Mission: Impossible

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??