Mission Impossible: Rogue Movie

Title: Mission Impossible-Rogue Nation
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Screenplay: Christopher McQuarrie

Bit off the usual beaten path for my blog, since Mission Impossible isn't really SF (thought a lot of the technology is) but ... well, screw it. Not like I have any subscribers to lose. I just watched "Rogue Nation," the fifth Mission Impossible movie, a series whose title becomes increasingly less convincing with each additional sequel.

It's a weird, weird series. I don't think it gets mentioned enough how weird it is, really.

Such as: It uses the "Tom Cruise has to go rogue to do the plot thing" trope every single time, and then has it mean nothing by giving Tom access to a limitless supply of high-tech gadgets anyway. Like, all the tropes feel old. Tom has the globetrotting and high-tech goodies from James Bond and the parkour of Jason Bourne. They're intensely imitative movies.

Such as: The actors all just play themselves: Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise (= running, riding motorcycles), Simon Pegg is Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner ditto. I'd be hard-pressed to tell you what any of the characters' names are without the IMDB page. There's no personality to any of these people outside of their roles in the story.

Such as: The hype is now more about the making of it than the actual movie itself, specifically about actors doing their own stunts.

I am, of course, talking about THAT jaw-dropping scene. You know the one. That's right: When Simon Pegg plays Halo 5 on three screens at CIA headquarters. Why three? Because four wouldn't fit on the desk, presumably.

At least I think that's him. Maybe they got a stunt gamer.

Ha ha, no seriously: Actual Tom Cruise hanging off the actual side of an actual aircraft as it actually takes off.  Didn't really do much for me visually, which is why I say the idea of it seems to have become more important than the actual execution. Which if you think about it, is kinda odd in our blow-the-budget on FX day and age.

Such as: The movie bounces between such highs and lows. The set pieces are fantastic, master classes in the art of not allowing your characters to succeed until the last possible moment. I don't want to understate this. These are some truly world-class set pieces, such as an opera scene where the baddies have sent three snipers to kill the Austrian Chancellor, and Tom has to take one down while suspended above the opera stage, then figure out which of the other two to shoot, knowing he can't get both in time.

Also, as our screens are overrun with overpowered superheroes, it's refreshing to watch a movie that isn't afraid to have its hero on the receiving end of a good old-fashioned shit-kicking, and knows that having things fail and screw up makes the action more exciting, not less.

Seriously, magnificent bits of moviemaking going on here.

And then. Ah, and then.

Those set pieces are followed up by truly wretched, horrible, massive infodump exposition. The one example that stuck out especially was in the previous iteration, "Ghost Protocol," where Jeremy Renner's character looks into the middle distance and relates his character's entire backstory and motivation.

What all that adds up to is an overall fun but uneven experience, with really high highs and rather dull lows, but the whole oddness doesn't really set in until you take a step back and consider the thing as a moviemaking endeavor rather than 131 minutes of entertainment: recycled plots, dull characters, bad dialog, stuntwork more exciting than the movies themselves, but hey, great set-pieces.

It's amazing these things are still being made, a testament to the power of the set piece and perhaps the Cruise charisma.