Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

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Monterey Jack
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#151 Post by Monterey Jack » Sun Feb 02, 2020 11:11 pm

flyonthewall2983 wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 5:32 pm
Pretty sure he'll be playing his character from the first one
I believe Finch was referring to
SpoilerShow
Baldwin's position in the IMF now being open, seeing as he's dead and all.

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thirtyframesasecond
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#152 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Mon Feb 03, 2020 3:49 am

flyonthewall2983 wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 4:58 pm
Hopefully he has more screen time. I just remember him having a few scenes towards the beginning culminating with the one in the restaurant. Between that and his role in Clear And Present Danger he really nailed down the evil bureaucrat cliche for awhile.
Czerny also played Christopher Plummer's son in Egoyan's 'Remember', which came out a few years ago, which was decent.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#153 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Dec 22, 2020 2:10 am

I revisited Rogue Nation yet again, and it's still the best MI film, a conclusion I formed since I saw it in theatres but that only becomes more glaringly obvious over time. Rebecca Ferguson is a welcome addition to the group dynamics, but the whole film is like an immaculate musical composition: The narrative mechanics twist relentlessly with fine-tuned precision amidst operatic setpieces, and McQuarrie defines the action movie's ability to blend with political thriller along the spy-mystery fault line. The fatalism felt as the trappers continued to fall into traps is best served here too in well-distributed doses of suspense, rather than the louder but less convincing provocations in the next installment.

I still like Fallout quite a lot, but it's far less of a pristine piece. domino brought up a nice comparison of the former film's opera scene as an art-house take on action, and Fallout succeeds best is when it's taking on the 'drama' behind the action in the language of an art-film, like the imagined raid early on set to a synth score, or the ominous Ferguson/Cruise 'tailing' bit. However, these scenes are paired with less effective 'straightforward' pauses on gravitas, surreal intrusive thoughts of past figures (signifying regret/fear without a connective reason), and recycled gags that take serious ethical dilemmas and exploit them as slight-of-hand reveals. As a result of this diversity, the film works as an amalgamation of tones and ideas, where a bathroom fight scene is as fun as any hand-to-hand combat setpiece, the twists and turns and double-crosses amplify to both self-conscious and self-serious degrees, the narrative takes more opportunities to pause and dial down the volume (especially in the early scenes, usually given to vault-blowing bangs, here deliberately paced to feel the stakes), and the artsy stuff is thrown in for good measure. Sure it's not a consistent work, but it's entertaining meshing everything together. I can see how this could be a favorite, since it'll all depend on how much of this chaotic paint job sticks to the walls for each viewer. A lot did for me, but I'm also a sucker for spy films and twisty thrillers, which this just keys up to 11.. I just cared a whole lot less about the characters and story than I did with Rogue Nation.

For the record, I do think that the story's trajectory bringing up old strands kinda-works in theory because it's not hard to believe that villains would use Hunt's Achilles heel against him, and I appreciate the concept that the past would eventually catch up with anyone running around the globe exhaustingly nonstop, but the last act still doesn't fully succeed for me. It doesn't help that Ferguson is suddenly in awe at Ethan and becomes reduced to two-dimensional characterization, after being so strong as his equal who could communicate in a special shared language via intimate nonverbal means at every turn in Rogue Nation, now puzzlingly transformed into another light sparring partner for Benji in the script with zingers and confused facial tics. Anyways, that's a lot of negative expressions for a film I really like, and as far as action films go, there's nothing even close to beating this series out there right now.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#154 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 23, 2020 3:10 am

It's funny that Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Spielberg's Adventures of Tintin came out within a week of each other, because the M:I feels like the live-action version of that comic-adaptation. That's not a criticism, even if it's not quite the masterpiece I used to believe, because the film never pretends to be anything other than a lightweight exercise in imbuing animated energy into the spy universe. Ghost Protocol is running on narrative-autopilot compared to the subsequent entries' cognitive-shifting dynamics, for like Tintin the characters' actions are revolved around merely following transient objects switching hands rather than unraveling layers they need to pivot from with new agendas built from flooding information. The comedy, visual ideas, setpieces and buoyant tone are welcome and emphasized in abundance to counteract the dark grit of the previous entry (which I love equally, just for different reasons). Paula Patton never feels like she fits in, because she doesn't, but this is a necessary entry to bridge between the other films and Rogue Nation, since that film becomes a Greatest Hits blend between this and III, elevated to a new level.

