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The MI films are movies, just like the Bond ones: I don't see why they can't be dissected and discussed.
WOAH not by all bond fans
even Craig's worst film Spectre I would put above Daf Diaminds etc
You're absolutely right there. I guess what I meant to say is that Bond films are big cultural events, particularly in the UK and Europe, whereas the M:I films are no doubt successful too but are purely Hollywood entertainment and not a broader cultural institution with the attention and expectations that Bond gets.
LOL!!!
Just look how brillianly NTTD performed in such crazy times. It will almost match Fallout's worldwide gross (the highest grossing M:I film) during a pandemic and after a 18 months delay. Without those unpredictable shut downs in China a couple of days before its premiere it would've bested Fallout surpassing the $800M mark.
Regarding your ranks, well, I'm sorry to inform you that your personal taste is not the expression of the whole world.
Based on IMDB rankings, Craig has 4 out of 5 of his films in the top 10 of the Bond franchise, with 3 in the top 5. Sorry to tell you that.
Ah, and Craig stands as the actor with the best average per film of the whole saga, adjusting for inflation, with a $900M+ average that is even better than Sean's.
And besides... while the M:I franchise will be over in a couple of years, Bond will continue to pack theaters and make money for decades.
I'd agree with you here. Also I'm not sure why the M:I franchise will be over in a couple of years, maybe alluding to the fact that Cruise won't be able to do it forever and the franchise won't necessarily be able to continue after him (I'm sure people were saying that about Connery etc etc, but the fact is the marketing around these films currently seems to be "what insane stunt will Cruise do this time"). The M:I films could have been titled:
M:I 4: Cruise Climbs the Burj
M:I 5: Cruise Holds His Breath For 1 Hour
M:I 6: Cruise Holds Onto A Plane During Takeoff
(I've probably mismatched the stunts here, but my point remains).
Lately the M:I films have been "tighter" and more cohesive than the Bond films have been, I'll give you that (perfect example is Rogue Nation vs. Spectre, where M:I handled the arch-villain dynamic much more deftly than Spectre did), but these films, IMO, tend to just slide off the consciousness (enjoyable when you're watching them, but not a tonne of lasting impact), where as the Bond films, for better or worse, stay with you. And I think this is true for general audiences as well given the comparative successes of both franchises.
This. I heard much more general chatter about Fallout than I ever did for SP. Hell, some people I know weren't even aware of SP as a film around the time of release. Even if the only method of marketing they have is "what dangerous stunts will Cruise pull off this time," I'd say they're doing something right (and for me, the films offer way more than a cool stunt or two to keep me returning to watch them).
I don't know, I see more references in pop culture to Bond than I do M:I, so to me that's at least one small indicator that the public consciousness holds on to Bond more than M:I.
But what do I know, I'm sure you're right.
Yep. There's a lot about M:I that reminds me of the pre-Craig Bond films in terms of the mood they pull from the audience. They're a rollercoaster ride. They've very clearly been attempting to fill that void while the Craig era has been experimenting with new things, and that's great as it's a win-win for people like me.
In short: I'm glad we have both.
I'm also not quite sure I agree with the idea that the M:I flicks simply slide off people's radar after they've been seen, no more than Bond does. The first M:I is still an immensely iconic 90s film and the last three films are seemingly on British television every second or third weekend. They don't get shown for no reason. I think comments like "they're really forgetful" are examples of confirmation bias from people who just don't like Cruise.
I disagree. It’s like comparing a BMW to a Rolls Royce, but yeah that’s a tiresome discussion.
He's saved the world, he's fallen in love, he's been married, he's been separated, he has friends, he's been put into situations where he has to make extremely difficult choices, etc.
I've seen that criticism levelled against M:I before, and once again it feels a lot like a thin veil disguising more dislike of Cruise himself than anything else.
Respectfully I strongly disagree on this point. He comes from a different school of acting than Dan but is very much his equal. Cruise has continued to maintain a high level in his acting while excelling in the more physical elements. One area that I think he edges out Daniel is a more deft injecting of humor; often it’s subtle and self deprecating.
Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. I think the more emotional and dramatic scenes he shares with Rebecca Ferguson and also Michelle Monaghan in the last couple were fairly stellar moments.
It's not something really worth "giving up" over. :))
You can't think Spectre is better than Fallout? Fallout is a practically perfect action adventure film. Rogue Nation too is just a brilliantly balanced piece of action filmmaking with one of the most satisfying resolutions in years.
Do they have groundbreaking plots? No, but then neither did North By Northwest: all of the flavour comes from the way everything is so perfectly set up, paid off, tension is built effectively etc.
At least SP is cooler, richer and romantic.
Wish I saw that in these films but I just don’t. Sometimes he bangs his head a bit I guess, but there’s not nearly enough self deprication imo. Ethan Hunt is never the butt of the joke, he never gets the piss taken out of him, the camera is always in close up to hide his height. That’s why I don’t get the Jackie Chan/Buster Keaton comparisons. There’s hints of physical comedy in MI, but never enough to undermine how badass Cruise’s “character” is supposed to be, and there’s never anyone ribbing Hunt or any women rejecting him (even Bond has examples of that, and his whole thing is being the coolest most unflappable hero). He’s too perfect and infalliable a hero imo.
