Mission: Impossible

Ebert gave MI3 2-1/2 stars, which is like zero from a critic with actual standards.

http://filmexperience.blogspot.com/2006/05/history-of-missions-impossible.html

http://nypress.com/19/18/film/ArmondWhite.cfm

J.J. Abrams
Director - filmography
(In Production) (2000s) (1990s)

Star Trek XI (2008) (announced) (attached)
The Good Sailor (2007) (pre-production)

Mission: Impossible III (2006)
... aka M:I-3 (USA: promotional abbreviation)
"Alias"
- Authorized Personnel Only: Part 1 (2005) TV Episode (minor segments) (uncredited)
- Authorized Personnel Only: Part 2 (2005) TV Episode (minor segments) (uncredited)
- The Telling (2003) TV Episode
- Almost Thirty Years (2002) TV Episode
- Truth Be Told (2001) TV Episode
"Lost"
- Pilot: Part 2 (2004) TV Episode
- Pilot: Part 1 (2004) TV Episode

"Felicity"
- Todd Mulcahy: Part 1 (1999) TV Episode
- Friends (1999) TV Episode

i like how they dispensed with that in the first one but they've really painted themselves into a corner

No Barbara Bain, no cred

I really liked the first one and have seen it a few times, wasn't bothered about the second one and saw a wee bit of tit when it was on the telly once, not really interested in the third one and don't mind whether I see it or not

(lotsa reviews say PSH doesn't get much meat in this)

Did anyone ever watch the 2nd one more than once? is there a point?

too true - cf. Malkovich, Dennis Hopper, tons of others.

(exception = Pacino in Dick Tracy!)

Terence Stamp?

I liked Malkovich in that Eastwood pic.

Kneel Before Zod = teh classic, of course.

for example, (ignoring the plot) Timothy Dalton & Robert Davi in License to Kill.

xpost Warner is classically trained, right? Also did outstanding voicework in Baldur's Gate 2 as the villain.

also, Peter Cushing in SW

(OK, how about solid actors who get to use more than 5% of their chops playing big baddies? I think Brandauer and Malkovich qualify here.)

we can pretty much rule out sharon stone.

X-Men movies are great, kingfish otm for why too. (next one's gonna BLOOOOOOWWWWWW)

I saw the new one this afternoon and I hope I never have to look at Cruise or his wet eyes again. The movie was ok, just exhausting. My bladder was tired.

3 is the straightest movie alive and i will never not be pissed when they don’t film tom cruise stealing the rabbit’s foot so we can watch his teammates pray for him or whatever. weak shit

i am a diehard abrams hater tho. none more hack

Tombstone is the straightest movie alive

that can’t be true

it is true in certain localized parts of the universe

I’ve only seen the De Palma and Brad Bird entries, but Walter Chaw’s review suggest I might actually have to catch up with the whole series:
https://filmfreakcentral.net/2025/05/mission-impossible-the-final-reckoning-2025/

um i feel like you need to excise one major character/performance from Tombstone to get it anywhere near straight

is Vanessa Redgrave in this

it’s gay as fuck!!!

xp

I suppose my response to tombstone is how delighted everyone is to swing their dicks out there. It’s not a note!

To be fair that makes it sound like the opposite of the straightest movie ever

Which is half of why it’s a fun time, just the campy banter coupled with sweaty dudes eyeing each other

campy banter coupled with sweaty dudes eyeing each other

You need to see Walter Hill's Extreme Prejudice, like, yesterday.

Oh, I’ve seen that multiple times. Powers Boothe is a crucial common denominator there.

when I got to the end of this one I was thinking about the tweet that read something like “me and my friends would have killed ET with hammers” re: the Entiry

big credit for not making the submarine sequence into a glory heist like the “duck in, grab the NOC list” one from the first movie they kept alluding to. just a punishing bit overall, even if it did nod to the turbine sequence from the other earlier movie at the end

I don’t regret seeing this, and there were awesome moments, but what a mess.

Half the movie is characters doing this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmHeP9Sve48

watched 5 last night. bittersweet to be entering “the mcquarrie era” of the rewatch speedrun. while they’re all good films, switching directors each time was a great bit (though tbf 4 feels very of a piece with the mcquarries). it’s a good movie but i feel like they’ve “gone rogue” in every single one and have seriously obit who cried wolfed the stakes

guys i’m an hour into Final Reckoning and i just

this is so fucking bad

can we kidnap them & force them to make a better movie WHAT IS THIS HORSESHIT

ok yeah that was fucking stupid and boring and unbelievably shitty

i’m quite mad about how crap this was tbh

hanging on for a fanedit that condenses the first hour into a montage of 3 mins faces & exposition fading in and out of a dotted line on a map tracking Ethan hang gliding off the train at the end of the last one, dot dot, setup setup setup, map map map, premise premise premise, dot dot dot, then cut to him dropping into the water and getting picked up by the gay submarine (and stripping to his jocks asap after clocking the vibe)

i think having sat through part 1 with ever increasing disbelief that _this is the plot_ i could only really ever see myself sitting down to watch part 2 in a atwell_pants fan supercut tbh

theres a lot of talk about what next presuming cruise cant do forever and what is needed imo is a ten part series about sean harris breaking out and starting his next criminal superclub from scratch

the best part of this universe, and no more close ups of the MI crew trying to act, in particular pegg who is better than good in his lane but utterly wet and wretched when called upon to be emotionalbenji.gif

