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pleasepaypreacher.net
Guy loves to burn bridges, as I've seen firsthand
It's working out well for him, too!
His Bruce Willis beef seems legit.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Who has he talked shit about other than Bruce Willis and Jon Peters?
That would have been amazing.
But the movie isn't about the revolution. It's not even about megacorp conspiracies or the menacing camera drones that fly around the skyscraper landscape... though those things exist. The movie is about one highly-sought-after corporate tech-firm presenter who is getting older and no longer meets the youth & beauty demographic the firm is going after (despite still being a beautiful woman by pretty much any standard). Her brilliant 13-year-old daughter, who crushingly reminds me of my little sister, is facing an even more uncertain future, and the main character will risk her very identity to make sure she gets all the advantages she can get.
I was shocked at how right they got the technology, and how engaging the story was, for all it lacked pew pew lasers and action sequences. Now that I do a little more research, apparently this movie is exclusive to Netflix, so I guess I'm going to cross-post to that thread...
Mostly the fourth one suffers from feeling like just another franchise entry (and one struggling to introduce Renner's character), with no real personal stakes involved and a boring villain who spends most of his time off-screen. Every other entry feels like a big departure from the status quo of a team-based television series; Ghost Protocol feels like the filmmakers are instead trying to establish and work with a specific type of story that doesn't depend on Ethan Hunt at all. With nothing at its center and virtually no personal stakes, the film acts as a generic entry (or, in its best moments, a self-aware platonic ideal) in what is otherwise one of Hollywood's most idiosyncratic and auteur-driven franchises.
Once you decide whether you love or hate MI:2's Dove Quotient (obviously I'm on the love side, but YMMV), the real handicapping is between Brian De Palma's pioneering original and JJ Abrams' fantastic second sequel. De Palma should receive the lion's share of the credit here, because the whole film series has been trying to superficially recreate his formula ever since, mixing and matching the plot elements that his adaptation of the TV show entrenched as vital in one way or another (Ethan accused, IMF agent betrayals, stolen items that have be protected from getting out into the open, high-wire stunts, off-book missions, tragic unmaskings). Moreover, De Palma's film is unique among the series in that it focuses on the travails and textures of espionage work--his Mission: Impossible is a dialogue-driven thriller about who to trust, with only one real action sequence (although it's a doozy and a classic, an explosive train versus helicopter climax in which De Palma deftly juggles 5 different perspectives/plotlines). Obviously much of the film is iconic and memorable, but in all the hoopla about hanging from the ceiling it's easy to forget that the movie centers on a man playing a dangerous, secret game with everyone, and how lonely and difficult that is. My favorite moment in the film might be Ethan, weary in body and soul after a long and awful night, preparing to crash in the safe house by breaking all the lightbulbs in the hallway so that he'll hear the glassy crunch of anyone approaching. Later on, this American Bond analogue will take on a very post-9/11, US-centric notion of using overwhelming force and meddling in international politics as part of an organization; but the film that launched this franchise is about one young man whose impossible mission is just to extricate himself from a trap before the water gets too deep.
If De Palma crafted a clockwork thriller out of the exploded bones of a television show, Abrams builds the clock itself. MI3 finds its protagonist constantly racing against literal deadlines, with seconds meaning the difference between life and death, first for Ethan's young protoge and then for the fiancee he's kept in the dark about his job. (Hilariously, he claims to study traffic for a living, which explains the government paychecks but not really why he might need to jet off to Italy at a moment's notice.) The film is elevated by a phenomenal, eerily deadpan villain turn from Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but make no mistake, this film's excellence begins with a really, really good script. It's really one bravura scene after another, from the stomach-turning cliffhanger cold open all the way to the film's full third act in China. (Along the way, a daring Vatican heist and a fateful plane ride are standouts.) Everything proceeds (mostly) logically, and the plot hums along in time with Hunt's most personal story, his attempt to separate his romantic and professional lives (and how he is eventually forced to reconcile them). All in all, it's a beautiful and powerful film in its own right.
