Blank Check with Griffin & David - Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

Griffin, David, Ben, and Marie accepted the mission. They live and pod in the shadows, for those they hold close, and for those they never meet. They also have a few notes for Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie with regards to Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. Join the crew as they break down all the problems of this latest (and final???) installment of the beloved franchise. Join them as they rave over some of the most incredible sequences ever to grace the silver screen - ALSO in this movie. It’s a mixed bag, folks. But speaking of bags - we still love popcorn. And movies. If you’re in NY check out the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—Story and Spectacle at the Museum of the Moving Image Read Owen Gleiberman’s Review Use code CHECK at monarchmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your  pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

["Skyfall Theme Song"] Blank check. I need you to podcast with me one last time. No, actually, we're going to do it all like every week. Oh, right. For the foreseeable future. Now, see, here's why I picked that quote, because I'm not buying for a fucking second. This is the last Mission Impossible movie. Oh, really? Oh, you're throwing that out right at the start of this episode. I'm saying this, spoilers. You think more. Much in the way that this is not the last episode of Blank Check. Oh, no.

Yeah, I mean, unless one of us has lost his submarine. I think there is one singular conflict in the way of there being future Mission Impossible movies, is the fact that this film cost $400 million, took five years to film, basically. Yeah, partly for factors beyond their control. COVID, the strikes, all this stuff. And they, like, could not control Tom Cruise, right?

Where I think there's a universe, much like what's sort of happening with the Fast and Furious franchise in Vin Diesel, which is completely bottleneck now. We might never get a final film. Right, because the studio is, like, it's's gone out of control and if you want another one We have a lot of like control we want to put on it Their wildest hope is to like make a final film and be like Vin Diesel. Thank you for your service

We're never working with you ever again. These movies are cheaper and smaller and easier to make now. We're doing spinoffs And the problem is much like Tom Cruise of Mission Impossible, this guy is too tied to this thing. You can't say no to him. He holds all the cards. Well, yeah, there's no more of these movies without him. But I was just to get out of the way, a little bit astounded, and I will get into the endings I didn't want to see, but a little astounded for how hard they're leaning into, like,

final reckoning, final reckoning all leads to this That this movie does not even attempt to pretend that it's closing any door. I Completely disagree. I would say I mildly disagree with you, too We sorry I feel very like discombobulated that we're talking about the end of the movie at the beginning of the episode Why that's the kind of impossible? I don't know. I would also argue that's almost how this movie is talking about the end of the movie, at the beginning of the episode. Why, that's the kind of impossible, I don't know. I would also argue that's almost how this movie is structured in the edit. True.

Okay, but at the end of the film, I believe that we've achieved world peace. And therefore, there's no, you know, he did it. I kind of, I kind of agree with you. What if he drops the USBs? Like, whoops. Excuse me. It's a 5D optical drive. Yeah, I was going to say, what is the USB?

What are you talking about? The cartridge thing. The super USB. Right, okay. And the entity is so glowy, but it's like, I make it glow. I think that's a good prop. I do too.

Oh, I love how it glows. Yeah. But I'm also like, why didn't he destroy it? We're going to get to this. I know. I think that's very intentional. But I agree with you that, like, I have a feeling this is based on nothing but having seen the movie twice now. I got a feeling.

It really feels to me like there were multiple endings that had a greater sense of finality. And Tom, at the last second was like, I just want an ending where we all nod our heads and walk in separate directions. What's a more final ending like that they would have abandoned? I will get into it.

Oh, he's gonna get into it now. Oh, he's gonna get into it. That final sequence, especially seeing it a second time, looks like it is shot entirely in the volume. Several of the actors seem painted in. It does not feel like they are all in the same space. They were shooting shit on this movie within the last three months.

I mean, the actors not being in the same place, I buy. But those were real humans in Trafalgar Square. They, I think, went to... None of them were looking at their cell phones because we've destroyed cyberspace and everyone is happier. Here's what I think. I think they went to the Fogger square. I think they filmed people I think then they filmed all the actors

We're starting out with completely you're just out of pocket. It looks making shit up as shit There's there's fucking YouTube videos of them all filming in the interfalgar Yes, Tom. Yeah. Yes at well. Yes all of them all filming in Trafalgar Square? All of them? Yes! Pum. Yeah, yes! Atwell. Yes! All of them. I think they did like a location day in Trafalgar Square. Who? Degas? I don't know who that is. It's Tarzan. Yeah, probably him. He's one of those guys where even when I'm looking at him I'm like, is he in this movie? Oh, there he is. Right, yeah. There's a moment in this movie. Sorry, Greg. Where they're like figuring out what everyone needs to do

in the final mission. Right, and he's like, I just kind of a no-time cruise. I'm just gonna die. I got no purpose. He says like, I guess I'll just stay behind with Dunlough and his wife. Right, where he said, I just don't feel important enough to go to that place.

Right. I think I'll stay with the kind of beats here. the kind of meeting like I haven't earned being in that room I was in maverick and clearly got along with this guy like I must be nice everyone likes me I got a cool name and a nice face I'm sure I'm friendly and easy to work nice lovely Middle name is Tarzan for crying out loud. Look that's half the magic This is blind check with Griffin and David. He was an elementary school teacher. So he must have like a lovely winning personality Wait really? That's so nice. He does have that kind of gentle authority. He does. My name is David Sims

I thought you were about to say he was in elemental and I was gonna knock him down. He was in elemental with, yeah exactly Errr, F. He played a cloud ball player or some shit. Yeah, what a great movie. You can keep it with this cloud ball season So yeah, it's so good. The Oklahoma City Thunder are doing really well. Don't get me started. Um God the two weeks my daughter was sort of into elemental though They feel like she was even she was kind of faking it. Those are the two weeks that you put her up for adoption Just a tough movie to watch over and over. It's tough enough to watch it. So hey guys, so you're Griffin and you're David and this is Blank Check and what are

we doing? And who are you? Oh, I'm Marie Bardi, party, Salinas, Bardi, Salinas, whatever my name is. Who's here? Oh, hey, what's up? It's Ben. Hi, Ben. The Ben-tity. The. Hi, Ben. The Ben-tity. Producer, Ben. The Ben-tity.

The Ben-tity. And we are here to discuss Christopher McQuarrie's very normal movie, Mission, colon, Impossible, M-Dash, the final, reckoning, the last movie in this franchise, probably. I agree with you, Marie, that I do think this movie makes the choice to basically raise the stakes as high as they could possibly be raised, where you're just like, I don't know how you do another one after this.

Well, well, well. Here comes Galactus. Every time I see some piece of Fantastic Four marketing material and I get goosebumps, I immediately go like, I'm so angry at myself. For like, it's getting me.

Forget me. And that fucking final shot of the most recent trailer where you just see Galactus' big boot. I'm just like, oh God, they still have me. They have me exactly where they want me. Just seeing some big goofy boot and I'm like, oh, he's not a cloud. Remember when there was like some, you know, one comic book reporter, one of those guys, who was like, they're looking for Javier Bardem, Galactus Latino. you know, one comic book reporter, one of those guys, who was like, they're looking for Javier Bardem,

Galactus Latino, like there was something like that. I'll never forget it. Just the idea that Marvel in some conference room was like, I think Galactus needs to be Latino. That's like literally that episode of the studio. Yes, yes. Yeah. Galactus Latino.

A podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. Now here- It was Jeff Snyder who said,

the main villain is his galactus and I'm told he will be Latino. Just the guy who did that with him. The InSnyder himself? Yeah. He thinks he was out Snide on that one. I mean, it's a big looking boo. Yeah. He thinks he was out snide on that one. I mean, it's a big looking boo. Yeah. Well, he's a large man.

Ben, do you know what Galactus does? Yeah, I think so. He just gobbles up planets. Correct. He sure does. That's his food. Some of us like turkey subs. Galactus like planet.

Yeah. Oh, it's played by the dad and the vich? Yeah, Ralph and the suit. I think that is awesome. The green knight. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's played by the dad and the vitch? Yeah, Ralph and the son. I think that is awesome. The Green Knight. Yeah. The titular Green Knight.

They made a choice that makes a lot of sense. He's not Latino. No. Not that I checked. I mean, maybe I don't know something. Did you see the promotional art that leaked out, David, of the full Galactus? Yes, I did.

Looked cool to me. You know what it looks like? Ralph and the son is Galactus. Yes, it looks like a Jack Kirby drawing of Galactus, and I cannot believe we've gotten this far that they're just like, we don't need to make this look any less goofy. We're just going to own this. I really I'm, you know, I'm very, very cautiously optimistic to take my first steps.

But listen, here on this podcast, on the main feed, we talk about directors and their filmography's and their careers. Right. We have a Patreon feed Blank Check Special Features where we talk about franchises their filmographies and their careers, right? We have a Patreon feed, Blank Check Special Features, where we talk about franchises and primarily franchises that don't have one dominant director. But Christian McCrory made a little movie called Jack Reacher. True. That you and I love.

Great movie. We did a podcast on it once. This is the thing. So early in the days of this show, when we'd be like, fuck, we gotta find more new releases releases to cover get that sweet new release bump Jack Reacher 2 was coming out and we're like great opportunity to do an episode on both Jack Reacher's then on our patreon Mission impossible wins our March Madness thing

It definitely did I think we did all the truth. Yeah, we cover all the mission impossible movies there Then we realize oh if we do way of the gun, which we did we've covered all Christopher McQuarrie episodes you weren't even on that No, but I had to watch it or I got stuck in traffic something happened But I did watch it and it was god-awful. It's not my favorite. No That had been said I have pre-ordered the 4K Steelbook because I'm a fucking sim. That's a limited edition. Did you get that fletch?

