Speaker 1: What today's today's episode getting spoilers for Mission Impossible? The
Speaker 1: final recording? Can this movie be spoiled?
Speaker 2: How could you spoil? I don't know. I guess we'll
Speaker 2: find out. I guess we'll find out.
Speaker 1: What it is, Jasconcepcio And on Wesday Night and welcome
Speaker 1: back to text. Our vision of the podcast. Will we
Speaker 1: go to the bottom of a trench in the Northern
Speaker 1: Pacific to talk about your favorite shows, movies, colleagues of
Speaker 1: pop culture coming from our podcast, where we'll bring you
Speaker 1: three episodes a week every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.
Speaker 3: Plus in the allo we are reckoning with Mission Impossible.
Speaker 3: Then mabe, wait a minute, We've got double omnibus.
Speaker 2: How did this happen?
Speaker 3: I will be talking about Final Reckoning one and Final Day.
Speaker 3: I will be reckoning with the action set pieces of
Speaker 3: the franchise and the history of how Mission Impossible went
Speaker 3: from a saucy, edgy political thriller by Brian de Palmer
Speaker 3: to an insane action set piece franchise.
Speaker 2: And Jason will be omnibusing about.
Speaker 1: How the television show evolved over the course of several decades,
Speaker 1: with an original run through the seventies, A reboot in
Speaker 1: the eighties to its final form as a film franchise.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it all, right, Rosie. First of all,
Speaker 1: let me say this, I saw an a possible final
Speaker 1: reckoning last night. I thought I was seeing it imax.
Speaker 1: I accidentally bought a ticket for four DX the Regal
Speaker 1: Live Downtown, La Live, Baby, where it's all happening, and
Speaker 1: let me tell you, Rosie, barely fucking survive. How's how's
Speaker 1: your back doing well? First of all, F one. The
Speaker 1: trailer for F one legitimately almost bucked me out of
Speaker 1: my seat into the front row, and I was hanging
Speaker 1: on for dear life for much of this movie. Forty
Speaker 1: X is in like you are a psychotic human being
Speaker 1: if you're like, get me into forty X now, dude.
Speaker 3: So that is basically how most kids like to watch movies.
Speaker 1: I am the way.
Speaker 3: I think it's the only way that we can like
Speaker 3: trap them into watching like a full length feature and
Speaker 3: needs a seatbelt.
Speaker 2: It needs a seat belt. I the only screening I
Speaker 2: could get into for Gladiator two, which we discussed.
Speaker 3: On a previous episode, was also forty X. Bro without
Speaker 3: like stabbing people in the back. I'm getting punched in
Speaker 3: the back.
Speaker 2: The sharks are spraying water on me.
Speaker 3: It was awful, the water, the vapor, the sickening vapor of.
Speaker 1: You can turn it off, so it's just like an
Speaker 1: er jet, but it's still troubling.
Speaker 3: I gotta ask you before we get into our full reactions,
Speaker 3: like this movie.
Speaker 2: Is edited so tropily. How was that?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: What did you how did you survive.
Speaker 3: The several cuts there are, so I don't know, Like
Speaker 3: my the version that I got in this in the
Speaker 3: version was like ja haja chu chu chut cha, Like
Speaker 3: how scary was that?
Speaker 2: In the forty X was it?
Speaker 3: Like it was saying for the action, what was the
Speaker 3: worst part when it was reaction the super when you
Speaker 3: were in the submarine, because that was stressful.
Speaker 1: Nuts, So in the submarine it was mostly I'll say
Speaker 1: this the film and whoever sinks the acts of forty
Speaker 1: X actions, they do a good job of, like of
Speaker 1: leveling you up. They don't just you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just like dropping you into the most insane like forty
Speaker 1: X movements, which is the problem with the f one trailer,
Speaker 1: the one trailer immediately and yeah, you're just like blown
Speaker 1: back in your seat. You can feel the tires of
Speaker 1: the car and it's just too much for final reckoning.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like a a staggered build, and
Speaker 1: you could so For the submarine section, it was a
Speaker 1: lot of spray. Every time Ethan is opening another hatch
Speaker 1: to go to another section of the sub, you're getting sprayed.
Speaker 1: And as the sub begins to roll into the trench,
Speaker 1: now you're getting this kind of slow, kind of sickening
Speaker 1: movement of the chairs back and forth combined with the spraying.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And then for the plane, it's just like hold on
Speaker 1: for dear life. Like I was bracing my legs against
Speaker 1: the against the foot pad, like really like holding on.
Speaker 2: Tip me out.
Speaker 3: Also, by this point it was like one in the morning,
Speaker 3: because the movie is like three hours long.
Speaker 1: I mean, it keeps you awake, like I was going
Speaker 1: to world, in which I would have I might have
Speaker 1: fallen asleep, but this absolutely keeps you on your p's
Speaker 1: and q's. To your point about the edding, this movie
Speaker 1: is I'm gonna start with the positives, Rosie.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Okay, let's go to reactions and start.
Speaker 1: With let's start the positive set pieces I think are
Speaker 1: legitimately some of them, like the sub is I thought
Speaker 1: a beautiful, very suspenseful, and weird in a way that's
Speaker 1: hard to put your finger on. Like, this movie is weird,
Speaker 1: and I kind of like it. There are portions of
Speaker 1: it where if this had been a quote unquote normal movie,
Speaker 1: normal action film, as done by Brad Bird or one
Speaker 1: of the previous people to helm a mission impossible franchise
Speaker 1: JJ Abrams, then there would be long sections of very
Speaker 1: very boring like dialogue about bullshit and Ethan's past and
Speaker 1: the people he is connected within his past and all
Speaker 1: these I mean, the flashbacks in this movie are probably
Speaker 1: an hour and a half of them at least at least,
Speaker 1: But there's a weirdness throughout that makes it those kind
Speaker 1: of dead moments strangely compelling, you know, in a this
Speaker 1: movie is bad but interesting kind of way. My personal
Speaker 1: theory is that five years since you know, top Gun,
Speaker 1: Maverick and Covid era of the industry basically saying Tom Cruise,
Speaker 1: save us, save the industry, save Hollywood, Tom Cruise, only
Speaker 1: you can save it, Only you can do it. Tom
Speaker 1: has like has like completely by osmosis filled his being,
Speaker 1: so that this movie is very strangely messianic.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's very much like he is Jesus the franchise
Speaker 3: or Hollywood unclear, but either and both.
Speaker 1: The whole movie is like, uh, we have you know,
Speaker 1: like no one has the strength or the courage to
Speaker 1: destroy the AI because everybody thinks they can control it,
Speaker 1: and Ethan Ethan's the only one who wants to destroy it,
Speaker 1: and everybody is trying to talk him out of destroying
Speaker 1: Grace is like, are you shouldn't really want to destroy it?
Speaker 1: You know that? The president is like we need it.
Speaker 1: Everybody is telling him, don't destroy it. And then you
Speaker 1: get to the end place where he's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think I can actually control it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's like, I.
Speaker 1: Got ye me, I'm the one person they can control it.
Speaker 1: It's obviously to me.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 3: Obviously if you're listening to this, you're probably like, Wow,
Speaker 3: can't believe you guys are not doing a recap.
Speaker 2: Impossible movie to recap guys, I just don't say.
Speaker 1: There's barely any place.
Speaker 3: There's literally there's literally no way you could recap it
Speaker 3: because too much happens and nothing happens, and most of
Speaker 3: that happens nothing in too much at the same time, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and most of what happens is just flashbacks to other movies. Now,
Speaker 3: I have to say I was I was on an
Speaker 3: emotional rollercoaster during this movie because it started and I was.
Speaker 2: Like, what is going on. Then by the time it
Speaker 2: got to.
Speaker 3: The credits, like twenty minutes in, and it was like
Speaker 3: an insane hundred people plus credits with like tiny little
Speaker 3: chopped and changed parts of the movie, I was like, oh, wait,
Speaker 3: maybe this is like a camp masterpiece. And then I
Speaker 3: was like nope, I don't know what's going on. And
Speaker 3: then I was like camp masterpiece. And then I was
Speaker 3: like insane stunts? Is this movie bad?
Speaker 2: It is true a unique experience.
Speaker 3: I think it's unbelievable that this movie got released in
Speaker 3: the way that it did because there is no other
Speaker 3: movie like this where you have like forty five and
Speaker 3: this fluss of recapping.
Speaker 2: This feels kind of like a TV show.
Speaker 3: They've had a lot of success in the last few
Speaker 3: years with these like religious TV series called The Chosen
Speaker 3: and every few months whenever there's like a religious holiday,
Speaker 3: they'll release a few episodes as a movie, and that's
Speaker 3: been very popular. I felt like that was what I
Speaker 3: was watching, like I was watching a TV series that
Speaker 3: they had, like were trying to plunge into a movie
Speaker 3: to try and kind of finish it off. It was
Speaker 3: absolutely insane. I was also very confused because I just
Speaker 3: do feel like the last movie, the first half of
Speaker 3: this movie was at least like a normal three act structure, yeah,
Speaker 3: compared to this this Like I kept being like, oh man,
Speaker 3: I've got to I've got to go home and just
Speaker 3: immediately watch seven and see what it feels like.
Speaker 2: And it did feel a lot more traditional than this film.
Speaker 3: And the thing is, I do like I agree with you.
Speaker 3: I like the ambitious swing of just being like, hey,
Speaker 3: here is a completely almost abstract movie like The Villain.
Speaker 1: But it's almost like two thousand and one Space on
Speaker 1: the same time. So that's really what I was reminded of.
Speaker 1: There's long stretches where no one speaks and you're just
Speaker 1: seeing like weird vistas and underwater stuff.
