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McQuarrie did a terrific job, it's immensely entertaining and very fun. Cruise is fantastic and the action sequences are all fantastic and brilliantly staged.
However, there is no denying that the script is a hack job. The plot is overly convoluted and the dialogue can be hokey. It's also a little baggy and over-long.
The thing I find most amusing from the fans is how people seem to think that Bond should revert to the model adopted in Fallout. However, Fallout is basically a MI's attempt to make a Daniel Craig/Bond film.
You have your tortured spy dealing with personal demons. You have the same humourless and dry approach. You have a very 'personal' dimension to the character's motivations. Also, the film is visually very sterile and crisp (which I love) but surely the same people who complained that the Mexico sequences in SP were not colourful enough were surly disappointed by Fallout's more muted palette.
It reminded me a lot of SF and SP.
This is probably true.
I don't agree here. I don't think fans are calling for Bond to emulate MI. That's not the argument or the point. MI: Fallout is an Mi film through and through. The series DNA seeps through it. This is a 'team' effort with audacious death defying stuntwork, amazing pace, and lots of twists and turns. That's been the franchise's M.O. since inception in 1996. Furthermore, I don't think it's made in the style of a Daniel Craig film. On the contrary actually. I'd say MI predates the Craig era style. They are the ones who went to an auteur (in De Palma and then Woo) first. They are the ones who screwed with the canon (Phelps predates Brofeld). They are the ones who dealt with character motivations and the personal dimension (all the way back with Ethan's conflicted feelings for Claire in the original and more recently with his attempts to combine married life to Julia with work in MI:3). Even plot elements in the famed SF (the NOC list) were similar to the original MI.
Yes, there are scenes in this film which evoke SP (the helicopter sequence in particular), but they also borrow from many other films as well.
Regarding the palette, I think McQuarrie stated that he wanted a different feel to this film and intentionally went for a colder aesthetic, in contrast to the sunnier disposition of MI: RN. Moreover, London and Paris can get washed out at times in reality, so the approach isn't so far fetched.
I think what fans are really calling for (or at least what this fan is calling for) from Bond is a thrilling final product which has the sort of pace, suspense, twists, acting, score and audacious daring which we saw in this last MI offering. In other words, the sort of product that Bond used to deliver.
;)
I agree about the "team" element in MI. Cruise (Hunt) is the star but he feels part of a team. I've never felt that with a Bond film. Bond is usually out there on his own. Q can pop up to help him but you always get the feeling Bond is relying on his skills rather than others around him. Bond is a loner hero whereas Hunt is team player. I think the 'loner' aspect of Bond make him a more romantic and mysterious character.
This is bang on. Though I must admit to having a problem with neither the plot or the dialogue. However, I did see it three times. It's certainly not a hack-job, however. The film moves like a freight train to smooth out any problems it has. There were a couple of moments where Cruise put on a weird accent while pretending to be John Lark that threw me a bit, though.
The big difference between MI and a Craig film, apart from the obvious, is that the focus is not so much on Hunt himself but the effect that his work has on people around him - it's been the predominant theme of the last couple of films, and MI3.
This is contrast to Craig, whose era has been all about him directly - his personal demons, his childhood, his past. There is certain overlaps of course, but for the most part the approaches to these motifs are quite different and one unfortunately certainly comes across more hokey than the other. I wish Spectre tied the Craig films together as well as McQuarrie connected the previous Mission: Impossible flicks with one another.
I wouldn't want a Bond in the style of MI, but it'd be with a great sense of ignorance to say that Bond was hitting its current targets as well as MI is hitting theirs. They have the formula nailed now - the more personal stuff doesn't get in the way of the cracking action sequences.
As for the palette, the difference is simple - the muted colours work in the locations that MI is set in. Like SP, the same style wouldn't work in Mexico or Morrocco.
The other thing I like about what McQuarrie did in this last one is to hammer home Ethan's values - always looking out for the little guy (the individual), no matter what the cost. It was there in the earlier films of course, but McQuarrie highlighted it, most notably with that policewoman scene in this latest film. Now that he has, that character trait is all the more noticeable to me in the earlier films (insisting that the team wait for Bogdan in GP and dropping everything to rescue Lindsay in 3 etc. etc.).
Yep! Nailed it. Well said. Bond films latelyvjust haven't been entertaining; nowhere near as entertaining as they're supposed to be and Fallout is oozing with it. This isn't about Cruise doing his own stunts, that's beyond fantastic and I don't need any Bond actor to be doing his own crazy stunts; I want Bond to use stuntman when needed, cgi when needed and in the end for everything to come together in one exciting, visceral, engaging and highly entertaining package.
But it's at least better than that awful Abrams film, aka MARRIAGE: IMPOSSIBLE.
2. Mission Impossible
3. Fallout
4. Ghost protocol
5. Rogue Nation
6. MI:2
I just enjoy M:I-2 on an absurd level like I would of FACE/OFF. It's also super melodramatic in a way that it becomes comical at times with how it's played. The only thing that would have made the car chase between Cruise and Newton more over the top is that if they just started having sex in the car on the edge of the cliff. That would have shot that film up above GHOST PROTOCOL. It's got a personality that so many action films lack.
Nah, that criticism is massively overblown. Never really understood why people damn the flick for an aspect that is only takes up a small fraction of the runtime.
M:I-3 is a great flick, with great set-pieces, a great score, and the best baddie of the series so far.
Agreed.
The first film threw those rules out the window when they made Phelps the villain, and the second one went even further away from it thanks to its absolutely ridiculous Woo-ishness, which was a chore to get through. So holding that as a criticism against the third film doesn't really wash. Abrams, to his credit, also brought the team element back for the third film which was sorely missed in the second and also gave us a glimpse at the IMF's inner workings for the first time.
