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cant cook creole bream posted:I think comparing these movies to some nebulous show from many decades ago does them a disservice. Have to disagree. The DNA of the series is important imo. Whenever Cruise's efforts veer away from the premise of the show (a team of pros doing cool sneaky spy poo poo), the films suffer for it. And so much of the series is iconic that you can't help comparing the new movies to the original. (A lot like Star Trek, I guess, but without so big of a fandom.)
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Jul 21, 2023 22:08
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cant cook creole bream posted:I think comparing these movies to some nebulous show from many decades ago does them a disservice. the first movie is a loving homage to the show despite hosing a beloved character and even ~60 years later the "nebulous" tv show is excellent. as much as I enjoy the movie series, the TV series and MI-1 sharing a name/theme/style with 2-7 does the TV/MI1 the disservice.
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Jul 21, 2023 22:11
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I wonder how different the series would feel if DE Palma had gotten his original vision of killing off the whole TV crew in the opening
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Jul 21, 2023 22:15
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I think there is still an element to the sequels where "the mission" always involves lots of convoluted planning that immediately gets fouled up on contact with reality, it's more an issue of scope creep where the mission changing now means Tom Cruise has to throw himself off the tallest possible structure and not die. Like there's a bit of the heist movie in these.
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Jul 21, 2023 22:20
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Maxwell Lord posted:Like there's a bit of the heist movie in these.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:43
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Eason the Fifth posted:Have to disagree. The DNA of the series is important imo. Whenever Cruise's efforts veer away from the premise of the show (a team of pros doing cool sneaky spy poo poo), the films suffer for it. And so much of the series is iconic that you can't help comparing the new movies to the original. (A lot like Star Trek, I guess, but without so big of a fandom.) I don't mean to be glib, but like what?
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Jul 22, 2023 08:07
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dunno if you're being obtuse but the cia wire heist in the first movie was an indelible image and copied/parodied throughout the 90s and 2000s e: unless you mean the tv series in which case i agree
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Jul 22, 2023 14:16
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Yeah, the TV series has more or less been completely forgotten by the populace at large
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Jul 22, 2023 15:47
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Famously, MTV VJ Kennedy covered the red carpet premiere of MI1 in the mid 90s and didn't know why Martin Landau was there. I'm an old nerd gray beard and the show is before my time. All I knew about it as a kid was the kickin rad theme song and "they do heists" premise.
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Jul 22, 2023 17:05
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It's funny that the original Mission: Impossible movie came from the same wave of nostalgia that gave us the Brady Bunch and Beverly Hillbillies movies.
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Jul 22, 2023 17:58
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The original show is still very watchable, as long as you're aware going in that it is over 50 years old and despite being groundbreaking in some respects it's still very much of its time, and that because it ran for so long (7 seasons) it covers the same ground with slight variations many times over. But if you want a quick best-of list, watch 'Operation Rogosh', 'The Mind of Stephan Miklos', 'The Mercenaries', 'The Execution', 'The Carriers', 'The Killer', 'The Double Circle' (Ghost Protocol reused the elevator trick from this) and 'Submarine' to see the original IMF at its peak.
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Jul 22, 2023 18:00
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For all the hot buzz and positiveness it looks like this movie got crushed by Barbenheimer
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Jul 26, 2023 15:41
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It's about where Fallout was in the same period.
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Jul 26, 2023 16:15
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:It's about where Fallout was in the same period. It's way below Fallout domestically. It brought in 2 MM on Monday, Fallout brought in 4 MM on it's second Monday. They were within 5 million or so after their second weekend, but Dead Reckoning had two extra days before its first weekend. It's going to end up ahead of MI:3 but well below the rest of the franchise.
