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I am all for a healthy industry. I could care about the budgets of said movie. I judge a movie on it's entertainment value, not on the size of a budget. I don't value DN less than GF because of the budget size.
Hollywood seems to be slow to some messages that the general public has been sending.
I could go on, currently it would appear that Hollywood wants what it wants and there is a disconnect with the audience. Some stars like the insufferable Rachel Z. almost appears to hate the ticket buying public telling a large portion of her audience to F off. I don't remember stars of yesteryear antagonizing audiences.
IMO it killed any sense of urgency and danger with them talking so calmly.
Disney made it all back with the success of Lilo and Stitch.
Why some movies flop and others do well is a mystery.
-Marvel has already slowed down.
-They haven't made a Star Wars movie in a long time.
-And I don't think we'll see an Indiana Jones movie anytime soon either.
Hollywood is slow because it takes time to make movies, but they eventually get the message.
It's maybe a mistake to release a big family film at any time other than summer/Holiday season. Snow White might not have been the best idea, but releasing it in the middle of March was ever worse. I haven't done a deep dive into the research, but families just don't have time for movies during the school year anymore. Another recent example: Wonka, which looked like a dud but killed it at the box office. (Holiday release)
If you're on the fence about seeing this film, go and do it. The set pieces alone are worth seeing in IMAX, this is what the format was made for. There was one part of the film were I thought I was going to pass out from holding my breath for so long 😅
also
I noticed that with the very last scene as well.
I wonder if Ving Rhames was dealing with some health issues and they had to compensate for this. Even Luthor being infirmed wasn't something that carried over from DR Part 1. He just appears to be in the care of a nurse. The Hunt/Luthor scene seemed clumsy in execution and one wonders if they added it on the fly or changed the script in someway.
Probably a dropped script element, you could say Ethan is just relishing in a London that didn't get nuked like in the entity's vision.
The Luther stuff admittedly feels off slightly but it doesn't ruin the movie for me or take me out of the scene. It does seem like a pick up shot and script doctoring though. You could easily assume Luther is heavily irradiated at this point with all the bombs he has disarmed.
The only thing that felt off was the opening 23 minutes. First we meet Hunt in an undisclosed location watching a VHS tape. Then we cut to London where they immediately get captured, then interrogated, then escape. Something about the rhythm of all that felt very off. I wonder if that had to do with the fact that the movie was put on hold during strikes, and when they finally got to resume production McQ had already come up with new ideas and decided to take a different direction, and what we got in the opening was a leftover, and a newly filmed scene with Hunt watching the VHS to set it up. It’s all very patchy, and I never quite got that vibe from the rest of the film.
I was listening to an interview with him today; he said they took onboard the reaction to the last one and tried to make this one shorter so he shot it to be non-linear, but when they put it together they thought it didn't work. Then they made it linear and it didn't work either, so I think they kept working on it.
I don't see that as bad incidentally: they try to make these movies work as well as they can and keep working on them, and they test them with audiences to see how they work, then adjust afterwards. Apparently Angela Basset recorded that opening monologue about two months ago. I thought the opening third or so had problems but it still kept me entertained and there were fights and incident, it wasn't just talking, as I had heard it described before I saw it. I like the film, I had a good time with it.
I think the usual Empire podcast mega interview with McQ is coming pretty soon, I'm sure he'll talk more on the way they put it together.
For all the talk of it being some set pieces strung together, I actually think the plot is pretty good. There's a race against time and one person is on his way to a sunken sub whilst the team are trying to find out where it is- I think that's good. And the whole idea about where the Entity is trying to go is a really good idea for a climax to this particular story too.
But like I said, by the time they get to Alaska it’s a much better movie. Even better than the last IMO. Where I found the bike jump in 7 underwhelming (didn’t help that marketing spoiled the hell out of it) the bi-plane stuff was much more fun to watch as they can at least show off more aspects of how Cruise can hold on.
Overall, I like it. I wouldn't say I loved it. Many have already repeated one thing I thought: the opening 15-20 minutes are a slog and, to me, seemed to insult the intelligence of the audience. But once we (finally) got through the credits, it picked up.
What I especially liked:
Did anyone else notice that at the end of the film, Ethan is wearing what seems to be a combination of Bond outfits?
Yes, one wonders if like NTTD sets had been constructed and had to be used? Luckily for Bond they re-purposed them for the new script. Maybe the deadline was too tight for them to do anything about it here? My son leaned over to me during the opening and said "Why is Luthor in a hospital bed?" I shrugged shoulders. Went back and watched DR Part 1 and could find a reference or a mention, just that Luthor had to go off the grid to combat the Entity.
Cruise has played plenty of dodgy characters of dubious morality over the years. But audiences don’t want Ethan Hunt to fail. Look at all the whining about Bond dying.