Then the no, the fletch box is for you, Ben. Uh-huh. Chevy Chase on Chevy Chase dot com is selling a limited edition flex fletch box. It's actually official Chevy Chase. I'm sorry. Yeah. That is a combination. I.D. cards and pins and buttons.

And stickers. And stickers. There's seven typos. Yeah, it refers to Gina Davis G-I-N-A. Yes. A couple of things that maybe, like, get an intern to give a once over here. There's a Post-It note where Chevy wrote Fletch on it.

And then that's signed by Burton Gilliam. We were trying to convince Ben to buy the Fledge Box. There's $200. Listen. There's no way I'm doing it. We did the Way of the Gun episode, right? Because we were like, if we've done this, then we've covered all Macquarie and we can make it like Mission Impossible, like a sneaky mission under everyone's noses that we have retroactively now covered this man's entire career, and he counts as a main feed director.

And so, last year, we talked about Mission Impossible, colon, dead reckoning. Previously, part one. I'm sorry, Mission, colon, impossible, M dash, dead reckoning, space, part one? Sure. And of course today we are talking about Mission Impossible, dead reckoning, part two, wait, no, scratch that, the one. Sure. And of course today we are talking about Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, part two.

Wait, no, scratch that, the final reckoning. The final reckoning. This time, it's final. Kristen Macquarie's film with Tom Cruise is in it. Tom Cruise is in this movie. Haley Atwell, Bing Rames, Simon Pegg, Henry Zerny.

Are you going a billing order? I don't know. Okay. Well, cause I think Pom Clementeaf is up for- The billing order is Tom Cruise, Haley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg. No, no, cause there's some ands and withs, so I don't actually know what-

Angela Bassett gets the and. I feel like it's- Does she only get the and? She's the only one who gets the and. Zerny with a with, so then it's only Bassett with an and. So then I think that's correct. Okay, great. I think that's right. You did a good job. And you've also got...

Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso. Tramell Tillman of Severance. Shay Wiggum of My Dreams. The aforementioned Greg Tarzan Davis. Oh! Of elementary school. Yes. Chris Parnell and Mark Gatiss. Charles Parnell.

Chris Parnell and Sardew. Charles Parnell. But no, Chris Parnell's here too, actually. Fuck, Parnell would be good in a mission. You could slot him in. Because they had what? Who's the Twitter guy with the mustache? Rob Delaney.

Basically, replaced in this movie by Nick Offerman. Also, Holt McElaney. Holt Mc in the last one, right? Basically replaced in this movie by Nick Offerman, also Holt McElaney. Holt McElaney's there, keeping it up. Also, two-time Academy Award nominee, Janet McKeer. Yeah, and she was good. She kind of has the presence required, I feel like. You know what I mean? She's playing sort of a nothing character, but she's good at just kind of glowering.

She seems really responsible. Sure. But all of this is even just in listening to this cast, emblematic of some of the core issues of this movie for me, which is basically like, you have Hannah Waddingham and Janet McTeer and Angela Bassett. Yeah, absolutely. You have Holt McElheny and Nick Offerman.

You want two square-jawed, slow-talking, gravel-voiced men who explain how important things are in the same room. Yeah, but what if they're sitting down? Yeah, they're both sitting down. You know who I really liked? I mean, Trimel Tillman, I think, is sort of like secret MVP. He's the star, yeah. But Katie O'Brien. Oh my God, I love her so much.

Yeah. Anytime she's in a movie, I'm happy. I agree, but we're like 20 names down on this list, and she shows up and immediately I'm like, fuck, this movie's not going gonna give her enough to do right I Just like that the submarine is good. Did you get I love thank you everyone on the submarine is gay So I said that Ben and I were the first ones here today And so even Ethan hunts like should I just like get my briefs I said Murray Murray. I'm just sorry Can we check the notes quickly? Who's the third one here? Uh, so Ben number one, right number two Griffin number

Interesting and bringing up the rear What's the third one here? So Ben number one, Marie number two, Griffin number three. Oh, interesting. And bringing up the rear. I welcome this debate, as I said, on a different episode. But when it was just me and Ben, I was like, I love the gay submarine. And Ben was like, what? And I was like, the submarine's gay. And he was like, interesting opinion.

And I'm like, no. Not interesting. It's very obvious. It's canon. That is a gay-ass submarine in the middle of the movie. It's just the funny that Triel Tilghman's like, and who are you? You know, he's just having so much fun with it.

Oh, mister. He could be like, hello? Like, I am the captain of the most important submarine in the world. No. Tom Cruise is just in his underwear for most of the time that he's on the boat. Katie O'Brien's just showing her muscles. Oh, you want to poke the bear? A plus.

I'm the man to do it. The way he says mister. Mister. Where did that guy come from? Like, where did he get plucked out of? He, like, only started acting in his mid-30s, I want to say. I was on his Wikipedia recently. Well, because he was on the Official Severance podcast,

which I very much enjoy, talking about his journey, where he was like... He was like a pre-med, he was like a science major in college or whatever, and was like gonna be a surgeon. And he just loved acting. But I think he went to grad school for acting. Yeah, he got an MFA in acting. Yeah, he did a lot of theater work.

He was the first African-American man to graduate with an MFA in acting from the University of Tennessee. That's depressing. It's kind of weird. Yeah, because. Maybe it's not. It's kind of weird. Yeah. Maybe it's not a big program, I don't know. But that's in 2014. Yeah, he didn't really start,

he got some TV roles, I guess. Yeah, his first theater credit is 2018. Like he's a very recent, yeah. He fucking rocks. Yeah, roles. While we're on the subject of Tramell. Like the whole magic of Severance is it's either guys where you're like, Jesus, this is like a heavyweight, Yeah. He fucking rocks. Yeah. Yeah, rules. While we're on the subject of Tramiel... Like the whole magic of Severance is it's either guys where you're like, Jesus, this

is like a heavyweight, or guys who are like, I've never seen this person in my life. Or Lauer, I've never seen in my life, and now I love her. But, okay, so not only is Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham in the movie. Yeah, she's an aircraft carrier, captain or whatever. And we've got Severance's Mr. Milchik. Did you notice that one of the like naval helicopter pilots is played by Sydney Cole Alexander, AKA Natalie from Severance? The one with the crazy smile.

Who's always speaking to the board. Yeah, she's wonderful on Severance. I didn't notice that. She's great though, good for her. Which means in my head at least she's wonderful on Severance. I didn't notice that. She's great though, good for her. Which means in my head at least, Tom Cruise watches Severance. Almost definitely. He knows Ben Stiller.

I know he knows Ben Stiller. But I'm like, when I watch Severance, I'm like, there are a lot of Scientology vibes in this. So I think it's very interesting that Tom is a Severance fan. You mean that it's like kind of making fun of certain, yeah, sure, sure. You know what's another movie we know he watched?

The Master? Yeah. Yeah. Sure. What do you mean? Well, but- What do you mean by we know he watched it? I mean, I assume he watched it. No, didn't PTA say that he- Yeah, PTA showed it to him in November.

Didn't PTA say it was like, it didn't go well? Right, that's what I- No, they asked him like, how do you respond? And he was like, that's a private matter Yeah, good. Yeah Yeah, so I'm just like why I don't know. I'm curious These are yes As we've talked about we've talked a lot of Tom in the ten years the decade of dreams of doing this show and we've talked

All the Mission Impossible movies on top of that, right? He is such a fascinating black box of a person. We were texting a lot yesterday in a group chat of a lot of his recent press interviews and his like, he's so good at being like, movies go, popcorn yes. It's truly what he's cornered, right, in this last few years of like, I am movies. And then it was so sad, someone at E! News asked me about his Father's Day plans, and it was like he short-circuited. I watched it again, and they phrased the question as, Father's Day is coming up, what would

your ideal Father's Day be? I'm like, they gave him so much wiggle room in that answer, it wasn't even, what are you doing this Father's Day? And his answer was, you know, making movies, big screen adventure, live it up. It was truly. It looked like he short-circuited. It really did. He was like the woman in the airport in total recall before Arnold lifts his head up. Two weeks. Making movies, big screen, big adventure, living up. That's why we love him. Because it is that thing where when he went to see Tenet,

he was like, Tenet, big screen. And I was like, did you process what an insane movie Tenet was? Yeah. Or are you just like, screen big. We were in another group text talking about the videos of him eating popcorn. In popcorn.

And one of our friends was like, the technique of how he's getting the popcorn in the mouth looks like he's palming it. Is any popcorn actually getting in his mouth? Right, so what Tom Cruise movies have we discussed on this podcast? We have discussed, because of course, he was, for most of the 90s and the early 2000s, a tour-driven director.

So Mission Impossible. And Mission Impossible was on tour-driven franchise. We've never discussed a movie from kind of the first 15 years of his career, the earlier years. Let me see if I can get all the cruise movies we've talked about. Jerry Maguire. Collateral. Obviously, we've covered Ghost Protocol on Main Street and Patreon.

