I’m listening to the Fallout Empire interview now (Part 1), and it occurs to me that I would love to see McQuarrie do this fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants approach to make a James Bond movie. He knows so well what a Mission movie is now. But I’d love to see what he would bring with this approach to what he thinks a Bond movie should be.
Even though I appreciate him being able to construct a movie like that, I find it rather baffling that they just cant seem to lock down a script and a narrative on these expensive movies. But yeah, he does seem to have firm grasp on the required Mission formula, that it would be cool to see what he would do with Bond.
I love that McQuarrie goes so deep into working with the music composer and how in certain scenes they fade out the sound effect and have just the music, while other scenes they have just the sound effects and fade the music, all in an effort to never exhaust the audience. They really did a great job of this without drawing attention to it. It was all seamless in the movie.
The only movie I can think of that did this even better than the McQuarrie’s movie is Spectre, the last Bond movie, which I thought had the best sound mixing I’ve ever seen/heard in an action movie in how it mixes and balances sound effects with the score.
Anyway, yeah, it’s really cool to hear a Director be so involved in the sound editing, and how key the sound mixing is for not tiring out the audience and keeping the audience engaged in the scene.
As a guy who has (unfortunately) worked on a lot of PowerPoint presentations in my time, I just want to offer mad respect for whoever made the opening mission brief. Some poor schmuck is sitting in their cubicle down in the bowels of the IMF, having to crank out ridiculously elaborate presentations on short notice.
The fact that he doesn’t like continuous wall-to-wall music and doesn’t use temporary tracks from popular soundtracks during editing gave his films its own unique rhythm full of striking music and sound FX focused scenes. The first Jack Reacher was also great in this regard.
I would even say that his style of work ruined recent Nolan/Zimmer movies for me.
Saw it again on IMAX this time. Definitely see it in as big a theater as you can. Holds up great on a second view, really enjoyed watching it while not trying to keep track of all the moving pieces. It’s still a bit long, but holy cow those set pieces.
I saw it on IMAX the first time. I really wish I could go see it again, but I can’t justify the cost. Even the before-Noon show on IMAX is $12+, plus there’s no way my wife would be okay with me doing that a second time while she stayed home to watch our son. (And she’s not interested in the movie).
The reason I do want to see it again is just to drink in those lush visuals again. The streets of Paris have never been captured so beautifully before, I don’t think.
Caught it on “regular” 3D. Really excellent film. Loved the callbacks, too. I can see this being a series wrap, but still lots of room for more.
It’s weird there’s this buzz that this is possibly the finale, especially since it’s gotten rave reviews and is so far establishing box office records for the series.
If I was going to guess, it’s possibly an end for Cruise; lots of character arc stuff got wrapped up. But yeah, there’s no way I’d imagine a money hungry studio walking away from a cash cow.
It’s all up to Cruise, of course, but Paramount is absolutely desperate for hits, especially now that the Disney/Marvel/Star Wars megalith has absorbed 20th Century Fox. The studio execs are probably praying each night that Tom re-ups.
Oh yeah, no doubt the studio will be up for it if Tom is up for it. But if he isn’t, it’s a nice ending to Ethan Hunt’s story.
Enjoyable sequel, and it’s nice to see a series go strongly in its sixth installment. Nice and readable action. The helicopter sequence got hyped up the most, but my personal favourite probably was the restroom fight in Paris - great choreography, it seemed as if Cavill was involved in most of it, and they did not ruin it with a flurry of cuts like they do in the Bourne movies. (I dig the first three Bourne movies, but the fight editing annoys the hell out of me.) I also liked that Hunt and Walker basically got their asses handed to them. Good audio work as well.
Sometimes I wish they’d resist the urge to have a countdown really run to the last second (C’mon!), but then again that’s something you’re used to from MI. Small bit I really dug: when Ilsa is fighting Lane while Benji is hanging by his neck, there comes this moment where she has to decide between finishing off Lane or helping Benji. It’s the kind of moment where you expect her to let off Lane and go for Benji to mirror Hunt’s “all in service of the team survival” mantra, but she actually waits for Lane to be incapacitated before moving on to cut the rope.
I’m sure it’s all down to Paramount being willing to give Cruise whatever share and freedom he’s asking for. Given that his other recent endeavours (American Made, The Mummy, Jack Reacher 2) didn’t do that well at the box office, I’d guess Cruise is up for it as long as he’s fit enough.
I thought so, too, but then I listened to the interview with McQuarrie that’s linked in this thread, and he basically said that people tend to see callbacks (other than to MI5) that aren’t actually intended to be callbacks because he didn’t have the time or could not be bothered to rewatch the older MI movies prior this.
It’s possible he wasn’t aware of them; I mean, writers will do what writers will do. Still, that’s interesting that he didn’t do any of them intentionally.
After listening to so many hours of Chris McQuarrie talking about these two movies in the podcasts posted above, the guy is a pleasure to listen to. He is passionate about his craft, so it’s interesting to hear him talk about it. The only mannerisms of his that I found a little annoying is the way he says “Mission has a mind of its own”. OTOH, he feels the same way about movies like Jack Reacher when problems came up and he had to improvise. So no Chris, it’s not just “Mission has a mind of its own”, you’re really just saying movie making is unpredictable, especially when you’re dealing with action sequence planning and the realities on the ground.
But I can let go of that one annoyance. He’s a great artist who knows his stuff and loves what he does, even to the point of obsession.
I finally got around to watching it yesterday. I enjoyed it immensely!
In General: TOM CRUISE ACTION EXTRAVAGANZA BONANZA 2018 DELIVERS!
The Good: The post-Paris sewer scene is exactly what makes Mission Impossible so fun.
The Bad: Enough with the vehicle chases already, one is enough.
The Surprising: I don’t think it was too long at 2h27m, which is very unlike me.
The action was overall very good. The cast was good overall, especially Henry Cavill. I guess Tom Cruise can headline one or two more of these, but it is time for Ethan Hunt to move into a managerial position. We discussed who could take over as lead on our way from the cinema if they don’t just hand over the reins to Rebecca Fergusson (which would be awesome). Jeremy Renner would be fun, and a friend suggested Ryan Gosling. Tom Hardy would be cool… but how about Taylor Kitsch?
I hope you don’t think that’s a joke. Because it’s an excellent idea. Unfortunately, I wonder if the Taylor Kitsch Action Hero ship was scuttled with Battleship and John Carter. It seems like he’s just doing Serious Acting now, with stuff like True Detective and Waco and, oh wait, he was the villain in American Assassin. Never mind.
-Tom
No it was not a joke at all! It was actually his performance in True Detective that made me think of him as a good fit for playing someone who takes over after the senior team leader retires.
A joke would be: How about Jai Courtney?
Also, for some reason I had filed John Carter under “Sam Worthington”. Huh. I think John Carter wasn’t that bad.
It really wasnt that bad at all. I think it was crushed by the negative press it got pre-release. It seemed like the press dog-piled the crap out of that movie for some reason.
I’m coincidentally watching John Carter right now. I’ve had two sessions with it so far. I have to say, it’s really boring so far, despite having the excellent Bryan Cranston. But John Carter just got to Mars and is learning how to jump when I last left it.
All this positive talk about John Carter, I guess I’ll go back to it and give it another chance.