stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2025-05-26 09:47 am
stevenpiziks) wrote2025-05-26 09:47 am
Mission Impossible
Darwin and I saw the latest MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movie yesterday, theoretically the last one. With Tom Cruise, anyway. It was well-filmed and acted, with lots of big action scenes and stuff. But it was overlong. Several scenes went on for too many beats, and you find yourself saying, "Okay, okay, we get it. Let's move on!" The show also alternated between outrageous and, well ... impossible action, and closeups of characters talking in low, intense voices. Once I noticed the latter, I couldn't stop noticing, and I wondered why the director made that particular choice.
The MI movies have also strayed far from their original concept. MI was more about tricks and traps and heists than action. There were scenes in which a couple bad guys would enter a room to talk to another set of bad guys. They exchanged information and the first set of bad guys would leave. Then the room was suddenly revealed to be a fake set, and the other bad guys were disguised. It was a ruse to get the information! Stuff like that. There was only one such scene in this movie, and it barely qualified: Ethan tricks some bad guys with a fake tooth. The rest of it is action, action, action.
I noticed that every single bit of the action scenes follows a pattern. 1) Ethan has to do something (open a door, flip a switch, eat his breakfast). 2) Some obstacle presents itself and prevents him (the door is stuck, the switch doesn't work, the toaster is shorted out). 3) Ethan tries to force the original plan to work (yank on the door, hit the power switch, shove the bread down again). 4) This doesn't work. 5) Ethan devises a workaround (taking the door off its hinges, pulling the switch apart and repairing it, buying a new toaster). 6) This solution works, but it sends us back to 1), where Ethan is trying to do something. Repeat until the audience is ready to throttle the director in frustration.
Deep sea stuff, especially deep sea stuff involving large objects like submarines, shipwrecks, and whales, freaks me badly, so a good quarter of the movie had me filtering the movie through my fingers. Darwin is severely acrophobic, so another quarter of the movie had =him= filtering the movie through his fingers.
Since this was a Part II, the screenwriters cleverly fill in backstory from Part I, but don't stop there. Endless references to the previous movies sneak in, including a minor character from the very first movie who plays a major role in this one. I imagine he was startled to get a phone call from a casting director who said, "Remember that role you played 30 years ago? Great! Are you free?"
The movie is worth seeing if you want to empty your mind for a while and follow the story of someone who's having a way worse day than you are. It's not worth seeing twice, though.
The MI movies have also strayed far from their original concept. MI was more about tricks and traps and heists than action. There were scenes in which a couple bad guys would enter a room to talk to another set of bad guys. They exchanged information and the first set of bad guys would leave. Then the room was suddenly revealed to be a fake set, and the other bad guys were disguised. It was a ruse to get the information! Stuff like that. There was only one such scene in this movie, and it barely qualified: Ethan tricks some bad guys with a fake tooth. The rest of it is action, action, action.
I noticed that every single bit of the action scenes follows a pattern. 1) Ethan has to do something (open a door, flip a switch, eat his breakfast). 2) Some obstacle presents itself and prevents him (the door is stuck, the switch doesn't work, the toaster is shorted out). 3) Ethan tries to force the original plan to work (yank on the door, hit the power switch, shove the bread down again). 4) This doesn't work. 5) Ethan devises a workaround (taking the door off its hinges, pulling the switch apart and repairing it, buying a new toaster). 6) This solution works, but it sends us back to 1), where Ethan is trying to do something. Repeat until the audience is ready to throttle the director in frustration.
Deep sea stuff, especially deep sea stuff involving large objects like submarines, shipwrecks, and whales, freaks me badly, so a good quarter of the movie had me filtering the movie through my fingers. Darwin is severely acrophobic, so another quarter of the movie had =him= filtering the movie through his fingers.
Since this was a Part II, the screenwriters cleverly fill in backstory from Part I, but don't stop there. Endless references to the previous movies sneak in, including a minor character from the very first movie who plays a major role in this one. I imagine he was startled to get a phone call from a casting director who said, "Remember that role you played 30 years ago? Great! Are you free?"
The movie is worth seeing if you want to empty your mind for a while and follow the story of someone who's having a way worse day than you are. It's not worth seeing twice, though.