.

fuckin' dougray scott ruins everything, the prick

two is a freaking gun and motorbike opera. it’s great. who gives a shit if it’s tonally dissonant with the rest of the series

mind you his appearance in mi2 saved us from the horrifying prospect of a dougray scott wolverine so it's not all bad

it’s got its problems but imo not as many as mi:iii

I'm less concerned with 2's tonal dissonance than I am with the fact that it's real bad.

never mind it's bad and i'm wrong

It's not an easy thing to admit, but I salute you.

It's kind of the Halloween 3 of the franchise. It probably should've just been its own thing, in which case I would be less likely to harshly judge it alongside an array of movies that rule.

Jeffrey Wells loves this one, so run for your lives

I thought "Rogue Nation" was a big letdown after Brad Bird's take. Just felt TV movie-like and mechanical. So I'm surprised same director, etc on this one getting raves.

rogue nation is

by some distance

the best MI

iii is what you said. but for some reason it was hugely overrated

in order of good:

v rogue nation
i just mi
vi ghost protocol
iii just iii
2 why a number

havent seen new one but bet its in top 2

also unofficial mi movies knight and day and jack reacher would slot in above iii in that ranking

bg correct about face/off which is bigger than mere ranking, it is the actual tetsuofication of an entire genre

I wasn't talking iii -- Brad Bird's was "Ghost Protocol" which is infinitely more fun and stylish than "Rogue Nation". By some distance.

Knight and Day is awful

otm, ghost protocol is rad af, brad bird should be forced into live-action directing forever imo xp

all wrong god help me all wrong and what a mess

ghost protocol is fine, but it has all kind of inverted emphasis.typically the weird stunts and physical stuff are supposed to be in service of the caper part, and the most memorable action scenes to me are the cars falling at the end, cruise doing all kinds of acrobatics to get out of jail. neither of which is directly caper-related!

the actual caper parts are like trying to distract the indian businessman and slowly rolling a decoy rig through a hallway

it also seems weird that the title is basically "this is what happens when you're disavowed" but Hunt gets disavowed or ditched in every damn movie

Knight and day really remarkably bad

I never watched that one because it looked horrible

fwiw the second Jack Reacher is incredibly boring

Is Simon peg still in these, and in them like a LOT

That was the thing that bothered me about the last one I saw, he was in basically every scene doing his hilarious jokes we all love so much and I was just this is too much screen time for this character

he's in there a bit too much, but he's the personality and tom is the face. unfortunately that's what we get

there

there was a second jack reacher?

the title specifically explains the use of the endeavor

kremlin scene in ghost protocol is probably my favorite single moment of the series. i'm feeling the deems opinion that rogue nation is better though

I mean, I enjoyed the heck out of the Kremlin scene buuuut

i mean you're right it is just them slowly rolling a decoy rig through a hallway

a thrilling slow roll regardless

anytime the setpieces in this franchise involve almost unbroken silence >>>>>>>>>

I am sold on the fact that one of the trailers for the new one has an extended reel of Tom Cruise falling off of things, running into things, failing to jump on to things, and getting hit by vehicles. This is what I want.

Would watch 2.5 hours of Tom Cruise in freefall, just occasionally ricocheting off of things.

Haha yeah my sister was saying that it just made him look shit at everything

ethan hunt is the living manifestation of falling

III was overrated because it had PSH in the (fairly atypical) villain role

Gave it a bit more cred, even though he only has two big scenes iirc

Rogue Nation by a very slight amount over Ghost Protocol, Rebecca Ferguson tips the scales.

McQuarrie is an exceptionally good director now, it’s kind of amazing how good he’s wound up being at these films and even moreso considering his career was looking finished in the post-Way of the Gun/pre-Jack Reacher era. Valkyrie and The Tourist not exactly inspiring as the only credits to hold down the dozen years between.

Oh and I guess the "personal" angle was considered novel, even though it was a totally unnecessary route for the franchise to go down

MI:3 feels vv slight, feels like you could plug Jennifer Garner in there and make it an Alias reunion TV movie.

That does slightly neglect McQuarrie's role as fixer on almost every Cruise project, although we're obviously not privy to the specifics of that role

true I guess but it’s weird that he hasn’t gotten many opportunities from other places. Maybe he found Xenu?