Speaker 3: I was It's like, when I was watching the movie,
Speaker 3: I do, I was thinking about this conversation, and I was.
Speaker 2: Like, Okay, what is your I need to go.
Speaker 3: I want to go back with the little like timer
Speaker 3: in my pocket, But like, what was your estimation for.
Speaker 2: How much of the movie has no dialogue, because I
Speaker 2: think it's pretty high.
Speaker 1: I think I think it's probably at least forty to
Speaker 1: forty five percent of the movie. I agree no dialogue.
Speaker 3: It's at these long shots where everyone is like looking
Speaker 3: at each other, very art house inspired. But then the
Speaker 3: other fifty five percent is just people explaining stuff. That's
Speaker 3: the thing I think is strangest about this movie is
Speaker 3: everything is over explained to a point where by the
Speaker 3: end it feels like you're going slightly like into a spiral.
Speaker 3: It seems like hypnotized by being hypnotized by the a exposition,
Speaker 3: Like everyone has to explain at every point everything that's happening.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that was an exact choice. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that was I don't feel like that's
Speaker 3: ever a writer's choice.
Speaker 2: But there was a lot of tell do not show.
Speaker 3: They would be like, Okay, then you gotta put this
Speaker 3: suit on, then you gotta go all the way down,
Speaker 3: then you gotta do this, then you're gotta do that,
Speaker 3: and they bring in, you know, incredibly talented and beautiful
Speaker 3: actress Katie O'Brien to explain to him how to use
Speaker 3: a diving suit.
Speaker 2: By the way, Okay, and I want to talking about
Speaker 2: two minutes.
Speaker 1: I need to talk about Katie O'Brien, whose character has
Speaker 1: no name, no US diver.
Speaker 2: How crazy is so.
Speaker 1: To kind of give you an idea about how strange,
Speaker 1: I mean, you talked about it. There's all these scenes
Speaker 1: where everybody's just like looking at each other with these
Speaker 1: kind of inscrutable looks on their face, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to like connect on an emotional level and figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on. So Ethan dives into the Northern Pacific.
Speaker 1: This is off of helicopter and these divers e merged
Speaker 1: from the sub, including Katie O'Brien, and they bring him
Speaker 1: down to the sub which is captained by Trammel Tillman
Speaker 1: Captain Jack Bloodson and who does get a name? Cool, right?
Speaker 1: He is wonderful. And so there's this one part where
Speaker 1: like there they've got Ethan in this hot shower to
Speaker 1: like raise his body temperature. He's sitting there with his
Speaker 1: shirt off in this hot shower and Kay o brian
Speaker 1: is like sitting behind him as if she's a about
Speaker 1: to soap his back and.
Speaker 2: Shies. He tries to get day.
Speaker 1: And this we in this very like motherly thing which
Speaker 1: is like we've talked about this weird theme of like
Speaker 1: all these women in these movies who just like want
Speaker 1: to take the everyone wants to take care of Ethan
Speaker 1: like a child, and they were just and she, yeah,
Speaker 1: she does this stick where she's like, no, stick.
Speaker 2: You like you have to get you an inscrutable chemistry.
Speaker 2: So when he leaves, she.
Speaker 3: Almost kids him, and then she's like and then she's like,
Speaker 3: you know, take care of my suit, which, by the way,
Speaker 3: he like chops the pieces that does not just cuts
Speaker 3: it off because he's like a superhero. But like, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's so many moments. I will say the one thing
Speaker 3: I did really like because like when they were doing
Speaker 3: a flashback at the beginning of all the different women
Speaker 3: that Ethan Hunt like has loved and has fucked, then
Speaker 3: who want to fuck Ethan Hunt? They didn't leave out Jack,
Speaker 3: the old lady from Mission Impossible.
Speaker 2: He has some of the best chemistry with him. So
Speaker 2: I apprecia Max. Yeah, Max, Yeah, that was great.
Speaker 1: I mean where that's really where it all began for
Speaker 1: this particular thing. Yeah, but there's all these weird things
Speaker 1: like that, and so many scenes of just people like
Speaker 1: around a table, jaw clenched, like scaring at each other
Speaker 1: so intensely, and they hold on these shots where you're
Speaker 1: like what is this?
Speaker 3: You're like okay, And I mean obviously like to me,
Speaker 3: every time Angela Bassetts in the movie is like more enjoyable.
Speaker 3: So I like that she was the one that they
Speaker 3: had president President. Now she was the one who they
Speaker 3: had to do the first recap And may I say,
Speaker 3: there are multiple recaps of other Mission Impo movies in
Speaker 3: this movie, which.
Speaker 2: I think is absolutely deranged. Were you do I kind
Speaker 2: of love it? Maybe I can't really. I mean that
Speaker 2: where I stand on this film, I think, like I
Speaker 2: wrote my.
Speaker 3: Letter boxed review, was like I felt like Zoe Kravitz
Speaker 3: in the finale of this Studio. No, it truly is
Speaker 3: what that is like the moment when she's like she
Speaker 3: like is like, oh my god, Matt, You're back, thank God,
Speaker 3: and then she turns just like the Seth Bergen character
Speaker 3: and she's like, I was like trapped in a forest
Speaker 3: and then I realized I was the forest and then
Speaker 3: I'm out of it and I'm so glad you're back.
Speaker 3: Let's do the presentation and he's like, it's been thirty seconds.
Speaker 3: That was me. The whole way through this movie, I
Speaker 3: felt like it was seven hours long, Like she was enjoyable.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I didn't leave.
Speaker 1: I mean it was memorable. Let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: what was your reaction when the credit stinger finally comes
Speaker 1: across the screen thirty minutes into the film. I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, what. I know, we were just getting
Speaker 1: into it.
Speaker 4: Suddenly hears like the thewse longer than and the vision
Speaker 4: impossible like.
Speaker 2: Las God bless Lalla Schiffrin.
Speaker 3: I know we've talked about this a lot, but like this,
Speaker 3: I do truly believe this franchise would not exist if
Speaker 3: it didn't have such a bang of soundtrack, a bang
Speaker 3: of score by Lollo Shiffrin.
Speaker 2: But like that was the moment where I was like, minute,
Speaker 2: I was like, are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: Because also, like the credits have so many main like
Speaker 3: title actors in them, and it's orange, and then they're
Speaker 3: like blowing through all these crazy images of everything that's
Speaker 3: happened in Mission Impossible before, and I was like, I
Speaker 3: feel like you could just trust the audience a little
Speaker 3: bit more. I will say, I think I think that's
Speaker 3: the biggest problem is I don't know obviously people like me.
Speaker 3: They treat them all and we know what's happening. And
Speaker 3: I'm not saying everyone's going into it with that level,
Speaker 3: but like movies have traditionally done this, like Karate Kid,
Speaker 3: the sequels to Karate Kid, they usually begin with like
Speaker 3: a five minute recap, but our twenty five minute recap,
Speaker 3: and not multiple recaps, because throughout the movie they're consistently
Speaker 3: saying stuff like, oh, Ethan Hunt, he did that Langley
Speaker 3: break in?
Speaker 2: And then they go back and they show you the
Speaker 2: break in from Langley.
Speaker 3: Though, I will say William donnaghue coming back, who was
Speaker 3: the don Low thank you?
Speaker 2: Who was the.
Speaker 3: Guy that they you know, gave diarrhea to break into Langley?
Speaker 3: Him coming back as like a major force in this movie.
Speaker 2: Wasn't expecting that. Love that part.
Speaker 1: I loved it. He was like, Ethan, thank you for
Speaker 1: ruining my life.
Speaker 2: He was like, I loved living in this cabin.
Speaker 1: I loved that you ruined my life and got me
Speaker 1: sent to Alaska or wherever the fuck this is because
Speaker 1: now I've I've found my my wife and life partner
Speaker 1: to Pisa, and I've found the meaning of life in
Speaker 1: this like desolate cabin.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and then by the way, thanks for fucking
Speaker 3: burning it down before you go, because that was.
Speaker 2: Actually going well.
Speaker 3: I will say, Aaron makes a great point. They recapped
Speaker 3: many things in this movie didn't make it in. They
Speaker 3: didn't recap the diarrhea. They recapped them giving him food poisoning.
Speaker 1: They were like, enough, I have a There's so many also,
Speaker 1: like weird threads that I'm like, did that happen? I
Speaker 1: have Okay, I'm gonna lay out the weird threads. Let's
Speaker 1: discuss them. And then I have a theory to drop
Speaker 1: on you, like like Luthor having terminal illness and then dying.
Speaker 1: That felt like that came out of what the sky?
Speaker 1: Where did that come from? Like players, First of all,
Speaker 1: they like you know, Ethan strolls out of like the
Speaker 1: subway through like this massive protest, and then like meets
Speaker 1: up with Benji and they go to like some safety.
Speaker 3: Can I just say something, it's a problem that they
Speaker 3: have a spot that they always return to. To me,
Speaker 3: if I was if I was, you know, a nemesis
Speaker 3: of some kind, that would be where I would kill them.
Speaker 1: So they go there and Luther's there working on stuff,
Speaker 1: and you get no hint that he's ill, and then
Speaker 1: the next time you see him in the Seine, he's
Speaker 1: like on his deathbed, like in a hospital bed. I'm like,
Speaker 1: did I like blackout and not something?
Speaker 2: Why is he dying?
Speaker 3: Is actually very true that nobody understand this. It is
Speaker 3: unclear that this was not something that was brought up
Speaker 3: in a previous movie.
Speaker 2: Everyone is like, why did this happen?
Speaker 3: I was I was literally went on Reddit straight away
Speaker 3: and was like, wait, how does this?
Speaker 2: How does this happen? I'm guessing that like they didn't
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 3: Have like I guess the poison pill, maybe making it.