Minority War of the Worlds. Yep. Reacher. We covered Reacher. Both Reacher. Both of them. Both Reacher. Yeah, and then obviously all the other missions on Patreon.

There's one more or two more. You're forgetting a big one. I'm forgetting a big one. And it ain't Lines for Lambs, yet. The Milagro Beanfield podcast is coming up. Oh, Eyes Wide Shut. Eyes Wide Shut. Is that the big one?

Yeah, that's the big one. And there's one more. And there's also, of course, well. There is one more, yeah. We did meet the mummy. Oh my god on patreon Who's in this coffin here? A sexy mummy? I saw this movie twice. I saw Mission Impossible Dead no final reckoning twice. I've seen this twice as well. First at a press screening Rex Reed was there It was really exciting. Was he having fun? He was. Did Superman say hello to him? No, but the lady who was checking everyone

in the screening was like, hello, Rex. Did you notice Rex Reed in 1978 Superman? I know you just watched it for the first time. No, I didn't know until you guys called it out on the episode. He's looking good. Anyway, Rex Reed was a snack. I saw this movie twice, once at a press screening, and once last night at Nighthawk. The pre-show they did at Nighthawk was, like, impeccable. Oh, yeah? They do a good job there. They do a great job.

They played the Ben Stiller, Tom Cruise, MTV Movie Awards classic bit, but then they also played the, like, wrong export of the Mummy trailer. Yes, which is so good. Which I had forgotten about. With the no, it's just sound effects. But then Tom Cruise goes like, ah!

It's just screams. Right, right, right, right. It's like there's birds or whatever, because she like sends like evil birds to crash their plane. Yeah. But you're not hearing the birds. No, you're just hearing.

Instead you're just hearing, go like, ah! to crash their plane, but you're not hearing the birds. Instead you're just hearing them go like, whoa! And I'd only seen that on YouTube or Twitter or whatever, to watch that in a theater with a crowd. Rocks. It was amazing. I just remember watching the trailer and being like, I like it.

And then they were like, it's a mistake. And I'm like, oh well, well, it was kind of cool. No? No, I thought it was good. What I thought was good was the Mummy, the film, great film. I was thinking, what I was doing the math on is, is that the only complete total zero of his career? No.

Tom Cruise? Yeah. I think he's got a couple others, doesn't he? I mean, it's definitely the biggest zero sort of since entering this action movies, primarily, like, phase. But you think about it, and it's like, there's some movies, like, Rock of Ages are, like, terrible,

but he's, like, doing something in it that makes it ultimately, like... I really do think he tries his best in Rock of Ages and has fun. That movie's definitely a cultural zero. It's a cultural zero. I agree. I've never seen it, but I do think he's given some credit for he tried something he hadn't done before for the mummy But the mummy has a weird

Tiny little bit of cache because the dark universe is such a is the failure But that's how do the train same with any of his big? What about Nick Morton do we have anything to say about Nick Morton? No, we don't. What do you mean? Keep your eye on that guy. Versus Stacy Jax! Stacy Jax! I will say, I think Jack Reacher Never Go Back is a total zero. I agree with you on that.

And more of a zero than either of the two movies. I think people have actively memory-holed that there was a second Jack Reacher movie. I also find that movie more offensive because I'm like you guys had the fucking roadmap. You actually did a good job. You fucked up everything you got right in the first one. I also think that Lions for Lambs is a zero. Lions for Lambs is a zero. No, that's like a negative 100.

But some of these other ones, I'm like. Lions for Lambs. He wanted to take a supporting dramatic role in a Robert Redford movie. I'm like that movie is a zero, but I get the move, right? I know Meryl Streep's in it! That movie's... I agree with you, the movie's a zero! But no, it's a major disappointment in how fucking boring, forgettable, and whatever it is, but... The Mummy is the one where I'm just like, why are you doing this and why is fucking Alex Kurtzman directing this?

Aww. Is he the one who died? No. Thatzman directing this? Aw. Is he the one who died? No. That was the other one? Okay. The other one is the really weird. American Maid's good. American Maid rock.

Kind of fun. American Maid's good. It's weird that he's in it. American Maid is right. Is like Cruz deciding to make a porch classic. I know. At a moment where all of his movies are like so big. And he gets kind of scummy in it.

He's a little scummy. What's the biggest zero from like early in his career? I guess it's like... I haven't seen all the right moves. No, it ain't that. That movie rocks. Okay, cool. I'll watch it. Also, I'll tell you, that movie's not a zero. It's got about six inches in it.

Far and Away. But you know, Far and Away, which is bad, was definitely a hit at the time. But yeah, I mean, far and away is pretty close to kind of, it's sort of forgotten these days. He's really bad in it. This is my bigger point, is like all the other zeros like that, you're like, well, he wanted to work with Ron Howard and he met Nicole Kidman. Like the movie's nothing, but there's power surrounding the movie. No, but didn't he meet Nicole in the set of Days of Thunder?

Oh, you're right. That was their that was their victory lap. Yeah, because I was I was going deep through Tom Cruise, Getty Image Archive this week, you know, pulling out all my favorites. You found a really good one of Tom and Sidney Pollock at a UN conference. No, it wasn't a UN conference. No, it was like a UN conference. It was like the John Huston symposium. It was when Ted Turner started

colorizing movies. And so it was like, we need to band together to protect artist rights. But they're wearing like UN translation headphones. Everyone's leaning in behind the cast. It's like a panel that looks really serious. They're looking really serious. Tom has an unbelievable look. He almost looks like he has an ombre.

Yeah, he's got, he's like kind of grunge-era. Yeah. It's like really cute. But it's him and Sydney Pollock sitting next to Amy Heckerling and Twink Kaplan. And just eagle-eyed Marie Barbie. I will post a photo the week between Look Who's Talking 2 and this episode. It's a great cast. Because, you know, to mark the transition.

But there were like photos of, and I could be like misremembering the timeline here, but it was like Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers at NASCAR races, which I'm like, oh, so he's in days of thunder mode here, but that's where he gets his following call. Yeah, she divorced in 1990. Yeah. Mimi Rogers, normal lady as well. Look, let's just get ahead, let's get, let's him in 1990. Yeah. Mimi Rogers, normal lady as well.

Look, let's just get ahead, let's get at, let's just say this. This movie's a mess, right? Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. But you can say it's a mess, which I agree with. I think it's a mess. I just want to get out there and say, like, I don't care.

So, in a nutshell, the first time... I would say that I care quite a bit. David and I saw this at I care quite a bit. David, David and I saw this at a press screen as well. Kind folks at Paramount helped us out. I'll get in to see this movie early, which made our lives a lot easier in terms of our score schedules and such. So thank you for that. David and I saw it at a press screening.

I went again last night for like the fucking IMAX fan first whatever. It is officially coming out today on the day that we're recording it. Going into the screening we had two friends who had seen it in advance. And one was like, it's good and one was like, it's bad. And I was like, huh. No middle ground between these two, right? Was really worried. I sat there was so fucking stressed out during our screening. I had this feeling that I... You were stressed out because the movie wasn't working for you?

I was like, this feels like a bumpy takeoff on an airplane. I just felt myself not shifting gears. Holy shit, this is gonna crash. Yes. I was just more like, why am I not, you know, doing the thing I do with Fallout or whatever, where I'm like, yep, up, up, up, up, you know, like, yes, yes. I never got out of like second gear.

I was feeling that, and then the longer I wasn't feeling that, the more I got worried of like, is this a disaster? Like, I started having that sinking Rise of Skywalker feeling. The best thing I can, well, the best thing I can say about this movie is it does get better as it goes along, rather than worse, so it ends on a pretty good note, and I came out of it and I was like, first hour is like a total wash.

The second hour is okay. The third hour is really good. And then I saw it again last night. It's three hours. It's very long. I saw it again last night. And the stuff that really fucking bugged me the first time didn't go down any smoother for me,

but I had removed the stress of being like, is this thing gonna fucking crash? Which made me a little more analytical about it. I got a little bit more into I don't care mode. I find this very disappointing. I saw with a group of people, including our friend Ben David Grabinski, passing Future Guest, and he said,

I cannot think of a movie with higher highs and lower lows, like where the best stuff in it, I think, is like as good as modern blockbuster filmmaking can be, and the stuff that is bad in it is like so emblematic of the cancer of what drives me crazy about modern movies. And I feel that kind of way. I come out, I'm like, this movie ultimately lands on the positive for me.

Some of it is I just like Mission Impossible movies. I like these characters. That's why I was basically always engaged. And these outfits and their locations and whatever. My bar is really high for these movies. And it like ultimately delivers just enough of what I want out of them. And yet there's so much of this movie I find so maddening

that is like so sloppy in a bizarre in a way that just kind of boggles my mind. Like most of all, I felt this the first time, I felt it even more the second time, and I really like studied it to see if this held up. I basically think you can lose the entire first act of that movie. Everything in the first hour other than dying, doesn't need to happen. Here's the bigger take. And the movie's three hours long.

But here's the bigger take. Yeah. The two movies are one very good three hour movie. Yeah, here's, let's zoom all the way back. The moment they decide we're making one two-part movie, disastrous. Faustian bargain, screwed all of them. They obviously never really work.

Have anticipated fucking global pandemic and multiple industry strikes on top of that that made this thing just like a cursed production that took half a decade. But that was the original sin of this film. I mean, for this movie to basically for for Rekka Ferguson to be publicly like, I had to get out of there. Like the way these things work, it takes too long. You can't do anything.