Tom Cruise for James Bodn

Rogue Nation is my fav but havent seen 2 or 3

ethan hunt is the living manifestation of falling

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Tuesday, 24 July 2018 16:38 (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wtaf at this shocking mistreatment of the greatest line ever uttered

Ethan Hunt's chronic inability to stay in vehicles or on top of buildings and concomitant hyper-facility wrt correcting for his incessant falling and flailing is kind of like that thing where in gym class I was amazing at dodging the ball and was always the last one left on my team but couldn't actually hit anyone with a dodgeball if my life depended on it.

I remember liking the De Palma one at the time, despite not remembering anything much about it now beyond the pair of opening and closing set pieces.

I remember disliking the Abrams at the time, even though I remember even less about it now. It's funny to hear that people overrated it on the basis of Hoffman's performance, because I recall him being under-utilized.

The Bird film is the best pure action movie I've seen in decades--a statement that would probably carry more weight if I watched more current action flicks. Beautiful, elegant, and inventive--the antithesis of the pummelling Michael Bay style that largely keeps me away from the genre these days.

Haven't seen the others. Is there any real continuity to the series, or are they basically Bond films: separate adventure stories with the occasional callbacks to characters and incidents from prior entries?

There are some throughlines in the recent ones, which apparently carry through in a fairly pronounced way in the new one.

The first three are basically standalone films more in the traditional Bond sense, zero callbacks to the other films unless you count the carryover presence of Ving Rhames. The Hunt character is completely different in each film too. Going from ice cold agent to hot blooded loverman action guy to put upon domesticated Abrams hero.

The last two and presumably the new one have more carryover and seem more consistent. It’s virtually a separate trilogy and a total reboot.

I think PSH being underutilized added to it. That's the one thing Abrams does OK if he sticks to it -- having villains that seem genuinely intimidating as long as he doesn't have them on the screen too long. He overplays it half the time!

So uh the Abrams movie is basically him doing a more concise first season of Alias, can anyone really disagree

I'm really mixed on whether I think having the wife character (played by Michelle Monaghan) reappear is a good idea. Depends on how they play it, but I thought the somewhat write-off in Ghost Protocol was a good idea but, at the same time, the reveal felt like dead weight in the plot

oh man, from the wikipedia article on MI3, after they explain the revolving door of directors/writers they went through:

After a dispute over the film's tone, Carnahan quit in July 2004. Tom Cruise then called J. J. Abrams, offering the directorial role for the film after having binge-watched the first two seasons of Alias.

Had no idea Abrams directed all of those episodes. Impressive stamina, m'man.

oh we spoiling now cool

she's in the trailer...

my issue with mi3 is that it's ugly as sin

man a Joe Carnahan M:I would have been...something.

Carnahan regrets that cinemagoers never got to see his version.

He says, “Were we going to do something that would have kicked the s**t out of the movie they wound up doing?

“Absolutely. I’m not even going to shy away from that. I know the film we made was going to be better because I thought it was important. And the movie we were making was about private military and what’s going on in Africa.

“I had Kenneth Branagh playing a guy who’s based on Timothy McVeigh. And I think the cast that we had–Ken, Carrie-Anne Moss, Scarlett Johansson–that’s the biggest heartbreak for me because I saw how amazing they would have been.

“If you would have seen Carrie-Anne Moss move with a handgun after a month and a half, it would have blown your mind.

“And we had flat-out the two best mask reveals in the franchise history. Like those mask pulls dealt with major plot stuff. They weren’t just these cartoony things.”

wtaf at this shocking mistreatment of the greatest line ever uttered

― dele alli my bookmarks (darraghmac), Tuesday, July 24, 2018 9:59 AM (forty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

deems i'm explicitly on this board to troll you, get used to it

my issue with mi3 is that it's ugly as sin

The budget on that thing was $150 mil and it looks like trash.

that description of the hypothetical Carnahan one sounds equal parts amazing and horrific

MI2 has major issues but at least it looks major-scale.

