Of. Power.
Hello and welcome back to Clear and Present Dudes, the podcast
that reminds you Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall.
I am Mike Zumbar. I'm joined by Roy James O'Toole
and Sonya Bioxan, good evening. Hello.
And tonight our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to
pop out and get some more ice for our engagement party.
And while we're out, discuss the 2006 franchise saving Mission
Impossible free episode should be reaching you on the 23rd of
March 26th. It might be sooner for technical
reasons, but very happy birthday to Michelle Monaghan and Kerry
Russell notwithstanding. OK, cool.
First of all, do a little call action, please.
I can subscribe to the podcast and do that on YouTube.
Do that Apple, do that on Spotify or wherever podcasts.
Cool. Thanks very much, guys.
Right. Mission Impossible three.
I said it was a franchise saving movie.
What do you think? Well, I for one have just
thought that I'm very glad that this movie has spared me from
one of the questions I've come to be most irritated by on this
podcast, which is how would this have gone down in Germany?
Because the film's already answered that.
It does. It does good on in Berlin or an
area somewhere near Berlin I guess.
Yeah, cool, real tool. Franchise saving is right, while
while I don't have an axe to grind against Mission Impossible
2, it's it's definitely one of the films of of all time.
I couldn't have seen an entire this.
This film got the got the franchise from what I can see,
because I haven't seen everyone, but from what I can see, it did
get it back on track. It got it back towards the kind
of thriller end of things rather than the absolutely ape shit
John Woo gunfu kind of thing. Great film, first time I've seen
it. Pleasantly surprised because I
did read some reviews that showed it to be quite
polarising. Like there were a lot of people
who really hated JJ Abrams mystery box kind of storytelling
primarily and stuff like that. But I really enjoyed it.
It was it was emotionally heavier hitting than I expected.
Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you what, why don't we
grab our Kodak disposable cameras and take a look at the
trailer? Who are you?
You have a wife, girlfriend. Whoever she is, I'm going to
find her and then I'm going to kill you right in front of her.
Welcome back brother. Mission Impossible 3 or M Colon
I Colon I I I is a 2006 American action spy film directed by JJ
Abrams in his feature film directorial debut Pushed and
starring Tom Cruise from a screenplay by Abrams and a
writing team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orti.
It is a standalone sequel to Mission Impossible 1996 and
Mission Impossible 2 from 2000 and the third instalment in the
Mission Impossible film series, which for the rest of this
podcast will refer to simply as Mission.
It also stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy
Crudup, Michelle Monaghan, Jonathan Reese Myers.
Remember him from Gorman Ghast. Yeah, Keri.
Keri Russell, Maggie Q. Laurence Fishburne is here as
well. And yeah, cool this movie as in
let's put it nicely, development hell for a while.
Think I think they all watched Mission Impossible 2 John Woo of
face off fame and kind of went we need to have a bit of a reset
here. Just to give you a better
background on the history David Fincher was initially slated to
direct. David Fincher hasn't got a good
track record with with attacking the third of a series.
Obviously his his first film, of course, was Alien 3, which was
pretty much critically and commercially panned, wasn't it?
He dropped out for creative differences.
I would agree that's finding its feet.
I mean each film of Mission series so far has been kind of
wildly different. I mean the first one, you know,
like it's it's an auto LED piece.
As I said when we talked about it, it's got so much like DNA
from like the 1970s and checked it in.
It would like it's got like the kind of three days, the Condor
vibe as well as that. The next one, it's like what
1999 or 2000, but it came out MI 2 when EV when everyone on the
face of the earth has turned up to 11.
Everyone's wearing those cool black shirts with the red flames
up on them. They've got like the backwards
red baseball caps. They're all listening Limp
Bizkit. And ironically, they're they're
wearing gigantic baggy jeans and shit.
The world's a different time, but totally different time.
And that again, 2006 when when Mission 3 comes out, the world
has once again completely changed this these epochal
spaces essentially almost like a generational DAP between these
films. And when you look at the
contexts around them and what's good in in like the film world,
what's going to make money in films, what's going to get
people in the cinemas and what's going to kind of transmit to
people. I think that I think that it was
a series that like kind of it hadn't found its feet yet
because I didn't know what I wanted to be or what was going
to be at this point. Yeah, I think you're right, man.
I think I think it was very much faltering on its on its babies
sort of steps. Also, there's quite a long time
period between these films. So six years is quite a long
time in in in cinema between a sequel if you're trying to
maintain a currency and a franchise, unless that franchise
has an extremely strong set identity.
And this doesn't really all it's hard is basically you slap the
theme sheet onto it and and Tom Cruise is there.
That's mission and anything else goes.
Pretty much if I was going to turn my mission head off and
just become like a film critic for a bit, this is probably
maybe one of the better ones of like how it hangs together.
Maybe the best one in terms of how it hangs together as a movie
because it's not trying to do some kind of like big tentpole
stunt. But the rest of the movie is
sculpted around. This is this is a movie where
the story kind of came first. So once the Fincher dropped out,
Drew Carnahan was slated to do it for a long time.
And I think you will probably want to talk about Joe Carnahan
maybe a bit later on when we get into like trivia and stuff.
There was a, there was a lot of casting stuff that went on in
the background there. Maybe we'll talk about that.
In casting people, you know, friends became enemies and
enemies became friends people. People joined the projects.
People left the project. It was stricken by numerous
delays. Lots of people dropped out.
Lots of changes from what they initially desired the movie to
be. Long story short, Tom Cruise one
night at the end of his rope maybe is scanning the channels
and at 2:00 AM somehow he stumbles upon the TV series
Alias and his mind, his mind is blown.
Maybe he's just. Like me, he's just like me.
For real, for real, for real. He sees it.
He sees he sees Jennifer Garner doing her like her one appointed
stunt per episode. And it's like, this is amazing.
This is this is peak television. Who made this?
JJ Abrams. So he, he and he and Paula
Wagner basically invite him to his house and he arrives and
they pretty much offer him the job.
Do you want to direct Mission Impossible?
You've never dropped to a movie before?
Do you want to direct a tent pool blockbuster?
Summer blockbuster? For me, Tom Cruise, I go wild,
but he does it. And they they delay the movie
for another couple of years because JJ has got alias and
lost commitments to, to to uphold.
But then once that's done, boom, off to the off to the races and
they're making a movie. Yeah.
So JJ Abrams has got a few people he tends to work with and
he's carried that forward. So some of that's in the casts
we'll talk about when we get to the cast.
Another one is Michael Giacchino is the composer in this movie.
I don't know how well you guys know Michael Giacchino off as a
video game composer. Or I should say, one of his
early big bits of work was Medal of Honour.
And then he kind of forged a career doing a lot of TV work.
So we did like Lost with JJ Abrams.
He did some brilliant music on that.
And then he kind of got famous for doing, he's done most of the
Pixar movies, right? And then latterly he's done with
his Rogue One. So he was the first composer of
a Star Wars feature film that wasn't John Williams?
Yeah. So big shoes to fill there and I
think he did a really good job. There's a particular piece of
music on that soundtrack calls Your Father Would Be Proud,
which is phenomenal. Yeah, really good.
More than more than Stan Sooto. Lastly, he did the soundtrack
for The Batman as well with Robert Pattinson.
So really cool. And then really lately he did
well a couple of years ago now that Marvel one shot Werewolf by
Night. He directed that and did the
music for it, which is really cool.
Cool. So the other thing about Michael
Giacchino, he's really famous for putting puns in the names of
the tracks on his soundtracks. So I'm just going to read you a
couple from from the Batman. Here we go.
So I'm really the Batman soundtrack we've got here what
we got. We've got escaped crusader good
and we've got highway to the anger zone.
We've got a meow and you and everyone we know or you a Kenzie
or a can't see what else we got here.
This is so bad. And then finally, all's well
that ends. Farewell.
Great. And then finally, a little
nipper tease. Michael Giacchino has a son,
Nick Giacchino, who is also a composer now, and his funny old
thing working on the spin off of The Batman, the Penguin, and has
also done a spin off of the Star Wars movie skeleton crew as
well. So that's, well, cancer from
Michael Giacchino. Yeah, Sonia, go ahead.
I've got another little tidbit adding to this.
This isn't the only JJ Abrams Michael Giacchini crossover I've
seen. The other one that comes to my
mind is the alternate timeline Star Trek miniseries, which
explains. I mean, that is mostly JJ Abrams
things I think, I guess, but it would explain the tremendous
amount of lens flare this film is giving us.
Yeah chasing was famous I think I don't know if he's calmed down
since but a lot of lens flare lens flare in this lens for
insane as a lens flare in the Star Trek movies Super 8 big
lens flare yeah loves a lens flare and then I I've only
watched did he do Rise of Skywalker as well the last of
the. Yes, because he said, didn't he?
He did. He did The Force Awakens and
then Ryan. Johnson.
For the last. The Last Jedi and then The Rise
of Skywalker. But I've only watched that once
in the cinema with you, Rory. Yeah, in 2019.
And I haven't seen it since because I hated it.
But. But I seem to remember there'd
been quite a lot of lens flares doing that too.
Insane amounts of lens flare. Yeah, Unreal.
I was thinking today maybe I should reassess that and watch
it again, but I think I might just get mad again.
It's just a man. You put 50P in his.
Fucking hell, I would have. I would have of the sequels it
is by far away the fucking worst.
Not don't count anybody says it is so fucking bad and I know it.
Fucks sake man. Somehow Palpatine returned.
Yeah, yeah, it's terrible that the chewy fake cow.
I liked the bit where she goes. I mean, it's not good, but it's
funny that she went to like, Intergalactic Burning Man.
I like that bit. The bit where she heals a worm
with the Force. What the fuck, man?
The bullshit bit at the end where she's like some old,
random old woman in the middle of the desert asks her what her
surname is so she can say so she can look at a Force ghost and go
Skywalker. OK, fucking all right, whatever.
Something better if she like looked if, if if she just like
looked like right down the camera and went my name Jeff,
that would be actually something that would fucking laugh about
down the line instead of cringe instead of cringe instead of
die. Right, so we need to.
Podcast to go cyber bully days riddling and.
No, leave Disney really alone. She's.
She's I, I feel bad. I was like, oh man, she didn't
do anything. That wasn't her fault.
Yeah, she's she's a splendid, perfect flower.
Leave her alone. But do come.
I don't know who the fuck to blame for this.
I mean, it felt poor and it probably comes together with the
Star Wars fandom probably being one of the most toxic online
communities around. Yeah, if you are listening to
this and you are one of the people who kicked off really,
really hard about The Last Jedi, well then fuck you because
you'll why Palpatine came back, Right, Right.
That's all we're going to say about that.
Actually. I mean, I was thinking about it
earlier today. Maybe maybe because they killed
Snoke is why Paltine came back and they shouldn't have killed
Snoke. But that's like the one fair
criticism against The Last Jedi. Like maybe you shouldn't kill
the big bad in movie two or three anyway.
OK, right. OK, fuck.
So I normally read the Wikipedia summary.
The Wikipedia summary for this neglects to mention the cold
open. So fade in.
The first image we see is that of a man, extremely tight on his
brutalised face, breathing heavy, bruises fresh.
The wounds, the grime and sweat speak of an exhausting disorient
and tortured journey. These are weak Mama Spaghetti.
We're looking at the Huns, wildly alert, his eyes trained
off camera, he looks at all ones, terrified, blind with
rage, heartbroken. Then, finally, a voice.
There's an explosive charge on your head.
Sound familiar? The man speaking to Ethan is an
imposing 37 year old sprog, A cold eyes.
He stands, doesn't feel away, pulling a pistol from a shoulder
holster. He is Owen.
Davian. He cocks the gun, standing
behind him as a second man. We'll simply call him Bronway,
bandage on his nose and we will forget about him and barely see
him again. Davian, the rabbit's foot, where
is it? Ethan, we now realise, is bound
to a bolted down chair, a barber's chair, a beat.
I gave it to you, Ethan. Where's the rabbit's foot?
What are you saying? That that's not it?
What I gave you that that's not the rabbit's foot.
I'm going to count to 10. You tell me what the rabbit's
foot is or she dies. Ethan's eyes flick back to where
they were before, and we Dolly to reveal that there's a fourth
person there, 30 years old, bound to a chair, a length of
duct tape plastered tightly across her mouth.
Under normal circumstances, you'd consider her confident,
intelligent, athletic and kind, a natural beauty.
These clearly, are not normal times.
Her name is Julia, and Davian holds the gun to her head, blind
with fear. But not right now.
She's sweating, she's busted, just crying.
She's choked, crying and. Throwing.
Up, just come to shop or not throwing up on the verge of
madness. Ethan says with love and
strength. Jules, honey, it's going to be
OK. It's going to be OK to
understand. Holy shit, the clock has
started. Julian squeals quietly, muffled
from behind the tape. He begins relatively calmly.
Listen to me, I got exactly what you asked for.
Did you want something else? There was a misunderstanding.
I will fix it for you. I can get whatever you want too.
Hey man, and I'm just talking to you.
Put the gun down. It's out of the rabbit's foot.
Did you want something else? Just listen to you talk man.
We can talk like gentlemen. 3 Ethan suddenly struggles like
man to extricate himself from his bones, blah blah blah blah
blah. So we have this account up to 10
where a gun is fired, bang. And then we start into the
Mission Impossible music. And this movie doesn't do what
some of the ones do, which is so don't.
I just didn't clock it. It doesn't do the thing where it
flash forwards loads to lose. The stunts are happening in the
movie. Is it or not?
It doesn't I don't think it does no.
Of course we're all wondering who the fuck is that one?
Because that's not Tando in Newton, who was his his
girlfriend at the end of the last one.
So he's he's got himself a girlfriend now.
Another thing I like about this, which is really cool, is that as
you see on his batters smashed up face, he's got a tiny little
bit of blood dripping down 1 nostril, which if you pick that
up now and then you kind of notice it later on when they're
talking about Keri Russell. And then you kind of piece
together what's happened to him before it gets said.
I like that. I like when they give you a
little clue. And then obviously we see
Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the mysterious, we don't know his
name is yet, the mysterious gunman.
What did you think you what was your first impression of
Phillips? Sonia, have you seen this film
before? Yes, Actually, for once, I think
I've seen all parts of a franchise we're talking about.
Wow. Thrilling Times is Rory.
Hasn't seen it and you have. That's going to be first.
I want a medal. Yeah, you can get a bell.
Yeah, yeah. 3 bars as well. What was what was your all
right? So who had who had seen the film
before? Has everyone seen the film
before? I've not, this is my first time.
Oh, really? We go right, Roy, What was your
first impression of Phillip Seymour?
Often. He's just incredibly sinister.
Like there's this, there's this measured delivery behind the way
he speaks as general on screen presence.
It doesn't feel like your typical screech and kick it off
going a shit like the last slash action move.
You guess more like action action moving nemesis.
He's he. He feels like disconcertingly
realistic and believable, very measured, very pissed off, but
also like it's it's a believable kind of crazy, if you see what I
mean. The kind of the brakes he puts
on his performance changes from someone who's screaming at you
on a screen to someone who you could actually imagine being in
a room. If you're intimidating you in in
such a fashion, that's actually held baby.