It sucks up all your life. And she exited in the seventh movie, she's in it. Like, and even then she was just like, no, I didn't want to even wrap like one more movie. No, no, no, I had to go. God bless Tom and Chris and all those folks. Right. I just kept, about the two-parter of it,

I kept thinking about, I kept thinking about Wicked. Where, again, have not... Unlimited. Do you think Tom Cruise said to Paramount, this production is unlimited? You should have said that. Together we'll be the greatest team there's ever been. And like Sherri Redstone.

McQuarrie. Like what? I'm picturing Tom Cruise in a bed and Netflix in the bed next to him. He's going, Loathing. Yes. But like, you know how everyone's like,

why the fuck are they splitting Wicked into two movies? Cause the second act is boring and all the good songs are in the first half. Yeah, but then I saw Wicked and I was like, oh, I understand why. No, you understand why, but you're like, I'm just anticipating Wicked part two to not have as much of the juice.

I'm no longer anticipating that, but you can save my joke. That's crazy. David had the joke that I think about all the time and quote back to people all the time. I think it was on our Thomas Crown of Pair episode with the great Amanda Dobbins, where you said the splitting the Wicked into two parts is like when I make dinner and decide that washing the dishes

is a tomorrow David task. That's morning David's problem. Right. And you're like... And the Wicked part two is like, I have to wash all these dishes. I'm sorry. Right, but you're like, tonight is incredible.

I made a meal, I ate it, it tasted great, and I didn't have to do any of the cleanup work. I'm in bed patting my big belly. Tonight's perfect. Ten out of ten. And then you wake up the next morning,'m in bed patting my big belly. It's perfect. 10 out of 10. And then you wake up the next morning, you're like, oh, my fucking God. This movie has a ton of tomorrow, David business. It has to take care of where it's like, oh, Jesus fucking Christ.

We passed all this stuff on to part two and a lot of it. They just go like, never mind. Well, that's and that's some of this loveliness is being like, you're not even going to fucking talk about this thing. But the movie feels caught up in oh gosh We have to figure shit out that we never figured out but then right it doesn't actually Even try to figure everything out just to speak on Wicked just to make my point clear Wicked for good out this Thanksgiving or whatever, right?

By the way, I think them calling it for good instead of part two is because they want to keep making these forever. Maybe. There's a bunch more books. Yeah. And they'll loosely adapt them, but they'll just they want this to be an evergreen process. Wait, there aren't a bunch more books. Evergreen. There's tons of the books. They just did a new one. The guy's that...

Really? Yeah, he pumps it off. I thought he made only one book. No, no, there's lots of them. It's a whole series. The books steer off in weird directions and they will... The books are not similar to the books. They will barely adapt them, but I think they will keep doing.

I read them all, they're great. Alphaba and Glinda. Interesting, because I only read the first book when I had stomach flu in high school. That was the other thing. They announced overall deals with Arrivo and Grande and then retitled Wicked and took the two out of it. And I'm like, that's them being like.

Wow, oh my God. We want them playing these characters for 15 years. News to me! And also maybe building a land on the Thamberks. Go on, David. Everything's gotta be a land now. We should have Mission Impossible land. Okay.

You just die. No, I get to wear like a fun mask. No, I want like Leia's to do to shoot me. That's my Mission Impossible land. Or Bom Clementeum stabs me or something. I just want some lady to murder me. But Reeve for good, when I watched Wicked part one, which I enjoyed, I was like, I can see now what they've done,

which is that in Wicked, the stage show, they gloss that the Wizard of Oz is happening in the background of Act Two. They will not be able to do that in the movie. People would be like, what the fuck? And so they clearly were just like, there's way too much plot in Act Two, as much as there's less songs.

But Act Two kind of yada yadas all the plot. We can't just cram it into this movie. People will be baffled. Like, it's a Wizard of Oz prequel, or sort of side prequel. But it does make it risky that it does seem like part two is gonna have the fucking tin man in the cowardly line in Scarecrow and Dorothy.

Well, but it's in the show. But sort of like, look there they are. And he's actually the Tin Man if you think about it. And people are like, whatever, it's 11 o'clock, I wanna go have dinner, you know, like. So I get it. I'm excited. I liked Wicked 1. It was good. Okay, well, let's just say Mission Impossible,

Final Wrecking, feeling very... my worst case scenario for... Little happy birthday sign. Yeah. Yes. It's very happy birthday sign. And also, it is nowhere near the catastrophe of Rise of Skywalker. But there are certain similarities of this same kind of self-imposed pressure of, how are we paying off what had been set up in the last two movies? And also, now we want to put the sense of importance on the entire series.

That is what Hamstrings did a little bit, right? Is Macquarie deciding like, I need to explain the rabbit's foot. I need to bring in mission, you know, I want to bring in Mission Impossible 1, where I'm like, cute ideas, but you've already got so much stuff to do. Now, the thing I want to say about Rise of Skywalker,

because you've been invoking it. A terrible film. That is not a good film. In my opinion, unsuccessful. Is almost entirely joyless. Agree. I hate that movie. I don't think anyone really likes that movie. It's a bummer to watch. Right, it's a bummer to watch. It's a bummer too.

Now that I'm having a bit of a Star Wars moment, guys. I'm just going to confess. Is your child getting into it? No, no, no, no. Because of Andor. I'm watching Andor and it's just like, I'm like, fucking love Star Wars, it's so good. I'm enjoying Andor so much. I started Ahsoka.

Wow. I was like, I never watched that when I started and I was like, Pee-ew. But anyway, moving on, Rise of Skywalker is not doing what this movie does. What this movie's doing is like, well, we still got the entity. Do you guys like him?

Whereas Rise of Skywalker is like, forget everything that happened before. It was the emperor all along. And there's like someone running in with like an emperor, his standee, and they're like, put him there. Like, yeah, see, it was him, it was him. And you're like, no, it wasn't. And they're like, yes, it was, yes, it was.

Don't, you know, pay attention. Well, the problem with that movie is it is so panicked and it's not delivering the things you want I just do what does that movie deliver one thing that made one person happy well the only one he's always my answer He's the only thing in that movie that makes me happy It's like but the thing with rises Skywalker is they're like well actually maybe Finn should have been a Jedi So he is one and you're like can well, actually maybe Finn should have been a Jedi. So he is one. And you're like, can you set that up or make that meaningful?

And they're like, no. Like, no. But we did it. So are you happy now? Like, so much of Rise of Skywalker is just kind of like, are you happy now? Can I just quickly say, talk about Star Wars moment. Our friend David Ehrlich, friend of the show,

past and future guest, recently showed his children all the Star Wars movies. And they have gone berserk for them. Yes. They love them. But Aysa loves them as well. But Rae does as well. Rae is Darth Raider.

Yes. She does her little... She knows all the Williams themes. That's the crazy thing. They're hummable. She's two years old. I'll say it. You kind of went off with those themes.

You kind of popped off. I'll say it, you kind of went off with those themes. That's... It's like... You kind of popped off. I wasn't questioning his power, but to watch Ehrlich start humming a Williams theme and have it be like the tenth theme in Star Wars importance and see his two-year-old finish it, I'm like, this shit hits. But Asa is just fully Star Wars-pelled, right? He has this picture book of all the nine Star Wars movies.

And, early out of town for Cannes, I was doing a little pickup, sort of babysitting kind of business. And I was like trying to stop a meltdown. And I was like, Asa, I have a question for you. I need you to help me here. Which character is this? And I just started going through the book and pointing at all the characters. He knew every character's first and last name. Jander or so? Everybody. I'm trying to think of like knew every character's first and last name. It was like everybody.

I'm trying to think of like a- Rogue One wasn't in there. It was only episodes, probably episodes. Who's Carrie Russell called in that one? She's not in the book, Zorri Bliss. Zorri Bliss, there you go. I was just kind of impressed by how deeply he knew it, but I just need to let the record show on Mike.

It was the greatest compliment I've ever received. I point, I go, who's this? He goes, Poe Dameron. And then he looks at me and he goes, you kind of look like Poe Dameron. What? Does Asa, I'm going to text Alisa. Get Asa a vision check. That is so cute.

Very nice. Well, you got kind of curly darker hair. Sure, I got the facial scruff. You're a little shorter. Poe Dameron's a little on the shorter side. Yeah. You seem like a hero. Thank you.

And you really seem like someone who'd be confident behind the wheels of a moving vehicle. And the hair, no less. Much like Poe Dameron. Is this guy quietly fucking everything up? Poe Dameron does knock over a lot of Jenga towers in the third movie. He's also like always 15 minutes late.

Yeah. David. Yeah. Fresh air, sunshine, and good food. That's what the spring is all about. That's true. Now I'm going to push back on two out of three. My allergies have been out of control.

Dang that air. I obviously have a bad body that can't process the air. So I've been staying indoors a lot. Also added to that, the increase of the sun will I burn really easily. You don't tan well. Right. But hey, good food I'm into. Hello!

For me, in a way, the spring is only about good food because I'm avoiding everything else. Right, you need more food. And HelloFresh makes it easier to fit quick home cooked meals into your schedule every week by curating delicious recipes like pasta primavera, chicken dijon, and pecan crusted trout, as well as over 100 seasonal snacks, sides, and treats. And I need someone to help me fit things into my busy schedule because I have to record like three podcast episodes a week.