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tenia
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#155 Post by tenia » Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:31 am

For all its autopilot narrative, I still think (and having taken advantage of the lockdown to watch the 6 movies again over a very short period of time) Ghost Protocol is the most balanced movie between GP, RN and Fallout. It might be because I quite like Jeremy Renner's character, or because I don't feel Simon Pegg is hijacking the show, but it feels like a more cohesive and balanced teamwork between the MI members. It's not perfect, but I don't think RN and even less so Fallout (which is far too long) are either and if I had to choose, I'd most certainly pick GP as the best of these last 3 movies.

However, all three do feel like a massive improvement over the previous movies. Not that I don't like the 1st one (which I've grown to like a lot unlike when I first watched it) or the 3rd (which went the opposite way : I used to like it a lot, but now, the more I watch it the more I see its flaws), but the last 3 movies feel like much better more cohesive and simply way bigger action movies. In some ways, DePalma might have been in the past the only one to manage all these elements in the 1st movie, but I always felt its tone, while being good, was a tad out of place.

I also quite like (like you it seems) how Fallout brought out the "behind the scenes" drama in the foreground, though I felt the movie has mostly Sean Harris to thank for it, but it does work in enlarging the movie's motivations past the "villain of the day".

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#156 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:34 am

I can understand that- Ghost Protocol is still my second favorite, and the installment most resembling ‘comfort food’ in a series where every film could be described that way. You’re right that as far as teamwork is concerned, it’s the most pleasurable because they’re running together, and new players all around (Benji’s first field job counts for me) make the dynamics feel fresh. I guess I feel like it’s easier for a film to be cohesive when operating at this level- though that’s not meant to take away the challenge of animating the action in a manner that requires Bird’s Pixar skillsets.

Rogue Nation, on the other hand, manages to strike a difficult balance of narrative creativity, pure entertainment, and also accentuate the dramatic stakes through loneliness by omitting the larger groups for teamwork. Now, this is not John le Carré, but it’s the closest the series has ever come to emulating his worldview- isolating Cruise and Ferguson as lost souls feeling uncertainty and desperation, only able to access one another and even then not knowing, or being able to communicate, the truth. The IMF group is split off in pairs, making for some solid buddy-cop comedy, but also stressing this lack of support and weight of personal accountability with transparency. The methods by which the characters continue to orbit around constantly moving targets and occasionally make contact with each other before going their separate ways is fun but also highlights this disconnect and (don’t laugh) doses of the realism of spy-life’s social segregation.

Of course le Carré’s protagonists wouldn’t be involved in lavish setpieces like this, but the tone of lonely confusion and the execution of deliberately-paced carefully-considered betrayal finds its way into a Bond-like action series, and so when the teamwork does come together it’s relieving and thrilling in ways only possible through the earlier subversion. I prefer that to the ‘sitting around the table laughing’ GP ending, that conveys that film’s mood perfectly, while RN ends with another break in orbit back into separation, signaling that detachment as the normal state for spies in a rather bleak and hopeless fashion, and then ends on a scene without any of the core group members, including Cruise, which solidifies this exclusive de-emphasis of his importance outside of being a go-to govt guy. In a sense, the film recognizes Harris’ perspective of spies being mistreated as expendable pawns by disloyal institutions in unreciprocated relationships via its formalist strategy of the last ten minutes, in addition to the narrative execution of these themes, even if it’s not endorsing such an ethos.

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knives
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#157 Post by knives » Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:48 am

First time I’ve heard the first two called comfort food. :P

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tenia
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#158 Post by tenia » Wed Dec 23, 2020 12:02 pm

I understand what you mean, TWWB, and I certainly acknowledge all the points you're mentioning as elements adding depth to the franchise without sacrificing too much of the other elements. However, as a whole, I guess the newer MI movies operate on a certain delicate equilibrium which I felt RN was handing slightly worse than GP, being by having Renner and Baldwin stuck in a courtroom (ie having the actors and characters in the movie but basically being almost useless), having Pegg starting (to my tastes) to highjack the dynamic of the supporting characters (like he did on Star Trek Beyond) or indeed mostly splitting the team in sub-pairs like tons of movies before as if the screenwriters couldn't handle a bigger team and had to dumb it down by working with pairs instead.

It's a minor change to the formula, I think, like a small adjustment, some kind of fine tuning being done either a step to the left or a step to the right, but overall, the 4th movie formula felt more organic to me, whereas I thought the 5th movie looked like watching multiple mecanisms working together instead of the whole resulting machinery (I'm not sure this one is phrased in proper English, but hopefully, it's decipherable).

