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Movie of the Week #37 - Mission: Impossible - Fallout
Next up of blockbusters is Mission: Impossible - Fallout from 2018 which made $791 million at the box office. Second M:I film directed by Christopher McQuarrie.
Is this a proper blockbuster with all that entails? Any thoughts on the franchise in general?
The rest of the schedule is:
- 15th: Snatch
- 22nd: Barbie
- 29th: Edge of Tomorrow
I'm surprised you liked Rouge Nation more than this. Especially since I feel like Rogue Nation is the beginning of the series changing. Like I'd group the eras as I-Ghost Protocol (different directors having different takes) to Rogue Nation-Dead Reckoning (McQuarrie's series). I disagree that Rogue Nation looks better however, I love the cinematography of Fallout. Although I can see that Rogue Nation's colors probably pop a little bit more. But I dig the hazy more grainy look of this film more. Although both films look better than Dead Reckoning.
One of my favorite movies of all time is North by Northwest, which is largely considered to be the first modern action film. The way the film was written was that Hitchcock and Lehman came up with a couple of set pieces (murder at the U.N, crop duster, mount rushmore) and then wrote a story to have those set pieces as an excuse. So I don't think a movie being written like that is a negative thing. I will say, however, that this is how Rogue Nation and Dead Reckoning were written. Whereas Fallout was written with the story in mind, from what I remember McQ saying at the time anyway.
I thought the action scenes here were some of the best of the series. The Halo jump, the helicopter scene, the motorcycle chase, and especially the bathroom fight. What I love about the bathroom fight is how brutal everything feels, and how the entire scene plays without any music.
I like Vanessa Kirby's character as an addition to the series and like her fight scene. I thought the "dream" scene where Ethan kills innocent people was brilliant, I loved the way they edited that in.
It's an action movie with sophistication and texture. It's entertaining without being cheap.
Ranking the Mission Impossible series:
I also said this was one of the best Blockbusters of the 2010s. I thought about this a few months ago, and came up with a top 5 best movies of the 2010s that made over 700M WW. In no specific order:
The look is of course entirely subjective, but it seemed like a digital look to me even though I know it was just shot on film, so I don't really understand myself why I don't like it. As for the script, I think he has said he generally works on all the films with a script that is more of an outline and then they work from there. Nothing wrong with and it can and does work. The same formula applies to all the films, but I guess it just one of those things you notice if you don't like it that much. Same goes the other way. I don't notice glaring plotholes if I like the film, but it is easy to start nitpicking those kind of things once the critical mindset gets going. And yes, we agree on the bathroom fight scenes. I tend to get bored quite quickly with long fist fight scenes, something that seems to have increased a lot in screen time in the action movies of this century, but here it had tons of variety and a combination of real danger and a little bit of fun.
It's interesting you say that because to me Fallout looks more like it was shot on celluloid. With all the depth of field shots, and how grainy it all looks. Dead Reckoning was shot on digital and it looks like it was shot on digital unfortunately.
I have great love for the first Mission Impossible film and it has been a bit difficult for me to accept that the series have taken a very different approach. However Ghost Protocol won me over for the new approach and after seeing Fallout I also rewatched Rogue Nation and picked up Dead Reckoning. While none come close to the first movie for me, I really liked Rogue Nation as it had basically all the things I missed in Fallout which I consider one the weakest in the series.
While every MI movie needs to be different, I feel like too much of the DNA is lost here. It tries to be a bit too serious but not enough like the third movie, there isn't really any cool gadgets used this time around and there is no proper heist style mission. In Rogue Nation we got a phenomenal intense scene at the opera and the infiltration heist thathad the right combination of calm methodical work and high speed tension. I got none of that from Fallout. It switched calmer but intense scenes with just more high octane action that I personally find boring very quickly.
What baffles me most is how non-impressed I was with most of the action scenes. I know the amazing work done behind them and how most of it was done for real, it just still often looks kind fake somehow. Maybe it is the odd bland color grading on the film that ruins it form me. The opening parachute scene has an impressive long take, but it is not really exciting. The car chases were pretty good most of the time, but also not really convincing me it was real. The final helicopter sequence was bonkers in its own right, and I like how they acknowledged the ridiculousness of the "cutting it close" trope and delivered on that. It was still however too long.
It is pretty obvious the movie was made with various action set pieces in mind first, then the actual script was written around that to make it fit. The plot is too convoluted for its own good, as I stopped caring with all the backstabbing and treacherous twists.
I do however like other things. While I could see the twist in the opening coming a mile away, as it is basically a remake of the opening in the first movie, it played out nicely. The use of the masks did properly fool me once again. The little jokes here and there landed at exactly the right moments without being dumb. The fight scene in the bathroom was well done. And it was nice seeing Julia again.
My ranking of the movies would be: