missiom: inpossible: dead reckoning: part fucking one? oh christ. give over

[phantom_power]

The first one is a good little twisty spy thriller with a De Palma spin
The second one is ridiculous and the only real mis-step
The third one is Abrams and has the best baddie
Then Christopher McQuarrie takes over and they become quite similar in tone but exemplars of their form

[Old Nehamkin]

The first one is a good little twisty spy thriller with a De Palma spin
The second one is ridiculous and the only real mis-step
The third one is Abrams and has the best baddie
Then Christopher McQuarrie takes over and they become quite similar in tone but exemplars of their form

Brad Bird erasure!

[Funcrusher]

So is the John Woo one not good?

[phantom_power]

Brad Bird erasure!

Shit yeah, forgot that. Ghost Protocol is in the vein of the McQ ones I think

So is the John Woo one not good?

I don't think so. It is a bit of a mess and his doves 'n' slo-mo style doesn't really suit the film. Cruise has a terrible haircut as well

[Blinder Data]

Shit yeah, forgot that. Ghost Protocol is in the vein of the McQ ones I think

Ghost Protocol was much sillier with Incredibles-esque technology and amusing farcical sequences. McQ ones have been much straighter with the emphasis on bigger and better action set pieces.

Still reckon Fallot was up there with the best action films ever (until this one comes out, probably).

[phantom_power]

I think it is the one I have seen the least so I should give it another go

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I'm off to see it on Wednesday. I didn't realise until I booked the tickets that it's almost three hours long. It's only part one of two as well. What could possibly take that much time? It's not like Avengers, where there are a million characters.

[how do you like apples]

I think it is the one I have seen the least so I should give it another go

I think 5 and 6 are the best films in the series (so far), but 4 is probably the most fun one of the lot, and it gave me the biggest gasp at an action stunt I can remember seeing in any film.

Spoiler alert

When he's swinging back into the Burj from the outside and hits his head on the window. I've seen it 3 or 4 times now and it still gets me every time

[close]

[Chairman Yang]

I really like movies 4,5 & 6 so I just got back from seeing this first thing.

It's pffff.... dunno. OK?

Spoiler alert

First up. It's not a heist movie, so you're already missing that touch of cool and cleverness that 4,5 & 6 had. It's kind of pompous and shallow at the same time, like a Marvel movie.

The driving force of the story is the team chasing the parts of a MacGuffin that they repeatedly concede they don't understand the importance of. Video game writing.

I feel like the threat is both poorly realised and over-explained, which is probably a consequence of designing the stunts first and then fitting the story around them.

It feels titanically long and the, albeit spectacular, stunts end up going way overboard to the point that they lose any sense of danger and become cartoon sequences.

[close]

Err so, aye. Watch it if you want?

[lipsink]

I think 5 and 6 are the best films in the series (so far), but 4 is probably the most fun one of the lot, and it gave me the biggest gasp at an action stunt I can remember seeing in any film.

Spoiler alert

When he's swinging back into the Burj from the outside and hits his head on the window. I've seen it 3 or 4 times now and it still gets me every time

[close]

Yeah, this. That whole sequence is possibly the best set piece of the entire series.

[13 schoolyards]

They really seem to have half-arsed the story in this one - the point has always been the stunts, but there are a bunch of sloppy moments here, including one big plot development driven by

Spoiler alert

"damn, the gadget we always use for this stuff just broke for no reason" and a bad guy who keeps talking about how things have to happen because they set up the next stunt a computer program predicted them. Second big car chase trashing Rome this year after the last Fast & Furious movie too, you'd think they'd set up some bollards around those thousand year-old buildings or something.

[close]

The final sequence on the coal-powered Orient Express is pretty good though, and I did appreciate that, unlike every other "part one" movie of the last decade, this one had an actual ending and felt like if you didn't bother coming back for part two you still saw a proper (badly scripted) film and not just half of one.

But yeah, if you like this kind of thing then this is definitely this kind of thing.

[A Hat Like That]

2, no question.

On the telly last night, amazingly poorly put together nonsense. Oakleys on faces. John Woo and some doves. A young Dougray Scott. Limp Bizkit on the soundtrack. 2000, then?

[A Hat Like That]

I don't think that is true at all. There is nothing like seeing the actor's face during a stunt to give you a more visceral feel, and not seeing any CGI stuff helps as well. That's why something like John Wick works so well. Seeing Keanu performing all those fights is so much more exhilarating than having a long shot or camera angle that hides the stuntman's face.

nailed it.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I really like movies 4,5 & 6 so I just got back from seeing this first thing.

It's pffff.... dunno. OK?

Spoiler alert

First up. It's not a heist movie, so you're already missing that touch of cool and cleverness that 4,5 & 6 had. It's kind of pompous and shallow at the same time, like a Marvel movie.

The driving force of the story is the team chasing the parts of a MacGuffin that they repeatedly concede they don't understand the importance of. Video game writing.

I feel like the threat is both poorly realised and over-explained, which is probably a consequence of designing the stunts first and then fitting the story around them.

It feels titanically long and the, albeit spectacular, stunts end up going way overboard to the point that they lose any sense of danger and become cartoon sequences.

[close]

Err so, aye. Watch it if you want?

That's pretty much exactly what I'm expecting, so, in a way, that's reassuring. Unlike you though, I wasn't particularly wowed by the last two, so maybe I'll think this one is outright guff.

On the telly last night, amazingly poorly put together nonsense. Oakleys on faces. John Woo and some doves. A young Dougray Scott. Limp Bizkit on the soundtrack. 2000, then?