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#159 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 23, 2020 3:11 pm

knives, I don't like the first two at all, so I wouldn't consider them comfort food- but I guess I see the 'series' mold really taking off with III, though I should've been clearer about that.

I get what you're saying tenia, and I think it comes down to a preference over watching that whole group dynamic functioning together with whimsical fun vs the multi-layered mixture of cold spy destabilization and crafty action that discerns teamwork in novel places. Your mention of "teamwork" prompted me to think about how this integral concept to the series is utilized in Rogue Nation. In GP, the affinity is demonstrated in straightforward, exciting role-playing games with everyone communicating and improvising with each other openly within pre-planned operations. In RN, this teamwork comes out in a lot of happy accidents (Pegg's banging on the wall triggering the banner movements, Pegg tricked into joining an operation against his will, Renner and Rhames also confused and in the dark about their roles running around trying to catch up, Baldwin tricked, etc.) but the really juicy moments of teamwork manifest in undisclosed gestures between smaller groups of people, which are subtly intimate in ways never reached before or since. Ferguson saves Cruise’s life twice, which quietly emasculates his superhuman individualism from the prior film but also provides a piercing intimacy that they cannot realise outside of these professional roles, a sad kind of fatalism that suggests an impotence to transcend their ingrained prioritization of hierarchical allegiance due less to nationalism and more to a fear of change from departing those systems. Still, the knowing looks they give one another reflect a deeper level of understanding of what teamwork means, even if they're often sly, appearing as betrayal, or while keeping the other in the dark. I understand I may be reading a bit too much into this, but there’s something very honest about that depiction: how we can be there for others without being fully transparent and earning credit for it on the surface, and I do think the film is aiming for this kind of emotional humility within an action film.

Back to the le Carré musings, I like how Harris finds an uncategorizable blend between a Bond villain and Karla-esque elusiveness with the latter's implicit mastery, down to his plan which involves defecting agents that's taken to intense levels of the Bond caliber.

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aox
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#160 Post by aox » Wed Dec 23, 2020 3:14 pm

I have only seen the first one and when it came out. I liked it but never really gave it another thought. Then the second one rolled out and I heard nothing but abysmal things about it, so I skipped it and stopped following the franchise altogether (about that time I also moved away to college). I think I have a bit of Baader-Meinhof Syndrome since the pandemic because this franchise (Cruise's recent outburst aside) is suddenly being talked about in all of my circles with every gushing over the latter entries. I guess I'll dust these off. I realize it is a means to an end to get to 3-6, but how bad is the second film?

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#161 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 23, 2020 3:31 pm

It's abysmal, but you really don't need to see it. All you need to know about it is that they bring in the face-masks as a device. As I alluded to before, beginning with III the series not only found its footing (though has played around in tone and style across all four of the last entries!) but the characters and ideas have been borrowed and repurposed starting there, so someone could easily skip the first two and go in with III.

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senseabove
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#162 Post by senseabove » Wed Dec 23, 2020 3:50 pm

Unless you mean something specific by "as a device," if that's the only reason to see 2, then there's no reason to see 2. Masks are in the first set-piece in 1, with Hunt/Cruise impersonating the senator.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#163 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:03 pm

I didn't say it was a reason to see it but something to know about it. I remembered them being used briefly in the first film, but they became much more of a go-to device beginning in the second (to ridiculous proportions), though yes, this element wasn't novel to that film and was in the TV series too I believe.

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knives
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#164 Post by knives » Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:12 pm

Though I highly recommend rewatching the first which is my favorite of the series and in my opinion the smartest post Cold War spy thriller.

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senseabove
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#165 Post by senseabove » Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:31 pm

Seconded. Having watched Fallout last night, I'd say 1 & 6 are my favorites, followed by 3 & 5. I can take or leave 4, and 2 I didn't actually watch this run-through because I remembered I had seen it after the first 10 minutes or so, and if I'd entirely forgotten it... well, I felt fine skipping to the ones I was actually curious about.

But beyond it still being my favorite, I think McQuarrie is pretty clever about making references to 1, in set pieces and twists (e.g. the traitors in 1 and 6, especially) but also in lore. I was surprised at the very quick reference from White Widow about her "mother, Max," that gets absolutely 0 reaction from Hunt and no follow-up in the script. But since that character is returning in 7 and 8, seems safe to assume that'll get followed up on there. And if they're bringing back Czerny as Kittredge, I wonder if they'll bring back Redgrave, too.

