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Mission: Impossible Film Series Thread


RonL21

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I just saw Rogue Nation and I loved it. This franchise apparently caught the same disease the Fast and Furious series caught. I thought this series was dead after the 3rd movie, but Ghost Protocal totally revitalized the series and Rogue Nation just builds off of that momentum.

I actually haven't seen the first movie in a long time, same with the 2 & 3, so I'm not sure how it holds up. I was quite fond of the game on my N64, though

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One day, I need to watch these. The first one filled me with such murderous rage that I never got round to the sequels (even the one by Brad Bird, making it the only movie of his I haven't at least tried to see in theater.) I know they get better then worse then better etc., but still. Fuck that first one in the eye with a horse.

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Part 3 introduces the team that they kept bringing back in the future sequels, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is interesting a reptilian heel who's basically a Bond villain. It's nothing amazing, but it's okay, JJ Abrams directed it.

But yeah, skip the SHIT out of part 2; it's the very worst thing John Woo has ever made, by a pretty huge margin. Just terrible, feels like a spoof-movie parody of Woo's usual style. Having boring-as-fuck, useless why-are-they-actors like Thandie Newton and Dougray Scott as our co-leads isn't helping any either.

Just curious, Cliff, what pissed you off so badly about the first one? I haven't watched it in long years, but I used to like it and most other people agreed, back in the 90s at least.

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Furious 7 was my first Fast and the Furious film this year and Rogue Nation was my first Mission: Impossible film last night. I right liked it. Maybe a bit too twisty at the end? I perhaps would have got more out of the references in Rogue Nation to events in the previous films if I'd seen them. Tom Cruise may be small but his balls sure aren't doing stunts like he does in this film and I'd seen the Burj Khalifa Ghost Protocol stunt previously as it made the news while Cruise was promoting the film. More Rebecca Ferguson in the next entry please, what a bad ass! Going to be hard to top what Cruise and Ferguson did in this movie. 

 

Wouldn't mind seeing the remaining film in the series to complete the set, know Ghost Protocol is well regarded.

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I actually liked Part 3, but the bookend scenes with P.S. Hoffman are what I think attracted me to that film.

 

I think I have seen all but part one in the theater. I hope to catch Rogue Nation this weekend.

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Part 3 introduces the team that they kept bringing back in the future sequels, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is interesting a reptilian heel who's basically a Bond villain. It's nothing amazing, but it's okay, JJ Abrams directed it.

But yeah, skip the SHIT out of part 2; it's the very worst thing John Woo has ever made, by a pretty huge margin. Just terrible, feels like a spoof-movie parody of Woo's usual style. Having boring-as-fuck, useless why-are-they-actors like Thandie Newton and Dougray Scott as our co-leads isn't helping any either.

Just curious, Cliff, what pissed you off so badly about the first one? I haven't watched it in long years, but I used to like it and most other people agreed, back in the 90s at least.

As a fan growing up of the 80s version of the series (and later the 60s when I saw it) I really hated the Phelps heel turn, and the fact that it felt like a "Tom Cruise movie" with most of the team he assembles being pretty bland and more accessories than "part of the operation". It might have been more bad expectations for an adaptation rather than the movie itself being "bad."

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Ah, gotcha, Super Mario Bros. syndrome. (I still maintain that's one of the best movies ever adapted from a video game, when considered as a goofy standalone film aside from its horrible mutilation of the source material.) Well, believe me, you'd hate part 2 even more, it turns into nothing but endless gunfights (and SHITTY ones, by Woo's standards). Part 3 gets the series back to the basic model of "a team of spies hatches a meticulous plan to do stuff" and it continues like that in 4 and 5.

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I really liked the first one when it originally came out but haven't seen it in years.  Action films from the 90s that rely on a lot of fancy technology have a tendency of aging poorly because of how outdated all the technical elements look, but I might give it another chance sometime soon. 

 

Part 2...fuck...  This movie came out the summer after my first year of college and myself and the group of guys I'd befriended over the year got together at a central location to go catch it.  We hadn't hung out in a month or two and finally found a night when we were all free to go see it and were really looking forward to the movie having discovered John Woo's back catalogue over the past year.  I remember about halfway though the movie, one of my friends turns to the rest of us and say "I'm sorry about this guys".  We all pretty much agreed that if we'd been at the movie solo we'd have walked out of it.

 

Because of how shitty part 2 was I never bothered with part 3 and was really surprised when a fourth was released.  Curiosity got the best of me and I watched Ghost Protocol and loved it.  After that I went back and watched the third and it's nothing special but inoffensive.  PSH's character is a bit over the top but otherwise it's a totally serviceable action movie and does a good job introducing the new characters.