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Jul 26, 2023 16:35
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Finally caught this yesterday, and while I had a great time, it definitely felt like a step down in quality from Rogue Nation and Fallout. Others itt have already stated what didn’t work (flavourless villain, Ilsa done dirty but not before Ethan’s already found her replacement, hollow talky bits, etc), but the thing that gave me a “oh no, something’s not right here” feeling in the first 20 minutes was Ethan Hunt getting a Crime Alley origin flashback. I thought the Rome chase was…fine, but again, felt like a step down from the Morocco and Paris chases. But I absolutely hated that the tiny Fiat was a secret super spy car. Like, why? Just have it be the only car they could quickly break into and hotwire or something, that’s much more interesting. If it was them trying to explain away why they could feasibly outrun the massive truck, it wasn’t needed, just use the size and the terrain to their advantage, have some shots of them cutting through small alleys. They may as well have gone all the way and had Ethan escape with an ejector seat before the train hit him. Also, the IMF has an infrastructure where safe houses and safe cars are only an app away in any city in the world… but it’s also meant to be a blacker-than-black outfit of loose operatives that is so small and nebulous not even top brass knows its full scope? Which is it meant to be? It felt like a setup to a punchline of the AI taking control of the car that never came. If I’m being generous, maybe it’s setup for a “we’re too reliant on technology to defeat this enemy” theme in the next one, but there were a lot of missed opportunities like that, it only really came up with the deepfake Benji voice in Venice which was admittedly cool and creepy. I’m a huge fan of the franchise (TV and movies) and this has been my most anticipated movie for a few years now. It was in no way a bad movie, just deeply unsatisfying. Bummer.
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Jul 27, 2023 10:24
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Matinee posted:But I absolutely hated that the tiny Fiat was a secret super spy car. Like, why? Just have it be the only car they could quickly break into and hotwire or something, that’s much more interesting. quote:It felt like a setup to a punchline of the AI taking control of the car that never came. If I’m being generous, maybe it’s setup for a “we’re too reliant on technology to defeat this enemy” theme in the next one, but there were a lot of missed opportunities like that, it only really came up with the deepfake Benji voice in Venice which was admittedly cool and creepy.
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Jul 27, 2023 10:41
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I had already presumed that Hunt being led up a mountain was the AI loving with them. But then it was just Benji being …a bit stressed?? That would even work better thematically! The AI thinking it was taking him off the board but hadn’t counted on Hunt being enough of a Mad Lad to drive off the top. That whole thing with Benji in the car had the distinct whiff of being cobbled together with reshoots with those awkward shots of him in the passenger seat. Maybe Luther was meant to be driving but Rhames wasn’t available? Very odd, and really distracted from The Big Stunt Matinee fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Jul 27, 2023 |
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Jul 27, 2023 10:52
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live with fruit posted:I don't mean to be glib, but like what? So my knee-jerk reaction here was to say "The masks!" and "The Mission: Impossible theme!" but then I sat on the question for a few days and couldn't think of anything else.
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Jul 29, 2023 00:51
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"This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds" "Your mission, should you choose to accept it" Basically all that setup has stuck in pop culture for a while
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Jul 29, 2023 01:30
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I don’t imagine the majority of people are even aware there was a Mission Impossible series before the films
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Jul 29, 2023 15:50
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I’ve been listening to the Empire magazine McQuarrie interviews and he said when he started on Rogue Nation, Tom Cruise told him the only three things that *have* to be in the film are a briefing, a mask gag, and the theme tune.
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Jul 30, 2023 12:34
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Expected you to say “me on a motorbike”, “me running” and “me doing something crazy”.
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Jul 30, 2023 14:48
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Simply Simon posted:It is still unbelievable to me that Benji put the car in autopilot and uses google maps to guide Ethan and neither of those things are an issue while the AI is actively taking out satellites, so it overtly has full control over them whenever it wants Matinee posted:I had already presumed that Hunt being led up a mountain was the AI loving with them. But then it was just Benji being …a bit stressed?? This this this. This AI has the ability to deepfake, conjure riddle boxes that play on your insecurities, and recruit a real-world avatar who gets reprogrammed in a sensory deprivation casket, but it won't mess with Benji's car or maps? I thought the movie was playing the long game with that sequence and Benji would turn out to be parked in a far away / vulnerable area, but nope. They barely lampshaded this angle with Benji cautiously putting on a seatbelt. Might be driving an evil car!