You poor guy. And I only have to cook for three kids a week. Exactly. We have the same issue. In 2025, HelloFresh is evolving to fit every lifestyle by bringing customers even more convenience. Because they got the ready-made meals now. You know, HelloFresh always had the meal kits,

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I see what you're saying. Just get some me time. Three minutes. Three minutes, I just think, don't oversell. That feels almost too fast. It's like witchcraft. Too furious? Exactly.

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You got a house full of handfuls, you got a handful of house fulls. Also true. Yeah. I recently had the Indian inspired turmeric chicken with rice and it was delicious. And they always say that's good for your immune system, right? Delicious food? Oh, turmeric, yes.

Is it immune system or, okay, I don't know. Digestive system, I'm down in turmeric. Oh yeah, you're popping that stuff. Well, get some HelloFresh. Oh turmeric. Yes. I is the immune system or I can't for something. I'm down in tumor Oh, yeah, you're you're you're popping that stuff. Yeah, well get some hello fresh I won't is there anything else we want I would just say to our listener if they want to feel great with meals that fit their spring schedule and make the season even more Delicious you should probably go to hello fresh calm Check 10 FM there you go to get 10 free meals with a free item for life. One per box with active subscription, free meals applied as discount

on first box. New subscribers only. Fairies by plan. New subscribers only new subscribers only. Where's the reference to an episode that hasn't dropped yet? One night only. Oh sure. You can cut that if you want.

No, no. We are a family like a giant tree. ["One Night Only"] You talk about the cuteness of the callback, you shit, right? I kept thinking about this watching it last night where I'm like, there are things in this movie that I like where I'm like, I'm fine with this, but you've done four of the same thing in the one movie, and I would take one of these. Okay, let's vote, which I liked Dunlough.

To me, it's 100% Dunlough. That worked so well. And that did kind of just, like, kind of slide into the movie nicely, and then him being a big wife guy, like, kind of rocks. Oh, my God, she is a queen. To Pilser, whatever her name is, I find. I mean, it is really funny that Ethan's like, hey, I'm sorry you were kind of collateral damage.

He's like, no, no, Ethan, you too saved my life by having me meet my wife on my, you know... It's all a matter of perspective. One of the people I saw it with last night turned at that point and said, Ethan, don't question a single thing you've ever done. Every decision you've ever made has helped everyone. You are literally God. Chill out. Yes. question a single thing you've ever done. Every decision you've ever made has helped everyone. You are literally God.

Chill out. Yes. The fact that he still has the knife to. I mean, that was a little cute. Here's truly maybe the single biggest issue with this movie. I do kind of want to at some point in time stopwatch this film. I think there are truly. You better get a big stopwatch.

At least 25 minutes of flashbacks in this movie. Oh, the flashbacks are well, OK. And like, do you think the studio is at times like we need more flashbacks? The audience too dumb. They won't get this. I won't get that. There's an article in GQ that I guess got published today by Zach Barron. I started the great backs. I married the great Aaron.

I mean, Dobbins, as I was on The great Zach Barron. I married to the great. Zach Barron. Amanda Dobbins. Amanda Dobbins. As I was on my way here, I was starting to read it, but they were talking about, they did a test screening in Paramus, New Jersey. It has to be. Where they were like,

the audience doesn't know what's going on. They can't follow this. They need to hear. I 100% buy it. It is the most panicked shit in the world, but like down to the Dunlough thing, right? We see the flashback to Dunlough at Langley, I think five separate times in this movie.

And he's got such a fucking distinctive face. And they keep underlining it being like, remember, this is the same guy. And then after he hands Ethan the knife that he's been holding on to, it cuts to back again. And we're like, yeah, we know. It becomes this inception level thing where when the movie is doing a flashback to something to one of from one of the previous movies,

in most cases, it is then the second or third time we've seen that exact clip in this movie. So it's almost a flashback to a flashback. Remember when we showed you this flashback two hours ago, but it has three separate streams of, it is doing flashbacks to previous movies, right? It is doing flashbacks to things that happened earlier in this movie. And it also has scenes that you didn't see the first time that happened earlier in the narrative that it's giving you later as flashbacks.

Like Luther has two dialogue scenes after he died that are, that took place. The Luther thing is the most egregious, like, what happened here thing in this movie. I have so many questions. These movies, for people who do not know, are constructed strangely, do not really go into production with a proper script.

It's not a good way to make a movie. And, like, I've gotten increasingly exhausted by Macquarie's kind of like, ah, but I pull it off thing where I'm just like, well, you stopped pulling it off. Yes, this is like the luck, you know, ran out on this movie. They built like a trap for themselves that was too big they couldn't solve. I also think, I know I'm much more into those six hour

breakdown podcasts than you are. But that's, I think a hot take for me, but they really annoy me. But you're saying that- Because he's not can't stand them. That's, I think, a hot take from me. But they really annoy me. But you're saying that... Because he's not revealing anything in them. It's like 12 hours of him puffing himself up. There's a lot of... And I think he's a smart guy and a great filmmaker.

I think he's incredibly smart. Right. But I also think you are misreading slightly that all of those things have this energy of, this has like destroyed me. He's not like, look at me and how smart and clever I am. I've listened and I know he says a lot of that. And then he's like, yeah, I'll never make another one. Right.

And then they keep catching him back in it. There has been this fascinating thing of like the production of these movies, mirroring the content of these movies and the character of Ethan Hunt mirroring the reality of Tom Cruise and the obsession with like, I cannot let go of this position. I'm the one guy who can do this. I need to keep doing this. And it all just with like, I cannot let go of this position. I'm the one guy who can do this.

I need to keep doing this. And it all just becoming like, the Venn diagram becoming one perfect circle. And then this is the movie where it all just collapses. And they kept sort of making it higher and higher risk for themselves and stacking the deck more and more against themselves for this working. And like signing on to try to do two movies back to back

or shot concurrently would have already probably been a disaster had the outside circumstances of the world not impeded it. But this just feels like these movies are not built from the ground up. They basically like start with a block of marble and start chipping away and then over time go like, fuck, I guess it's this. You on the other side start chipping this instead. That's an that's not an elbow, that's a knee, right? And like refitting everything. So much of what they shoot is like, this is meant to be act one.

And then they're like, nevermind, it's act three. We have to shoot the dialogue scenes, reshoot them or ADR them to change the context of why this is happening. Because now this is happening before or after that. Part of the magic of these movies was that they always just kind of worked, right? And this one, you feel all of that, 100%.

It absolutely feels like a movie that was made that way. And there's so much shit like that where you're just like, every scene, you're thinking, what was this supposed to be originally? I assume he's... Is he gonna do another of these, you know, with the Empire guys for this movie? I'm assuming. Will he cop to things a little bit more now that like, it's all done? I don't know.

If I'm him, I'm like, I don't think I can talk about this one for three years. Sure. But maybe he will. Maybe he'll be like, look, let me tell you why it is sort of the way it is and what did change. I'd love him to truly lay it out. But if he does, he's gonna be so much casier than usual. And as you said, there's always a bit of like

Magician in him where he's like I'm telling you everything but a lot of it is look at this I'm distracting you away from this and I'm covering this and you you told me that on dead the dead reckoning ones He's like and this is gonna get answered and this is gonna get all that It's like none of that shit got answered and also he was really cagey about Ilsa's death a thing that upset people a lot in the last movie and was clearly he's always trying to protect all of his collaborators Right, but then she came out interviews. It was like why am I not in the last one because in the time? Since I've wrapped Dead-rekening part one. I have done three movies in two seasons of a TV show and they're still shooting part

I've entered the silo. That's why I'm not in it anymore because I was tired of this and he wouldn't say that. It just, well, because fans were hoping till the end, maybe she's alive. But he also doesn't want to throw under the bus and I think he's like, I'll let them speak for themselves, right? And there's a similar thing with like, Vingrams, health is not great. These movies are increasingly boxed in by things like this where they're just problem solving.

So this is what I was going to ask. I normally, when one of these comes out, I try and watch all of them in preparation. I didn't do that this time. I thought about doing it as well and I still might do a marathon or whatever, but there's a lot of movies at this point. It's a lot of movies and I've seen them all multiple times.

And we just went to the Museum of the Moving Image that has a really great exhibit. Very fun. On the Mission Impossible franchise. Can we shout out? Sweep. They gave us a tour, it's an incredible exhibit. It's running through the end of the year.

Yes, so we want to give a shout out to Tomoko Kawamoto, who is our PR contact, and Barbara Miller, who was the curator of the exhibit. They showed us around the exhibit. It was so cool. Costumes, they had mannequins that were 3D printed to look like Tom Cruise, but not too much like Tom Cruise. It's fascinating.

And the poses of the mannequins are all in the poses of the stunts. But they're suspended in the air. And so it's it's like it looks to size where you're like, huh, OK, maybe it actually is pretty close to how tall he is. Actual actual humblebrag. They very nicely let us in before the exhibit opened. So we had like two hours to walk around before it was open to the public, so we really got to do circles.

And my number one priority was, I want to get a sense of how tall I am in relation to a screen-worn Tom Cruise costume. And it feels very deliberate that they don't let you get too close to any of the mannequins. They're all propelled from the ceilings or like on a slant or something like that. I did size myself up against Plum Clementeuf. We seem to be roughly the same height. If you remove the heels, I just want to put that out there.