Don’t think you can blame people for disliking Cruise first of all. And all that you’ve listed there is just stuff that happens to Hunt. In terms of personality, I think he’s a fairly generic stock character. It took them six films to give him any kind of character flaw, and the best they could come up with was “he’s just too much of a hero”. I really can’t think of many character traits he has. Whereas Bond has flaws, and tastes, interests. I can picture Bond drinking at the casino bar in his downtime. I could tell you what Indiana Jones is afraid of and skeptical of. But I have trouble imagining Ethan Hunt existing outside of the confines of his films, and I couldn’t tell you anything about him that doesn’t apply to pretty much every action hero ever.
There were hints of a character in the earlier films (they mentioned his parents at one point, and we used to see bits of his downtime), but I think he’s become more generic over time, because everything about the last few feels very formulaic and calculated in service of Cruise’s career rehabilitation imo, from scientologist creep to action hero who just really loves making movies. A good example is how sexless his latest films are. There might be hints of romance between him and whatever hot young British actress he’s decided to use (Andrea Riseborough didn’t have nice things to say about how him and his team pick his leading ladies, if you want another reason to dislike him) but the chemistry there isn’t really sexual in the way it often was in his earlier films. Remember MI 2, the jealousy and competition between him and Dougray Scott over the female lead who his organisation were pimping out? I bet there’ll never be anything like that in an MI film again, and we’ll never see him in anything like Eyes Wide Shut again. They’ve got to play it safe, stick to the formula, and avoid anything that could remind the audience of his creepy personal life.
It's a worse film though, even though I don't hate it. I don't think I've ever felt much about Spectre; the drama never really kicks in. With MI there are moments of genuine tension, built from an actual liking for the characters. I thought Benji was going to die at the end of the last one and I was surprised to find how tense I was at that.
I feel like you haven't seen Rogue Nation, where he falls over a car because he's just recently been resuscitated, his small statue in comparison to a gigantic baddie is made a joke of, quite a few jokes are made at his expense in fact. Those carry over to Fallout; and then you have the Burj sequence in Ghost Protocol where he doesn't want to do it, the water sequence where he's shown not to have the confidence Benji shows in him to be able to do it... I feel you haven't seen a lot of these films. Yes, he's a superspy, and that's even a joke at times (he can draw a perfect photofit of someone on his hand, he can read lips perfectly etc.) but that doesn't mean he isn't poked fun at.
I would say that Craig's Bond probably has much less fun poked at him, in fact.
I think Craig’s Bond gets poked fun at him plenty though. I can’t really imagine the leading lady in an MI film laughing at Hunt in the way Vesper does at Bond checking himself out in his tux, and I definitely can’t imagine anything like the scene with Nomi at Bond’s house in NTTD, where she rejects him and makes a few digs at his age (another good example of what I’m on about, the geezer is 60 but I doubt we’ll see the films address that). But like I said, I don’t know these films as well as you do, so again I could be forgetting some examples.
I don't. And I don't particularly care if they do, really. I don't find him all that appealing as a bloke, either. I wouldn't want to have a pint with him. But I can separate the man from the character he plays in films and from there it's very easy to spot confirmation-biased criticism when someone has a go at his performances or the work he puts in. Irrespective of his garbage personal affairs - he's a bona-fide movie star and he's very good at what he does.
But things happening to people are a fairly big part of what builds their character, I feel. Give me a hypothetical scenario and I could probably tell you how Ethan Hunt would solve it and what issues would arise from his approach for others. Is that not character enough for the world he inhabits? But I take your point that it's hard to imagine him in his downtime, even if that doesn't particularly bother me all that much. As I said, that's part of what makes Bond an enduring cultural phenomenon, for sure. However, I don't really see how it can be sensibly used to tear another character down just because the latter characterisation simply *just* operates within the remit of the story that the respective films are trying to tell. If we're going to critique within these fairly rigid lines, are we going to get rid of the likes of say.....Jason Bourne, too? I don't know if that's quite right.
You're probably right about the age thing, though. They had the audacity to refer to Cruise as a "young man" in his Mummy reboot, which drew quite a few laughs from myself and people around me.
Actually M:I 5 was both "Cruise Holds His Breath For 1 Hour" and "Cruise Holds Onto A Plane During Takeoff." M:I 6 was "Cruise Battles Henry Cavill in a Helicopter" (though I understand in some countries the film was known as "M:I 6: The Reason Superman Has a Funny Mouth in Justice League").
Yesh, they're very toight...like a tiger. Wait, sorry. Forgot I wasn't in the Austin Powers thread.
When Ghost Protocol came out, M:I was filling a void that had been left by Craig's Bond: a globe-trotting action-adventure spy flick where it was all about the spectacle, the glamor, the comedy, the crazily good done-for-real stunts, and really just about having a good time. Bond was busy repeatedly trying to quit MI6 so he could go cry somewhere where there was moody lighting.
Rogue Nation and Fallout tried shouldering in on some of that trendy moodiness themselves, but they kept up the amazing stunts and at least in the case of Rogue Nation, in my opinion, kept things very toight. (Fallout falls a bit more into the bloated, striving-for-an-epic side of things for my taste.)
Thank you!