Mission: Impossible

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