We did the math. We did the math. One of the fits, it was jeans that were quite dirty. Yes. Not buried, but not clean. No. But we were walking around this for like two hours and Marie, as I think you're setting up,

like we were, it felt like sacred. Like we were looking at these masks and the props and the cruciform key. When I saw the cruciform key, I literally like yelped. Yeah. Cruciform key's cool. It rules. Great prop.

It's maybe the best key ever. Yes. What about one of those maybe the best key. Yeah, it's yes What about one of those really old ones? That's big? I like Ben likes that goes in like a big wooden door But is it called a crew well you would like that cuz like those are skeleton keys, right? Yeah, I mean skeleton keys are also pretty You you're saying oh being back. What about a big giant key that goes in a wooden door? I'm like, you know, it'd be? If it was two giant keys that fit together

in a crucial form into a wooden door. What about the big key Superman has to open the Forges of Solitude? And my response to that would be, what if he had two keys? You can't just say what if he had two. It's not gonna work. Yes, yes, no.

Cruciform key. I mean, it's good though. I love the prop. It's a great prop. Yes. Now, famous keys. But yes, they have these mannequins that are the screen worn costumes in the most iconic stunt of each movie in the position

With this sort of stylization, you know, what's a great key a little button key and Coraline. That's a great Oh sure. That's a cute key. Yeah, it's great. Let's not call it. It's great. It's great I'm gonna keep looking at I'm googling great keys in movies You go. Mr. Impossible, The Final Reckoning. That's the film we're talking about today. I saw it only the one time. Let me try to do... you guys saw it more recently. You have the plot in your head. Yeah.

So let me try and do this. See if you can do it. A couple months have passed since the last movie. Right. When the movie starts it feels like it's years have passed and then they reveal late that it's only been two months. Which sort of makes sense in that AI is just moving so fast. Did people laugh in your theater when that line? Yep. Yep. Which line?

Both screenings. Oh, it was only two months ago that the events of the last movie took place. Uh-huh. People giggled. People laughed. So, the entity, the evil AI that was once in a Russian sub, but now is everywhere. Evil AI, excuse me, thought leader. Right.

The king of the marketplace of ideas in the film is taking over all- Podcasts are just asking questions. All of the world's nuclear armaments, one by one, like a big ticking clock. That's the ticking clock of the movie is like, he's taking all of the country's nukes, starting with the little ones

and getting all the way to the big ones. He thinks that the way to improve existence is to annihilate it, to wipe it clean. The entity has decided essentially, right, to just nuke the earth clean and then the entity will just live for a while, do nothing, and then I guess reboot humanity. Now, I tried to book the Entity for this episode.

Didn't work out. He's just been so busy with press stuff. I was gonna say, he's doing the whole Manosphere circuit. He was on Theovon last week. Theovon. Hot Ones, Flame Grunt. Theovon's got in the coffin. And he came out dumber, somehow.

He was like, all right, man. Do you guys know how old Theovon is? I don't know. I don't know, I don like, all right, man. Do you guys know how old Theo Vonn is? I don't know. I don't know. I don't think about it that much. He was on Road Rules when I was in middle school. Yeah. I'm going to guess he's...

But he was young on Road Rules. 42. He's 45. All right. I just saw someone I follow... That tracks. Do you think he was older or younger? No, someone I follow was spiraling and being like, this whole time I thought this guy was

32 years old. Right, because he's kind of hey Bro, what's up? And they were like Malini going on Theo Vana I was like this is kind of nice that he's supporting the younger generation of comics this guy's three years older than Malini He's had a long career. Up and down right? That's this thing So so that's like the ticking clock of the movie It's really the only thing they have to deal with right is? Is like, we must stop the entity before he nukes the Earth.

Yes. It nukes the Earth. Right. The entity has control of five nuclear stockpiles. Out of 13 and it's all ticking off. Or six, whatever it is. It doesn't matter. It's like, you know, that's the ticking clock. You start the movie at DEFCON 3. And how does the map measure that?

Who fucking knows? Who knows? And the Gabriel, once the entity's ally, has kind of been kicked out by the entity because he sort of failed. Doesn't need him anymore. Right. He sort of failed to contain Ethan anyway. So now he's out for vengeance and kind of wants to...

He's trying to kind of get the entity under his control. Yeah, he wants to control the entity. He wants to win it back. But the one thing that, you know, Ethan understands that no one else does to think you can control the entity, fools Aaron. Sure, America was sort of trying to do that in the first movie. They're still trying to do it.

They're somewhat, but they're kind of, Cariel was just dead, so like that's a little less of a high priority. And it feels like they lose the thread of Kit Ridge wanting it until the very end and then it comes back again. One of my bigger notes of the movie, certainly. It's like they don't, right, they don't really have a handle on that anymore.

This movie seems to forget that the last movie is like, Kitrige is crooked, he's a problem. Right. So, Gabriel is trying to get the entity back. There are so many doohickeys. Tom has the, sorry, Ethan has the cruciform key. Ving Rhames, Luther, has made a thing that will kill the entity.

The poison pill. And Gabriel has, or is trying to get the thingy, the poison pill will go in? The podkova. The podkova. He wants it. They have the podkova. Who has it? The podkova is in the sub.

It's in the sub. Right, that's what he has to get from the sub. And the only person who can retrieve the podkova from the sub. Right. That's what he has to get from the only person who can retrieve the pod Kovac from the sub. Yeah. Is Ethan. You've got to put, you got to get the pod Kovac from the sub using the cruciform key, put the poison pill in it while near the entity.

And then, you know, it's later revealed we'll trap him in a, in a US. They need the world's best USB drive. The biggest one. They said it couldn't be done. A 5D optical drive. It couldn't be done. And they need the world's best pickpocket

to do the best USB plug ever. It's not a USB. It's a 5D optical drive. I'm not saying that every time. It's a USB. And... CubeSB. Yeah, it's a CubeSB.

No, I mean, you are... And that's kind of it, right? Like, that's the main drive of the movie. Right, like now here's a problem with this film. There are literally four scenes in a row that take up most of the first hour that are extended dialogue scenes where Ethan locks in with someone and says,

please, I need you to trust me. The entity thinks we will never work together. I need you to trust me. He says that to Angela Bassett, who's of the he says at first to Shay Wiggum He says to Shay Wiggum and he says it revealed to be the son of Jim Phelps, right? Just they mentioned that and then you're like, okay, and then it's just has no bearing on anything, right? Which like getting back to earlier threads This is how this movie is structured where it keeps circling back and going like,

fuck, we forgot to set this up, right? The callback-y shit is Dunlough is brought back and actually has a significant role and I think is used well, right? He's fun, yeah, he's a fun callback. The guy from Mr. Monster. Shea Whigham's character, whose name was Briggs, which is the name of the original team leader

in the original TV show, who was later replaced by the Phelps character, turns out to actually be Jim Phelps Jr., son of John Voight, out for vengeance, although he claims, I'm not out for vengeance. He's like, no, I'm over it. I just love rules and doing my job. I don't like you, but not because of that.

Right. Then you have the sort of retcon notion that the rabbit's foot was actually- The source code of the entity? That the entity was built off of. Right, and he handed it over. So, like, Ethan is somewhat responsible here in that he got the rabbit's foot

and handed it over to save his wife, or Kerry Russell, or whoever he was trying to say. Now, the Hannah Waddingham character who is... No, it was Maggie Q, really. He was like, God, get her a CW show. The Hannah Waddingham character, who the get her a CW show. The Hannah Waningham character, who the president writes a note to that has a date on it that's like, do you know what happened on this date?

Something really bad happened and we lost people and we never recovered. We didn't take a risk or something like that. The date that's on the note is the release date of the original De Palma movie. So both times I've watched it... I think that's just masturbatory. Right. I've been like, is it supposed to be

that she's connected to something that happened in the original movie? No, I think that's just them doing a sort of like pat on the back, like, wow. But that feels so fucking dumb. And the exact kind of thing Macquarie has always stood in opposition to, and I think is one of the best at explaining why that shit is bad. When he does press tours for this movie... He literally just gave an interview saying that he thought fan service was a cancer. I was like, I can't believe he has the gall to say this when this movie's coming out.

And then I realized that was an interview from the last movie that's being re-circulated now. But it's such a stark contrast of being like, he's usually so good at identifying. And I think we'll say other things that I like a lot about like, Tom and I both agree that there's this problem in like blockbuster filmmaking where you do these kind of jokes that like defuse the main characters, where everyone's kind of like cutting everyone down to size and belittling them. Not like a back and forth repartee way, but in a way where the movie's like, we want to make the joke about ourselves before the audience can make it so we don't seem corny.

And he's like, when you do that, it makes the audience think less of your main character and dislike the person that's making the joke, which I'm like, that's him nailing a core problem with like fucking Marvel movies, right? And he talks about the fan service thing. The thing that he brought up in this interview is that like, when you do that kind of shit, 50% of the audience is patting themselves on the back for recognizing the reference, which then takes them out of the story of the movie, and they're thinking about a different movie rather than the one they're watching, and then they have to re-enter. Or the other half of the audience doesn't know what it's a reference to, they're confused, and they're now in their

head about what is that, what do I not know, am I not getting something, and they're also not paying attention to the movie. And this movie not only does that exact thing to the audience so many times, but it keeps showing flashbacks over and over again, being like, we want to make sure you're not confused, which then takes you out of the movie. It does. You see May 22nd, 1996 written, they flash back to that piece of paper, like five times. No information gained.

Now. But I think it's just supposed to be like, you know, they've been taking the ultimate risk on these movies. I don't know, something like that. But I'm also just like, the whole time I was like, she mentioned Serbia, so it takes me out of the movie,

because I'm like, they didn't go to Serbia in the first Mission Impossible, right? Maybe they did, you don't know. Did they? I don't remember. And I'm like going like, what's her last name? Did any other character have this last name?

What's she connected to? Is she like Emilio Estevez's ex-girlfriend? Yeah, that's what she is. She and Emilio had a hot night in Prague. I don't fucking know! That's on the movie, not on us, because by this point in time, they've already set up the other three things, and we're in a mode where we're like,

what does this connect to? You keep connecting shit. Emilio Estevez is how many years older than Hannah Waningham? Guess. Fifteen. You were pretty close. 13. She's older than I think she is.

She's younger than I think she is. She might be younger than you think she is. Wait, really? How old do you think she is? 1000. 48? I think she's 50. Okay.

Yeah. Okay, so I'm wrong. She's only five years older than Theovon. She's 16 years younger than Angela Bassett. So I'm not quite sure what the connection is there, but whatever. The Motion Picture Center, a runaway success, 16 years younger than Angela Bassett. So I'm not quite sure what the connection is there, but whatever. The motion picture of sinners, a runaway success, an artistic triumph, someone making something personal

and awesome and exciting within the studio system. I have heard a lot of people complain about what they feel like is an overabundance of flashbacks in sinners, which they're like, it feels like the movie doesn't trust the audience to remember the details. That's Kugler believing in testing. Like, Coogler tests his movies rigorously,

and like, he does, he takes notes. But there's lots of reporting that Coogler was like, I'm playing ball, I want this to work. Like, because there was all those things of like, how dare this man want ownership of a film? Like, he's gonna destroy cinema. That's also what the movie's fucking about. I guess I know.

Right, but my point is I saw it a second time, right? And the flashback thing didn't bug me the first time I watched it. And even if it's just him doing the best execution of that note of the audience is confused, can you remind them? The way he actually executes those flashbacks and edits them in in terms of like the rhythms and how he like uses the score in connection with them, it

genuinely feels like he is finding a creative fix for a story problem that ends up playing more like a fucking like Maliki, these are echoes of thematic like memories and it does feel like when the things happen it's less like you need to remember this plot detail and more like, I'm trying to remind you of the connection between these two moments in terms of the emotion of the story. He's using the flashbacks as a vibe check versus in Mission Impossible where it's like... Even if that stems from a test screening note,

it ends up working that way. It's a more successful film. I agree. I'll just say it. Whereas this, I'm like, this is just truly being like, remember, remember, remember, in a way that is so confusing and disorienting. And especially when you're getting scenes that are like,

wait, Luther died, what is this scene? Did this happen earlier? Did they just not show us this? The Luther thing's just a disaster. Disaster. That's the thing in the movie that kind of irked me the most. I largely enjoyed watching this movie. And the way I feel about the Luther...

I'm not mad they killed him off. I'm not either. But I feel about the execution of that, similar to the way I think a lot of people got pissed off by the Elsa death, which I kind of defend the execution of more. Sure. The Elsa death is more tense. The Luther thing where he's like, he's rigged this and I have to stay

behind where you're just like, there's no tension to this. Like, whatever. OK, first up, this is Luther has a little hospital room set up in tunnels underneath the London Underground. It has been two months at the end

of dead reckoning. Luther goes, Ethan, I need to go off and do something by myself. Good luck, right? And like, it is just... Your Uncle Luther's getting a little tired. They have talked about the fact that like, even in these globetrotting movies

and with pandemics and all these restrictions, like every single thing Ving Rhane shot for the two movies was in London. His health is not great, his mobility is not great, they had to lock him into one city, they had to build around him, they had to batch shoot his stuff, right? So they do that thing at the end of the last movie

where he's like, I gotta go off on a solo mission. And I'm like, I get it. Macquarie needs to come up with some structure for him to be off on a solo thing so that they don't have to work everyone else's schedules. And I guess the idea is what he's doing is he's making the poison pill? Possibly.

Within the context of the movie. But then this movie starts, it's one of the things that makes you feel like, work everyone else's schedules around. And I guess the idea is what he's doing is he's making the poison pill? Possibly. Within the context of the movie. But then this movie starts, it's one of the things that makes you feel like, oh, five years must have passed. He looks like shit. He's in some private, like, black site hospice care. He's in, like, some government-controlled, like, hidden tunnel hospice. He's gotten deathly ill.

Yeah. I saw it with my husband who's like, wait, so when did this happen? And I'm like, I don't think it did. I think that like this is the real, like Ving Rhames being sick in real life or something, trickling into the movie, but in a way that like is really like confusing

and it's blurring the lines of- It's like the first chunk of the movie is so rushed that I'm just like, okay, this is an elegant, but I guess I get just gotta keep up with this. Ben David turned to me 10 minutes and said, I feel like I'm having a stroke with like the intensity and the speed at which they're throwing information at you very sloppily and frantically. There's one scene in the beginning of the movie where it's they're cutting between two conversations.

Yeah. But Tom is in both of them. Yes. And it is so confusing. And then you're also cutting to, like, flashback images of other things. So it's like Tom explaining something to someone about the poison pill,

and then you're cutting to Luther and Benji explaining what the poison pill is to Tom. And you're like, this happened a week ago, but the movie didn't show me? Yes, and it is just, it is so inelegant. Which, look, these movies, they talk about, they figure out the plot like last, right? They retrofit it onto everything else that they figure out,

which is why they often have these sort of sloppy intro scenes in which they get the message, and that's the thing that's like figured out finally with ADR to then explain what they're doing for the rest of the movie, right? This movie starts out with like the clunkiest one yet, which is just opens on Tom in tight closeup, silently reacting, we'll fill in the dialogue later,

Angela Bassett monologuing for like eight minutes. Wait, pause. I am so glad that we're talking about this. Yes, we have to. Because I love that the little... The mission briefing device is Ben's porch TV. It is. Isn't that fun, guys?

It's a TV-VS-ER combo. It is. It is. Although he's, I guess, kind of for the first time ignoring his mission a little bit. Angela Bassett goes, no one's been able to reach you. You're not responding to anything. I thought you might respond to the president, right? I thought you might respond.

So does she send him the porch TV? Does she just send him the VHS tape? We don't know where she went on Best Buy. This feels like this was thought. That's actually a great question. Yeah, does someone have to eBay a combo and get it set? Or is it that like this is how Ethan is consuming media now because he's so afraid of the end.

Like you've established that in order to like skirt the entity, you have to go analog. This feels like, so it's like it's all he's doing. Just watching VHS tapes. Two years ago, I heard and these things change so much. But two years ago, I heard on Good Authority that that was the big conceptual hook to the entire part two, was the entity has reached so far... Has taken over cyberspace.

...that this is the first Mission Impossible movie where they can use no tech. And I was like, that's kind of an interesting angle. I think I remember you saying this when the last movie came out. Yes. And there's elements of that. Elements. Like their big base where they're pushing around.

Down to the biplane. And the biplanes. That being right. Yeah. Yes. That's kind of it though. Yes. Yeah.

Which like the biplanes were something I think they largely shot in 2020. They shot that really early. But that whole sequence really slides into the movie really well. I brought two planes. It feels like it really fits into the plot, just like so like like snug. Maybe it was a little later than 2020. I know they did not shoot this concurrently, right? Like that got abandoned.

Yeah, it essentially became a back to back shoot. But the train from the end of the last one was supposed to be in this one. They did a swap of sequences. I'm going to need to see some reporting on this. Some stuff got sloppy. Here's what I want to say. Angela Bassett speaking on my TV VCR combo. This looks like it was shot in Tom Cruise's trailer one month ago. It is two close-ups. We've seen so many versions of this scene

where like Ethan's in some weird safe house, and then a guy delivers a thing and whatever. There's, like, no even attempt to place him in any environment. The GQ article gets into it a little bit of, like, Macquarie just has, like, this, like, repository of crew's reaction shots. Right. That's what it feels like. Where he's like, give me that one.

Right. They have just collected. He doesn't say anything, and they keep cutting back to him, and he makes, like, hmm, interesting face. And then I'm like, I don't know about this face. And it's clear he's reacting to nothing. Angela Basset monologues for so long.

I'm like, this is sloppier than usual, but if this is what they need to do to get the movie off and running, then so be it. Totally forgivable. Exactly. And then the movie spends an hour basically repeating this scene. So what does it do? Remind me. Okay, so here are some examples of ways of because I I agree with you that I felt

a lot of throat clearing in the first hour, but I don't really remember what actually happens. This scene also, by the way, is crazy because when you're watching this and like no one's been able to reach you, you're like, oh, it's been five years. When you find it's been two months, you're like, why is the president freaking out? Because the world's evolving so fast.

Okay, fair. Yeah, it's getting pretty hairy out there. Half of the world's nuclear silos are already in the entity's control. We're DEFCON 3. Sure, sure. Which is insane, we would be a DEFCON one. She spends almost 10 minutes setting stuff up, right?