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Jul 30, 2023 18:12
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Jakabite posted:I don’t imagine the majority of people are even aware there was a Mission Impossible series before the films Yeah. I sure wasn't. I had no idea that theme was so ancient. It was always just "That cool theme from the Tom Cruise movies." The movie series has fully superseded the existence of a series which may have inspired them at some point. But the original film came out when I was five, so I'd consider that vintage too.
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Jul 31, 2023 21:35
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I'm about to jump off a cliff in a wheelchair here
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Aug 1, 2023 01:56
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Speaking as someone who never watched the original TV series, is there anywhere to stream it and are there any standout episodes I should look for? Also is the show a sort of continuous story arc or are the episodes pretty standalone?
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Aug 2, 2023 22:08
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Xenomrph posted:Speaking as someone who never watched the original TV series, is there anywhere to stream it and are there any standout episodes I should look for? Also is the show a sort of continuous story arc or are the episodes pretty standalone? It’s on paramount plus (it’s a paramount property). The 80’s revival is not streaming but people have uploaded it to YouTube. It’s all episodic. I’ll also throw out a recommendation for Mannix, streaming on Amazon. It’s from the same period as MI, same creator, and the same dude did the theme song, which owns as much as the MI theme. Jose Oquendo fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 22:20
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Xenomrph posted:Speaking as someone who never watched the original TV series, is there anywhere to stream it and are there any standout episodes I should look for? Also is the show a sort of continuous story arc or are the episodes pretty standalone? ^^ It's mostly episodic, but there are a handful of two- and three-parters. A funny thing about the show is that the best episodes are the ones that mix up the the show's established plot arc. Like, most episodes follow a pretty predicable pattern (most of them are still interesting despite that), but there are always a few eps in each season that do something different. Those were always my favorites when I watched the show growing up. (The reruns were on some cable channel in the 90s, but I don't remember which one, maybe TNT or something?) One of my favorites is The Town (S2E21), but that isn't one you'll want to start with -- you want to get a feel for what the show normally does to see what makes this episode fun and unique. The Falcon (S4E14-16) is good too, it's is a three-parter that feels like a movie, and Leonard Nimoy owns in it. (Nimoy replaced Martin Landau as a different character after the first few seasons.) You'll actually see more of the show's influence in the movies than you might expect. Sometimes it's just a name (The Syndicate), but sometimes scenes are pulled right from the show, like tricking a villain into thinking their holocaust-level plan worked. I think Cruise uses that one early on in Fallout or maybe Rogue Nation. Eason the Fifth fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 02:41