And again, the home-life stuff is barely there (the first 20 minutes essentially, after that it's not about balancing a home-life, it's about saving someone he loves) and blown far out of proportion by the film's detractors. M:I-3 is no more personal than FALLOUT is. The films are very comparable in terms of their motifs, just as GHOST PROTOCOL and ROGUE NATION are.
Sure, the hospital rooftop conversation between Ethan and Julia is a bit melodramatic, but it lasts three minutes. I don't write the film off because of it. Cruise and Monaghan are good enough actors to pull it off, as well.
It’s as if they couldn’t afford Hoffman (who had just won the Oscar for CAPOTE) for too many scenes or he was simultaneously filming something else and was unavailable. It was kinda jarring to me.
I know the series isn’t known for memorable villains but I’d go with Sean Harris as Solomon Lane. Not only did he appear in my 2 favorite films in the series but his creepy whispery voice gives me chills, particularly in Rogue Nation. Not to mention that the Syndicate is my favorite villainous organization so far. Jon Voight was easily the best actor to play a villain (I’ll watch Voight in anything) but because they made Phelps the villain I can’t seriously pick him. That was really stupid and disrespectful to the original series. Basically a stupid twist just for the sake of a twist, like what they did with “brother” Blofeld in SP.
IMF has a mole, a simple simpleton villain escapes and threatens Ethan's life and his wife, trust issues and pretentious red herrings (Hell, I've always known Fishburne's character isn't the villain), shakycam nonsense, overreacting agent who's bound to be a professional yet acts nothing like it but gets agitated every two seconds, and - of course - a plot device that isn't even disclosed. Rabbit's Foot. What the hell is it, anyway?
A Mission: Impossible film should be about chasing that MacGuffin and stopping it from bringing harm upon innocent lives. Not about Ethan Hunt's personal life that doesn't seem to work out. I'm glad Fallout finally closed that chapter, and now we get to just enjoy the spy thrillers the franchise is made for.
Memoirs of a Semi-Retired Agent Not Accustomed To Civilian Life? No thanks. Save all that "lovey dovey" dialogues for chick flicks. That's why the third film is by far the weakest, and I'd rather take that ridiculous John Woo film with hardened slow motions and dual Berettas in shootouts over any melodramatic Bourne ripoff.
Nah, that criticism is massively overblown
Never really understood why people damn the flick for an aspect that is only takes up a small fraction of the runtime.
M:I-3 is a great flick, with great set-pieces, a great score, and the best baddie of the series so far. [/quote]
+1
MI:3 gave the series heart and made Ethan a three dimensional character.
With that said , future films wisely did not iwallow in the personal aspects, as some other franchises have done.
I actually don't mind not finding out what the Rabit's Foot was. Sometimes plot devices are little more than just ways to motivate characters into impressive set pieces. Hitchcock knew that well. It didn't matter what the plot device in NORTH BY NORTHWEST was, so long as it brought the characters to the climax on Mt Rushmore. The problem with M:I-3 was that the plot device didn't bring the characters to any memorable action sequences.
Melodramatic schoolboy (with Tom Cruise giving off his worst acting aspects that are fortunately left behind by him, since Ghost Protocol), that's what Ethan Hunt was in Mission: Impossible III.
Granted. Hoffman was a great presence on the screen, but I have a hard time to believe some as frightening as Solomon Lane who embodied the entire globe in his palm couldn't properly get to Hunt while a mere arms dealer like Owen Davian got under his skin by uttering a few couple of words any average school bully would do and Hunt lost his temper and acted like his life was on the verge of collapse. Now, give me that.
Having said that, I do like the way the story was wrapped up in MI: Fallout. I credit McQuarrie and Cruise for getting the tone just right with this film while closing that chapter. This is how they perhaps should have opened it as well.
I'm conflicted about Cruise in MI:3. I know he's giving it his all, but he comes across too wound up imho (I realize why, but still).
I have 2 and 3 at the bottom and can't pick between them sometimes. I think 2 deserves credit for the great action sequences and its overstylized approach. It's memorable for that at least. Oh, and Thandie.
Repetition doesn't reinforce the points already outlined above, I'm afraid. Again, the retractors always zoom in on a part of the film that only takes up a fraction of the runtime and is surrounded by pretty solid stuff. Once we get past the first twenty-minutes there's very little difference between the third film and FALLOUT in terms of the motifs explored. Unfortunately, it seems that people are unable to get past that.
I don't see any confusion with the film. It sets out to do a very specific thing - give Ethan a bit of humanity - and succeeds. And despite arguments to the contrary it doesn't really do it by detracting from the mission at hand. It's arguably the film that allowed the successors to build on the character into what McQuarrie achieved with FALLOUT.
Each to their own, of course, but the criticism of M:I-3 seems pretty numb-skulled to me.
And yes, I'm aware I gave out about repetition and then repeated myself. I know, I know. :p
Fallout is dialed down on the personal angle by a wide margin in comparison to the third film. Some unnecessary nightmares here and there, but we don't see Hunt break character by overreacting out of the ordinary whereas the third film overdoes it. It drifts away from the mission with everything it has, and doesn't focus on the real threat that's supposed to be the said Rabbit's Foot.
The first film showed more character development in Hunt's personality that tied in with the fourth and beyond smoothly. The third one, however, was made to appeal to those who enjoy soap operas. But, in all fairness, those who like it, it's fine by me. To go out of their way to tell me it had great set-pieces? I'd say we've been watching two different films.