it's especially noticeable when you're watching all of them bc the rest of the movies are p beautiful and have outstanding individual shots (the scene of kristin scott thomas wandering through the blue fog in the first one knocked me out recently and i've seen that movie a million times bc i was obsessed with it as a kid.) mi3 has the color palette of quake 1

the whole dinner party scene intro might actually be an alias episode with the dialogue hastily rewritten

fuck I might have to rewatch some of these now. I still haven't seen the fifth one

Rogue Nation is ugly as hell, too!

xp imagine the fourth movie, only with the rhythm of Jack Reacher and then throw a group trying to be SPECTRE into the MI landscape, only done fairly minimally

i still have to rewatch that one but i'm pretty sure i disagree (possibly i am so dumbstruck by the visuals in the fallout trailers that my memory has totally visually redesigned rogue nation) xp

I'm loathe to compare anything to the really overwrought Bond movies of late, but I swear the villain of Rogue Nation was shown footage of Mr. White from the Bond films and told "deliver lines kind of like that"

Rogue Nation looks great. It’s a little more visually close-quarters than Ghost Protocol and doesn’t rise to it but it’s p thrilling aesthetically nonetheless.

https://okinawaassault.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/vlcsnap-134960.png

Is PSH the only memorable villain in these movies? I feel like it's their persistent weakspot.

first twenty minutes of m:i actually kinda scared the shit out of me when i was a kid, especially emilio estevez's death

the fluctuation between czernay and voight as the antagonist in it is actually pretty solid villainy imo

Main fail for me in Ghost Protocol is the lovely yet decidedly terrible Paula Patton.
Rewatched RN two nights ago and it just looked like a monochrome sludge and pretty much all of it in medium shots.

Czerny was super good playing those icy govt bureaucrats. See also: Clear and Present Danger.

cobalt in ghost protocol is kind of a non-entity but the real villain in that film is nuclear annihilation

PSH coasts in MI3. He’s pretty memorable but also very much the type of bad guy who lasts on episode of a TV show. Which is what that movie felt like anyway.

Most memorable villains probably the three headed monster of Voight/Redgrave/Reno in the first one.

hard for me to think of max as a villain

i love the max callback in ghost protocol, where hunt requests a meeting with an arms dealer and they make him wear the same hood

oh i guess she is a villain bc she wants that list of deep-cover operatives but idk she's so much fun, redgrave rules in that movie

Love how she’s totally into Ethan once she thinks he’s legit, drops the steel and turns on the flirting.

imo they should redeem Monaghan's thankless presence in these movies by making her the baddie in the next one (esp since he more or less inducts her into the killing game in MI:III)

I'd actually be all-in for the "Ethan, we don't do things that way!" junk in the trailers be a foreshadowing of the character actually cracking and Cruise's character cracks and is straight-up shooting people in the face for half the movie. I mean, they won't, buuuut....

Is PSH the only memorable villain in these movies? I feel like it's their persistent weakspot.

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Tuesday, 24 July 2018 18:14 (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no way sean harris pwns

minority report

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/mission-impossible-fallout

http://www.keithuhlich.com/2018/07/a-little-more-on-mission-impossible-fallout.html

i enjoy relentless spectacle if it's fun and these movies tend to be fun

discouraged by his repeated references to the dark knight but surely the action is shot better

I am powerless against well-crafted action trash, so I'll be seeing this Sunday.

finally watched Rogue Nation yesterday and found it mostly a chore so I guess I should sit this one out

this movie has so much fun with how ridiculous it is

^^^ what i wanna hear

it all but winks at you if you were on board with the last two, it whispers "oh, i *dare* you to declare it silly at this late stage" pretty much throughout. hugely irreverent imo

felt v much like a 60s/70s tv show (maybe not ~the~ tv show) at times in pacing and setup.

and not just for henry cavill's presence, but parts felt a bit like the man from uncle remake, the bits that worked like.

packed a lot of action in- a. lot. it should have suffered from fatigue but our audience at least was still jumping at the last few bashes and crashes

cross, swap, misdirection, double cross, triple cross, wait is the next twist what i thought it was, tons of that

i think it did an expert job of letting you see the next twist before the big reveal- three or four times throughout- so that even first time around you can enjoy the tells and double meanings

too long, got both too serious and too ridiculous in the final scenario, serious lack of coherent bad guys, no need at all for monaghan, id put it between iii and iv in a ranking

baldwin pwns

https://i.imgur.com/Wn41WPO.png

i want to see this v much

That Uhlich thing is ugh

The only thing worse than Rotten Tomato morons rageing at film critics is the film critics’ subsequent valedictory blog

“Why am I the only critic brave enough to speak the truth about Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time: The Movie? [quotes Henry James]”

lol

lotta Scientology allies in this motherfucker

lol chuck otm

"the pall of perceived consensus"

board description?

