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Saw Rogue Nation tonight. Feel like there was basically no story. The "Story" of Rogue Nation is a very loose collection of generic spy movie plot points that are literally simply excuses to introduce the next set-piece. Like there is no story. Every character is just a spy drama cliche acting out their role to completion, wherein the heroes win because they were the best spies. The stakes are "bad spies might continue to exist" and the resolution is "but the good spies stopped these particular ones, good job". Plot-wise, this felt more like a bad James Bond film than a Mission Impossible film of any quality. Like IMF v. The Syndicate was only a thing to pre-empt MI-6 v. SPECTRE in the upcoming Bond film Spectre. I have no complaints about the acting, cinematography, or general design of the action sequences and set-pieces. Those were all excellent. But the "story" did not draw me in and propel me from set-piece to set-piece. I felt like all of the characters were underused. Benji is the second-most prominent character after Ethan. He has the most scenes and most dialogue of any supporting character. This isn't an ensemble picture; It's the Tom Cruise Appreciation Station. I was elated that Ving Rhames was back for this film. He does nothing. Has half a dozen lines and accomplished some things off-camera that are basically magic. Jeremy Renner's character? Also does nothing. He spends the entire film sheepishly admitting that Ethan Hunt is right even though his methods are unstable at best. I constantly expected that they would give his character a chance to shine, do an action scene where he proved to be a capable and good agent. This never happened. Simon Pegg did get a small chance to flex his acting chops in this film, it's a shame the film wasn't better. edit: Let me know if I should spoiler-tag any of this. Snak fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 08:49
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:This movie was good but God drat they wasted Renner. I feel bad for Renner. I feel like he keeps getting caste in roles where he's supposed to be an A-List type action hero, but he ends up as almost superfluous background. Every time I thought he was gonna be awesome in Rogue Nation turned into him just sheepishly admitting that Tom Cruise was right. He had a few funny bits of dialogue. There's a scene where both Tom Cruise and Jeremy Renner start running and I thought "lol it will be a scene where more than one person is doing the 'Tom Cruise Running'" thing, but then it just ended immediately. No one cared about his Bourne movie because he wasn't Matt Damon. He does the least of any Avenger, and he did almost nothing in Rogue Nation. I think he's awesome, but his agent needs to step up their game.
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Aug 4, 2015 01:03
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I liked that she hugged Tom Cruise at the end of the movie rather than kissing him. Upon reflection, he is old enough to be her father.
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Aug 5, 2015 03:55
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When you think about it, the entire Mission Impossible movie franchise is based on how good the first one was. MI:2 is very bad. People liked MI:3 when it came out, because Philip Seymour Hoffman was in it, but when Ghost Protocol came out and was so much better, everyone retroactively hated 3. Ghost Protocol was pretty good, it did what Fast 5 did earlier the same year and dialed back the seriousness of the previous films with a more comedic and spectacle-based tone. Rogue Nation is unfortunately a shallow attempt to carbon-copy the success of Ghost Protocol. I feel like for every sequel except Rogue Nation, my reason for seeing it was hoping that it recaptured the quality of the original. And now I've seen their attempt at recapturing the quality of Ghost Protocol, I again hope that their next movie is more like the original.
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Aug 5, 2015 05:01
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Darko posted:I'd say the first is possibly the worst, actually, with the train fight being possibly the most silly thing in the entire series (mainly because of how it looks). It has decent interesting scenes, but like many DePalma movies, is a mess in the sum of its parts. I think the first one has the strongest storytelling and the least dependence on action set-pieces to carry the film. Rogue Nation's "story" is that some of the most generic and overused cliche spy characters happen to be in the same film.
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Aug 5, 2015 19:46
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ruby idiot railed posted:The first movie opens with a sequence that kills nearly the entire team and proceeds straight to a set piece that blows out a wall-to-wall aquarium in a restaurant. Ask people what other stuff they remember from M:I-1 and they're gonna tell you about the CIA infiltration sequence and then the train. The plot of Mission Impossible is that there was a mole hunt and everyone now thinks tom cruise is the mole. In order to clear his name, he needs to find the real mole while protecting the list of agents from the real mole. The plot of Rogue Nation is that a secret team of Bad Guy Spies called SPECTRE are bad and tom cruise has to stop them by... being the best at everything and always being right. There's supposed to be some kind of tension where Ethan Hunt is a dangerous renegade, but as is carefully explained in many scenes, he doesn't know best and he is so awesome that he cannot be beat. That's the whole movie: Tom Cruise is Awesome.
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Aug 5, 2015 22:00
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Wrong bad spy organization name there. Yeah, I think that MI: Rogue Nation is intentionally trying to pre-empt elements of Spectre like bad guy spy organization and sexy MI-6 agent in order to make their action setpiece orienty spy franchise seem stronger compared to 007's. Why do you think Ethan doesn't sleep with Ilsa?, because unlike 007, Mission Impossible isn't about objectifying women any more. This movie is a calculated product.
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Aug 5, 2015 23:07
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Gyges posted:I hope they just transition Tom Cruse into the Secretary or maybe Brandt's role once he gets too old for this poo poo. Just slowly transition to a new action lead, or switch to a different team role as the constant. Either that or make sure Ving Rhames still shows up in every movie, at least one movie in the far future being elderly Luther drinking coffee at a cafe while IMF mayhem ensues and he just shakes his head and goes back to his breakfast. Maybe they are trying to set up Renner for that role. Rogue Nation is the movie where Renner finally embraces Tom Cruise's methods of insane stunts as the most practical way to accomplish espionage.
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Aug 6, 2015 05:09
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Mars4523 posted:It's going to be one hell of a wasted opportunity if Rebecca Ferguson isn't brought back for MI:6. That final knife fight was all kinds of badass. Considering she's an MI6 agent, it would be a waste for MI:6 to not be about MI6.
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Aug 8, 2015 11:47
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Also, if the Syndicate is an "Anti-IMF", functions similarly to the IMF, and is called a "Rogue Nation", does this mean the IMF is a "Nation"? Because the title of the movie makes no god damned sense.
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Aug 22, 2015 23:22
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Sir Kodiak posted:It's an anti-IMF because it's oriented towards promoting global financial disorder. It's a rogue nation because a nation (the UK) went rogue to create it, rather than working with the 188 member countries of the IMF. That kind of makes sense. I wish they had explained that in the movie.
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Aug 23, 2015 01:32
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I'm pretty sure the moral of this movie was that Tom Cruise's character's ability to react to any situation in an amazingly effective AND MORAL way mean's that he deserves free reign to do whatever he wants. Like his response to "Why should you get operate without oversight or legal restriction?" is "Because If I can't, who's going to save the world?" with a straight face.
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Aug 23, 2015 05:43
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Disgusting Coward posted:It was funny how Ilsa had to take her shoes off in any scene with Tom Cruise so he'd look normal sized. It was funny how they needed to "foreshadow" Ilsa diving into the upside-down water tower to save Ethan by having that scene earlier where we see that she can hold he breath for 2 minutes. Like they actually had to show a watch telling us how long she was holding her breath. subtle.
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Aug 23, 2015 17:12
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Oh come on. In the movie they clearly say that The Syndicate is a Rogue Nation. Which does not make sense. They just really liked that phrase and wanted to use it as the title of the film. Even in the context it was explained to me in this thread, that Rogue Nation refers to the UK, because they created The Sydicate, the Syndicate is still the work of one man going against the orders of his head of state. Still not a nation.
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Aug 23, 2015 18:02
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Vulpes posted:They make mention of The Syndicate being composed of people from various countries who had defected, bringing these 'nationless' people together to create a new nation. It's clumsy for sure, but it made sense to me in the context of that speech. I mean yeah, I get it, but I just can't help feeling like they just really liked the phrase "Rogue Nation" and wanted to justify using it.
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Aug 24, 2015 04:21
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Of course it does. I'm not confused by it, it's just loving wrong. The Syndicate is not a nation in any way, shape, or form. In fact, there's already a name for what it is: A Syndicate. But they wanted the movie to be called Rogue Nation. I mean, your options are pretty limited when you're trying to come up with titles for your set-piece driven spy thriller and you naming scheme so far has be "1" "2" "3" "Ghost Protocol" and cool sounding code phrase is the trend you are wanting to continue. You can't do anything that sounds like you're cribbing from 007, which also rules out just using "Syndicate". The entire movie feels like it was designed by committee, including the title. They did a good job. They made a decent product, I guess, but it just feels like an empty product to me, not a work of art. 3 had a better story and Ghost Protocol had better momentum. This one just didn't work for me, I guess I'm not the target demographic.
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Aug 24, 2015 17:56
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I mean, there's no need to get defensive. I was simply trying to articulate my feeling about the movie being a designed-by-committee product, and I thought the title was a good example of that. I didn't think it was a strange or pedantic example. "Rogue Nation" is like, one tier above "The Beginning" "Origins" "Revelation" as movie subtitles go. But I wasn't trying to poo poo up the thread, so, my bad.
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Aug 24, 2015 18:05
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