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Comments
Yeah, I'm with you there. I thought she was great in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, too.
She strikes me as very feisty.
The feistier the women the better, in my opinion. :D
Yeah, M:I3 is pretty much a ballsed up soap opera movie, definitely not for my taste, as well. But, there were things in it I did appreciate, including the famous Maggie Q scene as she steps out of the car... Good God!
"You have a wife, girlfriend? It's up to you how this goes. Because you know what I'm going to do next? I'm going to find her, whoever she is, I'm going to find her, and I'm going to hurt her."
@bondjames, I think that part of the film would've been more powerful if the woman was replaced with someone from Ethan's past we knew, and not someone we're supposed to suddenly know and care about from one flashback. There's just no real impact, and when Ethan saves her you think, "Oh yeah, the girl from the video. Cool."
It perhaps made sense in this case to use a former trainee without a background with the audience rather than someone we would more readily empathize with. If we had another character who we knew it might have been too heavy handed.
Paula Patton - Jane Carter
Rebecca Ferguson - Ilsa Faust
Emmanuelle Beart - Claire Phelps
Maggie Q - Zhen Lei
Keri Russell - Lindsey Farris
Thandie Newton - Nyah Nordoff-Hall
Michelle Monaghan - Julie Meade-Hunt
On the Hunt babes, it's Ilsa Faust all the way for me. Perfection. Claire was great too ("Ethan...the moneee"....love her French accent).
M:I-3 could easily be renamed to The Ethan Hunt Saga Vol. 3 or Taken: An Ethan Hunt Story.
Better than
"I'm the money." "Every penny of it!"
"How was your lamb?" "Skewered!"
"That's because you know what I can do with my little finger!"
If you have a character in a relationship that is never properly addressed, what's the point? It's why many films, including the Bonds, suffer. We're fed these ridiculously hideous pairings between Bond and women in a way that doesn't feel organic or sensible. The women become objects to gawk at, and not actual characters in their own right, and the connection they have with Bond feels phoned in as a response. The best of the films have Bond meeting with women who feel real, and their relationships feel more powerful because the movie takes the time to explain why the chemistry is there.
MI could do this element better, but there's a place for Hunt having a partner, as it's an interesting side of him to explore. MI6 seems to be doing more of that, or at the very least looking at him at a more invasive, personal way than we've seen before. He'll hopefully become less action man, and more just...man.
The issue with Ethan as a character is that in comparison to Craig's Bond, he's not as developed a man, and doesn't have as large an inner life. I can look at any scene Dan acts in and I'm instantly tuned into what Bond is doing and wondering what every move he makes means because I know the team put in the work to build him as a more human and reactive man with serious layers. The MI films don't convey that feeling, and that's all right, but if they're going into that territory more work needs to be done to make us actually care. I think Ethan is cool and I like seeing him fight his way out of bad situations with pragmatic thinking and resourcefulness, but like Bourne he's at times a shadow of a character. If this was the Brosnan era right now and we were getting Bond films like his alongside these films, I wouldn't be so hard on the franchises because they'd muddle together, but with Dan's Bond and the mission statement the team have with presenting Bond as a character and not a robotic superman, their approach outdoes others trying for the same thing. It's because I care about Bond, whereas the others I care more about watching. It's just not the same thing.
Surely you can make your point without exaggeration?
And, oh, @bondjames is correct: DC is better in intimate scenes than TC... CR's shower scene alone....
As @bondjames just stated, and I agree, TC can got a little OTT in his emotional scenes. Craig's much more subtle. And yes, he has the natural machismo to sell these scenes.
This sort of thing is difficult to do in the spy genre, as the characters are already supposed to be very repressed and "in check" individuals, making it difficult to make them feel layered without going into crazy emotional territory, which might not suit the character they are written to be. As agents they have to be distant, and that sometimes makes it hard to have then suddenly fall in love with another.
MI2 crap
MI3 not as bad as 2
MI4 excellent
MI5 excellent