I caught the latter half of it on the telly last week and it is undoubtedly cack, but I must confess it left me with a warm sense of nostalgia thanks to how dated it is.

[Operty1]

Has Cruise and the team managed to pull off a better and more exciting car stunt than this yet:

If not then I'm out.

Whoever put it together has a poor grasp of physics.

[Stone Cold Steve Austin]

shouldn't have re-watched Big Train before this, it caused Simon Pegg's shitness to make me angry instead of letting it wash over me

[Mister Six]

These films always blur together into one indistinguishable blob to me and I never remember what actually happened or where the characters stand in relation to each other or anything like that but when I'm in the cinema watching them I certainly have a good time. Will be seeing this at the imax. I expect thrills.

Same here, except for bothering to watch it at all.

[notjosh]

Saw this last night, after rewatching Fallout at the weekend to get me extra pumped. I'm of the opinion that Fallout and Ghost Protocol represent the high watermark for modern action cinema, so was expecting a lot.

Unfortunately I had a similar reaction to @Chairman Yang. It felt more of a piece with Rogue Nation to me, except taking itself a bit too seriously. The Gabriel character is annoying and I don't have any time for 'prophecies' in a franchise like this. He's also part of probably the least realistic bit of action when:

Spoiler alert

he falls backwards off a train doing 100mph+ to land in a strategically parked (ie static) 2-metre-wide truck with a mattress in the back.

[close]

The franchise is also a bit overstuffed with characters now, and makes the mistake of thinking we care for them more than we do. Maybe it's just me, but don't think I really care if any of them live or die, beyond it being the inherent jeopardy of the action scenes.

Anyway, the main thing I was looking for was great action setpieces, and I left disappointed. Whereas Fallout had at least five really great ones (HALO jump, bathroom fight, Paris car chase, London footchase, sky helicopter chase) I think the only one that did anything for me in this was the climactic train sequence. And even that was marred by excessive CGI.

There's a big car chase in Rome and a hand-to-hand fight in Venice that both ought to have been good, but so much of it is filmed in close-up and fast cut that you don't get any of the visual clarity that you have in the aforementioned Fallout scenes. The Venice fight is filmed in a sort of muddy light with bits of lens flare so that it has that Paul Greengrass effect of trying to give the impression that lots of things are happening without ever really showing them. I wonder if Cruise is finally slowing down and the direction is having to cover for him more?

The big motorcycle jump is also a bit of a damp squib. The lead up to the jump, which I saw in full IMAX ratio in the BTS footage they showed before Avatar, shows him driving up a constructed ramp and felt very real and exciting. In the final product, shown in a cropped ratio on IMAX - they haven't gone full frame on anything, they've scrubbed the ramp out so he's just driving up the hill with loads of CGI dirt underneath the wheels. Sort of undermines the point of doing it for real. And then you lose him a little bit after the jump, rather than staying with him in the same way they did in the HALO scene, so it ultimately feels like a less stylish Spy Who Loved Me moment.

But the train sequence at the end is pretty decent, even if it also feels familiar and probably a bit less good than the thing which inspired it:

Spoiler alert

the trailer scene in The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

[close]

But yeah, it was fine. I'll go see the next one in IMAX as well in the hope of some better action scenes. But I worry the series has lost its mojo. Also Tom Cruise's face looks really puffy and botoxed now; it was quite distracting.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Cunning stunts.

[studpuppet]

Whoever put it together has a poor grasp of physics.

You've obviously never tested a Granada 2.8i Ghia X to its limits.

[Ferris]

Has Cruise and the team managed to pull off a better and more exciting car stunt than this yet:

If not then I'm out.

Whoever put it together has a poor grasp of physics.

Love the bit about midway through when the apples fall down, because it's like the director is telling the audience "as if all that wasn't enough, now his apples have all gone everywhere".

[Bad Ambassador]

The briefcase going "fuck this, I'm outta here!" through the window.

[madhair60]

just saw this it was good thanks x

[Operty1]

The briefcase going "fuck this, I'm outta here!" through the window.

I liked his glasses coming off as well! It's more frustrating as a sequence than dramatic as it seems the car could easily come to a natural stop. I just don't understand the car lifting at the end, especially so slowly. And the petrol cap seems to have come off somewhere along the way. There are too many questions. It's like it was filmed by people that couldn't drive and have never seen cars before.

[Operty1]

Love the bit about midway through when the apples fall down, because it's like the director is telling the audience "as if all that wasn't enough, now his apples have all gone everywhere".

They were also splattering all over the windows as if they have been sat, rotting in his car for a while. The car was barely moving.

[Sebastian Cobb]

That Appointment film's great tbh.

[beanheadmcginty]

Did anybody notice that a lot of the sequences in this had little or no music soundtrack? I don't think it detracted from the film at all, just stood out to me as unusual in this day and age. I wondered whether it was the makers responding to the very popular complaint these days that film/TV music is too loud and you can't hear the dialogue properly.

[Chairman Yang]

The music there was seemed like the two Mission Impossible themes and then like one long honking motif, it was pretty obnoxious.

I'd describe the soundtrack as 'blurry', if that makes sense?

[dissolute ocelot]

Appointment looks great, although I was waiting for a badly composited Christopher Reeve to pop up underneath the car at the end.

Anyway, for top car action, nothing beats Nicholas Ray's classic leather-jacket-on-door-handle action. This is what you call an over-the-top soundtrack:

[Captain Z]

If you can't complete your impossible mission in one part then its directives are too diffuse.