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I bought a 4K box set of the first 6 movies and I’m going back through the series. Some I hadn’t seen in like 20 years (the first two), some I hadn’t seen all the way through (the third) or never watched at all (the 4th). I’ve finished the first 3 so far. The first one is still great. Lots of cool spy stuff, not a ton of over the top action but still enough action to keep things interesting, overall it’s a really solid movie. I like it. The Langley heist is still great. The second one…. I, just… it’s just not a very good movie, ESPECIALLY by John Woo movie standards. poo poo just… happens, with no regard for coherence or if it makes sense. It’s one long string of “wouldn’t it look cool if X happened?” moments (which IMDb trivia tells me was literally John Woo’s thought process). It feels like a parody of a good John Woo movie, but played totally straight. You’ve got the doves, the gratuitous slow-mo, characters diving and sliding while firing two pistols, Tom Cruise doing kung fu (including two backflips), it’s like it was checking off a bingo card of John Woo tropes while trying to wrap some kind of plot around them. The final fight is Tom Cruise and the bad guy doing wrestling and Kung fu moves to each other on a beach, and I’m sitting there watching this saying “what is even happening here”. Anthony Hopkins (what little of him we get) is awesome but that’s largely because he can do no wrong, I wish they’d kept him around in the series. I will say this, though: it’s the only movie in the series where the IMF just takes a mission and completes it, no betrayals, no disavowed, no going rogue, just a mission and it gets done. The third movie is neat (I didn’t realize it was JJ Abrams’ first movie). It feels like an Abrams movie, and there’s a lot of “quippy” characters (especially Lawrence Fishburne). I liked that a lot of the action felt like a team effort, with Ving Rhames, Maggie Q, and the Irish guy actually having integral parts in the operations and being shown as skilled in their own ways. It felt a little like the opening of the first movie where you get the sense that their operation is a group effort and they all have jobs to do together. Philip Seymour Hoffman wasn’t as impressive or really menacing as I was expecting, but a lot of that is because he doesn’t do a whole lot - he has one good scene (the countdown-execution scene — and it’s so nice they show it to you twice!) and the scene kinda doesn’t make sense; Hoffman had the Rabbit’s Foot, what did faking Tom Cruise’s wife’s execution accomplish? Was he just trying to gently caress with Tom Cruise psychologically? Billy Crudup says it was Hoffman’s way of checking that what Tom Cruise gave him was the real Rabbit’s Foot, but I don’t see how anything Tom Cruise says or does in the scene confirms that. Maybe I missed something, I dunno. I did get a chuckle that the movie just straight up does not show you the Rabbit’s Foot heist - the team talks up how difficult it’s going to be, and then Tom Cruise just goes “yep I got it, jumping out a window now”. Also obligatory JJ Abrams “mystery box” by not explaining what the Rabbit’s Foot was and ending the movie with Tom Cruise straight up asking what it was and not finding out. To be fair the canister did have a biohazard logo on it. I’m not sure if I’m going to dive into the 4th movie right away or fire up the “Mission Impossible: Operation Surma” for the Xbox, which I’ve never played. It’s set in between MI2 and 3, and while it doesn’t feature Tom Cruise’s voice or likeness, it does have Ving Rhames! I’ll always take more Luther, he rules.
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Aug 4, 2023 01:16
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Xenomrph posted:
Hoffman says "you can't just open it and check. I had to be sure". He knew if Tom Cruise had swapped it for a fake, threatening to execute his "wife" would have broken him and he would have fessed up. He was able to read through Cruise's bluffs where he's just saying anything to stop the countdown. (like torture victims will say anything to make the torture stop - but Hoffman is smart enough to see through that and know Cruise didn't actually swap the canisters, and therefore, it's the real Rabbit's Foot). I don't consider the Rabbit's Foot a mystery box anymore than the pulp fiction briefcase. it's just a macguffin. Whether it's a magic nuke or a biohazard weapon is irrelevant to the plot. The simplest is a bio-weapon of some kind, but then that's just the same plot as MI2.