Yeah, so Philippine often is what was obviously gone far too
soon was one of those incredible actors who unlike so some actors
get like typecast and they and they do a certain role really
well and that's what they always end up doing, right.
Philip Seymour Hoffman could turn his hands to to anything.
He could. He could be big and comedic.
He could be in like weird and sinister.
He could be like honestly, like off unhinged sinister.
You could be like an avuncular, you know, approachable older
guy. Hey, he was great.
Everything I remember the first time I kind of clocked him was
probably in the central woman from 1992 with opportunity plays
like Charlie Sims, as an indicate.
Chris O'Donnell plays. Yeah.
He plays like his classmate. He's like the really, he's the
one who like is trying to get the cover up from and stuff.
He's the he's the bully, basically.
Yeah, it's called Shtar, you idiot, Doug Gastard.
He's a fucking asshole that but he's yeah, hateful.
Oh, the towns are Mr Ripley. He's wonderful in that as well.
Very different character. Yeah, great.
So yeah, he's great. Wonderful.
Just want to show a little tribute to Philip Seymour often
there, but we'll talk. We'll we'll we'll re encounter
him as the movie goes on, especially there's an amazing
bit of a vibe again we're going to have to talk about.
Right. Anyway, movie starts when we get
a bit of a bit of a change of pace for mission.
IMF agent Ethan Hunt is retired from field work and has settled
down with his fiance, nurse Julia Mees, who was unaware of
his job training recruits. He believes that he that she
believes that he works for the transport agency or something.
Yeah, and the Department of Transport.
That's it. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a. Fucking really stupid cover for
someone who's involved with like a top secret like intelligence
agency that does deniable kinetic operations worldwide.
Even even though he's retired from them, he's still quite part
of them I think. Why?
Why can't he just be like a a private security contractor or
something? Why couldn't he just be like a
consultancy? Why can't he just pretend to be
a part of a consultancy that does that, deals with defence
contracts, and then he can all reasonably?
All there's all there's tonnes of other kind of agencies he
could work for which would still give him the kind of peaceful
guy who just cares about like infrastructure.
I think he could have worked for USAID because at this point from
hadn't closed and gutted it. It could have worked for fucking
UNICEF or something, you know? And I mean, like, I get the like
they've got as cover as US like our State Department, but like,
yeah, for the USCID, you'd work for that kind of thing, but.
They're including my office or something?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, but they've got them
working for the Department of Transport, which is, it seems
like a disaster waiting to happen.
It seems like your cover is going to get blown eventually,
right? I'd say, oh, man, why you?
Why you, why you're so sad? Or just a few of my buddies at
work got like massive, got in a gunfight and then like, the US
government disavowed directions. But hold on, was, was, was, was
this the same thing as a train being delayed last week?
I was really sad. About the train.
Yeah. Sick of these potholes?
So we meet, yeah. So we, so we meet them at the.
It's an engagement party they're having, isn't it?
And loads of loads of people he doesn't know are there and loads
of people he's very vaguely knows.
So he's meeting a lot of people for the first time.
So he's he's giving his cover a workout.
There's a couple of things that that kind of he kind of tips his
high a little bit by accident. So there's a bit where Julie
Julia, played by Michelle Monaghan, is having a
conversation with a couple of her friends.
One of them is Iles from Rizzoli.
And Iles, by the way, Yeah, you're struck Mcbriffy's and.
Todd from NCIS as well. Yeah, right, Rod, Hot Rod for K
Todd. Hot Rod for K Todd.
And yeah, so she's she's talking to those two.
And this is a funny little bit of trivia.
So when they when Tom Cruise was filming The Last Samurai, some
of that stuff was filmed in New Zealand.
And one of the locations was this plague Lake Wanica.
And that is the reason why he and Julia in this film met in in
Lake Monaca doing some kind of like a war sports.
So yeah, he's he's he overhears them as she's trying to remember
the name of the place. And then he isn't over here.
I mean, he lips reads, which comes.
Yeah, which comes back later. But it's a good bit of
screenplay, foundational work. And then.
Yeah. So he we learned he can lip
read. And then then we see him have
like a few conversations with some fun people.
Fucking Aaron Paul. Yeah.
Isn't this movie? Todd Chavez jump scare.
Todd Chavez, Bojack Horseman mentioned again.
Jack mentioned relentlessly. I have to say that what when,
when you look at that kind of thriller code thriller maxing
activities, Todd from Bojack actually pulls off some severe
fucking moves that like not even some of the best thriller
protagonists could have done. And he does them accidentally.
That one episode when he ends up fucking managing to join the
Latin Kings and the Aryan Brotherhood in the same episode
when he's incarcerated. You know, the episode when he
accidentally fucking impersonates the leader of a
Eastern European dictatorship. It's all very.
It's all very Ethan Hood coded, actually.
It actually is. I like when he writes a rock
opera as well. Yes, it sounds like that last,
like the last song for a place that is rich in loam.
He writes it on. Like a little casual.
Like a little casual, like toy organ.
Fantastic. Beautiful stuff.
So while all this is happening, he said, Oh, sorry, I've got to
mention the bit where Ethan's doing his cover and he's talking
about traffic patterns to that dude who we see later in Star
Wars. Yeah, Greg Grunberg.
What a bit of netball buddy casting Gigi Abram's school
friend who we just like fucking gets into loads of his films.
Yeah. Greg Grunberg who will always
knows of some back Parkman from Heroes because he has such a
fucking cop face. Kevin's like the Department of
Transportation, and he feels like, yeah, I've been there for
almost 10 years now. Wow.
And Kevin's like, what is that? What do you do there, Ethan?
Study traffic patterns, flow, parking control strategy,
optimum speed limits. And we developed plans of attack
to eliminate the blockage. When you hit the brakes for a
second, just tap them on the freeway.
You can literally track the ripple effect of that action
across a 200 mile stretch of road.
And you know why do you know? Because traffic has memory.
It's amazing. It's like a living Organism.
Let me finish up that martini for you.
Wow. And then Keithan, like Ethan
walks off. Kevin does that look if like who
the fuck is this guy? He like rolls his eyes and
pretends to be asleep as I go. So boring.
What do you do for a job, Kevin? Yeah, that's so fucking
interesting. And.
Love like the immediate reaction to the two women round.
I'd marry him. I'd marry him.
It's like I'm fucking ovulating right now, you know?
It's like they are like, yeah, yeah, that's cool.
So during the party, Ethan receives a phone call.
It's it's encoded, isn't it? It's they say it's a like a cold
calling call from. Travel Agency.
So he hangs with the film, not saying anything, reaches down to
the ice box, throws all the ice out and then tells Julia that
they've run out of ice. We asked him to the shop.
So he goes and does that. And in the still gas station, he
bumps into the IMF director of operations, John Musgrave,
played by Billy Crudup. And he approaches him about a
special mission to rescue one of Ethan's proteges, Lindsay Faris,
who's played by Kerry Russell. Yeah, so.
Brilliant scene. Yeah, it's good.
So what are they doing? They're talking, but they're not
looking at each other. Tom Cruise, Ethan is looking for
like the the talk about slushies and like what to eat, and he's
looking at chips and stuff. There's a whole thing in the
screenplay, which I think is cut out, about how Ethan has been so
busy planning this party that he hasn't eaten and he's really
hungry, which they cut out. That is, he's just like me.
For real. For real.
Should have left that in. Ethan Hangry confirmed.
Ethan hungry? That sounds like they want to go
hangry. Right what?
What was your impression of Billy Crook when you first saw
him? Did you catch on the vibes?
You're a little bit off of this guy straight away.
Fucking sinister. I've I've I've found the vibes
to be off in this. Says says something, there's the
something he says that like gets my back up almost straight away.
Most grave. Hey, I know we joke about it,
but I'm always as close to begging you to quit training on
people who get your ass back in the field.
But it's not what you do anymore.
Respect your choice, except I know how you close, how close
you were with Lindsay, so I figured you might want to lead
the team. It gets a little bit too like
Tony on the heartstrings. Yeah, which gives me which gives
me off vibes. Yeah, it's, it's unprofessional
for someone in that kind of childbirth, isn't it?
I mean. Come.
On, come on, come on. Do it for her buddy.
Come on.
It's like. And it and it works.
It takes the, it takes that camera, goes home, sits in his
garage and watches the through the little Kodak thing, watches,
watches the mission brief. As we're watching the mission
brief, we're hearing about this guy, Owen Davian.
And Owen Davian has taken Lindsay Faris captive in a big
warehouse in Berlin somewhere. And the team has already been
nominated for it, including Declan Gormley, played by John
for Reese Myers, Zen Lee, played by Maggie Q and our old friend
Luther Stickle. Yeah.
Play, play, play by Bing, Rhames, Phineas, Freak himself.
And as we're getting that brief, we're also getting like these
sort of like Super 8 flashbacks. Yeah.
Of training montage with. Yeah, stick fighting.
Stick fighting. Yeah, crack, crack, crack the
stick fighting and like tripping each other up and oh, you're
good, but you're not as good as me.
And then she trips him up and it's like, ah, you find me,
you've bested me kind of thing. And she's like, she's like
blindfold on rebuilding rifles and handguns and stuff and all
that kind of thing. But but it's like fun bounce
because that's what people that IMF do for fun.
So you get that. And then it's a bit like, you
can see it's like emotionally affected him.
And you know, with the decision he's made before he's made it,
he's going to go and lead up this mission.
So he does that. He explains to Julia that work
called. There's a public transport
conference that's dropped short notice I have to go to.
There's a transport emergency? What like has it been a train
crash? Has has has been a massive multi
car pile up somewhere? Has a fucking bridge falling
onto a freeway? No, this is an urgent conference
I've got to go to right before I get married.
Moid behaviour. She is dumping this man.
She is going to be all over at it with this.
I think we need to discuss Julia's taste in men and her
inability to see a red flag. I think Sandy was going to say
something there. Yeah, I was going to say the
transport emergency is the 1615 from Brighton coming through and
it's being pulled by a red green diesel today and he needs to put
a 3D camera into his mouth and film himself on the bridge over
the track. Francois Bourgeois, that's what
he is. Can you imagine, like to keep
up, keep his cover? He's got a whole Instagram real
channel. I'm doing that.
This is the 1615. And is he got a tooth?
The horn for me? Yeah.
The horn for me, yeah. And then fucking flash forward
like 3 weeks and you're some terrorist in the middle of butt
fuck Noah and the last thing you see is this guy who you laugh at
on YouTube suddenly appearing in your bedroom with trained M4 and
just connecting you to God's Wi-Fi and it's like.
So we we get it, we get it here and we get it.
We get it after this Berlin sequence where like Julia like
is she's obviously knows he's hiding something.
She's not like a total idiot, but she but she's she's like
incredibly in curious about it. She's like, and it's not like a
deal breaker for it's all she's like, look, this, whatever it is
you're hiding, you can tell me, you know, I know there's
something and like she doesn't know that's work related.
It could be, could be anything. You could be, you could be like
a criminal. You could be having like 10
affairs. You can have a whole secret
family somewhere. He could be trapping people in a
basement somewhere. You know what?
I mean at all, at all tracks like a fair behaviour, doesn't
it? Because as cover story, it's so
mundane, yet he's having to go on these emergency conferences
and shit. It's like.
I need to take my other kid from my other secret family to the
dentist. He just goes and puts on one of
his IMF masks that he keeps just like being a like guy is like,
hi, it's me, it's your dad Frank and like Papa Frank.
It's the old Doug Ray Scott one from the On the Other Guy.
Just like fucking hell yeah, man.
Like, I mean, she's, she's powering through all the red
flags and all our friends are as well.
It's mad. It's like it'd be the fact.
I mean if I was doing this kind of behaviour and Emma's mates
would be like seriously, put a fucking air tag in his jeans.
But there's a version of this story where Like Julia Mees
wound up on Like Love Is Blind season 10, like well beyond like
the one. Let's just add like people,
people have known for a long time what this show is.
People are trying to get on there, but she's still there
trying to find actual love, not to try and get famous for a
little bit. And she's just getting
attracted. She's just one year with like
the worst guys, just all the most terrible men you've ever
heard of. Like people who meet her then
go, oh, I thought you'd have bigger tits.
So I'm not attracted to you. So I may ask.
Fuck it. That's Michelle Marrahan, you
idiot. Yeah, like some guy, like, he
like, sits in front of her like he's bought like, like the
smallest glass of wine he he can get because he's cheap and he's
not like a fucking big dope like Doctor Papa, like, like me the
God drink. And he's like, actually, you've
got a low canful tilt and your elbows are sharp.
I'm sorry. And he's yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's. Over and.
He's, he's really got the list of qualities that she should
have, but like in a LinkedIn sort of way.
Oh. My God, it's like, like those,
like those, like those nightmare dating profiles.
They say, ladies, you must be 18 to 22 years old, 5 foot 2 to 5
foot 4, Catholic trad, never married, no tattoos, support the
troops. And then they got like 1520
different fucking like deal breaking prerequisites and that
it's a dude who just looks like he didn't finish cooking and
needs to go back in the womb for a month.
Yeah, yeah. And, and, and these guys, like
she'll be dressed to the nines and he'll be, and they'll be
there like in a fancy restaurant.
He'll be there with like a pair of cargo shorts on.
Yeah. And like and like his in his in
his nice T-shirt. The good one, The good one, the
one with two stains on it. Yeah, yeah.
Only two stains on it. God, yeah, and he's got like a
broccoli haircut. My God, he's he's he's got the
whole I got half fucking. I see you got half your haircut
kind of thing. Oh my God is.
This already the most egregious oversaw of the military
industrial complex and getting away with being a walking red
flick despite being that short. Big time the fact that the fact
that the like we were skipping ahead a little bit, but the fact
that you fucking he convinces them to get married in the
hospital Chapel. Holy shit.
Like without presumably they have a marriage licence already.
I guess if they've they figured that out.
This is Marine Corps boot camp behaviour.
It is, it is this is, this is like wow, like an officer and
gentleman type stuff like like finishing phase one about to go
and do phase two on the other side of the country.
Got to lock him down to marriage now.
I don't know, Okie from Muskogee.
I can get that right here. I want to be, I want to be an
officer's wife. I want to live in pets.
I want to yeah, we're in. Pets are cooler now, but I want
to live in Hawaii like. Do you, Johnny Boot Marine, take
this girl who you only know by her dancing name, who you met at
3:00 this morning to be your lawfully wedded wife On this
date, the same date at 5:00 in the morning?
Fucking alchemy bad from us. Like do you take what's your
real name? Because I know what's not really
charisma. 1/3 it is Jesus Christ.
Welcome to the dance world. About to Make Love to some
Marines and get married. That's Christmas.
We, I'm just, I have right now. I was going to say, we're not
here on Christmas. Girls going to make a living.
Fucking right. Absolutely.
We, we, we, we support the troops and we support the
midnight ballerinas. You know, go get it.
I was going to say we, we have taken the peace out of traffic
transport emergency meeting for 10 minutes now.
Rory, I think out of us three, your job is the only one that's
done drug tests recently. Yeah, and once again I missed
out on them. You make a very good point.
We've talked about this for a while.
So Berlin. So Berlin.
OK guys, so the rocket Berlin, this film I think right.
I, I like it a lot, but I think it suffers from not adequately
explaining the heists before they do them.
And this counts as one of them, I think.
And I know that this is very much still in the first sort of
15 pages of scripts kind of thing.
So less of an issue with this one.
But we could have the Vatican. I think it's a problem anyway.
So Kerry Russell is somewhere in the middle of this building
having been tortured. She's she's barely conscious.
Standard setup. It's a it's a warehouse full of
goons and what they've done. Get your mind out of the gutter.
Get. Your mind back into the goon
cave. It's a it's a, it's a warehouse
full of thugs and hench men and, and that plan and I thought that
plan would be right. So he's plans to exfiltrate her.
And I thought, OK, right, cool. So this was like a stealth
action kind of game. You'd go in there, you'd try not
get detected. And then it turns like an escort
mission where you had to fight your way out.
Probably. It's not quite what happens
here. What happens here is they've got
like a flatbed lorry, which they've turned into like an OPS
room. I love that.
By the way, classic option minivan tick Phineas freak has
set up for machine guns, links to laptops with like EO so they
can remotely operate them, which is cool.
And he set them up to attack various parts of the building
based on and it's not made explicitly clear, but they have
some sort of X-ray capability where they can see through the
walls. It's not quite heat, it's
something else they can see through the walls, so the top of
that van is presumably pumping quite a lot of rads towards that
building to be able to do that. There's there's like fucking
there's like high degrees of male infertility reported in
like the next like few years after that drops that part in
Germany. Price, that little chip inside
of Kerry Russell's head hasn't been singed by that actually
already, but yeah, OK. But if you have been surveilled
by Ethan Hunt in the last 10 years, you may be entitled to
compensation. So, so that's happening.
So the team we have Declan Gormley, who is sitting in a
Huey off site and is dripping about it like he's like he's
bored. All you have to fly about it.
Yeah, All I do is copy. Like me.
You've also also going to fly Huey.
That's cool. So that's that.
Zen Lee, Maggie Q. We're going to call him Maggie Q
for the rest of the movie. Yeah.
Because no one else calls. No one else calls a my character
name. So Mikey Q, her job is to go in
and steal evidence. So she's trying to get a couple
of laptops that are in there. So she's infiltrating and doing
that concurrently. Meanwhile, your boy Ethan Hunt
is in there trying to find Kerry Russell.
So initially it seems pretty quiet.
They go in there, There's very little fighting.
Megan Q kills a guy in one office, which is the same office
that all the laptops are in, and she goes.
And then she starts, like, basically packing them up into a
bag to steal. Yeah.
It very quickly turns into a bit of a connect situation.
Yeah. Once they secured her and got
her like down on the ground and covered after he's injected it
with some like adrenaline or something, they basically like
duck down and then do like they just fire all those machine guns
off for a laugh and they just basically start shooting the
building up seems unsafe and start a massive firefight.
And then there's a very cool bit where like Ethan and and Carrie
are like back-to-back shooting people.
And they do a cool thing where like Ethan throws a pistol
towards her and it spins in the air, but she catches it and she
spins around a corner and kills a guy all in one slick movement,
which is very cool and looks very good.
Yeah, I like the sequence. What?
What did you say about it? I like there's a lot of a real
life for assault. Quickly going back to the
helicopter thing, I love how the IMF might be a very super secret
sketchy outfit. The respectful enough of the
German government to have their otherwise unmarked black
helicopter have big ass German national registration numbers on
it's on it's tail. Boom, very very visible.
That's a fake registration on that by the way.
It. Is indeed.
So the helicopter was a model built by Industrial Light in
Magic yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't know if there's a
big. One then, yeah.
Exactly. Yeah.
So it's like 1 one third scale I think.
Oh cool man. And yeah, so I like that they've
they've got these like sketchy unmarked helicopters.
But apart from the big ass, big ass German national registration
number there, I look like there's there's a great kind of
storytelling with with Tom Cruise and Kerry Russell just
through the way the move together, the way the fire
together. There's those scenes when I go
back-to-back. There's one shot in particular
that just the way the paused, the way the acting together hits
in such way as you think she's going to be in the rest of the
film, that's awesome. Absolute dopamine.
It's a great storyteller. It is.
And if you think about, like, if you think back to the original
Mission Impossible, yeah. And the number of women that are
on the team there. But if you think, well, it's not
the first time they've had a team that's dominated by women.
And also, that's also in that film, there's a little bit of
sexual tension between Tom Cruise and every woman.
Yeah. In that team so you know it's
like they could be going for a similar vibe in this movie and
they could be going for like a will they won't they between him
and Kerry Russell because then it would be like someone he
loves from his IMF life versus someone he loves from his non
IMF life. And that could be like the plot
that goes forward. So you yeah, you could
definitely read that and go this is where this movie is going.
Yeah. Yeah, that can ask to get that
kind of thing. But it ain't.
Exactly it is. So they do a very cool stunt
where they have to jump up the building after like deadening
and gas pipe, and they jump up the building and like kind of
rappel down at speed onto the top of the waiting van that
Mufa's driving to exfill them having with having already had
Maggie Q jump over a window to exfill as well.
Very cool. And then they drive away with
them on top of the van, midway to the helicopter.
At the same time as they're driving in the van, another
enemy helicopter flying extremely low altitudes to fit
into the shot. It's.
Such a fucking cool scene it. Is really good to the point
where, you know, if I was being like a funny Duddy, I'd be like
helicopter come from and like what I learned was was it was it
real? Where here?
Like what's going on? Yeah.
But don't think about it, don't worry about it.
You don't need to know. Just go with the go with the
flow, right? Just to sure about getting the
Huey carrier. So I should say name Lindsey
Farris start suffering from extreme head pain and they just
happen to have a device that can scan inside of her brain on
them. And they do.
And they discover that she has a chip and the chip is gonna has
been activated and in 4 minutes time it'll deny it and it'll
blow up her brain and God knows what else.
But they put her in the back of the helicopter in the hope that
they can stop it by using a defibrillator to show out the
chip. Yeah.
Which should theoretically kill her, but then she can react to
life again. But it should make the the chip
render it in it. That's what they're trying to
do. Meanwhile, helicopter versus
helicopter dogfight in a wind farm.
Very cool. Incredibly cool.
Holy crap, one of those. That's one of those.
It's one of those scenes that like kind of makes you a dummy
because you watch it. Oh shit, are they going to
crash? Oh my God, it makes you forget
that, you know, no, they're not going to die in a fiery
conflagration because there's like another two hours this film
left. But it takes into the story.
It's brilliant. It's just, it's really, really
contrast this enough. Fucking cool.
What what mission is really good for is that because of the
entire team getting wiped out with the sort of mission 1 where
always it's a bit like Game of Thrones.
Anyone could die in any moment. So when Monkey Cue, for
instance, tumbles up the side of their cops and it's hanging on
for dear life because she's holding onto some kind of
briefcase or something, have to pull her back in again.
There's a there's a version of that where she just gets dropped
and dies. Another thing I like about this
sequence is the attention to detail.
There's a bit where a part of a wind farm falls off prompts into
the ground and a lesser film maker would have had it just
happen into the field, boom and make the noise and you know,
stick to the ground here to give it a bit of extra kineticism and
just to have a bit bit more vibes.
It happened to land amongst some sheep and the sheep go back and
run away. I like that.
Just didn't need to be there. It was fun, yeah.
You see, you see that pissed off a lot of people from like
reviews and stuff I've seen people are mad at that.
Fuck off. I say what the fuck man and say
you what? What a fucking opinion to have.
I'm mad because of the sheep. Like there aren't sheep in
Germany, like there aren't sheep in Berlin.
You need to get on this movies level and this movies level is
is fun. Yeah, basically.
Somehow using that that old Huey, some excellent Pilot and
Declan languages to avoid one of the heat seeking missiles by
firing into the side of a wind farm.
And then they managed to evade the the helicopter by flying
through the blades of a of one of the towers.
And instead of just like pulling away the pursuing helicopter
like just follows them into it and gets twatted by by a by a
blade. The helicopter forgets it's a
helicopter and forgets that they can just stop and go backwards
and it's like bought the tickets, take the ride.
As they get away, they are waiting to charge up a
defibrillator, which is taking like 30 seconds, but they make
you wait those painful 30 seconds.
As this is happening, like the charge on the head is clearly
getting worse and worse and worse.
And as they have 6 seconds left before they can use the panels
on it, it donates. And we are given a horrible shot
of like one eye kind of ruined, looking straight ahead.
And the other eye for the force of the blast is looking away.
And we see it like fucking five times and it's horrible.
Yeah, it's a really good effect though, really.
Like because it gets gets by the the sensor because it's not
gory, but it is unnatural and horrible.
Yeah, audible, audible gasp from Emma when when we're watching
it, it doesn't shy away from it. I think that's really cool.
It's just, I mean, she goes, I'll even thank you or whatever.
And then like a second later the thing pops in our brain and
you've got the countdowns like 5 seconds or something left and
it's like, man, that's a. Project would become a series
where like Ethan can't let anybody die and they let him get
away with that for ages. Like they they give everyone
plot armour around him so that that that works and he is like
this unstoppable force. But here he is the same kind of
powerless he was in the first film.
And you seem like he acts it pretty well, I think.
I think really goodness, this is like peak Tom being a crazy guy
era as well. This is like a year after the
the couch jumping on Oprah. He's married to Katie Holmes.
I'm saying that he's a good performer and he hasn't changed,
right. Then he goes back to his home.
You see that he's visibly shaken up and he can't tell Julie about
it because Julie doesn't know about his life.
So he just shrugs off as he's tired.
And then we have the whole business which there was just.
Too much traffic at work today, honey, I'm sorry.
Yeah, the cars, they wouldn't stop.
Someone someone hit the brake for for two seconds on the
Interstate and the ripple effects were terrible, but it's.
Wild. He's like, he's like broken.
He's a visibly broken man. She's like, what's what's wrong,
honey? And he's like park and ride.
If I could, if I could come so one of his arms is broken.
He's covered in burn box. He's he's, he's lost like
tutorials in a testicle and she's like honey.
And he's like, there was a big fight at work today.
Somebody said that commute aliens were a good idea.
OK, so Ethan later learns that Lindsay mailed him a postcard
before her capture and discovers a magnetic microdot under the
stamp. IMF technician Benji Dunn,
played by Simon Pegg, who who wants when he's asked about
having a career in Hollywood, says what is not.
I'm going to end up being in Mission Impossible 3, is it?
And here he is. But by the way, does he have
like terminal nerd face or something?
Because it always gets like, I mean, Star Trek again.
I thought you were like referring to this time in his
career because it's like like this is what someone Peg was
like at the beginning. This is what we this is how we
knew him. Like he's all thin and like an
action movie star now. But like for most of us, like
watching Spaced Big Train and like his small bit parts.
And I'm Alan Partridge. And then the day-to-day.
No, sorry, Brassai. Brassai.
Yeah. Like, this is what it was like.
Yeah. Benji done recovers enough data
from the laptops to determine that Davian will be in Vatican
City to obtain a mysterious. It says here Biological hazard
could name the rabbit's foot. That's retconned, by the way,
later in the series. What they do in this sequence,
though, is, is they just use, like, utter garbage words to try
and explain away that what the rabbit's foot is.
Basically say that it's the Mac Guffin and that's all you need
to know. Person watching movie, you don't
actually need to know what it is or what it does.
OK, well interesting. I had a professor at Oxford, Dr
Wickham, hugely fast, enormous man, taught biomedicular
kinetics and cellular dynamics and he used to try and scare us
underclassmen by saying that the world was undoubtedly going to
be eviscerated by technology, that it was inevitable that a
compound be created that he calls the anti God, an
accelerated mutator, an unstoppable, horrific destroyer
of everything. Parks and houses, restaurants,
beaches, ice cream parlours. So whatever a rogue organised
organisation is willing to spend this kind of money on a piece of
mystery tech, I always assume it's the anti God end of the
world, that sort of thing. Not that I have any idea though,
that's just speculation. I expect you not to worry about
it either. Audience at home.
Yeah, Big Basil Expedition energy.
So yeah, they do the whole, they do the whole thing now.
They explain what it is, except they don't explain what it is,
and they never explain what it is.
ChatGPT that's. What the bad guy is in the last
two movies? Rory.
That's not a joke. That's pretty much it.
No, fuck sake. It's a large language model
called the entity. Called the fucking hell.
God damn. And it glows in Necron green
when you put it in the USB drive.
This is just the mad kind of escalation to get the franchises
though, isn't it? Because like, I mean, like I
said, the first Fast and Furious film was like, hey, so the
street racers and the steel and DVD players, and now it's like,
guys, you got to take those cars into space to stop the
terrorists. Yeah.
I am drifting a tank across an Acula submarine on polar ice.
Why? Because family.
Ethan visits Julia at work, which was in a spontaneous
marriage, which is wild. I get married by a HOTA, a
hospital chaplain, at their wedding rings.
By the way, he's wearing a little panda on a wedding ring
and she's got a little like Daisy or something for hers.
Very nice. Ethan plans an unofficial
mission to capture Davian and it says here the team successfully
infiltrates the Vatican and captures Davian.
Obviously lots, lots have happened.
So let's get into it. Fun little plan.
This is what I was saying earlier on.
Like they don't explain how the heist is going to going to go
down. Like one of the things I really
enjoyed about the first Mission Impossible and you see again in
later ones, I think, I think Ghost Protocol does one where
they explain how the heist should go down and you see them
going through all the steps so that when the heist doesn't go
to plan and they're floundering and having to like think on
their feet and do incredible stunts to to make it work.
We know how that deviated from what was was going to happen.
I think the reason why this we don't get one of these on this
on is because the heist pretty much goes to plan.
So it's pretty good. I guess that's the reason why.
But they don't explain what they're going to do either.
They just kind of go we're going to go to the Vatican and there's
loads of cameras and stuff. But what I do like about this
sequence is, again, attention to detail.
They do lots of little things that they didn't need to do.
So like we see it later in the movie and we see it here as
well. You see Ethan on the scene like
measuring the height of the walls.
But we get, so I'll explain it. So Ethan and Declan are in a
like that's not UPS, it's GGL or something like Korea Courier
van. And they pretend that the van
breaks down, blocking a thoroughfare.
So they have a little smoke machine in the bonnet that emits
smoke. And we got a funny sequence
where. Just a big louder Italian
argument. Yeah, Jonathan Rhys Myers and
Tom Cruise are doing a big louder Italian argument with
the, with the disticulations and the vocal tambour and
everything. And it's like, OK, like all that
stuff, Bully. It's just like, OK, cool.
Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, OK, because you're doing
it in the language. I guess that's all right.
And everyone's like, and all the cars are stopped behind them.
They're all doing the same thing like doing that fuck you like OK
and very fun. I'm I'm probably bad for doing
that. So it buys enough time for for
Tom Cruise. To we're going to send you to a
cultural awareness training now. It's being Italian, a protected
category. OK, Yeah, it probably is.
Ethan Hunt scales the wall, the exterior wall of the compound
that is the Vatican. It's quite cool how they did
this. So when they were filming it,
they basically built a big wall. On one side of it is the big
stately home that's meant to be like filling in for the Vatican.
On the other side of it, they kind of redressed to be like an
Italian St in Rome. And basically what they do is
they kind of redress the same bit of wall going up and up and
down. So it looks different each time
they do it. So when he gets down on the wall
on the other side, it's the it's the side he actually went up on
the first side redressed. Very, very cool.
Anyway, he gets this wall by firing like some kind of
grappling hoop thing a bit and runs up it.
And then for no reason whatsoever, he lies flat on the
wall, turns to the camera as a zooming crashes me into him, and
goes Humpty Dumpty 7 the wall, which is just one of the
greatest lines of any movie ever.
Like the music built do do do do do.
Humpty Dumpty sat in the wall. So it's fucking amazing.
In the period of about 10 minutes, we've gone from his
beloved prodigy dying right in front of him to him running up
the wall of the Vatican, looking bang into the camera and then
doing a verbal stem. My only disappointment is that
when they got out of the van, like neither of them had like
big comedy moustaches. Like I really wanted them both
to like, like Mario and Luigi. Like that would have been so
much better. And like, the camera just like
pads around to say the like, cab of the vans full of like, empty
fucking pizza boxes. And this was like, no one's like
Catholic, like Agon's and rosary beads hanging from the fucking
rearview. America's It's Italy, baby.
So I'm just imagine getting really annoyed at some like
snapping pasta as they put it into the pan.
We're doing this thing again when we make up a guy then got
mad about him. So Tom, Tom's on top of the
wall, Humpty Dumpty's on top of the wall.
He does a really cool thing here.
So, So what he does is he has to, there's a, there's a camera
nearby which he has to obscure so he can walk into the path of
it. So he does.
So he gets his little Game Boy camera out.
That's so fucking cool. And takes a picture from the
angle of the of the camera. Prints it off on his little Game
Boy camera printer and then and then puts it in front of the
camera and then rewires the camera up.
So it was like out for 30 seconds and the guy's like, oh,
the camera's broken and then it comes back on again and it's
doing the whole thing where it's looking at a still image.
Very cool. On top of that, he's uses a
little laser range Finder and like dangles it over the side of
the wall so you can see exactly how high the wall is.
So then he can set up in advance his little repelling line so
that it stops before he hits the the bottom.
So he can just fall off the wall.
And we didn't need that that a little bit where he gets the
laser and goes and then measures it.
And then you see the measurement like you could have.
We could have assumed they did that in pre planning, but we
didn't have to. But we but we seemed to it and
it's cool. Yeah.
So he falls off the side of the wall, does a little homage to
the Langley heist where he kind of like does the fall down and
does the thing where he's like a waves around over the ground and
doesn't hit the ground. Very cool.
Fun fact, they did a few takes of it and the rappelling wire
went down a bit too slow. So they tried to gradually speed
it up and they did one take where it went really, really
fast by accident. And Tom Cruise made contact with
the ground and like his Dick off the ground.
And then and everyone was like, Oh my God, Tom Cruise hit his
Dick on the ground. Oh my God.
And then Tom was like really, really happy about like, oh,
that was so much fun. That was so cool.
I'm going to do it again. It's the fastest anyone's ever
fucked the ground before and lived.
Oh my God. Then he then he sends his little
clothes back up the repel line again.
All of that takes his, takes his overalls off and sends the
overalls up on the line again. Yeah.
And then the next thing we see is him like, dressed like a
cassock and everything, like an old, like, like a priest need a
little hat and everything on. It's like you're the least
convincing priest I've ever seen.
Yeah, that's, and that's what he wanted to do with his life.
He was a seminary student when he was a young lad.
He was headed, he was. He was headed for holy orders
before he decided Actor Max. It's wild, isn't it?
Yeah. God, imagine the world we would
have had. Imagine taking confession or
giving confession to to Tom Cruise.
You'd just be so enthusiastic about us.
You'd love me. It's like forgive your Father
for our sin, and I love that about you, you know?
You sinned, you know. I've done that as well.
Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Yes.
So he's smuggling into the the area I guess now having done a
costume change. Meanwhile, Declan drives the van
to like a public part of the Vatican and parks it randomly
somewhere that you definitely can't park a van.
He does a costume change into CVS to be like a journalist or
tourists with a camera. Something like that.
Yeah, Yeah, I'm. Trying to remember what, like
Declan's function is. So I was thinking about this.
Imagine that you could make, like a short film about a heist
going on, but it only follows the point of view of, like, one
person. And that one person has such,
like, a nugatory job in it that they're they're sat there having
a conversation about completely different stuff.
And then they do that one little bit and they go back to having a
conversation. Yeah.
That's why that's why I imagined because there's a whole bit
here. We'll get into it.
But like, there's a whole bit where Declan's on his own in the
Vatican, just like, yeah, lowering a body down like a
tower. Like there's a huge amount of
slapstick potential there that that was not was not plumped.
Luther is also hacking his way into into the the Vatican
underwater. Isn't he?
Yeah, he's yeah. He's in a school bag here and
he's swimming through the Vatican sewers.
Yeah. I love this.
Like yeah, because they've all just picked 1 normal way to get
in, but yeah, fine. So.
So he's underground and he's like setting up explosives to
like get away from the sewer into the main Vatican building,
I guess that they're going into. Is it like Saint Peters Basilica
or something mental like that? Saint Peters Yeah, yeah, I'm
really glad that the Irish guy isn't the demolitions guy in
this. He's not the explosive guy.
Because it boils my piss, It really does.
I mean going back to fucking Sheamus who a car bomb in the
fucking Harry Potter films would say you're a story arc is to be
Irish a bit dumb accidentally blow shit upset things on fire
and the big final final her all the film blow a bridge up
positive positive representation for the sons of Ireland.
JK roller man, do you remember when she was asked on Twitter if
there were any Jewish Wizards and she just like responded?
But it shouldn't even say like hi, thanks for asking.
Oh, that's an interesting question.
She just went like fucking something Goldstein Jewish was
that was it? And it's like, what the fuck?
What the fuck, man? So I'm just Maggie Q, right.
So, Maggie. Rules up in the Lambo baby.
Yeah, Maggie Q, Rules of the Lambo and I'll put I'll put the
video into the video in the pod here.
So Maggie Q couldn't drive and I don't know what her agent told
Paula Wagner when she was cast because she says she couldn't
drive. And I went from not driving last
week to this week driving a Lambo on the making of.
And what happened was she said that she was wearing, and I
don't know why she had to do this, but she was wearing like
high heels obviously for like her scenes, but they've got her
in the high heels, which is driving the car as well.
And she says. That the because there was a
script passed by Quentin Tarantino.
Oh. God, don't talk to me.
I watched that fucking scene from Crimson Tide the other day
where they talk about the silver surf and I got angry all over
again. So, yeah, Maggie Q, she was
driving, she's parking up this land though in in her high heels
that the the high heel itself got stuck on the accelerator and
she couldn't, she got like her foot got stuck and she couldn't
move it. So she's driving this like
$350,000 car and just like bumps it into a bunch of other cars on
her first day on set of like her first day filming.
Incredible. Yeah.
Brilliant. I love everything about that.
Story love. I love that story.
Anyway, good. Good enough.
Left gassing at Monkey Q, right. Bosh, Maxon.
Right.
OK, cool. So she's there.
She's in this knockout dress, head turning.
And it does. It turns people's heads.
Yeah, did you notice that one extra checking her out?
Yeah, he's like. Tom Edwards.
His eyes aren't painted. On.
Her role in this is Owen Davian has come to meet a buyer and she
does the classic spy movie thing of like walk up to them and
spilling a drink all over him. Classic hitman stuff as to to
get him to go to a bathroom. Perfect.
Love it. It works like a treat.
And what is happening concurrently is your boy, your
boy. Ethan Hunt has met up with
Luther. Luther's brought his 3D printer
along. Yeah.
And has 3D printed a perfect Philip Seymour Hoffman mask.
Yeah, because. The because the photos that
Maggie Q's been grabbing. That's right, yeah.
And so they make this, this Philip Seymour Hoffman disguise
for for Ethan Hunt to wear. He's completely changed into it.
The only thing that he hasn't got squared away yet is the
voice. There's a little AI voice
modular thing that has to hear. The the the the person's voice
say a specific set of phrases that presumably capture every
vocal intonation required. Yeah, it's like a specific poem
that captures all the different, like phonemes and stuff like
that. Exactly.
Yeah. So that's the only thing they're
waiting on. But Owen Davian goes to the
bathroom in on his own, and lurking behind a little grate on
the floor, which was not caught by his security, is a a perfect
Owen Davian clone in the form of Ethan Hunt.
Hunts knocks out. Did we get some of the ground?
And then he forces them to read that little, that little script
for the voice modulator to take. Meanwhile, the security is
coming very shortly. So they need to get rid of the
body. And there's a whole thing where
I think it's. A deck was holding the door kind
of kind of no downs behind the door.
Security guards got a door open and because the AI systems still
trying like kind of work out how he speaks like he's been told in
in in Asia stickle they're like, oh, you've got another 10
seconds, 20 seconds, whatever. So rather than Tom Cruise trying
to speak, he's just it's. Tough ages.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then eventually he's like, what do you want?
Go away. Yeah, leave me alone.
Then like, he's out, isn't he? Like he's out of the bathroom
and yeah, he goes up to him and she's like, oh man, I'm sorry, I
got why on your shirt. Want to fuck about it?
Yeah, exactly. So he's So what, what, what what
they've done is they've stolen Owen Davian's briefcase, which
which was unattended in the bathroom.
So he's taken that and he's posing as Owen Davian.
He leaves the bathroom is propositioned by by Mikey Q He
says through security, I'll go off with her.
You follow in the car. So he gets in the Lambo.
Lambo drives away, parks over a sewer grate.
They open the bottom of the car and escape through the sewer
grate, having handed off like the briefcase to to stickle and
all that. And then once they're
underground, they deny at the car, blowing up the car and
everyone thinks that Owen Davian's dead and killed by car
bomb. And then we got a really cool
like, just like smash cut to them, like rounding a corner on
a speedboat, like flinging, flinging, flinging up the up the
tiger, just like looking cool as fuck.
I just wanted like a mission complete like overlaid on that
point and like like a score count.
I just like just it goes up like 10,000 or something and it's
like. SS rank.
SS rank perfect run and all like the twitch comments.
Go like WW suit. Only Silent Assassin car
deloaded mill. Cameras detected Mill.
Yeah, walls sat on one. One Humpty Dumpty's one.
Yeah. You've unlocked the rubber duck.
Explosive rubber duck, Yeah. You've unlocked the Humpty
Dumpty skin. You've unlocked the the egg
decoy. You just, you just fucking.
It's fucking hit manning around in the background dressed like
Humpty Dumpty. That would be that was right.
OK, If this was a little, that would be like the costume that
you can find that makes the level stupidly hard because each
ship, each ship my level has a bone costume you can find that
makes it super hard. Like there's the fucking like a
man. There's like the suit of armour
in Sapienza. The plate, It's a plague Dr
Sorry, there's a plague Dr one and there's so many.
Yeah, there's like a samurai one in Hokkaido.
Yeah, OK, yeah, cool. That would be the giant big egg
Man 1 would be the one for this, the vacuum.
So cool. Oh, by the way, before we leave
the Vatican, has anyone played Engineer Jones?
And the Great Circle is basically a Vatican infiltration
simulator. The whole the whole first field
of the game, as you like in the Vatican, dressed as a priest,
finding relics and bombing around and punching, punching
Nazis. It's great.
I love, I love like Maggie Q's recalcitrance to blow up such an
attractive car as well. I would have been kind of in the
same boat at that point. It's like they should have
infiltrated in a beat ass Fiat 500.
I can just say there's a lot in this movie.
There's a lot of there's a lot of very quick and loose handling
of explosives. They are.
Because that's because they haven't got an Irish guy
running, that's why. They are very good.
They are lobbing those things all over the place.
They are just, yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, cool. So after landing, Ethan learns
that Lindsay's microdot is a warning about Davian and IMF
Director Theodore Brussel, which is Laurence Fishburne.
They are in a convoy taking them across the Chesapeake Bay
Bridge. So they're back in, I think,
Virginia. I get the impression that the
IMF headquarters is in Langley, Virginia, but they just don't
say it. And the convoy, which has
obviously the captured Davian in it, is ambushed by mercenaries
who extract Davian. This is a mental sequence.
So when they were filming it, they, they built a section of
bridge in like California and shot it there.
And they only used like a few location shots to go establish
the the water and everything, but the rest of it is all from
the flat. So yeah, a helicopter comes and
there's also a Reaper drone or put a drone or some kind of cool
drone flying around firing missiles at them. 22,000 and six
So early on the on the drone boom.
Yeah, I mean it's got a CGI then afterburner, so like that.
So they're not quite sure how drones work at this point
because those ones are cause propeller driven, but.
But yeah, the one big stunt from this movie that people talk
about is the rocket that that chases Ethan and blows up a car.
And then the blast from the the car knocks Ethan into the air
sideways, smashing into a car. That's that's the cool, that's
the cool shot. And it was like the big the big
stunt they talked about at the time for this one.
Looking back, compared to the other Mission movies, this seems
kind of quaint. Yeah, but it's.
But it's still a perfectly really good stunt, I think.
I think a stunt that any stuntman would be happy to have
on the resume, yeah, is a really cool looking stunt and he sells
it really well. Yeah, like I mean the thought I
had was, yeah, this is this is quite mild as opposed to the to
the stunts you see in later films.
I mean, the fact that the fact that we're using sort of behind
the scenes work for one of the big stunts for I think the
second or third last film as a trailer, just like behind the
scenes footage of that was being shown before films at the
cinema. Oh, are you talking about the
dead reckoning bike? Jump off the off the Cliff.
Yes, I am. I am.
Yeah, yeah. And like when you say how like
outlandish and how crazy and. And there was, there was one
with the Burj Al Khalifa at one point in one of the films, I
think. And that's.
That's the next one after this goes.
Right, right. So that's when it goes.
Yeah, since this one does look like looks a bit mild compared
to what we're doing now, but a really cool scene.
Really excited. Really, this is this is one of
the runniest films he's done. I think he probably runs more
than he walks in this film. Right.
So on the subject of stunts, then we'll, we'll, I mean, we're
going to come back to this. So in every movie since there's
a, there's a tentpole stunt that is like talked about in the
press up to the beginning of it. The next one is the Burj
Khalifa. And after that is the clinging
to the side of the A400 as it takes off.
The next one to that is the bike.
No, sorry, it's Fallout. So it's it's bungee jumping off
a helicopter. And the one after that is the
bicycle jump that you talked about just then.
And then what we got for the final one.
It's a combination of the submarine thing that happens,
which is really cool, and then the big, the big biplane chase
that happens. The reason I list all those is
because in each one of those movies, it gets progressively to
the point where the stunt overtakes the film.
Yeah. In the Burj Khalifa sequence, it
makes sense for what they're doing.
It's part of the heist and it's good character stuff happens and
plots of not plot stuff, but like stuff that makes this stuff
interesting happens and it's it's really good and it's in the
middle of the movie and it's not the big climax.
And then they crack on with other shit after it.
And there's also over a good stunts in the movie.
Each of these films has a good stunts in them.
The A400 and the next one happens in the cold open.
Then the Fallout 1 happens at the climax and then after that
they become like parts of the climax and then they go on for
ages. And then the focus drifts away
from the storytelling of the action and turns into look at
the stunt we're doing. Can you believe we're really
doing this? And it kind of becomes a bit
distracting to A to a certain extent, to the point where what
you sign up for when you kind of come to a movie theatre to watch
a film is to be taken away and right along with a story.
And then what ends up happening and this is that you end up kind
of going, well, it's half of that.
And it's and it's half like me now watching like just like a
stunt like you would on TV, like like watching Evel Knievel jump
a bunch of buses. It's like it's not part of the
story. This is separate to the story.
It's a bit like, but when they did the Bond movies and like in
living that die, they do the the the jump over the river as the
car somersaults and it's like, yeah, OK, I get it.
But that's not really part of the movie anymore.
This isn't part of the chase scene.
It's just like a stunt he's done in the middle of the chase
scene. It's overdone, it's over worked,
it's over Ross. And while it's cool, it also
kind of makes you feel a little bit cheated, I guess, because
like, the films built around this rather than built around
the film, you know? Yeah, that definitely was an
issue as we get to the ends where the plotting of the films
becomes very much like a secondary to like, how can we
get from distance sequence to distance sequence to distance?
And that wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't in this genre of film
where plot is actually really important for to keep the wheels
on. Yeah, like a spy from that
hasn't got a problem that makes sense or is like interesting and
it's just nugatory. Like, yeah, it's bad.
I talked about on the first one we did Mission Impossible one.
But like in from this point on, you're going to get increasingly
films where all the plotters live to you like small simply
lit rooms so they can change as they need it to work around the
stun sequences. Long story short, Owen David is
recaptured by his mercenaries and all the.
We've missed our really cool bit.
We missed our really cool. Bit on the flight home.
On the flight home, fuck me, right?
Take it away. So the so they're interrogating
them and this is when this is when you start to really see
just the quality in Philip Seymour Hoffman's acting, the
menace that you abused this character.
The crux of it being in the whole the whole thing is
obviously he's not going to get he's not going to get Ethan to
identify himself to him. So he gets him so fucking pissed
off that he almost arbitrarily executes him by dropping him out
of a plane just so he can hear Luther shout his name to stop
him. And that's genius, he is.
He is a great foil for Ethan Hunt.
Because which of these guys is more fearless?
And in the end, Ethan shows the most fear for his wife, right?
This is a classic thing, isn't it?
Like what's. Yeah, he's he shows no concern
for his own physical well-being and throws himself into all
these situations. But yeah, ultimately the the
ultimate bit of leverage is that you have a wife and family.
Exactly. Yeah.
And it's just fucking really cool just seeing them being held
on just by like cable ties. That's zip ties to our American
cousins. It's like he better have not got
those from B&M bargains, because I do not trust those things.
But no, yeah, it was incredible. And just seeing him getting
mentally outmanoeuvred because Ethan Hunt is a good guy who
gets a lot of things right a lot of the time.
And to see him get pulled out of his as the moral construct by
which he lives his life and his hand forced into doing something
arguably evil. That's not even arguably evil.
It's like the fucking it's like the fucking arbitrary execution
of a guy just because he's threatening people around you,
you know, I mean, he's been picked up by guys from a three
letter agency who got this evolved of the fuck up.
He's been thrown onto a plane and then he's been taken back
America. So it absolutely is rendition,
right? So this guy bumps into her in
the in the hallway and says, like, you know, can you find,
find this patient? And she's like, absolutely not,
but we're going to go anyway. What's her name?
And he sticks a little sticker on her.
And the sticker knocks her out. It's, it's some kind of
sedative. He puts in a body bag and tries
to take her to the hospital. As Ethan is rushing around
looking for her, he literally walks past her and the guy and
doesn't spot it, which is a brilliant bit of visual drive,
really. Yeah.
Yeah, that was great.
Very good. And then he gets the phone call
in the parking lot that Julie has been taken and he has 40
hours to find the rabbits foot. And just as that happens, a
bunch of blacks and hands circle around him.
And out of it steps a bunch of IMF agents led by on Timothy
Omundson, who plays Detective Lassie.
And it's like, and he's like, we've got to take you in, man.
And he tries to get away, but they, they shouldn't.
They tease him and they and they bring him back to IMFHQ where he
gets grilled at the minute. He thinks that that Brussel is
the crooked Mai who he he and Brussel are loggerheads and he's
what's he restrains to a Gurney and yeah, like and muzzled.
The restraint would go and either put a gooning mask on him
and then they had like the drag of it, like the good cave to it
there. And it's like as as I said to
Emma, and this upset her against everything after the seed is
just his hallucinations as he goods himself to a brainless
degree, like like like fucking what's his name Brussels, like
you're going to pull that shit smooth off.
You're going to goon until you're brainless.
This is how we're going to break you.
It's. Going to be like a blind couple
of thumb. You're going to good so bad you
won't know one ways up one ways down, right?
Wrong. You'll only know the goon.
That's awful. That's awful. 1 Fishman 1
Fishman When you're here, going to try not to come.
Lawrence Lawrence Fishman's like Good boys don't bust.
Man.
That's a little. Point for us.
I'm so sorry. So Billy Crud appears, who was
of course become Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen.
And he says Ethan, try not to come.
No, Ethan. Ethan, do you want to see how
deep the rabbit hole goes? I'm so disappointed in you,
Ethan. I'm so disappointed that you
could do this. You've, you've been a traitor.
That he does some lip, mouths some words to Ethan and gives
him a tool for which to free himself and.
To go to win Shanghai. That's right.
And they're like, take him away. Take.
Him away, boys. Take him from me and they and
then we have a cool, cool elevator fight, which is very
good. Yeah, boy, Tom Cruise gets free
and he has a unsanctioned mission that he takes as a
Shanghai with with the gang to recover the rabbit's foot.
So there's a very cool sequence here where this is another cool
stunt which they don't do for real, for real, but it's it's
good enough. So it's what I'm talking about
is the how they're going to infiltrate the skyscraper at
which the rabbit's foot is held. And the way they tend to do it
is from a neighbouring skyscraper.
They're going to use a fulcrum to swing and and land on top of
the other skyscraper and then try not to fall off it because
the roof of it is a big slant. Meanwhile, they're going to
distract the guards. This bit doesn't really work for
me. They're going to distract the
guards enough so that when he does do that mission that that
fall onto the you can kill them easier.
I don't know. And it's like, this is wild to
me because they decide to distract them using a baseball
pitching machine. Where do they get that from?
Do they know they're going to do that before they got there?
Like if he if he stood in the building looking at it and going
I know I'm going to do and so it's drawing on the window.
I'm going to do a fulcrum doing the measurements and stuff.
Then surely he knew what's the did he plan all that on the fly
when he got there? Do they have no idea what
they're going to do when he arrives?
They're just going to scoop it out.
Are they scooping it out and then an hour's time they're
going to go back and do it. Is are they finding the all like
baseball pitching machine shop to do this from?
Is there is there a Sports Direct in the fucking bottom
floor of the one they're in? Out out of all the things on the
go. Keep one in in the boot of my
car at all times. Actually, you don't.
I will now. Because whenever I get tailgated
I just swing open the rear. Don't go fuck you.
Oh. Man, I want that.
I want a fucking tail gun I'm on when someone's like Bootlin is
on the a 19, I want to just like press a button, actually open.
So just like a little guy with like a fucking baseball pitching
machine just gives him six and out.
That'd be fantastic. But it's like, yeah, where one
where the hell of the finding it 2 they make a big thing.
All these armed guards, the Rex, the Rex People's Liberation
Army. So yeah, yeah, for these guys
are going to escalate the lethal force straight away when
something gets thrown at them, be it a fucking baseball or
whatever, you know, this is this is fucking Shanghai, man.
They aren't going to mess around.
That's all they they didn't know that was a baseball, but it was
flinging its way across towards them.
It could be anything. Yeah.
Oh, hang around to find out. So you just the jump, just the
big swinging fulcrum thing, which looks really good.
It looks it looks really good on the thumb.
And what they did in real life is they have a really they had a
really high platform in a sound stage and green screened all
around it. So you really did like run like
30 feet and like jump and fall quite a long way on on on a
line. They just CGI did in Shanghai
after. But yeah, it looks really,
really good. So he does that very cool.
And you have like Luther, like he made it.
I knew we'd make it very fun. And then you have the whole
bollocks of him, like infiltrate in the building.
We don't see it. We see like everyone else
reacting to it. And then he just says overcomes,
I've got the rabbits fun. Like, what the fuck?
There's definitely a sequence that we should have seen.
I was like, hang on, did I miss something there?
And I went back and was like, I don't think it is.
Yeah, I thought it was just to go, we had cut of it or
something, but no. It's yeah, but no.
So he just said. He just says he's got it.
I guess him getting it from the skyscraper would have looked an
awful lot like getting the Mergafen from the end of Mission
Impossible 2. That was my thing and yeah.
I've conflated them. Yeah, but he just has it.
Yeah. There's a whole phone bit where
he has to escape, though, and he's too low for the base jump.
And he's parachute opens and he gets flung back into a building.
And there's a very funny sequence where like a guy,
security guard comes in and sees him and then he gets pulled out
by the building and by the billowing parachute at the exact
same moment. A bit of paper like hits and
square in the face as well. That's a very, very funny, very,
very good shot. Well, he ends up on the ground
by falling into the Rose and then the parachute getting
caught on a street light or something.
So he's dangling. He's dangling above traffic.
Yeah, which is cool. And then he falls on the ground
and he gets separated from the the rabbit's foot.
And we finally see it as well. It's like a biohazard container,
which if anything, makes it make less sense to me.
Like, what was it? Is it a virus?
Is it a fucking? We had a virus in the last one.
It can't be a virus again, surely.
What is it? Who knows?
So yeah, that happens and there's a bit of a bit of a car
chasing kind of thing. And then eventually they they
get away and they have the rabbit's foot and.
Then Land Rover involved, right? There's a Land Rover on that car
chase, am I right? I think so, yeah.
I think there's building security when A1 aren't they?
Yeah, Sonya, is that a Land Rover?
Hang on, how did I not club that?
It's not like in green and white slunge of the colours though.
Yeah, it's not good old school. He's looking nice defender.
Yeah, so Ethan, this is what it says in the summary.
Ethan obtains the rabbit foot and delivers it to Davian, who
tranquillizes him and implants a micro explosive similar to the
one that killed Lindsay in his head.
So we've kind of caught up with the start of the film.
So he wakes up, he's in, he's bolted to the chair.
Davian is not happy about the rabbit's foot.
I don't understand this because I think that is Roberts foot.
I think he's just fucking with him which is weird.
This. Is one of the thing.
This is one of the things a lot of people really pissed off
about JJ Abrams quote unquote mystery box storytelling
techniques and stuff. That's like I didn't piss me off
pregnancy. Why people might have found it a
little bit infuriating. The whole what is rabbit's foot
kind of thing that's saying what is this not it?
I wonder if there was some drastic cuts done between this
whole anti guard thing and I was asked to biohus and it's like I
wonder if there was more exposition than that that was
cut out to make things more kind of like teasing and make things
more engaging I guess I mean. Owen Davian shoots who Ethan
believes to be Julia, but it's not.
And this is something that pisses me off actually, is that
somehow Owen Davian also has the mass technology.
It has made a mask of Michelle Monaghan and put it onto his
former head of security, who he's just doomed.
The former head of security been the translator from the Vatican.
Sequence allowed. Yeah, he let him down.
Exactly. I mean, the movie was great.
This, this, this all works really well for me as a action
sequence. It doesn't make any sense to me
as to what Owen Davian's doing and why.
Like he's got the rabbit's foot. Should just go on his merry way,
right? Yeah, but I guess he's
vindictive over the whole playing thing, but he's.
But he doesn't want to say it. He just wants to confound him.
Give me the rabbit's foot. I've given you the rabbit's
foot. Give me the rabbit's foot.
I'll kill this woman. He's got the rabbit's foot.
I'm going to kill her then to make any sense.
Anyway, Ethan has a big long chat with I think it's Benji to
find out where where Julie is. And it turns out they're like
mile away from each other and he has to just run across Shanghai
to find her. Then it's just the great kind of
him, him directing him as he runs kind of scene.
Yeah, classic. And you'll hang a lampshade on
this kind of thing later on that the same scene again kind of
thing in Dead Reckoning. But because the entity has taken
over the comms, it's it's like it's like a bad sat NAV.
It's like turn left, turn right. No, Ethan, you gotta go left.
If no, hang on. You gotta go, turn around, go
behind you. And it's like the voice is
taking over. It's just leading on a merry
chase. Very, very funny.
Yes. So we have that.
So we have him running and we see like, what are the great
sequences of Tom Cruise sprinting?
Yeah, it's the final, final day of shooting the movie.
So the final scene that that that Tom Cruise shot for this
film is that really long run that he does along the
Riverside. Yeah, and all those extras,
they're not real extras. They're just people who happen
to live in that village. So they were getting like I
herded like cats by the production.
So they had like a Chinese speaking assistant director for
for the Shanghai sequences. It was a Scottish guy for the
rest of the movie. But for the Chinese stuff,
they've got a Chinese local there and she's just talking to
the normal people saying like, don't look anything, don't look
at them, Just don't look at them.
I like just go out your day. Like, no, you normally would.
I think this is where some of the stories have come up online
of like of like Tom Cruise is like no one's had to look at Tom
Cruise on set. And it's like what they are.
It's just like if you're an extra scene, you should be
looking at the fucking spy who's there because it's really
obvious if it was, if everyone, if everyone at the park is
looking at Tom Cruise, you know. But anyway, yes, we have that,
which is really, really cool. There's a fantastic video online
that that analysis. Tom Cruise is running the form
and he has really good form and he's really nimble getting over
these rooftops and stuff and getting down to St level and
then running across this way. And you've got to remember he's
like wearing dress shoots when he does it as well.
So as a sprinter, he has generally really good form and
you'll see like his posture is really good.
Yeah, sorry. So yeah, I got, I got really
into this when I got really into running like 3 years ago.
And I, and I watched this video and I'm going to, I'm going to
link to it in the show. It's fascinating video about how
good Tom Cruise's running form is, anyway.
We do put a lot of special interests into this podcast.
Don't. We we finally get the reveal
that Musgrave, IE Billy Crudup, is actually the bad guy.
He's the one who I think peels off the mask of the the head of
security and everything. Yeah.
He's like, Julia's alive even because of me.
Julia's still alive. Davian want to kill you both,
but I convinced him otherwise. Julie hasn't seen me.
She doesn't know anything. She's clean and she'll get to go
on with her life as long as you tell me about Lindsay's message.
That's why I'm here. Did Lindsay know about me and
Davian? Is that why she sent the message
to you? Did she read it?
Did anyone else see it? And all that kind of stuff goes
off goes off for one. So he's he's a shit.
And there's a fun bit where he like goes into this building as
a bunch of old fellas all like played more Hong or something.
And they kind of just like points like go through that
door. Yeah.
We don't. We don't want any troubles.
And so he does, and he finds her.
And just just as he finds her, Owen and Davian appears.
And as that happens, he gets like a obviously a blinding
headache. And Davian's like, I've
activated the chip in your head. I love.
The way you love us, that lineman just like the.
The chip in your head. It's it's like the delivery is
incredible. It's like it's, it's a matter of
fact, Yeah. It's still brimming with
absolute menace. Yeah, that's what it is.
I've activated the charger in the head.
He tosses the triggers to the ground.
You have maybe 4 minutes left. Ethan is an excruciating pain.
Julia breathing heavily, terrified, perplexed as Davian
circles Ethan and kicks him in the face.
I told you she'd call your name and she's and Julia's like, stop
it, don't Ethan. And then have a fight.
It's a good fight. It's a really good fight.
It's a punchy. It's really, it's weighty.
Tom Cruise is really good at doing fight scenes and punching
and stuff when he's in a compromised state, and we saw
that in Minority Report when he's like fumbling around blind
and stuff, and he's really good at here.
One move in the fight choreography makes me laugh
every time I see it though. Which is when he's because he's
keeps driving his temples because his head hurts and he
hits Damien twice by twatting with each of his elbow.
Strikes was so silly, I loved it.
So silly but very fun. Very good.
Also, the way he dispatches Damien Davian is just
ridiculous. So they tumbled into the street,
and it just so happens that, like, a friendly assassin truck
happens to be flying around. So he holds him up and he gets
his, like, head smashed by a truck.
Yeah, just like. Fucking how convenient.
You know what I mean? You don't even see the body
because you know, that's big. Be like blow and smooth off,
right? I mean, yeah.
It's amazing there's not more
blood on Ethan Wild. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
Bit of an actually climax, I think for for this, like for
this brilliant villain. We've had a tremendous villain,
really, really good. And then he just kind of gets
like taken up by like a fucking on the other hand, kind of nice,
kind of poetic. You know, you can be the most
powerful guy in the world, but there's no account thing for a
driver in Shanghai. Yeah, I mean, he's gotten taken
up with traffic. As well erotic because talk is
cover stories, being a traffic guy.
Exactly. Yeah, bang.
You loaded the traffic and has killed his opponent.
I love it, I love it. Department for Transport for the
Wind. We've dug in something really
deep here guys. I wonder if any other podcasts
have mentioned this. You know, that's the ripple
effect, the traffic taking them out.
Smooth off man. That's it.
Two hours ago, somewhere halfway like 3 miles up the road,
someone pumped on their brakes for two seconds.
Yeah, and now when Davian's been decapitated.
Yeah, you see man. Ethan gets back into the
building. No one follows him, by the way.
No one wants to know why he was fighting with that man who just
died, which is really funny. I.
Just want to quickly circle back for a second.
If I was a random Chinese guy in a Chinese town going about my
business and two random white dudes I haven't seen before have
a fucking Barney in the street, then one of them gets killed by
a truck, I too am going about my business and not asking too many
questions. Right, cool.
Then he basically gets himself onto the deck, doesn't he?
Fills his mouth with tongue presses, tells Julia that he
loves her, and then to flip the switch, very short, down, off
on, and then back off again. Very, very important for the
off, which knocks him out and obviously puts him into cardiac
arrest. And then what we have is Julia
flips the switch. A hot stopping current
electricity courses through Ethan.
His whole body tenses. Julia flips the switch off.
Ethan falls dead to the ground. Suddenly bullets ricochet all
around Julia. The pursuing guards have found
them in the clinic. She does a very cool thing where
she one guy comes in, starts clattering her out.
The place she hides behind the wall sees his reflection in like
a refrigerator or something and then shoots him.
And then as she turns around, Musgrave has entered the room
and she puts like 9 rounds. She puts, she uses all 15 in
killing the first guy, changes the mag and then she uses like 9
rounds on the next guy who's Musgrave.
And then just and then she like uses CPR on Ethan, who he wakes
up, bolts upright, picks up the gun and points it at the the
dead body of Musgrave. And it's like you do you do
this. It was you cool.
It was you. It was you.
And then it has them walking outside like nothing's wrong at
all. And Ethan's there, Robert's foot
in one hand, the girl in the other, strolling down the down
the road. And she was like, I was just
thinking, maybe you might want to tell me why we're in China.
And he's like, I know. And she's like, I work for an
agency called IMF and she's like, what does that stand for?
And he goes impossible mission force.
And she's like, shut up, fuck off.
Fuck off mud the lies lengths men will go to to get a woman.
Men would rather join the IMF and go to therapy.
Yeah. And then we get the final scene,
which is like, everything's all toasty and warm.
They they're back at the IMF in Langley.
Was fish bones like, hey, aren't you glad I'm not the bad guy?
The White House has been calling about a job they want you to do.
And he's like, do you want to know about it?
And he's like, I want to go on my honeymoon.
He's like, OK, off you go, you crazy kids.
Meanwhile, Judy is like talking to all his friends like Benji
and and Luther. And they're probably saying like
the most heinous shit about Ethan and she's laughing like
that. This is this is very military
coded like probably they're probably like telling her like
the most horrific stories, but the things he's done while they
been on OPS and all these various European destinations.
The time when they went to four floors with them.
Yeah, yeah, Gets gets pretty lonely in those OPS room vans.
I once watched. I once watched Ethan take a shit
into a bucket because he didn't want to break his cover.
Like, there's that kind of shit, isn't it?
And then finally, oh, there's an extra scene that we didn't see.
So in the in the movie, it ends with them walking towards the
camera down the corridor in slow in slow motion, music taking
over. And then it fades to black and
it's the end of the film. Luther, they're going on their
honeymoon. IMF erupts into applause in
cheers. We watch from a distance.
Ethan and Julia walk off. We fade to white, white as blank
as a page. The quiet sound of wind, then 3
or 4 shushing and then two tiny specks appear, slowly dropping
from top of frame and you realise this is a massive long
shot of pristine snow, a steep mountain and those specks of
figures. We are exterior Mountain Day.
It's Ethan and Julia Heli boarding.
Long lens shots catch them as they cut through the snow like
they're flying. An exhilarating ride, just the
two of them against the mountain, against the world's
husband and wife. No more secrets.
And our final song begins, Driving pounds, lifting our
spirits, and it soars as we the end.
Everybody on the bus stands up and claps.
Claps. Wow, that's amazing.
Fucking God. We've seen enough, we don't need
to see the heli boarding. Wow, such a frillway line about
heli boarding at the very beginning of the film as well.
You're not going to remember that he's watching?
Like what the fuck are you doing?
He likes his holiday as though, doesn't he?
Like he? Yeah, he gets a lot of annual
leave for this job, you know. Oh yeah, he's he's not hanging
out for to use his Ala. He's yeah, he's he's all over
the place. The start of Mission 2, he's
like just free climbing up a mountain.
It's like, dude, when you like, well, the amount of excitement
you get in your day-to-day job when you want to just like, I
don't know, get like a fucking canal boat or something.
Yeah, if I was doing, I was doing this kind of shit, I would
not be doing anything in the slightest exciting for my
holiday. I would disappear somewhere very
quiet and and just not. Go to the Winchester and wait
for all this to blow over. Exactly.
Is the last thing you should be concerned about, Ethan.
So we're back now for some categories about this most
excellent films, starting off as we've done before casting.
You can't really kind of fuck with Tom Cruise's career if we
want to talk about films and stuff.
But I do find it interesting to the reason Jeremy Renner was
cast in the next film is because some people were sort of trying
to soft prepare for him to take over, weren't they?
They were kind of soft preparing for that, I think so.
I've heard discourse about it, yeah.
Trying to make him the newborn particulars, they tried to make
him the new mission thing. Everyone tried to make Jeremy
Renner a thing for a while. Yeah, stop trying to make Jeremy
Runner happen. It's not going to happen.
He was really good in Hawkeye, he was good.
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, like the the really
gave it a go because he was in the Born Legacy, Bourne Legacy,
Bourne Legacy. That's right.
Tony Gilroy is The Bourne Legacy.
Hey, yeah, excellent. It would have been interesting
to see how how the franchise had gone if you had taken over.
I don't think would have had the same like insane level of stunts
and stuff because because he's not like nobody's as
indestructible as Tom Cruise, right?
The films would have gone a very different direction, I think,
much, much like a different direction that probably would
have gone if our friend from Smoking Aces.
I've got the director's job. Yeah, so was smoking a business.
Probably wouldn't have happened. Yeah, like smoking.
This has not already come out by that point.
No come it comes. Well, it came out in 2006.
It came out instead of. It's the project he worked on.
That's right, yeah. Because he, he spent like 15
months developing this, didn't he?
And then obviously that didn't happen.
I heard it was going to be like darker, grittier and more like
Shades of Grey and a bit more kind of harsher on the US
government kind of thing, ah. This is a good point to talk
about this, actually. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of
different characters. So basically a completely
different story on this. So Sandoval Newton was
approached to to reprise her character from MI 2 and she she
declined, which I think was probably why she was spent time
with her family. She had a young family.
They introduced some new characters.
One was going to be played by Carrie Anne Moss, as we would
have had we've had Morpheus and Trinity in this movie.
That'd been cool. But she she pulled out as as
part of the delays. Scarlett Johansson was going to
be in this film as well, but couldn't, couldn't commit to it.
And instead of Philip Seymour Hoffman as Owen Davian, it was
initially cast as a Kenneth Branner, which would have been a
very different vibe, I think for the character.
Maybe still good, but I think we've, I think we've seen what
he would have done. We're going to talk about it
very soon, actually, in Shutter Recruit.
Yeah, I think that's probably where we're going to find the
kind of Brunner villain that would have been most like the
one he would have done here. Yeah.
Or, or Tenets. Did you watch Tenet?
I never did, but I'm aware both of them have him using a silly
Russian accent. So indeed, the Joe Carnahan
version of Mission Impossible would have been mental, I think.
Yeah, I, I don't, I don't think Tom Cruise would have vibe with
it. In fact, obviously creative
differences indicate that he didn't vibe with it.
Yeah. So yeah, I mean.
You know me, man. I'll, I'll fight in the street
with my shirt off for smoking aces and, and probably will do
one day. But I think Joe Conahan would
have kind of killed the franchise if he'd if he'd if
he'd worked on it. If it had been like his dialogue
and stuff as well that you put into it, I just don't see that
working. All those all the all that
constant joking and banter and in the Can you imagine a scene
where like Ethan Hunt is manipulating the draw of a dead
henchman and making him talk to him?
Okay, going on from casting to trivia, the bunch of a trivia
that I had down here. We touched on the whole thing
with a Comedy Central South Park the the trapped in the closet
episode when Tom Cruise threatened to cancel allegedly
allegedly were doing a lot of heavy lifting for everyone's
protection here allegedly threatened to cancel publicity
if the film of comedy Cent were rebroadcasted.
That trapped in the closet episode, the one that mocked him
for his Scientology and really gave him the business and indeed
it was. It was actually taken off the
air. Here's a thing on the subject of
traps in the closet. Have you, Sonia, seen Trapped in
the Closet, the R Kelly R&B opera?
No. So it's not, it's real and it's
very, very long. And I was watching a clip of it
the other day. She said, don't ask me how.
So yeah. So I was watching a clip of the
day and Michael K Williams is in it and I completely brain dumped
that. So that's that's Omar in The
Wire. It is an unhinged film, yeah.
And that's the same year as the Wire came out.
It's mental, right? It's nuts.
Yeah. Crazy.
Imagine, imagine being in that film.
God, man, man, just when in this a very short small gentleman and
R Kelly's egg. It's a man, but the man is a
Midget. And and and like and and and
like. Why they call you big man?
Because I'm blessed. It's like, what the fuck even is
this film? Jesus, that's my point, Sonia,
that it's the same track of music over and over again.
It doesn't change. It's the same backing for the
whole thing and the film, the films like an hour plus at least
like 20 parts, 20 parts. It's it's insane and it's like a
super plot. And then the end of it was
everyone's got aids and what? It's insane.
And every single episode ends with R Kelly repeating the last
line he sang as he kind of like dissolves into like favour and
favour out of frame. It's really weird.
Bad. The one you will, the 1 you will
see all the time, if you look at like the world still does the
rounds on like Instagram reels and stuff is the scene where a
guy played by Michael K Williams is finding his wife's lover that
she's taken. And as R Kelly reveals, the man
turns out to be a little person who's hiding under the sink.
And it's like a reveal. Like they open the sink and
there's a man there and he's a little man.
And then R Kelly's just stood there going, but the man was a
Midget, Midget, Midget, Midget. And then and then that fades
out. And then because it's like the
middle of the story, it just fades back in again.
It just starts the next bit. It's absolutely nuts.
I think it was released like, was it really such a web series
or something? It was mental.
Really. Summer Redstone of Paramount at
the side not to renew the distribution rights after this
film. And a lot of that was due to Tom
Cruise's couch jumping on on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Yeah, she was disgusted by his antics.
Apparently, Jen said mind cannot comprehend how weird the Tom
Cruise jumping on the couch thing was when it happened.
The Chan said mind cannot comprehend that.
Sorry Sonia, but but it's like, it was so weird.
It's just. Was it not giving love to much
latter? You you've lives in under the
shadow of of the post, the post Trump world for too long.
Like like that was really that was really weird when that
happened. Like it was just like he the
waves overreacting the way he got married to like, Katie
Holmes from Dawson's Creek. Katie Holmes.
I'm with Katie Holmes in in current year, nobody's pay our
hands. From the allegations.
The Overton window has moved far too far for that to look weird
anymore. Like, like we've seen, we've
seen too much weird stuff. You know, in a world where
Dakota Johnson called Ellen for not inviting her to a party that
doesn't. Yeah.
This pales like embarrassing now, but.
Yeah, it's like the whole thing with like army hammer on
cannibalism and stuff and it's like.
Yeah, that's, that's shifted things too far, isn't it?
Like now it's still going back from that.
I mean, he's he's not going back, is he?
It's really a maritime before he's a Ben Shapiro film, isn't.
It. Like Jonathan Majors, Joseph
Major is making his own right wing version of Sinners,
apparently. Oh my God, bloody hell, the
David Fincher version of this would have been wild.
The basic storyline of it was going to deal with black market
trade of body parts in Africa. Now that's cool as fuck.
That's incredibly, incredibly David Fincher.
No, it's, I mean, organ lagging is not Mission Impossible.
It's I'm so pleased to God use the word organ lagging.
He would just be literal about the rabbits.
Parts yeah, but it's like for the rabbit's foot.
I got the humans first. I got the humans ass everything
you need. There's so many fantastic what
might have been with this film and what are those as you
correct David David Fincher applying his Zodiac and seven
and literally Mindhunter esque chops to this film.
I will. I will say that Zodiac is aged
better than this film has in terms of it's just a real luck.
Like the vibe of it. Yeah.
Like, this is a bit. This is dated into the early
naughties in a way that that Zodiac and the films he did, he
had a really good run from probably Zodiac up to before
Monk. So Zodiac, social network, gone
Girl, girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Those four look pristine. And then he kind of went a bit
mad with Monk and then the killer is a bit, I don't know,
maybe here nor there wasn't sold on it, but those four are what a
run. Along with David Fincher and
when he was attached, Sylvester Stallone was being courted the
main villain, which would have been really fucking bad.
Stop. Making it have happened.
Stop trying to make that happen. It's like, so David was in
Randall this year. Yeah.
So David Fincher.
Cool, awesome. Love it.
We had organ lagging plot in Africa.
OK, kind of cool. Kind of it was, it's not going
to feel like Mission Impossible, but it's going to be kind of fun
and interesting, right? It's going to be grimy David
Fincher and who? Who's this walking into the room
fucking the guy who's going to be full of blood Morgans.
What the fuck? It wouldn't have worked in the
slightest. There is a thriller called The
Humpty Dumpty Man and it's like. Is he an egg?
He's not an egg. He is not an egg.
I'm devastated. He's a, he's an Australian,
which is maybe kind of like an egg, I don't know.
He's not an egg, but he is Australian.
Yep, it is a Australian television movie from 1986, a
drama slash thriller. It's based on the ALP politician
David Combe affair. I'm sorry.
Shadow is a trade consultant who accepts the Soviet trade
contract and is accused of international espionage.
The movie was not released theatrically.
That's it's entire summary here in in in the Wikipedia man after
like the info box. So Humpty Dumpty Man's 1986
Australian TV film, first feature Co written, directed by
PJ Hogan, etcetera. So, yeah, PJ Hogan, is that Paul
Hogan? Is that?
Is that Crocodile Dundee? Yes.
What? Yes, I'm not even joking.
PJ Hogan. Yes, Austin from director and
screen over. He's a film right now and
screenwriter. He wrote.
He directed murals. Wedding, My best friend's
wedding. Peter Pan Confessions were
shopaholic. He is not the Paul Hogan.
Oh, he's not Paul Hogan. Oh, you're going to be so
excited. Yeah.
No, he is. He is not the Paul Hogan
everybody. Wrote yours wedding, he wrote my
best friend's wedding. Watched that.
Yeah, last week. Yeah, he directed murals.
Didn't like it? Really shit.
I didn't wish. It should write this from the
list and Kazak, you also wrote Confessions of a shopaholic
filmography of this guy. The The first film he wrote was
a short film called Getting Wet in 1984, followed up with The
Humpty Dumpty Man, written and directed of.
Shapiro Films. My God.
Holy shit, I thought half. Yeah.
Dune, the movie about Pat Shapiro's wife.
Brutal. But yeah.
So. Yeah.
So. Bedroom like I must cultivate
desert power. Umm so the Humpty Dumpty Man was
not released theatrically, but I think we should track it down to
make 3 thrillers we've looked at related to Humpty Dumpty is.
There is, he wrote, a Peter Pan adaptation with Jason Isaacs as
captain. Who?
Right the Jason Isaacs, Peter. Richard's Richard Richie Briars
as Smee Jeffrey Palmer Is it it Jesus Christ?
Yeah, man, I think, I think. Very young George McKay I.
Think that was the apex of his career as well.
I mean, the fucking Humpty Dumpty bad certainly wasn't.
Wow. OK.
So yeah, that was great. Thank you very much for them to
me and Rory, that's enriched my life.
This is the last non superhero film as of 2015.
This really very old, very old trivia.
This is very old trivia. The last non superhero film
would be the summer movie season starter, released on the first
weekend of May. With superhero movies scheduled
to start the summer through 2029, that will mean 13
consecutive years of start of the summer with a superhero
movie. That's an interesting point.
Because this is, yeah, I mean 2029.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking what, what was
the starting lineup in 2023? The the Barbenheimer year?
That was like mid. That was like sort of June,
wasn't it? So what was before that?
I thought it was Black Adam, but that's 2022. 20.
When was when was? When was Wakanda forever?
I was. 20 That was 20, that was 22 as well.
Which? Which year was Bob and Heimer?
2023, right? Yes, it was.
Yeah, Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Officially kicked off the early May with Guardians of the Galaxy
Volume 3. I forgot about that.
There you go. Yeah, man.
The animal cruelty one, I didn't watch it.
In early May 2024 was reported that Tom Cruise and his role as
a producer requested of the German government that filming
be allowed in the 40 metre glass Dome of the German parliament
building, the Reichstag. You know, I visited the Foster
and part of design building and had been very impressed.
His request was denied, however, by Parliament President
Volfgantius. The building is not available as
a film location and we refuse point blank every request to use
it as such, a spokesman said. I love that it's like.
And Martin Landau was offered a cameo but declined.
He's already pretty pissed off about Mission 1 where like all
the characters were killed and John Voigt was the bad guy and
all that stuff, so he was pretty pissed.
He's pretty pissed off from that still.
Yeah, I mean, so. Yeah.
And you know he'd already done enough in Meteor.
Yeah, go back to this centre anyway, right.
So you want to move on to weapons?
Absolutely. This is almost really cool.
Guns in it. Obviously it's going to.
It's a Mission Impossible film. That AG 36.
Yeah. What do you mean and?
I like how the refer to the G get the G36 out of the truck.
It's like not get the rifle the truck get the G36 on the truck.
It's like you know like someone from hacker and cock is like
fucking hey Tom there's €1000. Just make sure someone says the
actual unit name of this rifle. Piss us off how he has to
assemble it. I literally said it loud.
Just keep it in a bag. I know it adds tension the scene
and it was that reason, but it's really fucking silly.
It's not as egregious as he's seen as these films on some this
is going to piss people off films on some super badass
assassin spends ages assembling a sniper rifle from its tiniest
component pieces and then like just like snapping the
telescopic sight on and then it's going to be completely in
need of being zeroed, right. But he makes the perfect fucking
shots that that boils my piss. But very, very silly.
Has to assemble. It gets a few shots off.
It's AJ 36. It makes Sonia angry because
it's the gun of people who are cuts.
No actual rare exception from the rule.
Because it's not a con. The current for once and also
for once which is very rare just being used in the standard
configuration used by the German army.
Also pleased to know that he actually used the red dot
correctly because that has has two different settings because
it can be battery powered which is why it has a little selector
wheel on the side. Or you can slide the top cover
open and use daylight Cool man to power.
It did a bit of research and I was right in my initial
assessment that it is a repair drone.
It's a Generosomics MQ TAC9 repair drone that attacks them
with a CGI added afterburner as you said earlier.
I like the the the kind of suppressing fire the laid down
on the building in Germanys from big fuck off Barrett M82 sniper
rifles on remote control weapons stations with those big fuck off
drum magazines. It's ridiculous.
It's a brutal about of overkill. I love it things kind of cool
how the tranquillizer pistol that he uses on Davian is cast
rubber Glock 26 with with with a bit of modifications on it.
That's really cool the the film, but it's like less than lethal
weapons doesn't like lean into any kind of actual real
commercial tears has rented from the pistols that are firing the
tears as Ethan Hunt as he's leaving the even the hospital
will escape in the hospital. It's Ruga Ruga standard little
semi automatics. The IMFDB says it's the mark
one, but I think it's the mark 2 with the size of the barrel.
Can you believe there's a wife upstairs?
All of that the IMF DB, the possible Missions Force
database. The grappling hook that they use
is a modified Desert Eagle, which I think this first can be
cool because it's like, it looks like it's just like, grab us a
bag of things to make and the other things.
And I like that. I like that kind of like, like
kind of armouring and kind of costuming of the scenes with
bullshit. Yeah.
It's Kit bashed off quotes from this film.
This film's got some bars, some absolute bars.
Most of them are coming from the man himself, Morpheus.
It's. Got like 5 minutes of screen
time as well. It's amazing, it's mental, I'm
fine. Some of my favourites here.
Mr Musgrave, please don't interrupt me when I'm asking.
Rhetorical questions, yes. So good, man.
It's not acceptable that chocolate makes you fat, but
I've eaten my share and guess what?
Amazing. So good.
It is so. Good, you can look at me with
those judgmental eyes all you want, but I built.
But I bullshit you not I will bleed on the American flag to
make sure those stripes say red. Such a big fuck.
That's something fucking eggs, F would say.
Yet. Somehow.
Yet somehow it's cool, man. Brussels says it.
Yeah, that's because that's because Lawrence Fishman is a
hell of actor. Yeah, and Lawrence Fishman.
Coolest Fucking Pete Hanks. That sucks.
Sucks. Yeah, you.
Suck. Deaf sucks.
We've dropped the people discovering with.
Ethan Hunt after claiming a wall as a signal, Humpty Dumpty sat
in the wall. I just think that was a signal.
I don't think that's a signal he sounded out.
I think it's a vocal. Stem to himself, yeah, it's just
to himself, isn't? He I'm getting sat in the wall,
you know? I'm Humpty Dumpty.
Yeah. Always wanted to say this.
Boy, oh boy, oh boy. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.
Get a little silly with it sometimes.
Yeah, OK, one of the weird ones is.
And you never slept with your little sister, right?
Yeah, that's, yeah, that's creepy.
That's that's Luther being a bit being a bit blue.
Yeah. And you never slip in your
little sister, right? Yeah.
OK. Humpty Dumpty sad in the wall.
I love that. What other ones can even hunt do
and the couch under for the moon.
Like he's a little The kid had a fiddle.
He's all the nursery rhymes. He's about to get busted by like
corrupt British cops and he's like all the King's horses, not
all the King's man. Kingsman all that bit.
There's a bit of a rogue nation where he like, jumps into the
underwater facility where all the hard drives are stored.
He's under there for ages. Just there bubbling out his
mouth is like would she Spider I?
Love that shit. That's incredible man.
Fucking I really like the line from there.
Brussel. I don't care if your daddy plays
golf with the president, this is intelligence.
So far I haven't seen any. I love that.
That's really good as well, keeping that my back pocket for
a particularly zesty Teams meeting.
Nice. I don't know if this actually
shows shows up in the in the quotes section on here, but I
love the line when Brussel is is giving Billy crud up the
business about running in unsanctioned up and Billy clubs
like, Oh, well, I've got evidence for some guy with a
totally made-up sounding Arabic name that's going to be in some
place and he's like, huh, I'd like to see that intelligence.
I don't like to think of is what's kind of running joke.
It's you're Omar Bakshi, leader of Hezbollah, and it's like,
yeah, I'd like to see that evidence that it's like, I want
you, you piece of shit. Yeah, just like I said, a
significant. Yeah, it's, it's it's we've
received Intel that Haddam Salim Baha was on route to Shanghai.
He's like Hadeem Salim Baha. That's right.
You know what I'd love? I'd love to see that Intel.
I'll be in my office. It's like, yes, we've got, we've
got, we've got, we've got evidence that John made-up name
is going to be in in this place again.
Just a great Brussel, Musgrave smackdown.
Brussel to Ethan. Who was drawing these
conclusions? Is it you, John Musgrave?
I am, Sir, based upon Brussel. I'm not on you yet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been in this kind of
meetings before. Yeah, yeah, fucking incredible
scenes. How would you think a Brussel
would be as a leader? Would you guys like having
Brussel as your leg? I've.
Had people I've had, I've had people like Brussel be my boss
before. I shouldn't talk about on here.
We have talked, obviously about how this film was almost
directed by the fella who did Smoke Anesis.
I've got a little game we're going to play called Wheel of
Directors. When I've listed some directors
of previous films clear and present dudes I've done, I'm
going to spin this wheel and we're going to have a chat and
see what this film would have looked like if this director had
worked on it. Oh, little wheel.
Little wheel. And the wheel's spinning, and
the wheel is coming to its rest and it says Denny Villeneuve.
Dennis Villeneuve. Denny Villeneuve, Yes.
Yes. Right.
How would Denny Villeneuve have pulled this bad one off, do you
think? Has been interesting?
Wouldn't it would have had like he would have imbued a lot more
distrust of the government into it?
Yeah, this film is, it's not as fun with Denny Villeneuve.
I don't think Denny Villeneuve's got in him to make like a fun
blockbuster that isn't like, you know, touching at something,
quote unquote elevated, quote, unquote prestige, you know what
I mean? Like if you look at his his back
catalogue, everything he's done has been pretty serious.
I don't I don't put a Denny Villeneuve film on to have a fun
time. Closest, closest he's done to
that is probably June Part 2, right?
Jesus Christ played on a 2049. What a you know, I love that
film very much. But if he's trying to do a
mission, it'd be a bit of a snooze fest I think.
Philip Seymour Hoffman working on though Philip.
Seymour Hoffman No lens flare, less colours.
No lens flare, less colours. I like it.
More depression, longer and more lingering shots of the the poor
girl with the exploded brain. God, yes, Absolutely, Fucking
absolutely. Fucking hated that scene the
entire time anyway. He'd be like cutting a lot of
people's dialogue down, like hardly anything.
Philip, Philip, Philip Seymour Hoffman's dialogue would just be
cut down to I've activated the charge inside your head.
My rabbit, my foot, give it to me.
We, we will. We will cultivate running power.
I'm going to give it one more fucking spin.
Something on blue and it's coming up with Roger Donaldson.
No way out. Yes, incredibly 80s and
incredibly horny. Tom Cruise would have had full
full sex several times in the film.
Absolutely. Oh man, I mean, right.
I don't I I have a theory that that Tom Cruise has never had
sexual chemistry with any person on film ever, and the closest he
gets to it is Ebony Blunt. That's because Emmy Blunt
fucking rules other films. But Roger Thomas on the other
hand, the man who did Species, The man who did no way else.
Yeah. Jesus Christ, let's have a look.
Who else he's gone. He's he's Uber.
We must refresh ourselves on this one.
So cocktail. So he's worked with him before,
actually. He has, He has.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cocktail.
Wow. So actually they probably bit
for Rapport already. The recruit in 2003 is 100 and
something. That's a brilliant film.
That's on the list. Oh yeah.
OK, this would rule actually. So that's probably.
Good, yeah. So that's the closest XP to
this, actually. And and, you know, same sort of
thing, say, guys doing spy stuff.
It'd probably have more spy stuff in it than action stuff.
Yeah, But I think it'd be really, really good.
Oh, we should do that film, by the way.
The recruits. Yeah.
And on the cookie jar. Oh, brilliant.
Definitely. Definitely good, I would have
maybe felt more like the first Mission impartial film the the 1
from 1996. Like I'm actually really fucking
cool. I would be pretty damn horny as
well. Yeah, we focus a lot more on his
relationship with Julie, and for some reason there'd be a sex
scene just to kind of buy in there.
Would you say that he has a penis like a baboon?
I don't know. The the the hospital sex scene
would have been more graphic. I'm going to give this thing one
more spin because this is because this is good.
You just wanted to land on Neil Breen, Julie, just junior breed.
No, no, it's because I'm good, because I'm going to make this a
fucking recurring thing, Sonia, So I'm so I'm not just going to
put my finger on it and make it land on Neil Breen.
OK? This is.
Going to add to the mix now. OK, here we go.
So it's a different colour. It's in yellow now and it is
coming up with Neil Breen. I can't believe you spun the
wheel. I cannot believe you spun the
wheel. And you can't keep getting away
with it. Mate.
All right, OK, here we go. So this film's special effects
would be significantly different.
The. Same amount of green screen,
just not employed anywhere near as well the.
Bridge attack scene would have been absolutely horrid.
It would be on the same level as those those African action
things. Spider man or whatever.
And then someone that's like cropped in a Tiger attack
helicopter really badly. Who killed Captain Alex,
basically. Yeah, yeah.
Same sound effects for explosion over and over again.
The exact same sound effects. There's a bit where Tom Cruise
turns on the camera and goes, we need to make this an even fight
and then only isn't Tom Cruise because Tom Cruise gets sacked
from production by Neil Breen, who somehow has taken over.
Yeah. Extraterrestrial beating from
outer space who can read minds, levitate and have superpowers.
Yeah, Ethan Hunt really is the force of *** He really is
manifest. Destiny.
But you have given you the rabbit's foot.
I have already given you the rabbit's foot.
There's a scene, right? And understand what you want
from me. It's like Julia I.
Can't help you out of this one and.
It's going to be like, listen, listen, it's typing away the
laptop. And he goes, I'm going to
continue hacking into these these government systems to see
what I can find out about all this national and international
conversion I know is going on. I'm going to uncover the
Vatican's secrets. Stop, stop.
I could already get so excited about the film.
It's actually a shot for shot remake of Fit for findings.
You could literally knockout quotes and then he'll reinvoice.
I study traffic patterns. You hit the brakes for a second,
just tap them on the freeway. You can literally track the
ripple effect. Hey man, I'm talking to you.
Put the gun down. Was that not the rabbit's foot?
Did you want something else? Just listen.
Talk to me. We can talk like gentlemen.
But that actually fucking. That actually is the amount of
repetition there. Holy.
Shit, yeah. I work for the impossible
missions. The rabbit's foot is in Paris.
You want to know where in Paris? Then let her go, because you
will never find it without me. It is in Paris.
It's not in Paris 5. This is this is right up there
with that hole. Take a film, replace every
member of the cast but one with Muppets, the VHS and the mess
test. Would this film do well in
constant rotation on a VHS, DVD or Blu-ray player in the mess,
wardroom or barracks of a military vessel or base?
Big dime, big dime. It's got all.
It's all the ingredients. It's slap the base button.
It's got all the ingredients, it's part of a franchise, it's
got stance, It's vaguely military related but isn't
really military related. It came out at a period when all
we were young, so it's nostalgic as well as did we a good movie.
Strong. Nostalgic.
Strong. Tom-tom Cruise is still making
these movies, so it's still a current franchise.
It's current. You can, you can.
You can have a marathon of them starting from #1.
We can do a marathon, Yeah. A very important ingredient for
deployment is the ability to have a marathon of the films as
well. Yeah, excellent.
There we go. What is the most egregious
oversaw of the military industrial complex in this film?
Holy fucking shit, where do you start?
The wall scanning thing, What the Which one?
The the eye can see through walls without giving everyone
massive cancer. Oh yeah, that's pretty bad,
yeah. Yeah.
In fairness though, they don't know.
We we don't know that it's not given the massive cancer.
That's right. There isn't there isn't like a
post credit sequence were like a loaded German guy who's just
like just like fucking walking out of of of like an oncologist
office looking really sad. What else?
Oh, the All right, I say what I do like about this film,
actually, Hodge. Deagle.
I got I got a bit grumpy. I got a bit grumpy that Owen
Davian had the mask tech because it was a bit like, well, hang
on. Yeah, I never got it.
How how how they got it is it is it's just masks, the thing that
anyone can do now that was annoying.
But but I do like that we're still in the stage of Mission
Impossible where the masks are like fun to do and this is the
first time we see them get made. There's a lot of stuff we see
happen in this draw, like, but yeah, I think I agree with
Sonya. I think the I've got one, I've
got one. So the exact same thing.
It's the same thing, but there's a bit where they identify Kerry
Russell's character and it comes up with a screen vascular match
and they've got, they've got a scan of her blood vessel, like
her, her circulatory system, and that's like her fingerprint.
And they scan that through the wall and match it to her and
have an ID match and it happens in a split second.
Yeah, that's, that's how I was going to say that.
It's the fact that the that the that the IMF can put the hands
on a man portable fucking easily deployed baseball pitching
machine at at fucking Zero Dark hundreds, half a world away.
They can somehow get their hands on one and make it work.
But the biggest sofa Sally right, is fucking identifying
someone through the vascular system, through a wall.
That is it. What's the biggest missed
opportunity in the film? The Ding Chavez Memorial Missed
Opportunity Award. Shit, yeah, forgot about this.
I mean, they deal with this later in subsequent films, but
this is Benji's introduction to the franchise.
Some of his character he would become on, he comes on to become
like a major character to the point where he's like joining
them on the missions. He's a field agent and all that
kind of stuff. I don't I don't think they
indicate that he wants to do that in this film or at any
point. And then the, I think a cool
thing, if they knew the, if they knew where the franchise was
going after, after this, which they didn't, they they could
have indicated that a little bit.
I guess that's the only thing I can think of.
Like a real subtle thing of like, oh man, I really want to
join you on these missions one day kind of thing.
And then the next one is like, I passed the field as an exam.
Yeah. You know.
Yeah, kind of thing. Be cool, man.
I would like to see a hospital chaplain's honest reaction to
being told by by this lady that please do an emergency fucking
wedding. Please.
An emergency marriage for me and my boyfriend.
Not because he's about to die. Not because it's like an
articular mortar situation. Because.
Because he's about to go away for work.
Yeah, and he's like. My interest?
No, it's a conference. Just a conference, you know, My
job is normally telling people like is helping people out when
they've been diagnosed with cancer and stuff.
Yeah, this. Is really my job.
Yeah, it's like, it's like, OK, so I've seen, like I, I have
seen the light go out of multiple people's eyes today.
I've given the last rights to three people.
I've, I've, I've carried out fucking like just today I
married a cancer patient to his wife 5 minutes before he died.
And then and now you want me to marry you and this guy?
Is he a patient? No.
Is he dying? He's.
Sort of. This isn't, this isn't like
while you were sleeping. This is like Dermot Mulroney.
He's just woken up from a cover. Yeah.
This is like, this is like, will you see?
We've got to get married because it's going to be really cute.
Sorry, I need to make a correction.
It's Peter Gallagher who wakes up from there, wakes up from the
camera. I'm sorry.
Got married, it's going to be really cutesy.
It's going to stop him fucking around on his conference that
he's at. What about you saying you got
any messed up? Parking rides, parking rides.
Bring it quickly, boys. Bring it, bring.
Yeah, I've got to bring it home with some notes from the peanut
gallery, if that's quite all right with you guys.
Let's see what the good people of Letterboxed dot com think
about this film. 1/2 a star from someone whose name I won't even
use because Mike will probably try and kill him.
Was Philip Seymour Hoffman ever in anything good?
Just asking. What the fuck, man?
It's like he's never even seen Magnolia or.
Or the master in. New York or the Master, or along
came Polly. Half a star.
The Asian character wore a chopstick in her hair.
I just want to talk from someone called extremely judgy.
Fair enough, half a star stinks. As this franchise keeps going
they put more and more money into it.
This is the third one of the plots getting no better.
Tom Cruise gets no better either.
Totally repulsive individual. What is so attractive?
The movie producers to invest in films that are remakes of TV
shows. So lame.
Got another Savage 1 here. All capitals garbage ass Looney
tunes for 35 year old men. There's two stars coming out
here. They needed let Philip Seymour
Hoffman cook a whole lot more. He should be on screen the whole
time. Picture in picture down in the
corner. Whatever.
Philip Seymour. Whatever Philip Seymour Hoffman
is on the screen, people should be asking where's Philip Seymour
Hoffman? See, there's some freaky essay
in the biggest in series, so I'm going to continue reading that
because the wrong. One star.
I wish this would have been directed by Neil Breen.
Two stars we're. Not going to find that in here.
Star Review. What if there was a wife?
That's pretty much it. Two star alias and add spin off
pilot our movie. Only JJ fucking Abrams can make
Mission Impossible boring. This is an exercise in what
happens when you get the most unimaginative director possible.
The director franchise. It's literally known for being
imaginative. Ouch.
Would disagree as well. There are worse directors.
I can't I see where they're
coming from because the heists that they do with this movie
aren't like some of the crazier ones that we get later in the
series. Like I I already mentioned the
underwater vault 1 to you like that.
That one's, that one's mega and nothing, nothing that happens
here is it puts them in the same kind of peril during the heist.
Yeah, I'm on theft. Also, maybe they just didn't
like lens flare. Yeah, maybe they were like an
enemy of lens flare. 3 stars breaking loops and trampling
shits. Burning heart emoji, breaking
loops, and trampling shits. That's all that means. 4 1/2
star review Gold Dam someone says yeah, she's the wife of
cinema. I'm the wife.
Here's a question if you haven't touched upon.
I just saw a review that mentions it.
Tom Cruise, Ethan Hunt hair watch Yes, so so this is the
third movie, third hairstyle. It's slightly different from the
first film where he has like a short buzz on the sides.
Second film. Long, resplendent, improbable
hair. Yeah, he does not have the hair
of the military guy. Probably the best cover he could
have hadn't been to be that hair.
And then this one has standard short backing size with a little
flick on the front, doesn't he? Which looks weird from the side,
but that was very much of its of its time, doesn't it?
It was. Very golf time.
Golf, dad hair, that's what he's got.
Yeah, we'll see the next one that gets along again.
Yeah, it does make him believable in his kind of Amir.
Just boring admin kind of guy cover, I guess, because like,
right, if you had like this kind of like like military kind of
haircut in the first one, I said right, see a very physical first
go and we had all these ships you to work for the fucking
Department of Transportation. You're killing people out
somewhere. You work for Blackwater or
something, don't you? Yeah, yeah.
Whereas now he's like, got the kind of look and that car, he's
got that always, like, big. I don't know what they call it,
but he's got, like a big family car.
Yeah. He's got a dog, which in the
screenplay is called Buster. He's got hair.
You can imagine him and Jules going for a drive and they're
listening to Coldplay is a rush of blood to the head.
Oh my. God.
Actually, do we think that is a believable cover for someone who
is ridiculously fit in an America pre the excessive gym?
Culture. We have the manosphere.
Shouldn't you be a little chubbier with that job?
Can you imagine like Ethan County has to do like tactical
weight gain? Possibly it would be more
believably if he told his wife that he was working like for an
oil company or something like that.
Yeah. This is the need get away with
with being medically fit enough to piss off to an oil rig every
now and then. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it would also explain him just being unavailable for for
weeks at a time. And she's impervious to red
flags so she wouldn't even notice.
Yeah, but but like, I mean, oh, I, I, I work for the Department
of Transportation. What are you the traffic?
That reminds me so when he's escaping from from Langley.
Work is the train I'm going around you what?
So when he's escaping from Langley and he's like getting
all the agents to go all over the building and he's like
jammed the transmitter onto plates sing like we are fair
movies. There's there's, there's a bit
where he like tumbles through an office and out for like a
doctor, something like that. He knocks over a box and
out-of-the-box fills tonnes and tonnes of leaflets and all the
leaflets say on the, on the front cover like primer for the
Department of Transport. So it's like, it's like where
they get their covers from. Like they're all in the
Department of Transport. Every person who works for the
IMF, there is no Department of Transport because they all work
for the IMF. Like, like, and it's just like,
Oh yes, transport. Violation citizen and it's just
even on showing up to shoot you in the head.
Just hires all these jacked, very capable people like fucking
fucking Luther Stickles coming round to just check out check
out some issues regarding that fly over that someone said had
some cracks in its base. And you know, just just paying
no attention to his incredibly capable and intimidating
demeanour. I swear to God, he's just like
like a higher level admin guy. That's why fuck, like I said,
yeah, Sonia, really good point. I mean, if if this film was out
like he come nine years later, he could have explained his
massive level of physical fitness by saying always a
CrossFit brew as as well as being like an admin nerd for for
the DOT. But it's like, yeah, like,
nothing about his cover makes sense at all.
Like, I don't know. We are, we are litigating deep
into this. But I think we all all are aware
that if we told the women in our life this bullshit that we've
just got to go away for a traffic conference, they're
like, no, no, this is a lie. Just the last one we should be
asking is, would this film be better with Peter Falk in it?
Wouldn't get Columbo on it. Scrungly, crungly Peter Falk in
his dirty old coat. Being witty, being smooth, being
cool. Well, the wittiest character of
this film is Brussel, isn't it? Yeah.
So I think, I think I think PF Four could be a good Brussel, be
a good boss of the IMF, and that would be closer to like, what?
So the second one is Anthony Hopkins, who's the boss.
Yeah, yeah. And they?
Never explained what happened to him.
They just replace him. Maybe you're.
Arrested for murder? Yeah, obviously.
They, they fired him because because he had this stupid idea
to give them all this fucking Department of Transportation
cover story, right? So most grave It's come to my
attention that yesterday afternoon you sent A-Team to the
Far East. Oh, we received until that Haram
Salim Baha was on route to Shanghai, Haram Salim Bahar.
But one more thing. Isn't Haram Salim Bahar already
in custody in Guantanamo Bay? My wife, she she, she has a
lucky rabbit's foot in her purse, but that's not the
rabbit's foot we're talking about.
Nice, I love it. Amazing, amazing man.
And here's the question on everyone's minds.
Is this film pro or anti the Department of Transport?
I'm sorry, the CIA? Yeah.
Is this film pro around I the CIA?
So I think at this stage in the history of the IMF, in the
Mission Impossible franchise, and the IMF is still part of the
CIA. And it's only a thing that comes
in the later films where the funding streams, the CIA and IMF
become separate and separate to and subject to congressional
oversight hearings, which is all I've been watching on Fred's for
the past fucking three months. Apparently the part is one of
them. Every fucking day now and they
lead nowhere and nothing matters.
Jesus Christ. Anyway, I think this film is pro
say, I think I think later ones we're going to have a more
interesting conversation when we get to like 4:00 and 5:00.
Definitely, definitely. Just waiting for the the
Congressional oversight hearing on the Clean Print Dudes
podcast. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm reclaiming my time. If you want to answer my
question, I will ask another. Have you been tonight?
We. Who have we been tonight?
We have been clear dudes nice.