I saw this movie Tuesday and I can not find a thread on it here at the Straight Dope.
It’s at 93% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, same as the previous movie in the series.
I’d basically rate them like this at this point.
Ghost Protocol - A truly great movie. Far and away the best Mission Impossible.
Mission Impossible 1 - again, a lot of fun. Really great.
Rogue Nation - more on this in a bit
MI: 3 - Good, but kind of forgettable.
MI: 2 - The only really bad one. Terrible with nothing to redeem it.
I was actually disappointed by Rogue Nation. I had high hopes that it would equal the previous entry, or at least be close. It ended up being good, but not great at all.
It was a loose plot tied together to get us from one action scene to the next. I, for one, did NOT find that to be the case with the MI: 1 and Ghost Protocol. I felt the major sequences in those movies came out of the story. In this movie, it felt kind of lame. The only one I felt fit into the story was the “underwater” sequence, which was pretty cool. And I’m glad he failed, requiring saving by the girl.
However, I leaned over to my wife during the movie and said, “10 bucks says after the car chase, he gets on a bike and chases her/them on the bike.” Then, he crashes ludicrously and does get on a bike for a chase that served only one purpose. Show us Tom Cruise can ride a motorcycle. Note: The car chase was kind of neat as well.
Anyway, it was a good movie, but I wish they had gotten Brad Bird to do this one instead of McQuarrie. Jack Reacher was a better movie.
Pros:
Neat underwater sequence. Best thing in the movie. Actual tension!
The car chase was fun. Felt like they had seen Bourne movies.
The plane was neat, while brief. Wish we had never seen it in the trailers. I feel like they thought of it late and just threw it in the beginning.
I like the cast and it was fun to see Ving Rhames with Jeremy Renner.
Simon Pegg is a lot of fun.
Cons:
Lame plot.
Motorcycle sequence was an obvious attempt to just show us Cruise on a motorcycle.
Ending was kind of lame, but not horrible.
I’d give it a 7/10. Decent.
If you were interested, you could probably just get away with watching the first one and Ghost Protocol. Honestly you could probably just watch Ghost Protocol. RN is self contained but in some ways is a direct Sequel to GP.
My biggest problem with the movies at this point is that they’re one big sausage fest. In the TV show, Cinnamon was an important part of the team (heck, Barbara Bain won 3 Emmys for playing her). But there’s no female continuity in the films, just lots of one-off hotties who are usually under suspicion half the time and who have become fairly interchangeable. This recent one had some great stunts but the villain was also bland and his intentions obscure, so at a certain point, I just stopped caring.
I wish I hadn’t seen all the press Cruise and Pegg did last week (Daily Show and The Tonight Show) where pretty much all they talked about was Cruise doing a lot of his own stunts (hanging on the plane, driving the car, holding his breath for 6 minutes). The whole movie I was watching to see if I could tell when it was really him or not.
Saw it last night.
Enjoyable, but the underwater computer storage was perhaps the most absurd idea in history…
Loved Rebecca Ferguson. I can forgive a lot of moronic, formulaic plot points just to watch her.
Simon Pegg is great, as always, but he’s the most unlikely of field agents.
Cruise was good, but I can’t help wishing that, just once, some bad guy will wipe that smirk off his face.
I would love to show the original Mission: Impossible to some of the young’uns who spend their summers watching such shlock and see what their reaction would be. Five’ll get you ten they’d fall asleep after the first five minutes.
You not only had to pay attention to what was going on, you had to think in order for it to make any sense. I fear such things are beyond the abilities of today’s audiences.
If you’ve seen it, you’ll know what scene I’m talking about.
There is a point in the movie where it is a moral imperative to say, “Now’s the time on Sprockets when we dance.”
I thought it was better than average. Most every time in the movie, when I feared the filmmakers would do something stupid, they didn’t. Benji loses the only copy of the data? Nope, he had another. Hunt is going to fall right into the baddie’s trap and kidnap the PM? Nope, he had a better plan.
Technical nitpick - the movie makes the common mistake in that they think hitting a healthy person with a defibrillator will merely knock them unconscious. Wrong! It will kill them. (Also, if that was an off the shelf emergency defibrillator, it won’t even fire on a person not in V-fib.)
And I agree with** beowulff** - that computer was the stupidest idea ever. Who would build that? Not only is the general idea dumb (the maintenance alone would make it unworkable. And was that salt water? I missed if it was. That would be even worse.) but the rotating Hunt-knocker was extra-level absurd. What did it do? What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a rotating arm in the middle of a submerged computer.
Not really. I read the first book, then forced myself through the second (which was just the first book with different names) before giving up on the series. The book was as bad as the movie, and about as deep.
I knew that was the bathtub fight before I clicked on it. Best scene in the movie. Didn’t make it a good movie, but it was a fun fight scene, and I credit Cruise for never phoning it in.
We went to see Rogue Nation, and then immediately watched the first one afterwards and, hooooooly crap:
…is that movie dated!
…is the CGI just terrible!
…is the plot completely nonsensical. I agree that the young’ns will fall asleep and be confused because the movie makes no goddamn sense. I love these kinds of movies, and I pay attention to them, but I have no idea the logic of some of the reveals. It was so damn slow it was hard to pay attention to