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Aug 4, 2023 04:24
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stratdax posted:Hoffman says "you can't just open it and check. I had to be sure". He knew if Tom Cruise had swapped it for a fake, threatening to execute his "wife" would have broken him and he would have fessed up. He was able to read through Cruise's bluffs where he's just saying anything to stop the countdown. (like torture victims will say anything to make the torture stop - but Hoffman is smart enough to see through that and know Cruise didn't actually swap the canisters, and therefore, it's the real Rabbit's Foot). Like I guess Hoffman went into the exchange planning to execute his bodyguard (disguised as Cruise’s wife) regardless of what Cruise did. I guess it kind of makes a little more sense when framed that way. It’s still a good scene. stratdax posted:I don't consider the Rabbit's Foot a mystery box anymore than the pulp fiction briefcase. it's just a macguffin. Whether it's a magic nuke or a biohazard weapon is irrelevant to the plot. The simplest is a bio-weapon of some kind, but then that's just the same plot as MI2. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Aug 4, 2023 |
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Aug 4, 2023 04:43
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Xenomrph posted:Yeah but like a torture victim, what is Tom Cruise going to say? He’s already saying whatever Hoffman wants to hear because he thinks if he doesn’t, his wife is going to get shot. Like let’s say it actually was fake - what’s Cruise going to do? Hoffman “breaks” him, he fesses up and says yeah it’s fake, blam his wife is dead. Like a torture victim, anything he says is inherently unreliable. Hoffman isn’t even asking “is what you gave me the real deal”, he’s just saying “where is it?” as if Cruise gave him nothing, which is extra confusing because Cruise (genuinely) gave it to him. At best he’s gaslighting Cruise who now doesn’t know what to say or do to make Hoffman happy, which is why he keeps repeating “whatever you’re trying to get, I will get it for you” and then blam his “wife” is dead. The idea is Hoffman would have been able to tell when Cruise tells the truth (if he really had switched them). He's just that good. So yes, if Cruise fesses up and says it's fake (and it really is), Hoffman would know it's fake and then, I dunno, go scorched earth on everybody and everything until he is delivered the real one. But he can tell Cruise is just confused and has no idea what's going on because he really did deliver the real Rabbit's Foot. Yeah either way that bodyguard's dead.
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Aug 4, 2023 05:19
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The We Hate Movies crew did an ep on MI:2 so I re-watched it and I liked it a lot more than I remembered. I was way into John Woo in my late teens so I probably was burnt out a bit on his particular action direction by then. After the past 20 years of greater homogeneity in the design and direction of many big movies, going back to see Woo just do his thing was engaging. Apparently a 3h30min rough cut existed, which is obviously far too long, but I do wonder if some cut scenes would have helped with the flow of the film. It's unfortunate that Thandie Newton was introduced as an elite thief but then sidelined as damsel in distress, albeit with a heroic sacrifice even while captured. With it entirely taking place in Australia and the emphasized romantic tension, it felt like John Woo overlaid the essentials of Mission:Impossible onto an idea he'd already drafted, and as a bonus he got to use the in-world face-mask technology to play with more Face/Off false identity concepts. Anyways, plenty of flaws but it (along with 1) really stand out as unique in style, and I'd be more keen to re-watch them than 3, and as of now (i.e. without seeing the second half yet), Dead Reckoning: Part 1. Considering she only showed up at the start of Rogue Nation, Ilsa Faust immediately cemented herself as an integral character in the series alongside Luther and Benji. Also the obvious spark with Hunt was very enjoyable to see simmering throughout their confrontations and team-ups. For her to die in a really underwhelming way in DR1 really took the joy out of the flick for me. In Rogue, Ilsa goes to her handler with the data drive and is told she can't come home, or can't be pulled out. Then in Fallout when Hunt claims she "got out", Ilsa says British Intelligence coerced her to capture Lane in order to prove her loyalty / earn her "freedom". That's a basic concept which makes perfect sense and doesn't need to be justified, it's been popularized by The Prisoner, by Jason Bourne, i.e. once you're no longer an asset you're a liability. So rhe groundwork has been laid for making Ilsa's true departure from her agency a challenge with stakes in the finale of the series. But then they go a weird direction with the retcon in DR1. Now the IMF seemingly recruits many of their agents by forcing a choice between prison vs joining the IMF? Why is this Suicide Squad nonsense necessary? It creates so many unnecessary questions. Gabriel could have still been someone who haunted Ethan's memories without their incident being the catalyst for Ethan to join the IMF. Atwell is awesome but the character Grace bails on Hunt at least 2 too many times. I know covid messed with filming and re-shoots so I won't harp on awkward editing and conversations with only 1 person in camera at a time, but the script made Grace way too dumb, borderline cruel, at times. How far away did Grace manage to get before the loud rumbling subway train barreled towards the Fiat with Hunt handcuffed to the wheel? Anyways I'm rambling but it will be a huge letdown and massive missed opportunity if Ilsa Faust is truly dead in the series. I don't think she'll be returning, and it'd be clumsy as hell to pull off, but that's still something I'm hoping happens in DR2. In a roundabout way it would solve the "how does Ilsa actually walk away from British Intelligence" challenge posed by the prior two movies. Oh, and in the final battle Ilsa should break Gabriel's neck to save Ethan.