Speaker 3: I have no idea this was like ranged like making
Speaker 3: the ive D drive. Sometimes nobody seems to know. They
Speaker 3: don't specify at any point, and I guess maybe because
Speaker 3: he was sick, they maybe.
Speaker 2: It makes it less bad that he doesn't well.
Speaker 3: Also as well, let's speak about this moment, because so
Speaker 3: that he gets trapped in the weird underground like lair
Speaker 3: where Gabriel's made this mini verse of the bomb that
Speaker 3: he's gonna use later and he's like, it's gonna bomb us.
Speaker 3: But I need to understand. You guys have like broken
Speaker 3: into the FBI had where were you guys tunnels on
Speaker 3: the London.
Speaker 2: They just decided to exists. But they also like you
Speaker 2: can't suddenly you just can't get him out of like
Speaker 2: a metal cage. I don't believe it. Tom, somebody get
Speaker 2: a blowtor. All he did was just broke it with
Speaker 2: a rock.
Speaker 3: He just broke the look off, like I have seen
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise do crazy things in this movie, and now
Speaker 3: you're telling me he's just not gonna says.
Speaker 1: Like he's a movie in this very movie. He He's like,
Speaker 1: I have uh oh, I have lock picks in my
Speaker 1: watch and my and my cufflings, Like where's that stuff?
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 1: Another weird moment, Hunt and Grace are capture. They go
Speaker 1: to like some party. The world is falling apart, but
Speaker 1: all the spies are having this massive like opera party,
Speaker 1: like that's that like the top spies in Cut and
Speaker 1: Gabriel are just gonna go to has to go to this.
Speaker 3: They say it in like the un or something, but
Speaker 3: the British Embassy, but it's actually the Natural History Museum.
Speaker 2: Where are you used to up right?
Speaker 1: And so even though like the AI is threatening the world,
Speaker 1: the world is falling apart, there's like a nuclear crisis.
Speaker 1: The entity has a cult like everything's going sideways, all
Speaker 1: like the top spies and diplomats are like, let's have
Speaker 1: a party. They have a party and even goes to
Speaker 1: this surely one of the most recognizable spies like ever
Speaker 1: And is.
Speaker 2: Any one of those mosques. I have to say, not
Speaker 2: enough mission impossible mosques in.
Speaker 3: This movie, whereas I come on, Ethan, you couldn't wear
Speaker 3: a most like moments, I was like, he's somebody's gonna
Speaker 3: pull off a masque, and they say so.
Speaker 1: Grace shows up and they both get captured you know
Speaker 1: by who, like I guess by the Entity, by Gabriel's people,
Speaker 1: and Gabriel by this point is like kind of not
Speaker 1: working with the entity or whatever. So they're about to
Speaker 1: get tortured. Ethan wakes up. He's chained to a chair.
Speaker 1: He says like, I don't have my watch and on
Speaker 1: my cufflings on my lock picks. He says to Grace,
Speaker 1: Remember Grace, it's only pain. Just tell yourself it's only
Speaker 1: it's pain.
Speaker 2: You could get through it.
Speaker 1: What okay? This is psychic.
Speaker 3: This actually leads into one of the best weirdest moments
Speaker 3: of the movie.
Speaker 1: It's so weird.
Speaker 3: So they escape, but what they decide to do is,
Speaker 3: rather than showing us like a sick action sequence, we
Speaker 3: get about thirty seconds of that. And I have to say,
Speaker 3: for a mission a possible movie, there is not a
Speaker 3: lot of action in this film. And there is not
Speaker 3: a lot of set pieces. There's only like two major
Speaker 3: set pieces, which is big though, and the longest one
Speaker 3: is like twenty five minutes long, and it's very impressive.
Speaker 2: But they basically they break out. Good for them.
Speaker 3: But then they do an incredibly strange choice that I
Speaker 3: still can't quite work out, where they have the camera
Speaker 3: framed on Captain Carter aka Grace his face and they
Speaker 3: have it there for like twenty seconds as even.
Speaker 2: The hills every it's like.
Speaker 3: Tunes and also very like it's her face is so
Speaker 3: horrified by what she's seeing and you're hearing all this choice.
Speaker 2: And when he cuts back, he's been killing these people
Speaker 2: with a meat cleaver.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a meat clean sticking out of the guy.
Speaker 1: The two guys are piled on top of.
Speaker 2: It, okay, and he's like, they were gonna kill you.
Speaker 3: But that felt like to me that would be something
Speaker 3: that they would play into late or she wouldn't trust
Speaker 3: him or she thought he was too violent, but no,
Speaker 3: it was just a random bit that they did.
Speaker 1: So weird, very strange choices. Okay, final, final, super weird
Speaker 1: thing hunt And what I think is maybe my favorite
Speaker 1: segment of the of the movie is the sub infiltration
Speaker 1: and escape and so Ethan is escaping.
Speaker 2: Which is really weird. But really again.
Speaker 1: This is this is the most two thousand and one
Speaker 1: like final thirty minutes of two thousand and one part
Speaker 1: of a summer blockbuster, like ever, maybe no words at all,
Speaker 1: all action, very weird visuals like they they mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: Katie O'Brien's unnamed us divers tells him, listen, you're gonna
Speaker 1: experience like mental like psychosis and weird things and pain,
Speaker 1: and so they there is a brief there's these brief
Speaker 1: moments where he like sees one of the dead sailors
Speaker 1: like pointing to him, but that and it's like.
Speaker 3: And also it looks like they've got some kind of
Speaker 3: growth on them, so it looks almost like fungal and
Speaker 3: they kind of play into that kind of weird.
Speaker 2: The weirdest they came out doesn't do anything.
Speaker 3: Doesn't that do like a fifteen minute explanation of how
Speaker 3: dangerous it is for him to do this dive in
Speaker 3: this suit and all the reasons he has to follow
Speaker 3: the rules and wear the suit.
Speaker 2: But then he like immediately just cuts the suit off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just like like six hundred feet underwater. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this brings me to my final very very strange.
Speaker 1: So Ethan cuts the suit off, exits the sub which
Speaker 1: is rolling down a trench through the torpedo tube, and
Speaker 1: with difficulty, swims hundreds of feet five hundred plus feet
Speaker 1: six hundred and seven hundred feet to the surface, experiencing
Speaker 1: the bends the whole time is like the gas you know,
Speaker 1: the gas bubbles expanded in his body and he he
Speaker 1: comes up like fifty feet short and drowns.
Speaker 2: But then they predicted what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: But then like because he's got that like little tracker
Speaker 1: on him, they don't show it. But he wakes up
Speaker 1: in the pressurization and the mobile pressurization chamber that Grace
Speaker 1: and Tapisa had like rode out on the sled out there,
Speaker 1: and he wakes up there and there, and she's in it,
Speaker 1: and she's in it. She's in it. I guess you
Speaker 1: could just be in it if you didn't go underwater.
Speaker 1: She's in it with him, and she wakes up. He
Speaker 1: wakes up in her arms, and they're like the light
Speaker 1: of love is shining on them and to pieces like
Speaker 1: looking in through the glass smiling this tific smile. So
Speaker 1: here is my theory. This entire movie is the death
Speaker 1: throws of Ethan Hunt as he drowns. He all of
Speaker 1: these flashbacks, all of this exposition is his life flashing
Speaker 1: before his eyes as he fails to make the surface
Speaker 1: and dies, and then it's unclear to me if he
Speaker 1: if he actually lives. I think he dies right there.
Speaker 2: I like that a lot.
Speaker 3: I think that makes a lot of sense, especially because
Speaker 3: from hairing out, everything gets like very super heroic, like
Speaker 3: he finishes everything, everyone survives.
Speaker 2: Everyone is saying, Benji makes it. You know, he makes it.
Speaker 3: The new kid makes makes and it seems like they're
Speaker 3: setting up like a pum clementy Benji relationship.
Speaker 2: Maybe. Also, that's another thing that I will say about
Speaker 2: this movie.
Speaker 3: It establishes multiple things where I feel like there could
Speaker 3: have been a way to explain it, but they do
Speaker 3: so much explanation, but then they don't. So for example,
Speaker 3: early on in this movie. Something we have not mentioned
Speaker 3: yet is that so that he can be in control
Speaker 3: or at least in conversation with the AI, which the
Speaker 3: early half of the movie like constantly just shows like
Speaker 3: a computer music visualizer type version of this AI for
Speaker 3: like ten to fifteen.
Speaker 2: Minutes on the screen talking to Ethan. It's surreal. It's
Speaker 2: incredibly surreal.
Speaker 3: But like during that moment, Ethan puts on this like
Speaker 3: scary AI helmet and goes in a scary AI box
Speaker 3: costant kind of like a coffin that kind of show,
Speaker 3: and Pom says, it will change you.
Speaker 2: It's gonna change you.
Speaker 3: So he gets in that AI shows him the truth
Speaker 3: of the world kind of like he's Ultron, and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, okay, well then they can use that
Speaker 3: to just explain why he can do anything for the
Speaker 3: rest of the movie, because he's basically like right, and
Speaker 3: he's like half AI half human, and they don't do it.
Speaker 3: They don't do it, just they just get him out
Speaker 3: and then they're.
Speaker 2: Like, Okay, he's out, like you seem AI, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: what is going on?
Speaker 3: Like I feel like my original letterbox review was gonna
Speaker 3: be like I need the tofa Grace cut, and I
Speaker 3: do stand by that because I want to see there
Speaker 3: is a ninety.
Speaker 2: Agree to two hours of this movie.
Speaker 3: Movie way more like the original Mission Impossibles we've seen.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have all the insane flashbacks, it doesn't have
Speaker 3: the constant reuse of old footage, It probably doesn't have
Speaker 3: as much of the AI visualizer, And I think there's
Speaker 3: something that would be really interesting in that.
Speaker 2: Movie that feels a lot more akin to.
Speaker 3: An like a traditional maybe early Mission Impossible movie. But
Speaker 3: in its current status it is one of the stranger
Speaker 3: films of the year.
Speaker 2: And in that way, I kind of like, good, good on.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Yeah, I'd rather see a very weird bad movie
Speaker 1: than a flat out bad movie. One more thing, and
Speaker 1: then we'll move on to the Omnibus. I to the Omnibi,
Speaker 1: the entity terrible villain what even it doesn't make any
Speaker 1: sense because, first of all, Carbons omnibussy. First of all,
Speaker 1: because the AI is like never even involved enough to
Speaker 1: be a be an effective foil for Ethan and then Gabriel,
Speaker 1: same thing is just not around until the very end
Speaker 1: of I feel really.
Speaker 3: Really weird that they the AI is so omnipo omnipotent
Speaker 3: and they have it like take over the nuclear arsenal
Speaker 3: or whatever, which actually honestly feels like a very overdone
Speaker 3: trope for this movie where they're doing so much weird stuff,
Speaker 3: But like, why isn't the AI just like we see
Speaker 3: at the beginning that there's this AI doomstay call never
Speaker 3: mentioned again, by the way, which I thought was interesting
Speaker 3: part of the movie. And they also mentioned like the
Speaker 3: AI is changing stuff, so people are.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you? Did you so when when Hunt
Speaker 1: gets attacked by the other unnamed US diver, I perceived
Speaker 1: that as this is one of the entities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, me too.
Speaker 3: It was just like he must love the cult, he
Speaker 3: must he must love the entity or whatever.
Speaker 2: But they never really explain.
Speaker 3: Aaron said, the BB Report is sharing all the videos
Speaker 3: of the cult. Come on, Aaron, But like it's one
Speaker 3: of those things where I was just there was a
Speaker 3: lot of threads that they introduced that I felt like
Speaker 3: could have helped push the narrative along, Like if the
Speaker 3: AI is so powerful, we could have seen it kind
Speaker 3: of play around with the public perception of IMF or
Speaker 3: Hunt or anything. But instead it just doesn't just talk
Speaker 3: about the AI, just like take over the nuclear weapons
Speaker 3: and then just waits behind to basically disarm it. It's
Speaker 3: it's truly very strange.
Speaker 1: And our film.
Speaker 3: And I was in the movie feeling like it was
Speaker 3: much longer than it was, which is I mean, I
Speaker 3: love I love.
Speaker 2: The movies, movies, movies, movies. Me and Jason paid to go.
Speaker 1: And see this movie.
Speaker 3: We love you and I we love we love cinema,
Speaker 3: we love porn. We apparently love forty X now, so
Speaker 3: I guess see to the movies.
Speaker 1: I watch six K.
Speaker 3: I would watch that in forty X definitely that would
Speaker 3: be terrifying. And I just I this was such an
Speaker 3: unexpectedly strange experience.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine.
Speaker 3: I went to see it, uh at the local AMC
Speaker 3: and in me it was Bargain Tuesday of Love that day.
Speaker 3: But like there's there's the del Ammo Maull which was full,
Speaker 3: like every single one was full. And and usually it
Speaker 3: goes between our there or the other theater, which one's
Speaker 3: going to be full.
Speaker 2: And our one was not full.
Speaker 3: And I honestly just can't imagine what it would have
Speaker 3: been like to see that in a full theater, Like
Speaker 3: were people stoked about it?
Speaker 2: Like when don Low appeared where they like, no.
Speaker 1: One seemed to like no one seemed to clock that
Speaker 1: no one got the reference, and they don't tell you
Speaker 1: until they're on the plane leaving the island, like they've
Speaker 1: got through all this stuff before he's it's like, oh
Speaker 1: you're that, yeah, remember me?
Speaker 2: They have other people say it.
Speaker 3: But the other thing that I find really funny is
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna lie. Part of this Watching this movie
Speaker 3: did feel like to me that some execs somewhere had
Speaker 3: like watched a lot of MCU movies, didn't understand the
Speaker 3: Easter eggs and was felt like annoyed.
Speaker 2: That they didn't understand them. So they were like, you
Speaker 2: know what people.
Speaker 3: Really want, They want to every reference explained. When somebody
Speaker 3: shows up, you better reference how they were in the
Speaker 3: other movies and why this is a reference, and like
Speaker 3: what they been up to it.
Speaker 2: I think I'm.
Speaker 3: Interested to see if there's obviously Chris mcquarie and Tom
Speaker 3: Cruise I think have final cut on these things.
Speaker 1: I don't think that I like, I think Tom has
Speaker 1: the Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think that there's a world where there's like
Speaker 3: a different cut they wish was released, but it was
Speaker 3: giving a blade Runner with the narration to me, like
Speaker 3: I would love to see a non exposition, non flashback
Speaker 3: version that just allowed it to be abstract and weird
Speaker 3: and all about these crazy set pieces. Like I will say,
Speaker 3: for whatever my feelings are about the quality of the movie.
Speaker 3: The end like forty five minutes of this movie with
Speaker 3: the sub escape and then the crazy plane biplane drama
Speaker 3: that was kind of like the end of Porco Rosso,
Speaker 3: but like live action. It was I was at the
Speaker 3: edge of my seat, stoice thrilling, Like it was really thrilling.
Speaker 2: It made me feel.
Speaker 3: Like how everyone else says they feel when they watch
Speaker 3: Uncle John's.
Speaker 5: Like when I hunka Charms, I was just like vibe in.
Speaker 5: I was like, this is a great movie, Like I
Speaker 5: love this, Like fuck, this guy is like so bad
Speaker 5: at doing everything.
Speaker 3: This is so much fun to watch. But everyone else
Speaker 3: was like, oh, it gave me an anxiety attack. By
Speaker 3: the end of that movie, I was sitting in my
Speaker 3: chair forwards with my hands on my head, like what
Speaker 3: are you doing, Tom Cruise, Like I.
Speaker 2: Was stressed watching him biplanes.
Speaker 3: I know he didn't do it, and then you know what,
Speaker 3: at the end he was like boom, I'm still alive.
Speaker 3: I'm back with all my pals in Trafalgar Square, London,
Speaker 3: which if anybody watched the security cameras here would know this.
Speaker 2: Is where we would meet. And then we're all just
Speaker 2: gonna walk off.
Speaker 3: And also, okay, let me ask you this before we
Speaker 3: go to the Omnibus City. The last like hour of
Speaker 3: this movie is definitely just well, honestly most of the movie,
Speaker 3: because Katie O'Brien falls into this too, is just them
Speaker 3: like being like, who's gonna be the next mission impossible?
Speaker 2: Who's on eight fifty different teams?
Speaker 3: Who who's your most likely to take over from Tom
Speaker 3: Cruise character in a Mission impossible, requel, reboot, whatever they
Speaker 3: decide next, because it feels like that's what they're trying
Speaker 3: to sell.
Speaker 1: I agree. I don't know who's going to take over.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody currently in the franchise is going
Speaker 1: to be the takeover person. I think they'll probably bring
Speaker 1: in somebody new to truly take me Ethan hunt Roll,
Speaker 1: but I believe the team will include Benji Grace Dega, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he definitely.
Speaker 3: I think Tom Cruise met the act while they were
Speaker 3: doing Top Gun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I was like, I was very confused as
Speaker 1: why Dega was like at the prisoner move of Para anyway,
Speaker 1: like why was why was he used?
Speaker 3: He used to be Sia Wighams like right bod, but
Speaker 3: then he turned onto the the no rules part of IMF.
Speaker 2: Which is the party most of it.
Speaker 1: So I think Paris Clementief will be part of it,
Speaker 1: and then and then maybe came.
Speaker 3: I think I feel like they set up Katie O'Brien
Speaker 3: as a potential, like she's an incredible stump person. We've
Speaker 3: seen her an incredible kind of rolls everything.
Speaker 2: From at Man Quantumania to Love Life's Bleeding.
Speaker 3: I love that movie so much, like it's such a
Speaker 3: weird movie, just like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, another deeply weird movie. And this.
Speaker 3: I just think it's like an intriguing space to leave
Speaker 3: the franchise because they acted like it was going to
Speaker 3: be a goodbye to Ethan Hunt, but it doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like it was unless your theory is true, and I
Speaker 3: love your theory, where this is basically just him imagining
Speaker 3: what happens after he dies, and the best case scenario,
Speaker 3: like the world doesn't all shoot its nukes to each us,
Speaker 3: like I.
Speaker 1: Said, I did it.
Speaker 3: I see the world I did kind of think it
Speaker 3: was funny that and this is I think a problem,
Speaker 3: a mission impossible problem here is that.
Speaker 2: Angela Bassett, who I love.
Speaker 3: She did as they say, do the thing, as always,
Speaker 3: she did the thing, but like they have her make
Speaker 3: a decision that was like, it feels like you've seen
Speaker 3: it before where it's like she's not gonna shoot the nukes.
Speaker 3: It's like, Okay, I've seen that in the Dark Night.
Speaker 3: I've seen that in like a million other movies where
Speaker 3: you're gonna trust humanity for everything else about this movie
Speaker 3: that was so weird.
Speaker 2: I just wasn't buying.
Speaker 3: That as like an incredible emotional moment, like and also
Speaker 3: I was very confounded by everything else going on in
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 2: But yes, insane movie.
Speaker 3: Not surprised that it was beaten by Leelo and Stitch,
Speaker 3: though I am interested to see another discourse starting movie.
Speaker 3: I mean, we are really in the summer blockbuster times now, guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mission of Possible Final Reckoning.
Speaker 3: Let's see what it's final box office was for this weekend.
Speaker 2: I mean Lelo and Stitch made like a head of
Speaker 2: five stars.
Speaker 1: What do you give it?
Speaker 2: Okay, well it made seven.
Speaker 3: It opened to seventy nine million, which is a series best,
Speaker 3: so good for them, good Leelo's Stitch open to one
Speaker 3: one hundred and eighty two point seven million.
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 3: Giving they Lovely low Stings out of five.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I was really struggling with this.
Speaker 3: I actually didn't give it a letterbox number because I
Speaker 3: was like kind of struggling. I feel like there are
Speaker 3: moments of the movie where it's a four out of
Speaker 3: five movie, but I also feel like there's moments a
Speaker 3: movie where it's a one out of five movie. I think,
Speaker 3: if I was being really honest, i'd probably give it
Speaker 3: two and a half.
Speaker 2: But I think I could push it to a three
Speaker 2: because I.
Speaker 3: Do love stump work and I love crazy out there movies,
Speaker 3: and I love hard sci fi, and I love so
Speaker 3: many of the people involved, and I love the concepts
Speaker 3: that they were going for. I love Tremmel's performance. I
Speaker 3: thought he was like a highlight. I would love to
Speaker 3: see him kind of built into the franchise in a
Speaker 3: kind of bigger way going forward. But yeah, it is
Speaker 3: a it's also like a hot mess. That's the craziest
Speaker 3: thing about this movie.
Speaker 2: And I think, what about you?
Speaker 1: I think for me, it's like a one and a
Speaker 1: half two, but an interesting one and a half two. Hm,
Speaker 1: you know, like technically not a good movie, but with
Speaker 1: some things about it that are very compelling, some action
Speaker 1: set pieces that are genuinely thrilling, and a general weirdness
Speaker 1: that makes it kind of can't look away. So in
Speaker 1: that sense, it's like a two but a really fascinating thing.
Speaker 3: It's a really fascinating too. Yeah, I will also say
Speaker 3: I want to I really do want to go back.
Speaker 3: I have so many questions, like how many eye raises,
Speaker 3: like meaningful eye raises, this.
Speaker 2: Tom Cruise doing this movie?
Speaker 3: I counted like twenty before the credits started, and then
Speaker 3: I was like, I can't do this. I will miss
Speaker 3: the entire movie if I'm just doing this. How much
Speaker 3: time is non spoken? How much time is b roll?
Speaker 3: I saw the Guardian guessing the b roll and flashbacks
Speaker 3: are around seventy minutes of the movie will be hilarious
Speaker 3: if it was true.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing my estimation is more like forty minutes.
Speaker 3: I need to know how much of the movie has
Speaker 3: no dialogue, because I think that's again really strange for
Speaker 3: a massive popcorn So will I be going back? Into
Speaker 3: count all of these moments with a.
Speaker 2: Secret digital timer in my pocket.
Speaker 3: Perhaps I will, because I truly came out of it
Speaker 3: with so many data questions.
Speaker 1: All Right, that's been our reactions to Mission Impossible, a
Speaker 1: final Reckoning. Now let's get into the omnibi. Okay, Rosie,
Speaker 1: I'm very excited about this. This is a franchise that
Speaker 1: since its inception, has always been a vehicle for incredible
Speaker 1: set pieces, and the set pieces, as you mentioned up top,
Speaker 1: have only come more and more insane.
Speaker 3: Some of the wildest stunts that we've ever seen put
Speaker 3: the screen.
Speaker 2: And I think the thing I was most.
Speaker 3: Excited about when we talked about doing this episode was
Speaker 3: just like me and you were big fans of the
Speaker 3: first movie, and I think like that is such like
Speaker 3: an understated, atmospheric Brian de Palmer political thriller.
Speaker 2: And it is even though from the very beginning we.
Speaker 3: Do get these kind of moments of action, and obviously
Speaker 3: there are some really memorable set pieces like the break
Speaker 3: in to Quantico and all that kind of stuff the
Speaker 3: train tunnel, it is very interesting to see how different
Speaker 3: that movie is from what we get with like A
Speaker 3: Dead reckoning. And also, yeah, it's very interesting because we
Speaker 3: sort of as I was rewatching the movies and then
Speaker 3: reading a lot of behind the scenes stuff to put
Speaker 3: this together, just kind of realizing like that evolution and.
Speaker 2: It's you know, he's Tom Cruise. He's like an unknowable man.
Speaker 3: So there's no not really a lot of conversations about why.
Speaker 3: It was just something that started happening. So yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean it all all begins with the first Mission Impossible,
Speaker 3: which was this, as I mentioned, like this dynamic, atmospheric
Speaker 3: spy thriller by our one of our favorite great weirdos, Brian.
Speaker 1: Aupart Still yees still.
Speaker 2: I think it's a really fantastic movie.
Speaker 3: I have it on multiple different I have it on VHS,
Speaker 3: I have it on DVD.
Speaker 2: It's just something I want to own. I want to
Speaker 2: watch again. It's intimate and kind of filled with betrayal.
Speaker 3: I think it establishes a lot of the twists, and
Speaker 3: it's far like the franchise is filled with outrageous twists
Speaker 3: and this definitely kind of establishes that with all of
Speaker 3: the mask reveals. But it's more of like a classical
Speaker 3: political thriller than it is a wild stump movie. But
Speaker 3: it does set up the framework for the franchise having
Speaker 3: some really incredible step pieces. In this case, the most
Speaker 3: dangerous stump was actually the exploding fish tank, the chewing
Speaker 3: gum exploding fish tank, because Cruise has talked about how
Speaker 3: basically it was sixteen tons of water and glass that
Speaker 3: had to explode on set and for some reason him
Speaker 3: and the stunt coordinator just couldn't kind of communicate properly
Speaker 3: about timing. So he has a lot of like feelings
Speaker 3: about how that was surprisingly kind of dangerous and he
Speaker 3: did it himself, it wasn't a stunt actor. And obviously
Speaker 3: I think the most memorable moment for me in this film,
Speaker 3: and I think about it a lot because I watch
Speaker 3: this film on VHS when I was a kid, and
Speaker 3: there were two moments that really scared me. The beginning
Speaker 3: when the guy.
Speaker 2: Is on the roof of the elevator.
Speaker 3: And also the end when Tom Cruise ends up hanging
Speaker 3: on the train and then the helicopter is like Blaied
Speaker 3: is like one meter from him.
Speaker 1: Now Emilio, Yeah, right, coach of the Mighty Ducks hockey
Speaker 1: team who.
Speaker 2: Doesn't go well for him. I had many nightmares about
Speaker 2: the elevator.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the train sequence is actually interesting because it
Speaker 3: was still like surrounded by one hundred and forty maper
Speaker 3: our winds to make it look like it he's laying
Speaker 3: on top of the train, but it's all green screened, right,
Speaker 3: which is funny because now we know that he would
Speaker 3: kind of do that in real life if he had
Speaker 3: the option now. But it was definitely a kind of
Speaker 3: classic Hollywood slighterpand that established him as an action star.
Speaker 3: But in the much maligned Mission Impossible To by John Wu,
Speaker 3: which I still enjoy, as you guys all know, it
Speaker 3: was interesting because that actually still stands the opening of
Speaker 3: that film as one of the most dangerous stunts he's
Speaker 3: ever done, which was he free climbed these immense kind
Speaker 3: of they were created rock faces and the famous Oakley's
Speaker 3: opening where he throws the Oakley's ass. And John Wu
Speaker 3: did speak quite extensively to entertain Weekly in two thousand
Speaker 3: about how he did not want Tom Cruise to do
Speaker 3: that stunt. He said, I was like, really mad he
Speaker 3: wanted to do it. I tried to stop him.
Speaker 2: I couldn't.
Speaker 3: I was so scared. I was sweating. I couldn't even
Speaker 3: watch the monitor when we shock. I'm like Tom Crase,
Speaker 3: what are you doing to John Wu? Like let this
Speaker 3: man live?
Speaker 1: I also, could you imagine like coming over from from
Speaker 1: Hong Kong and being like, oh my god, I has
Speaker 1: a Sum Cruise movie and he might die, see imagining
Speaker 1: being like the director who killed Tom Curls.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I think that for whatever reason, that must be
Speaker 3: part of what inspires Tom Cruise, because like, he is
Speaker 3: not the last director that is going to feel that
Speaker 3: way about Tom Cruise being stunt. But even though the
Speaker 3: movie is not necessarily beloved, that opening sequence is super iconic.
Speaker 3: And the fact that they had like a Metallica tie
Speaker 3: in video to that, I think also kind of helped
Speaker 3: cement it, and it kind of expanded his mission to
Speaker 3: become like the A list stunt director. Interestingly, Mission Impossible three,
Speaker 3: directed by jj Abrams might have heard of him. That
Speaker 3: is like a stunt heavy movie, but a lot more
Speaker 3: kind of He's flinging himself from one skyscraper to another
Speaker 3: in Shanghai. There's an explosion as he tries to run
Speaker 3: away from Davian and it's a car explosion, and Tom
Speaker 3: Cruise actually did end up breaking two ribs during that,
Speaker 3: but it's not necessarily the most remembered of his you
Speaker 3: know stunts. Really that becomes mission impossible for ghost Protocol,
Speaker 3: where under the keen eye of director Brad Bird, who
Speaker 3: I'm sure also did not want him to do this,
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise decided that he was going to climb the
Speaker 3: tallest building in the world, the bers Khalifa, and he
Speaker 3: was actually gonna do it, no stunt people. And that
Speaker 3: was also the first one. I think you'll remember this.
Speaker 3: This is like twenty eleven. That was the one where
Speaker 3: they were like advertising the movie on the stunt. That's
Speaker 3: where that part of the franchise begins, which now is
Speaker 3: a huge part of.
Speaker 1: The movies, huge marketing push around that stunt pictures of
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise with the thumbs up on top of the
Speaker 1: Bruskale for emerging and this is months before the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just completely wild.
Speaker 3: They would contest with like real life sandstorms, multiple technical
Speaker 3: difficulties to bring it to life. They actually had to
Speaker 3: get permission from the bersh Khalifa to break multiple windows
Speaker 3: on the building so they could basically attach Cruise on
Speaker 3: different points of the building with the safety line. But
Speaker 3: he still could have died. And I would say that
Speaker 3: even though I don't know many people who would say
Speaker 3: Mission Impossible for is necessarily their favorite. It is the
Speaker 3: kind of the fast and furious of this franchise where
Speaker 3: this is when they've reinvigorated the franchise. Everyone's talking about
Speaker 3: the death defying stunts. Everyone's talking about Tom Cruise.
Speaker 2: The image of him on the.
Speaker 3: Bersh Khalifer with the glasses is very iconic and hilariously.
Speaker 3: When I rewatched this movie, it's quite funny because actually
Speaker 3: all the scenes around the Bersh Khalifa stuff and in
Speaker 3: the bers Khalifer are so funny and like well done
Speaker 3: that the stunt is almost secondary to the actual narrative
Speaker 3: of the movie. But when it came to how we
Speaker 3: were looking at Tom Cruise and how we were looking
Speaker 3: at these stunts, it became, you know, a kind of
Speaker 3: a game changer for the franchise and for his career.
Speaker 3: And if we just take the way and our mission,
Speaker 3: if we choose to accept it, is to listen to
Speaker 3: some messages from our sponsors, We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: And we're back. We're back.
Speaker 3: So this is where I would say that Mission Impossible
Speaker 3: becomes the franchise that it is now, and that is
Speaker 3: because in Mission Impossible five Rogue Nation.
Speaker 2: I do think maybe the best.
Speaker 3: This is our joint best of the later the later franchises.
Speaker 2: This is the one that I rewatched the most. I
Speaker 2: saw this in the movie theater.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a villain, great villain, so engaging, great.
Speaker 1: Stunts, marvelified in the best kind of way.
Speaker 2: Yes, kind of snap.
Speaker 3: Up and it's we were kind of talking about this
Speaker 3: off camera where it was like, actually, this Ethan Hunt
Speaker 3: has always been kind of written sassily, and so by
Speaker 3: the time you get here, when the mcu is having
Speaker 3: that huge impact, this becomes, oh, we can streamline this
Speaker 3: into like a bantery team, kind of like mcuh meets
Speaker 3: the A team and that's kind of what they go
Speaker 3: for for the rest of it. And I love that.
Speaker 2: So this is his first.
Speaker 3: Collaboration with Christoph mcquarie, who's still making the movies now,
Speaker 3: who is the director of The Final Reckoning, and the
Speaker 3: opening of the movie is Tom Cruise clinging to the
Speaker 3: side of a real life plane. Still one of the
Speaker 3: most kind of this is like up there with your
Speaker 3: your classic stunt people, best ever stunts.
Speaker 2: That have been put to screen.
Speaker 3: It was also the first stunt that made Cruise basically
Speaker 3: like question himself, as he revealed in a chat with
Speaker 3: Jimmy Fallon, he was like, they strap me on the
Speaker 3: plane beforehand, and then they start the engines. Then we
Speaker 3: taxi down the runway, and he the pilot was basically like,
Speaker 3: you gotta be you know, doing it in the right
Speaker 3: direction and making sure that it's hitting the future, don't
Speaker 3: hit the fuselage, and da da da da. And basically
Speaker 3: as it was going on, Tom Cruise admitted that he
Speaker 3: was like, oh, like, maybe this isn't such a good idea. Like,
Speaker 3: as that plane is going up into the sky, He's like,
Speaker 3: I don't think this is a good idea, but I
Speaker 3: can't tell anyone because the whole crew is on the plane,
Speaker 3: which I think is actually incredible, incredibly relatable. You get
Speaker 3: to the event, you don't want to do the work,
Speaker 3: and you're like, well, everyone's here, I gotta do it anyway.
Speaker 2: But that plane would be a huge kind of game
Speaker 2: changer for the franchise.
Speaker 3: Again, you start promoting the movies on Cruise doing these events,
Speaker 3: and this is where he starts to establish himself to
Speaker 3: the point where like at Cinema Con a couple of
Speaker 3: years ago, he filmed a special video of himself on
Speaker 3: an old timey plan and being like welcome back to.
Speaker 2: The movies, like get your popcorn.
Speaker 3: And he becomes this kind of advocate for cinema the
Speaker 3: way that we've seen him promoting Sinners Barbenheimer, and.
Speaker 2: He often will do it with like a crazy stunt.
Speaker 3: Recently, for the premiere of the Dead of a Final
Speaker 3: Final Reckoning, he was just standing on top of the
Speaker 3: Imax Theater in the UK, which is like a three
Speaker 3: hundred foot tall, like circular building.
Speaker 2: No one knows why he was there, No one knows
Speaker 2: he just he just did it. And so then that's
Speaker 2: when we enter this.
Speaker 3: Era of stunts in mission impossible movies. Like in Fallout,
Speaker 3: which is another great movie. I loved the addition of
Speaker 3: Henry Carville. I thought the plot and that was really fun.
Speaker 3: He did a twenty five thousand foot halo jump out.
Speaker 1: Of altitude low opening.
Speaker 3: Yes, like he is jumping out of that plane, causing
Speaker 3: everyone on that set to have like deep deep anxiety issues.
Speaker 3: And then like for you know, so Dead Reckoning, I
Speaker 3: would say probably the most famous stunt of all of these,
Speaker 3: and the one you know they were doing ten minute
Speaker 3: previews of this stunt before the movie came out in Imax,
Speaker 3: and this is the stunt where Tom Cruise drives his
Speaker 3: motorbike up a mountain and then just drives over the
Speaker 3: mountain parachutes out to get onto the Orient Express, the
Speaker 3: legendary trade.
Speaker 1: He said, he said, Michelle Yo and Super Cup forget you,
Speaker 1: I'm about to I'm about to triple up you, quadruple
Speaker 1: up you.
Speaker 3: Why isn't Michelle Yobin in one of these movies? By
Speaker 3: the way, that's the reboot. That's the reboot, and that
Speaker 3: all leads us to Mission Impossible, the Final Reckoning, which
Speaker 3: promises to have multiple insane set pieces. As director Christopher
Speaker 3: macquarie te's that can, he said, He's in a biplane,
Speaker 3: completely alone at the controls, and the biplane stuffers some damage.
Speaker 2: Spoiler, there's tension.
Speaker 3: In this scene, Cruise was essentially acting as the higher
Speaker 3: crew from the plane. Mcquarie explained that because at ten
Speaker 3: thousand feet above the African landscape, he was completely alone.
Speaker 1: Up there.
Speaker 3: Tom is lighting the shot by how he's positioning the
Speaker 3: plane and its relationship to the sun, and he's operating
Speaker 3: the focus just off camera. He is the crew in
Speaker 3: every single shot you're seeing and nobody tells you to stop.
Speaker 3: I feel like we should probably have told him to
Speaker 3: stop at some point before this.
Speaker 2: I know he's gotta stop. I think he got stop.
Speaker 2: The thing is like, does he want to die on screen?
Speaker 3: That's like I feel like they were still released the movie,
Speaker 3: but for now he's still alive.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of a Dustin Hoffman quote. Dustin Hoffman,
Speaker 1: I believe this was from Dustin Hoffman's in the Actress Studio.
Speaker 1: He's talking about doing Marathon Man with Why am I?
Speaker 1: He talked about doing Marathon Man with Sir Laurence Olivier,
Speaker 1: who at that time was very.
Speaker 2: Ill mm hmm.
Speaker 1: And he asked, Sir Lawrence, like, why do we do this?
Speaker 1: You know? Why? Why do we? Why are we compelled
Speaker 1: to be actors? What is it about this life? You know?
Speaker 1: And Olivier leaned towards him and he would he you know,
Speaker 1: very ill, but his you know, his voice kind of
Speaker 1: changes says, you want to know why, my dear boy.
Speaker 1: He goes and he leans in close to Dustin Hoffman
Speaker 1: and he goes, look at me, look at me, look
Speaker 1: at me. Look And I really think that's it, Like
Speaker 1: you know if you're an actor. Some of this is
Speaker 1: you're a fucking ham. You're a ham since kid, you
Speaker 1: love everybody looking at you.
Speaker 3: You're doing a performance with your cousin's at the Christmas Pie,
Speaker 3: Like you're a performer.
Speaker 1: You need that. And I think Tom Cruise is like
Speaker 1: maybe the most yeah, you know, pure example of that,
Speaker 1: because yeah, man, it's like you're killing us here. You're
Speaker 1: gonna don't please don't die on a biplane like over Kenya,
Speaker 1: Like what are we doing?
Speaker 2: We don't, we gonna do that. We'll be right back
Speaker 2: after a message from us onces We're back.
Speaker 3: Okay, Jason, what is your favorite almost memorable stunt from
Speaker 3: this series?
Speaker 1: Memorable? I mean, there's too many to mention. I'll just
Speaker 1: say my favorites. My favorite the Knocklists stealing at Cia
Speaker 1: is I think still my favorite. But having rewatched all
Speaker 1: these movies recently, the car chases, we kind of just
Speaker 1: forget about how amazing the car chases are because.
Speaker 2: I think it's so much else going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the car chase in Man, the car chase
Speaker 1: in Wait, which is is it?
Speaker 2: The dead reckoning one with him and Grace whether and
Speaker 2: the tiny car.
Speaker 1: No it's okay. That's the car chase in in Rogue
Speaker 1: Nation when he's in the car with Benji and you know, Ilsa,
Speaker 1: I believe just like stolen the disc and they're kind
Speaker 1: of chasing her, but they're also running from other people
Speaker 1: in the cops. And Ethan drives backwards like down a
Speaker 1: set of flying like across like this raised position, jumping
Speaker 1: like over this set of steps, and then the car
Speaker 1: rolls and you see it. There's a camera in the car,
Speaker 1: so you see the airbags go up and the car
Speaker 1: is rolling and you see Benji and Ethan like getting
Speaker 1: like like socks in a dryer. I watched that. I
Speaker 1: was like, Jesus Christ, that is cool. And it's definitely
Speaker 1: not one of those things where you're gonna kind of
Speaker 1: picking wild.
Speaker 2: Tom cruise stump. That'sive.
Speaker 1: It's watching really really impressive. What about you, No, I
Speaker 1: agree with you.
Speaker 3: I do actually think Regnation there is that scene at
Speaker 3: the beginning of our infornation where that oil in the
Speaker 3: van and then the band like falls into the river
Speaker 3: and it's kind of like they're trying to get escape,
Speaker 3: and like that was really good. I think another moment
Speaker 3: and this is definitely just great stunt choreography I get
Speaker 3: and kind of you know, fun fighting.
Speaker 2: But the Walker fight.
Speaker 3: In Fallout where yeah, you know, he really famously kind
Speaker 3: of like he kind of like cocks his fists and
Speaker 3: therein I love a good classic bathroom fight, and I
Speaker 3: think that's one of the great bathroom fights. I think
Speaker 3: I actually got to write a bathroom fight's list based
Speaker 3: on that, which I feel very blessed about.
Speaker 2: I would also just.
Speaker 3: Say I think memorably like and I again me and
Speaker 3: you definitely have a nostalgia connection to the first movie.
Speaker 2: But I really remember and just that feeling of like.
Speaker 3: How cool the explosive gum was when he blew up
Speaker 3: the fish tank and then that wall of war. Yeah,
Speaker 3: red Light, green Light. So I just think there's so
Speaker 3: many and I honestly think it's it's very interesting to
Speaker 3: see a movie like this in the current comp and
Speaker 3: the franchise like this, in the current conversation around stunt work,
Speaker 3: because this will be a movie that is eligible for
Speaker 3: that but first stunt movie or maybe that's twenty seven.
Speaker 3: Cruise is gonna try and get it, basically, like get
Speaker 3: it what this is everything he's been working for. He
Speaker 3: is essentially like an advocate in this space. But I
Speaker 3: think it's very interesting to see this when we're finally
Speaker 3: having these conversations about the stunt workers, about the choreographers,
Speaker 3: about directors like David Leach who are trying to put
Speaker 3: movies out there, about films like The Fall Guy or
Speaker 3: John Wick. You know. So Mission Impossible is very different,
Speaker 3: but I think it fits into the conversation. And I'm
Speaker 3: very excited to see stunt work become something that is
Speaker 3: more recognized, more talked about. And yeah, it's gonna be
Speaker 3: interesting to see how that translates. Also, just ballpark guests,
Speaker 3: what do you think that insurance premiums are like on
Speaker 3: these movies?
Speaker 1: I can't even I truly think that's most of the budget,
Speaker 1: because I've got to be a part of the imagine
Speaker 1: what because surely you're ensuring mister Cruise for hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars, like tens of millions, like this is
Speaker 1: the this is a franchise that is around a billion
Speaker 1: for each movie in the Ballpark. So and then you're
Speaker 1: talking about like future earnings, I don't eat. I could
Speaker 1: not even imagine.
Speaker 2: I would love to know.
Speaker 3: I'm very excited for the next iteration of this franchise's story,
Speaker 3: which I think has got to be some kind of
Speaker 3: incredible behind the scenes book about the making of the movie.
Speaker 2: The making of the movie.
Speaker 3: I'm back, Yeah, I think this has got to be
Speaker 3: some kind of incredible book in the works of the
Speaker 3: making of this movie. With these movies, I can't wait
Speaker 3: to read that nonfiction behind the scenes book about this franchise,
Speaker 3: about the way the studios must have been so scared,
Speaker 3: and about the way that Cruz has actually kind of
Speaker 3: essentially managed to make this his I can do whatever
Speaker 3: I want franchise, which I don't think we've seen the
Speaker 3: likes of that with any even like you know, Robert
Speaker 3: Danny Junr as iron Man arguably like the biggest box
Speaker 3: office draw for the last kind of fifteen years. Even
Speaker 3: he was still working within the framework of those stories
Speaker 3: and what he could do and what he couldn't do,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure there was a lot of collaboration there.
Speaker 3: He brought Tony to life in a way that launched
Speaker 3: the you know, one of the biggest franchises on Earth.
Speaker 3: But Tom Cruise can literally just be like, hey, guys,
Speaker 3: I want to drive off a cliff, and they have
Speaker 3: to be like, okay.
Speaker 1: Sure, let's let's figure it out.
Speaker 3: And I want to say, like, this article is not
Speaker 3: the kind of like the essay that I wrote as
Speaker 3: this omnibus is not even like covering every single stunt,
Speaker 3: Like there are so many stunts.
Speaker 2: You can't even kind of comprehend.
Speaker 3: Even in Dead Reckoning the stuff with the Orient Express
Speaker 3: where they're kind of jumping through the can marriages as
Speaker 3: they fall out.
Speaker 2: Now obviously they're not on a real train over.
Speaker 3: A you know, a cliff, but they're still having to
Speaker 3: do incredible choreography and stump work and to make those
Speaker 3: scenes work. And I think that these are some of
Speaker 3: the most still some of the most engaging and kind
Speaker 3: of dynamic action movies that we have in the cinema.
Speaker 1: And that's without even mentioning the fight choreography, which has
Speaker 1: exactly really evolved over the years to I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I think the bathroom point is a high point, yes,
Speaker 1: for the fight choreography and the Mission Impossible franchise.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: Such a cool looking fight with people flying through tile pipes,
Speaker 1: getting pulled out of the wall. You know, there's that
Speaker 1: wonderful moment where the guy they think is Lark who
Speaker 1: we actually, I don't think ever find out who the
Speaker 1: guy is. No, has Walker like on his knees by
Speaker 1: the hair and like stares down Cruise and then like
Speaker 1: kicks Walk like punches Walker in the head and then
Speaker 1: kicks him away, and Hunt has it to be like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I don't know if I can take
Speaker 1: this guy. It's a wonderful fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really really cool.
Speaker 1: And to have that high point like happened this late
Speaker 1: in the franchise, I think is really cool.
Speaker 2: I totally agree, really really great enough.
Speaker 1: And now part two of the Mission Impossible Final Reckoning Omnabai,
Speaker 1: this time about the Mission Impossible television series done done
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six. Mission Impossible burst onto CBS's airwaves
Speaker 1: with a brassy, lallow shifting theme in five four time
Speaker 1: and the simple premise about a team of covert agents
Speaker 1: taking on impossible missions every single week. Creator Bruce Geller
Speaker 1: fused this action television show with Hollywood heist thrills and
Speaker 1: lots of Cold War cloak and dagger themes and drama,
Speaker 1: reportedly inspired by the Intricate Caper film, which we've talked
Speaker 1: about on some previous episode's top copy. The Impossible Mission
Speaker 1: Force IMF was like a ragtag collection of specialists. You
Speaker 1: had the muscle man Willie, the Master of the Sky's rollin,
Speaker 1: the fashion model turn agent Cinnamon, and the electronic was Barney.
Speaker 1: And each episode, of course, opened with the iconic taped
Speaker 1: briefing your mission. If you choose to accept it, that's
Speaker 1: self destructed in five seconds, a gimmick that became an
Speaker 1: instant pop cultural staple. TV producers during this period were
Speaker 1: under pressure to diversify their casts and to include black
Speaker 1: characters in roles that were not like negative enter Barney Collier,
Speaker 1: played by Greg Morris, one of the first black actors
Speaker 1: in a primetime ensemble. TV Guide nineteen sixty six hailed
Speaker 1: Barney as one of television's quote new Negro figures. To
Speaker 1: show you how unused to talking about black people on
Speaker 1: television the press was at this time. He was the
Speaker 1: team's indispensable tech expert, consistently saving the day with gadgets
Speaker 1: and know how, and it's notable looking back how Barney
Speaker 1: was very stoic, completely one dimensional in his dedication to
Speaker 1: his job, with a portrayal that avoided any hint of
Speaker 1: racial conflict, personal conflict, and This was part of Bruce
Speaker 1: Geller creator Bruce Geller's general aversion to character backstory. He
Speaker 1: believed that the Secret Agents should be blank slates, as
Speaker 1: featureless as the masks they were, and that we shouldn't
Speaker 1: know really anything about any of the backstories of any
Speaker 1: of these characters, and he would veto attempts by writers
Speaker 1: to give the IMF operatives personal lives. This, of course,
Speaker 1: was an era of civil rights struggle, and so you
Speaker 1: could kind of frame simply not making an issue of
Speaker 1: Barney's personal feelings, his personal feelings, but the work he
Speaker 1: does as itself kind of a statement. You know, this
Speaker 1: integrated team that was functioning as equals, quietly embodying this
Speaker 1: American ideal of equality and cooperation in a way that
Speaker 1: the general American television audience could find palatable, not disruptive. Safe.
Speaker 1: The IMF's missions often dropped them into global hot zones,
Speaker 1: which were thinly disguised fictional countries. This is the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War era, of course. Each week, Phelps's team might be
Speaker 1: outfoxing some iron curtainspiring or our top lane to some
Speaker 1: despots somewhere in Latin America, or thwarting a shadowy terrorist
Speaker 1: plot they took on quote hostile Iron Curtain, government's Third
Speaker 1: World dictators, corrupt industrials, and crime laers, basically every boogeyman
Speaker 1: in the Western Cold War playbook. American audiences sureley got
Speaker 1: a vicarious thrill about watching these the good guys right
Speaker 1: do do stuff to outwit the evil communists and the
Speaker 1: various crooked regimes, reinforcing this idea that US spies, unofficial
Speaker 1: US spies, were the good guys who were who are
Speaker 1: the heroes and keeping the world safe for democracy and capitalism, etc.
Speaker 1: In fact, the show's villains were explicitly written to be
Speaker 1: like almost cartoonishly villainous, so that the team's elaborate heist
Speaker 1: type hijinks against them would seem justified, breaking and entering deception,
Speaker 1: fake executions in the form of fiction firing squads. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: That's all fine, because these are the good guys. As
Speaker 1: one critic later observed, Mission Impossible reflected a very nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties faith, mid nineteen sixties faith that we are good,
Speaker 1: therefore the ends justify the means. In foreign policy, the
Speaker 1: IMF routinely interfered in other nations affairs, set up coups
Speaker 1: set up enemy officials to look like traders and criminals,
Speaker 1: even if they were just doing their job. It was
Speaker 1: essentially espionage as American wish fulfillment, and it's no coincidence
Speaker 1: that abroad the show gave viewers an exaggerated impression of
Speaker 1: the CIA's abilities. Breaking the law in this case wasn't
Speaker 1: just acceptable, it was like a heroic way of doing
Speaker 1: business for the US regime. To keep things politically palatable,
Speaker 1: the series was deliberately vague about a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: Real countries were not named. The missions took place in
Speaker 1: like Balok or Sentales or some other weirdly named Eastern
Speaker 1: European or Latin American republic, but everyone knew who these
Speaker 1: bad guys were supposed to be. You've got like the
Speaker 1: tyrannical general with a fake goatee in an Eastern European accent,
Speaker 1: some power hungry Caribbean strongman stealing for an aid. The
Speaker 1: IMF's exploits made covert American intervinsion look cool. That was
Speaker 1: the goal, to make it look cool. The team to
Speaker 1: just foil villains, they also spread the gospel of American
Speaker 1: style freedom and capitalism, often by tricking oppressed peoples into
Speaker 1: revolting against their oppressors. In one episode, for instance, the
Speaker 1: team rigs a prison camps communications to spark an inmate uprising,
Speaker 1: manipulating the politics of a fictional dictatorship in a way
Speaker 1: that would benefit US politics. By the early seventies, the
Speaker 1: world had changed. Of course, America is by now trying
Speaker 1: to extricate itself from Vietnam. You've got the Watergate scandal
Speaker 1: kind of brewing and the ensuing revelations around that, all
Speaker 1: of which which unmasked the ethical and the ethical kind
Speaker 1: of lows that the US government was willing to go to,
Speaker 1: and certainly the FBI was willing to go to in
Speaker 1: spying on its own people, civil rights organizations, etc. So
Speaker 1: the show wisely pivoted to safer ground. Now it was
Speaker 1: mob bosses, crime syndicates here in the US. This made
Speaker 1: production cheaper, no uniforms, but it's clear the whole kind
Speaker 1: of format was running its course, and after seven seasons,
Speaker 1: Mission Impossible was done in nineteen seventy three. Two years
Speaker 1: later nineteen seventy five, you get the Church Commission Congressional Commission,
Speaker 1: which looked into the acts of various US intelligence outfits
Speaker 1: here in the US and abroad, and that shattered the
Speaker 1: myth of any kind of ethical US intelligence apparatus, with
Speaker 1: revelations about domestic mind control projects, spying on civil rights
Speaker 1: organizations overseas, coup's assassination plots successful and unsuccessful, etc. In
Speaker 1: the late eighties, Cold Wars winding down, but on TV
Speaker 1: the Fight returns. ABC resurrect's Mission Impossible in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: dropping Jim Phelps still Peter Graves into a new series
Speaker 1: of missions, and this revival was born out of the
Speaker 1: Hollywood writer strike of the time and a dose of nostalgia.
Speaker 1: Because they couldn't write new scripts, the show producers literally
Speaker 1: just filmed the nineteen sixty six the nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: scripts on several occasions. The new Mission Impossible is filmed
Speaker 1: in Australia on a very tight budget, with an eager cast,
Speaker 1: including Phil Morris, son of Barney Morris, who was the
Speaker 1: original gadget guy in the first Mission Impossible series. Not
Speaker 1: much had changed in terms of the show's mission, but
Speaker 1: now they were using you know, computers and and and
Speaker 1: digital mini tapes instead of actual audio tapes. What had changed, though,
Speaker 1: was a political climate. This Reagan era things had gone right.
Speaker 1: Word towards the end of the Cold War seems like
Speaker 1: America's winning, and there was this resurgence of gung ho
Speaker 1: like patriotism. Black and white depictions of good and evil
Speaker 1: action heroes are back, you know. Rambo, Top Gun and
Speaker 1: Mission Impossible dutifully followed suit. The show's tone nudged to
Speaker 1: the right and embraced even less subtlety. One episode, The
Speaker 1: Wall finds Phelps and team in East Berlin orchestrating the
Speaker 1: escape of a bunch of dissidents and uh and one
Speaker 1: part this like East German criminal colonel literally as he's
Speaker 1: turning away, steps on this little girl's like doll and
Speaker 1: smushes it into the into the mud while arresting her family,
Speaker 1: just to show you like how evil the communists were. Uh,
Speaker 1: the IMF team during the period, we'd even hand out
Speaker 1: US citizenships to grateful defectors, you know, as they're fleeing
Speaker 1: their home countries. A private spy team acting as basically
Speaker 1: like the one stop shop for getting into America and
Speaker 1: becoming part of the free world. It played and was
Speaker 1: like a Reagan era fantasy confident simplified heroes, the US first,
Speaker 1: everybody else, The nineteen eighty eight revival also reflected the
Speaker 1: action kind of language of the time, more explosions, more action,
Speaker 1: more gunfights, etc. But for all the tweaks, the new
Speaker 1: Mission Impossible could not recapture the magic and it only
Speaker 1: lasted two seasons and then it was gone by the nineties.
Speaker 1: With Mission Impossible off TV for several years, its legacy
Speaker 1: was looking towards a renewal once more, with Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: getting involved in acquiring the IP nineteen ninety six You've
Speaker 1: Got the new Mission Impossible movie backed by Tom Cruise's
Speaker 1: new production company, Cruise Wagner. Interesting note about the first film,
Speaker 1: there was some controversy about the way that Jim Phelps
Speaker 1: was depicted. So in the original show, Jim Phelps's hero, right,
Speaker 1: he is the leader of this Mission Impossible team of
Speaker 1: heroic spies that goes around the world promoting American freedom.
Speaker 1: In the new movie in nineteen ninety six is Mission Impossible,
Speaker 1: Jim Phelps is the bad guy, the guy who turns
Speaker 1: on the IMF, betrays his team and his agents and
Speaker 1: has them all killed, and this actually enraged some of
Speaker 1: the cast. Actor Greg Morris, who played Barney, was disgusted
Speaker 1: by the film's handling of Phelps. He walked out of
Speaker 1: the theater and called it an abomination. Peter Graves himself
Speaker 1: declined a cameo in the film because he'd learned that
Speaker 1: his character returned it to the bad guy and very interesting,
Speaker 1: like footnote to all of this, and all of that
Speaker 1: really tracks with the way the culture shifted over these decades.
Speaker 1: The Mission Impossible films reflect a culture that had fully
Speaker 1: internalized and digested the revelations of the previous decades. Now
Speaker 1: the enemy is not the USSR, it's not Eastern European generals.
Speaker 1: It's not Latin American dictators or fictional you know, war lords,
Speaker 1: or even organized crime figures. Now it's the Spies themselves,
Speaker 1: cut loose from the Cold War and its larger ideological
Speaker 1: struggle out looking to make a buck on the side.
Speaker 1: All right, well that was Mission Impossible to fight, a
Speaker 1: reckoning and absolutely insane film.
Speaker 3: Absolutely go see the movie there, because you're not going
Speaker 3: to see another movie like that.
Speaker 4: Have really not, don't know, maybe in Bodiacs Jason Stibbe, Hey, listen,
Speaker 4: maybe that lady. If you're feeling brave, go seeing forty X.
Speaker 4: In the next few episodes of excervation, we're diving into news.
Speaker 4: Monday is sendoff for the Nintendo Switch. On Tuesday, John
Speaker 4: Wick her Speed Recap, and on Wednesday a new episode
Speaker 4: of Your Wrong Friend.
Speaker 1: It's a BlimE versus Skyrim. And finally Friday, we're doing
Speaker 1: another special on some movies with another popcorn pop out.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening, Bye bye.
Speaker 1: X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Sepcion and Rosie
Speaker 1: Night and is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 3: Our executive producers are Joe Alminique and Aaron Kolefman.
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Abusafar.
Speaker 2: Our producers are Common Laurent Dean Jonathan and Bai Wag.
Speaker 1: A theme song is by Brian Vasquez, with alternate theme
Speaker 1: songs by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Saul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and Heidi.
Speaker 2: Our disc called moderate, though