To the fanboys, the thin-skinned, those who would tag me with a scarlet 'C' for 'Contrarian,' and any discord-sowing Russian bots I say, come at me if you must. Just know that I follow Henry James' exhortation that "Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." So you will receive the kindness of my silence as you howl into the void.

https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/square_small/2/22757/449293-01.jpg

true kindness would have been to keep silent in the first place tbf

idk if henry james was referring to the kindness of not getting into a twitter war

i fuckin love the idea that 'discord-sowing russian bots' are getting involved in an utterly inconsequential twitter beef about whether the new m:i movie is any good

is there any low to which those meddling russians will not sink

I predict that the next M:I film will take place entirely on Twitter.

the writeup was ridiculous but knowing the internet he probably did take a lot of abuse so I'm tempted to call it even

i fuckin love the idea that 'discord-sowing russian bots' are getting involved

glad you took this at face value

Look at the comments section responding to a middle-to-bad review of any fanboy film, and read them in the voice of Comic Book Guy.

It's weird how simultaneously great and unmemorable these movies are! I remember that I loved watching 3, 4, and 5, but I literally can't remember a damn thing about them except that in one of them they jumped a sports car out of a dubai skyscraper.

sound "great" the way those Russian car-cam videos are

OTM

https://shlabotnikreport.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/1992-star-pics-snl-grumpy-old-man.jpg

so if I was enh on the last one should I see this or nah

how do you feel about action scenes?

after revisiting it last night rogue nation is def my favorite, i can only assume the new one is rogue nationier

its not tbh

its more like iii

simon if u didnt like the last one i dunno what to say to you tbh

should clarify its more like three in how nuts/silly it gets

its like rogue nation and iv in how it doesnt try to imbue a super srs tone in with this

saw an ilxor note how ronin some of the sequences are which is also true

baldwin is damn near drebin in his few minutes but perfectly so

I may have missed it but where was the alleged rogue nation? It seemed more like maybe 20 people, a rogue agency at most.

once u have nuclear capability u r a nation de facto iirc

Did the Sybdicate have nukes in RN? I'm thinking it was exaggeration to get funding out of the committee.

While I can't call this one lifeless or joyless (it is self-aware and irreverent... mostly), it seemed to lack in color and imagination and inspiration and characters and interesting set pieces and good joeks/exchnages. It's weird, even though it was long, it wasn't a slog, but still felt drab. Pretty big disappointment ime.

Also, MI usually delivers on gadgets and future-tech and cools cars and luxe life portrayals, a la Bond -- almost none of that in this one.

its a tonally weird effort, true

Did the Sybdicate have nukes in RN? I'm thinking it was exaggeration to get funding out of the committee.

― Absolute Unit Delta Plus (Noel Emits), Saturday, 28 July 2018 19:23 (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

now im only asking but by any chance are you a civil servant because yr thought patterns suggest its an excellent fit

IMF justifying its existence and securing funding is a major part of the plot of this exciting action film, it's not something I invented.

true, true

I think they were a rogue nation in the context of intelligence agencies. Like they were the equivalent of the CIA or MI6 with a similar level of funding, but not tied to an actual country

in the Mission: Impossible world, civilians are virtually nonexistent except as a card to play when you need to threaten another group

or in the case of the new movie, the last scenes play out somewhere where there presumably are civilians, but we don’t see them! maybe the budget for extras ran out

.....
it was a funny place to put a hospital wasnt it?