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Aug 7, 2023 22:41
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Catching up on this series, I have to say, Fallout is not just a strong MI movie, but a perfect action movie. Great villains, amazing stunts, clever tricks and that crazy helicopter stuff at the end. I also love "John Stark" for going 2v1 Hunt and Walker in the bathroom and loving them both up.
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Aug 9, 2023 01:20
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Xenomrph posted:I’m not sure if I’m going to dive into the 4th movie right away or fire up the “Mission Impossible: Operation Surma” for the Xbox, which I’ve never played. It’s set in between MI2 and 3, and while it doesn’t feature Tom Cruise’s voice or likeness, it does have Ving Rhames! I’ll always take more Luther, he rules. 4 is the best one so the sooner you watch it the better
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Aug 9, 2023 01:47
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kalensc posted:Oh, and in the final battle Ilsa should break Gabriel's neck to save Ethan. "The AI cannot be defeated by man." "I am no man." *snap*
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Aug 9, 2023 05:37
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R. Guyovich posted:4 is the best one so the sooner you watch it the better Q about 4 which I'll spoiler for the guy who didn't see it yet: In Dubai there's the series of tech not working properly, which culminates in the mask creator malfunctioning, and is compounded by the buyer bringing along someone who can verify if the nuke codes are legit. I know their initial plan was for there to be 2 separate meetings, and to do a whole bunch of sleight of hand with the codes and diamonds (which we do end up seeing in the movie as it plays out). However, the entire purpose for the 2 separate meetings subterfuge was to make the buyer believe they had the legit codes, and then follow him to the main villain. And now they're reluctantly going to give the buyer the actual codes, otherwise the verifier guy will know something's afoot. So, within the world of the movie, was there any reason whatsoever to actually go ahead with the two meetings setup? Letting the buyer meet the seller without revealing their presence was still viable, and they had control of the internal systems to ensure they could be in position to tail them when they left, etc. Am I missing a legitimate in-world reason why they had to absolutely go ahead with the impersonating and double meeting? Or was it just a thing the writers hoped the audience wouldn't think about too much, and it's purely a way to put the characters in perilous positions for the subsequent fights and chases?
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Aug 12, 2023 02:28
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I just watched MI:3 again and since I complained about this detail in 7 earlier in the thread I felt it was my duty to report this: there is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of Hunt putting in contacts as he is preparing to put on the Owen Davian (PSH) mask. I've watched this movie a half dozen times and somehow never noticed or remembered this bit. Pretty sure this is the only time in the entire series they acknowledge that contacts are a part of the disguises. So I guess I'm to assume that in 7 Grace is just too inexperienced or nervous or whatever while trying to get the White Widow getup on that she forgets the contacts, and then...nobody else ever notices. yes I know it's a dumb nitpick but it's been bugging me this whole time ok
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Aug 12, 2023 02:57
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Found this one a bit of a disappointment all said; reviewed it on letterboxd but I'll quote it here:quote:Not so much a fan of this one, though it was perfectly watchable. Overall it came out less than the sum of its parts, and while it didn't feel hacked to pieces in the fashion of a Fantastic Beasts movie or anything, it certainly felt like different parts of the movie were conceived of at completely different times and in completely different moods that were never reconciled. There's three big parts, airport/Venice/train, with stray action sequences in the Arabian desert and Rome, both of which are fun but somewhat disconnected - there's a bit in the Rome sequence where the two protagonists are forced to switch cars which feels like a gigantic sticking plaster.
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Aug 12, 2023 13:55
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josh04 posted:Found this one a bit of a disappointment all said; reviewed it on letterboxd but I'll quote it here:
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Aug 12, 2023 14:03
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