Add another black mark to the 4th entry, which doubles back on MI3's mix of doom and optimism in favor of developments that were bog standard-sexist back in 2002's Spider-Man. The series has never had a great track record with women, although to go into too much detail here would entail spoilers. Suffice it to say that women in this series are, more often than not, objects to be fought over as much as any of the films' more literal MacGuffins. The first film features a woman as battleground; the second, as bait. (MI2 is also the film where Ethan's handler tells him unironically that being a woman is all the training a character needs to "go to bed with a man and lie to him"--that the whole film is both a romance and a reworking of Hitchcock's Notorious, and that the character in question does not return in any later entry, makes the whole thing even ickier.) MI3 does better to shift from whore tropes to Madonna tropes, but still isn't all the way there, although it points the way forward--and, as I said at the start of this paragraph, a way that Ghost Protocol goes to great lengths not to follow. (The oddest part of 3's gender dynamics, actually, is that Michelle Monaghan's performance doesn't match the way other characters portray her. We're told that she and Ethan met and fell in love because they were both the kind of adrenaline junkies who skydive and mountain climb in their spare time, but whenever she's onscreen she seems very Generic Hollywood Wife, right down to the career in medicine.)
As someone who very much likes this series, gender warts (and doves) and all, I find myself apprehensive about the upcoming Rogue Nation. Will it continue the series' tradition of taut scripts, non-violent suspense sequences, solid Cruise performances, and idiosyncratic auteurism? Or will it follow in the 4th entry's footsteps by seeking to be a slick but ultimately forgettable bit of summer nonsense? Neither mission is impossible, here, but I know which one I'd choose to accept. This essay will self-destruct in 5 seconds.
And there is, as you say, surprisingly little action. But lots of tension.
I want to see it again, though, because it really is a great film.
It's amazing what years of widescreen do to you. I used to be able to watch fullscreen as a kid, I swear.
Years and years back, me and a friend say down to watch Leon: The Professional only to realise about 2 minutes in that it wasn't widescreen. And we had to stop. It's just so horrible and jarring to see pan-and-scan now. It's like physically discomforting.
At least it wasn't in NTSC colour and with scan-line.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Not sure. I think it shares continuity and he might make an appearance, haven't heard anything else.
I think the whole movie is inherently undermined by what we discover in the first movie.
That said, there are two parts I really like
And the final Cabin Scene
Still have to wait three weeks for Inside Out and that wait is butts.
Man, I'm on an undermining kick this morning.
I've heard a few people say Fiorintino was an asshole, so thats not just hi.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
Fishburne is wasted and there was never a sense he was the bad guy, the romance is the weakest of all the films, and everything in China was a waste and just in contrast to what the movie was trying to do for the first two thirds that grahhhhhhhhhhh
Like, every damn time.
not sure why he thinks that's important
Because he's sick of her trying to make "fetch" happen?
IMF keeps getting disbanded, too. Or it seems like it. Every movie seems to hit certain plot points which isn't necessarily that weird or even bad but the ones the MI movies pick is just bizarre. I have no idea how governmental oversight works in that universe.
She probably is, but it comes down to Smith needing to air every single thing publicly because he loves it. One of those people who doesn't really believe in keeping personal things personal.
I think it's probably that everything Smith says is fairly accurate (atleast from his perspective), and the reason he seems to be at the center of all these stories is that he likes being kind of a dick and airing all this stuff publicly.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I think he's complaining about not being told anything about the film other than the scenes he's in. He doesn't know what's going on in the movie, which limits his ability as an actor.
It's much more interesting hearing what he thinks of himself.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Didn't she also refuse to do any promotion for Dogma?
He makes that point all the time. He's always pointing out how his opinions don't matter and makes fun of himself.
Agreed. They came very close to realizing Paula Patton's character's full potential yet utterly failed to do it properly, while the male cast members didn't have this disadvantage. I was disappointed she never came back for a sequel, she was good character and the actress is wonderful. Now I'm thinking about it I can't remember any female agents returning in sequels - like male members have returned (Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames). They need to bring back Maggie Q.
Contrast him, with, say, Katt Williams, who is an actively horrible human being with a similar level of exposure, but we never complain about him, really.
He's acting like a comedian on tours and at events, he's just doing it unofficially. Kathy Griffin does this too - as a comedian.
Smith has a claim to fame (being a movie director), charismatic, tells entertaining stories and is funny. That's all he needs, and this adds to what he's known for doing.