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IMHO, Part 3 is one of the weakest ones other than the villain.  

 

For example, the torture scene.  Why would PSH and Crudup stage an elaborate fake torture scene and execution of his wife?  Why wouldn't they just actually torture her and threaten to kill and/or execute her?  That made no sense to me other than to give the audience a big bait and switch.  

 

For another, the film completely telegraphed that Crudup was the real bad guy.  IMHO, his whole scheme was lame.  

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I remember it being the mid 90s equivalent of a meme that the plot to the first MI was too complex and confusing. It didn't seem that way when I rewatched it a few years ago though. I loved the second one when it came out, but I was 13 and had just gone Woo crazy. I'll have to check it out again. The third one was pretty good, but Ghost Protocol is spectacular and the building repelling scene is an all-time great movie set piece. I love the franchise because each one is unique and has a director with their own sensibility.

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Saw it this afternoon. Tom Cruise either thinks he's immortal, or he's jealous that Brandon Lee got to die while filming a movie and wants to better him. That bike chase - he's not wearing a helmet or any leathers, but he is going really fast, weaving in and out of traffic, and a lot of it is shot close up enough that you can see it's actually him doing it (in some shots at least. Probably not all of them).

 

Not sure where they found Rebecca Ferguson, never heard of her before, but that's a hell of a way to launch a career. Hope she's in the next one, the series has a habit of not bringing female characters back for sequels for some reason.

 

Also nice to see a movie with a male protagonist and a femme fatale of indeterminate allegiance where they aren't playing a romance angle.

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I've actually been watching the series the last two months or so before catching the latest film (haven't seen it yet). I saw the first one in theaters as kid and fell asleep so I remembered very little of it. I thought it pretty average upon rewatching it. I liked Cruise & Ving Rames, but no one else did much for me. Didn't think 2 was terrible, but I didn't think it was good or anything either. I thought 3 was a decent flick, probably the best out of the first 3. PSH as the villain definitely helped. Ghost Protocol was solid, maybe even good. I missed Rhames, but the cast was good and had nice chemistry. I dug how they handled the wife.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Finally caught Rogue Nation. On the way home I realized that for the entire length of the franchise's existence it's been better than it's Bond counterparts (except for Casino Royale.) I'm pretty fond of MI, but as a Bond fan it bums me out.

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Finally caught Rogue Nation. On the way home I realized that for the entire length of the franchise's existence it's been better than it's Bond counterparts (except for Casino Royale.) I'm pretty fond of MI, but as a Bond fan it bums me out.

 

This will be contentious...I'd say the same about the Jason Bourne trilogy. There's no fourth film out there ; ).

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  • 4 weeks later...

I finally watched Ghost Protocol last night.

 

I enjoyed it but that was also because I kinda just want mindless nonsense - so this is fine with me.

I am still unsure why Paula Patton isn't more of a thing.

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Rogue Nation is the first time in five films where I feel like they've struck a perfect balance between the TV shows aesthetic and blockbuster action. Hats off to Christopher McQuarrie, hope they bring him back for the next one.

 

I enjoy the first one, even though the tech is beyond goofy and dated (the emailing scene always makes me cringe). 2 just doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned, such an awful film that tries to cram in every hip thing from the early 2000s. 3 was okay give or take but highlighted my biggest issue with the series up to that date which was the lack of any consistency between the films. Ghost Protocol I remember enjoying but honestly can't remember the story or anything outside of the skyscraper set piece and Sawyer dying at the beginning

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Ghost Protocol I remember enjoying but honestly can't remember the story or anything outside of the skyscraper set piece and Sawyer dying at the beginning

 

What's funny was I was like "Wait? is he in this movie for a minute?"

At least he got a couple more scenes

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  • 6 months later...

My wife bought the franchise pack on DVD because she's only seen Rogue Nation, so I watched MI:2 for the first time in probably 15 years. Holy shit, what a gloriously cringeworthy time capsule of the year 2000. Cruise and co. responded to complaints about the complex plot and lack of action in the first MI by making this one as dumb and loud as possible. The music video cinematography and editing, the flamenco music cues, the John Woo self-parody, the Metallica and Limp Bizkit soundtrack...it's amazing. Plus, early signs of Tom Cruise's complete disregard for his own safety by insisting that Dougray Scott actually put a knife 1/4 of an inch away from his eye at full strength. Oh and Dougray Scott is the bad guy, and when production goes long on this he loses the role of Wolverine in X-Men to some dude named Hugh. I'm sure that doesn't keep him up at night. 

And why wasn't Thandie Newton in everything after this? 

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