I mean I think the implication was that the people near there were nomadic or spread out in nearby small villages, buuuut

https://letterboxd.com/thejoshl/film/mission-impossible-fallout/

good sorta-kinda rebuttal to/expansion on uhlich's piece

I think that gets at why these down't do much for me unless they're imbued with a little something extra (like the wit in the Burj Khalifa sequence) - the daredevil thrills don't do much for me on their own and I start to feel like I'm watching a very expensive Scientology ad.

I hope Tom Cruise has it written in his will that if he dies doing a stunt in one of these movies that they’re obligated to release it including the shot where he bites it

and that Ferguson takes over as Ethan Hunt in the following shot

is tom cruise a scientologist

must write that into my next message board post review of an action movie he is in

the bit where he wins because of xenu now makes more sense

as the Letterboxd review so eloquently puts it, Cruise and Hunt are inseparable and I don't think it's nuts to be persistently reminded of his Scientology exploits when considering his single-minded dedication to proving himself as the ultimate movie star!

this would not be the case if the movies weren't so obviously paper-thin beyond serving as a vehicle for Cruise/Hunt's awesomeness, but they are. and that's fine for most people, with variable degrees of success for me personally. I'm earnestly glad ppl have a franchise they can get behind and I begrudge no one's enjoyment!

ok, granting that

whats different about the beliefs of every movie hero as proxy?

that cruise's beliefs are scientology as opposed to apple pie/individualism/liberal humanism?

dunno what makes cruise an exception, any star that plays the hero should be held to the same standard by yr argument.

and tbh even if you do that, eh you shouldnt. its just movies.

I am all for Tom Cruise playing paper-thin bizarre everyman wish-fulfillment characters. Someone could probably do a thesis on how none of his action characters have an internal life, it’s completely externalized. The MI movies seem like the plot elements trying to give the character backstory seem like they’re in a constant state of course correction post-Abrams chapter: he can’t be anything other than the spy/cipher

The science fiction roles he’s taken are amazing examples: in Oblivion he’s literally a clone with a programmed mission, but breaking free from that means finding a way to live this all-american dream of collecting detritus of the american past and living in a cabin with a beautiful woman. Edge of Tomorrow? He’s a virtual blank slate and the movie is about programming him, via time travel, to become a hero.

And “Ethan” is probably the most distinct he gets. His name is just “Jack” in several films now

well hes never played an interesting character, i mean he has been the template for jock assholes who need to get drunk and cry in the alley behind the bar 2/3 of the way through the story before they man up and win the day by just doing what they did in the olening sequence but *really meaning it*

wait did i segue into that routine about tom cruise

Edge of Tomorrow is def the ultimate Cruise role, we take pleasure in his repeated obliteration while he builds a hero narrative over countless existences

Xp sorry man, I was sitting there with the stick holding up the box and put the bait out, didn’t think you’d walk in

Wish he'd do more roles like Tropic Thunder

MI:F had amazing action scenes and I could barely care about anything in between

i hated hated hated his attempt at ironic self-deflation in tropic thunder, mostly because he was really bad at it and everyone kept on about it

mcconaghey the hero of that movie if theres a poking-fun-at-self turn worth saving in it

tom cruise is very good at his job im glad he found work again after the couch thing

Slant came up with a good title for this film in a headline: Tryhard

yeah I don’t get the Tropic Thunder/Cruise praise at all. In it for about two minutes and the entire joke is he’s a fat, belligerent movie producer who treats people like shit

now that I typed that last part I’m cringing over here

and steve jobs

just saw a tweet mentioning that Tom Cruise’s skincare routine is a lot more pertinent than his Scientology connect and I’m close to agreeing, because wtf man

this was good

the in-between bits were a little draggy.

cavill is an excellent untrustworthy heavy. sometimes though when he talks it's as if he's painstakingly taught himself to say the lines phonetically.

i don't think we get a full cruise-grin once, which i was a bit sad about.

my son exclaimed halfway through: "he's REALLY good at steering!"

ferguson's moves at the extremely lightly explained parisian "event" where ethan's supposed to impersonate lark were badass and whoever said upthread that she should take over from cruise once he bites it in a stunt is otm. and she's amazingly beautiful of course but i don't hold that against her. neither, it seems, does hunt's wife.

q: what does ilsa whisper in julia's ear in the last scene at the hospital??

"Deus ex machina"

Loved this btw