I haven’t watched this yet but I remember thinking how terrible and tedious part 1 was…

i really loved part one, especially on revisit. still, haven’t heard anything about final reckoning that’s made me rush to see it. someday

Sic and VG OTM

I could not in good conscience advise anyone to this see this movie without a bullet list of considerations

Like, there is 60-75 minutes of cool shit in there! But then there’s the wasteland of the rest

If Final Reckoning accomplishes anything, it makes Dead Reckoning seem a little better by comparison

huh i thought final reckoning rocked. submarine behring strait and prop plane chase were two of the best set pieces of the series. rolf saxon and his wife were great

i also found the suggestion that after the film ends ethan is going to fuse his brain with the entity and become an omnipotent benevolent god that rules the world to be a hilariously pure expression of cruise’s megalomania

making half the movie a congratulatory victory lap celebrating and revisiting selected events from the entire series was a bit much

we have a series that does that with regularity: Fast & Furious

xp it's also a fine endpoint of the Ethan Hunt character trajectory of: good spy in a bit over his head -> world's best spy -> superhero -> literal messiah who literally comes back from the dead.

i enjoyed the flashbacks as mcquarrie’s totalitarian desire to rationalize the films before he took over and bring them under his control. but i can’t forgive him for explaining the (hilariously never explained) rabbit’s foot macguffin from iii and shoehorning it into the entity

(feels weird to use spoiler hiders in these movies where the plot is so stupid)

set pieces worked great for me but connective tissue was way below standard for the series.

Also someone please cast Hayley Atwell in more stuff my god

sic otm

this was like the zombified corpses of like, three half-movies stitched together and animated with lightning jolts or whatever
but hey look at our shiny SET PIECES you guys (just dont look at literally anything else like plot, story, dialog (definitely noy dialog) or character)

literally held together w narration (! SO MUCH NARRATION)
flashbacks (at least 50% flashbacks)
and at some points dialogue is even adr’d over actors standing in shadow (esai morales for example) because they clearly didnt have a working script and were just whatevering their way through this massive budget movie wasting a thousand people’s time & good effort because those people thought they were making a movie and not “finding” the story while they were shooting/editing etc

this franchise has always been dumb fun but never so clearly, actually cravenly shitty (imo)

like just scooping out this cobbled together expensive garbage and throwing it on our plates because we the stupid sheeple will pay to see it based on good will that was genuinley earned and now completely wasted

to pull these run and gun b-movie dodges when they have all the fucking money in the world is kind if shameful to me?

cheap movies do these things because they cant AFFORD to do more

I didn't like the last one, and literally couldn't muster the energy to see this one. Like, I want to say three times I was prepared to see it but at the last minute just kind of noped out. And it's not even that long! Just seemed ... exhausting. Even the trailer made me tired.

Did they ever figure out who had the key?

i hate that key

but hey look at our shiny SET PIECES you guys (just dont look at literally anything else like plot, story, dialog (definitely noy dialog) or character)

i didn’t find it exceptionally bad itr relative to the other recent movies in the series tbh

some parts of the plot/story that were enjoyable:

- set up to the behring strait sequence had some good iterations of the classic MI scene where ethan explains his plan to an incredulous audience. “so how are they supposed to know which random 4 square foot circle of ice to cut and collect your near-death hypothermic body from, out of the entire sea?” “by making an educated guess”
- ethan’s in the decompression chamber responding in the most asexual way possible to hayley atwell’s embraces
- showing up at rolf saxon’s house but the russians beat them to it was tense and suspenseful
- the subplot with angela basset and nick offerman actually successfully threw me on some red herrings (i thought offerman was compromised) and succeeded in having some decent jarring plot twists. i love basset so much in this role

one thing i could see being annoying about final reckoning is it relies extremely strongly on the assumption that the audience an emotional connection to the series and characters. but i do (lol) so a lot of that worked

Just struck me how funny it would have been if Tom Cruise's character had died heroically in each installment, but then showed up again in the next with no explanation.

It IS Paramount, go full Kenny-in-South-Park.

Mission Impossibly Long and Poor.

Shea Wigham lookin' like a velociraptor.

This shit is stupid. They are all sitting around talking bout The Thing and what is going to Happen with The Thing and what they will do or need to do because what if AI but oh no. And the first half an hour was basically a Clip Show!

How did they get so many good actors to sign up for this shit. Travis Trammell, Nick Offerman, Mark Gatiss, Hannah Waddingham, I am disappoint. Stop associating with this scientologist POS.

(I am not actively watching it. My bf has a terrible habit of finding THE WORST movies and watching them on weekends, like sub-5 star shit).

I still love 4-6 but I really don't think I'm gonna watch this one.