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knives
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#166 Post by knives » Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:43 pm

Wait, are you sure you’re not me?

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tenia
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#167 Post by tenia » Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:09 pm


aox wrote:how bad is the second film?
Abysmal indeed, either as a MI movie, an action movie or a John Woo movie. It plays like a worst of everything it tries to be, bad plotting, bad sub-plot, bad romance, bad villain, bad supporting characters, bad action movies, bad John Woo gimmicks. It also constantly feels like running on fumes, going in circles with no real direction on the horizon. It was probably 10 years since I last saw it and boy did I forget how bad it was. The Limp Bizkit might be the best thing it has to offer, which says a lot.

Also : I can't help to wonder what would have happened to the franchise if they would have starred and been produced by MI2 Tom Cruise.

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swo17
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#168 Post by swo17 » Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:21 pm

No, this is the best thing about MI2

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#169 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:30 pm

senseabove wrote:
Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:31 pm
But beyond it still being my favorite, I think McQuarrie is pretty clever about making references to 1, in set pieces and twists (e.g. the traitors in 1 and 6, especially) but also in lore. I was surprised at the very quick reference from White Widow about her "mother, Max," that gets absolutely 0 reaction from Hunt and no follow-up in the script. But since that character is returning in 7 and 8, seems safe to assume that'll get followed up on there. And if they're bringing back Czerny as Kittredge, I wonder if they'll bring back Redgrave, too.
Interesting, I remember the White Widow/Max relationship being pretty widely discussed in promotion around the time of the film's release (though whether that was just on the internet or openly in interviews I don't recall) but I agree that it's deliberately underplayed perhaps for these upcoming seemingly-interconnected sequels. Hunt's non-reaction is another example of detailing his obscured 'realistic' spy skills, which don't get enough credit for their accuracy amidst admittedly ridiculous louder content. McQuarrie and Cruise definitely mesh well in their desire to insert clever subtleties in his behavior often through non-action, and many of the pleasures of returning to the films are in trying to notice how he's expressing himself and with what information he has by that point- another reason Rogue Nation feels so layered.

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domino harvey
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#170 Post by domino harvey » Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:31 pm

Look, let’s just do the thing: 5, 3, 6, 4, 1, 2

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Pavel
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#171 Post by Pavel » Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:38 pm

I need to revisit the whole franchise to rank them confidently (right now 4, 5 and 6 kind of blend together), but I'm pretty sure 1 is my favorite.

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senseabove
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#172 Post by senseabove » Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:40 pm

domino this is a DISCUSSION board over here if you don't want to laboriously split hairs while we cycle through every possible opinion on an action megafranchise you can head right over to blu-— wait...

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knives
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#173 Post by knives » Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:42 pm

1, 6, 3, 5, 4, 2

Edit: I took the bait.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#174 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:54 pm

5, 3, 6, 4, 1, 2

Updated 12/25/2022
Last edited by therewillbeblus on Sun Dec 25, 2022 11:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Monterey Jack
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Re: Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-?)

#175 Post by Monterey Jack » Thu Dec 24, 2020 11:53 am

Am I the only one who authentically enjoys M:I-2? And not in an "ironic" way, but honestly think it's a slick, cool, romantic action thriller? For a movie that was the highest-grossing film of its year, it's confounding to me just how its reputation has plummeted in the two decades(!) since its release. It's like how Die Hard 2 and Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom have been pilloried as "the bad ones" in their respective franchises for decades, and yet I think they're awesome. Yeah, it's obviously a compromised film (oh, to see John Woo's original cut before the MPAA stepped in...!), there are a ton of blatant lifts from then-recent popular action flicks (Last Of The Mohicans, Darkman) and Cruise's star ego is probably at its grinning apex here, but the film offers up a nifty popcorn spy-movie riff on Hitchcock's Notorious, and it's the only film in the series where Cruise has actual chemistry with his female lead (the stunning Thandie Newton). It's far more entertaining than the third film -- with its flailing, extra-shakey action sequences -- and less convoluted than De Palma's admittedly-stylish original. Every time I sit through it, I enjoy it as super-sugary eye candy. The only real demerit is Hans Zimmer's leaden score (also a blight on the otherwise-terrific Fallout, scored by Zimmer's pet Lorne Balfe).

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