Then when he goes into the entity's coffin, I would argue the entity does another version of this for about seven minutes. Yes, he does. The entity does another one with a little bit of sort of previewing things in the future. I need to get to this place. And it's similarly cutting to Tom reaction shots

of his eyes in the coffin going, it can't be true. The entity of course is telling him for the first time about the nuclear armament thing, but it's so long. It goes on way too long. So long, especially when we've already had one of these info dumps and there hasn't been an action sequence yet. And then I would argue when he gets into the war room

with Bassett and all the other stuff shirts, there is a third version of this. And it's like you can do... And it's again him being like, I know, I know, I know, but you have to trust me. Totally. And you're like, this is the kind of thing Macquarie's usually good at is looking at the footage and being like, fuck, you know what we need to do?

We need to reshoot and combine the information in these three scenes into one scene. And instead, this movie has this thing where it's like making a dish with two preparations of the same protein, right? It's like you're eating a taco with like fucking like roasted and fried chicken in it And I'm like pick one in the same way we're revealed that Luther is in this fucking hospice site I immediately go huh, okay. This is sloppy and this is moving too fast I'm very confused, but I can kind of see what they're getting at here This is interesting if Luther is dying and Ethan whose whose whole thing is, I won't let anyone die, especially my whole team, right?

You cannot sacrifice one is facing a thing that he can't solve. Luther has a terminal illness and Ethan is going to have to accept that he can't save this guy's life. Right? I was like, this is an interesting new test for this character. And then they have him die in a saw trap. And I'm like, then why is he sick? It's a good question. Why he's sick is to soften the blow of his death, right? Is to have it be like he's like, look, it's time for me to sacrifice myself

because I'm near the end. But it makes it unemotional to me where I'm like, I'm eating it. I'm going, why is there chorizo and bacon at the same time? You know, it would have been it would have been so good if Luther died of... It doesn't. Yeah. If Luther, like, dies of cancer, which is something that Ethan Hunt can't fix, we get a bit of a bedside repeat of the Magnolia scene.

Tom, emotional. You want to shift into Magnolia mode? You want the boat to turn into a boat. One of the things that bothered me in this movie is all the time, like Tom gets emotional in the movie like twice. Ethan's not a real person. He doesn't make sense getting emotional. Movies, adventure, big screen, let's go.

Ethan gets emotional twice in this movie, and the two times it happens, it's with fucking Shay Wiggum. Well, hey, Shay, look at you revved up. And it's like, I am so sorry I ruined. He keeps doing this kind of like very clenched. Like, bro, Luther, the only guy who's been with you since 96 dies, and it's just like, okay. I wrote this in The Atlantic.

It's always been hard for these, as they progress and have built more serialization into them to be like, Ethan Hunt the guy. I'm like, he's not a person. He's Tom Cruise. He's Tom Cruise. He's this kind of mythic force. Like, everyone in the movies talks about him.

Like, he's like, bald lightning. The living manifestation of destiny. Yes, exactly. And it's sort of like, you know, right, I'm never gonna... Like, I love the idea that he's like, I'm gonna marry Michelle Monahan. And it's sort of like, you know, right. I'm not, I'm never going to like that. I love the idea that he's like, I'm going to marry Michelle Monahan. And it's like trying to put magnets together where it's just like, no, you're not allowed to do that. You are Ethan Hunt.

Like your job is just to be Ethan Hunt. I know. Yeah, I don't know. I did rewatch Dead Reckoning, part one, after seeing this the first time. Movie I like quite a bit. It is imperfect. Coming off of a couple nearly perfect movies. It's a really fun movie by and large. I fucking love it.

There's one sequence in it I wish was better. The nightclub. The nightclub is the one sequence where I'm like, this could be better. You mean the entity's party? And look, I'm not dissing the guy's party planning. Because that's rude. Well, I don not dissing the guy's party planning. Because that's rude. Well, I don't like the entity.

Someone's mad he didn't get an invite. Someone didn't get the party falling. Macedonia, where are they in that movie? I don't dislike that sequence, but that is the sequence. It's just the one where I'm like, it doesn't look that good. It feels the most COVID affected to me. It feels COVID affected, and it also feels kind of like, also sort of filled with a bit of ADR and explanation and all that shit, you know.

But here's what I like about Elsa's death in that movie. Knowing that it probably came out of necessity of Rebecca Ferguson saying, like, I want an early out on this. Because Harry Atwell in this movie, in the last movie she's got stuff going on. I like to argue it. In the last one. In the last one. In the last one.

In Final Reckoning, I'm like, this is just Elsa. This should just be Elsa. Everything she does saves for the two times she picks someone's pocket. Feels like it's supposed to be an Elsa scene. When she rescues him from the ice, I'm like, this scene makes sense if it's Ethan and Elsa. They don't have the history for this conversation.

They don't have any chemistry for these big moments. And once again, she has only been an agent for two months. Well, she accepted the choice. I get it. But like, what I like about her arc in the last movie is this is the first time we're seeing someone start the pipeline through this. They've lost any sense of her still learning on the job in this one. She's as qualified as Benji.

She's just right. She's just part of the team. There's like nothing. Two months. Two months. Two months. Like, truly some of the issues in this movie are immediately solved if that ADR line is five years ago. It doesn't solve all the problems, but it makes certain things less galling. The Elsa death, what I like about it is, Gabriel kills her, right? He can't save her.

He's there crying on the bridge, and then it cuts to all of them in a safe house, sort of standing in silence, mourning, and then they start planning the next mission, right? And I've heard a lot of people be like, this is the most important character, this is the heart of the franchise. Rebecca Ferguson across these three movies was like the secret sauce. How is the rest of the movie not existing in the wake of her death? Like everyone should be so emotionally affected by it.

And what I think was a good choice in terms of characterization is they're in silence and then Haley Atwell I believe is the one who breaks it and says something like, I don't think I got her name. Who was she? And Luther kind of explains to her like, this is our life. We like lose people like this all the time. This is the choice we make. Death is part of the job. Like I'm worried about Ethan, but also you have to understand like this thing you've

gotten yourself into is someone dies and then we go to a safe house and we sit in silence for like five minutes and we plan the next mission. We don't get to mourn them. There's no funeral. We don't have human connections. And that makes for me, her final choice to accept the mission, right? At the end of the film, feel more impactful.

That's why I think they make her death meaningful in that way is they're acknowledging these people don't have time to grieve and they have to compartmentalize the notion that they even care about each other and try to move on. Whereas I think they're trying to make the Luther thing more of an emotional thing, but it doesn't work. I want him going Magnolia mode, not because it feels like the depth of that relationship has been written, but because he's literally the only guy who's in every other movie.

Absolutely. And it's the one opportunity to acknowledge, like, to let Ethan break and be like, fuck, I do care about this guy more than I ever want to let on, right? And that's why it doesn't need to be some crazy mission death. It's better if he's just fucking dying in a hospital bed and Ethan goes to visit him and he gets the poison pill and that's the final thing. I like him having the pre-recorded message at the end. It feels nice that the movie ends with fucking Luther.

The movie ending thing is fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. But they mishandled the death so much, you're so confused by what's going on with him, then he's fucking trapped in the catacombs, then he's flashed back to two more times. You just, like, do not know what is happening. Alright. That's true. Well, I, of course, always know what's happening. I'm so locked into everything.

But I feel like you kind of do... The Luther thing you do kind of not know what's happening. Or it doesn't fit into the plot very well. And the fact that he made a poison pill out of nowhere, which has not come up before. The last movie is like, he needs to get in the sub to get the thing. And I'm like, I got that.

And they're like, he also needs to put Luther's thing into the thing. I'm like, okay. It's a non-thing. Who cares? That Macquarie is usually really good at, of just like, it's one object and this is what they need to do with it.

And you're like, it's like- Three to four objects here. Right. Like it's so simple what the overarching missing is. And this now, as you said, it's like four different devices. It's four devices. Cause it's the key, the thing, the pill, and the... Help me out here.

The podcova? No, the drive. Oh, the 5D optical drive. And that's, it's four. And what, pray tell, is the fifth dimension of this drive? I have no idea. Right, cool. Friendship.

You're right, you're right. It's just a friendly vibe. The friends we made along the way. It's a friendly fun. It's a friendship we made along the way. The Impossible Mission friendship. So when does this movie kick off for you then if you're talking about the first hour being very slow? So for me, I feel like what should basically be the cold open of this movie and the only

thing you need to solve is like how do you get the Luther thing in here? And I have a thought on that. Is him being brought in, in handcuffs, in front of Angela Bassett. And then being like, here are the stakes, and him being like, I need you to trust me. And then after that, he says, I need you to get me to this fucking aircraft carrier. Yeah, George H.W. Bush. Right, and you're like, oh cool, Tom's gonna go fucking Top Gun mode in Mission Impossible He lands there. He has one intense conversation with Hannah Waddingham. That's the third conversation like this in a row. We've heard it adds Nothing to the movie. I think she is good in it, but it adds it doesn't nothing and like except

All of that is just like wait a second You're saying you need to be here when this is happening and this is, you know, they're again, trying to pump us up with like, not going to do it. Not God, Dan, and then be prudent. Dropping broccoli, which is weird. That's not even fun. And then also John Lovett shows up behind her, goes, I can't believe I'm losing to this lady. You know who has a master of disguise. You know who won.

What if Tom Cruise announced, I am stepping down from the Mission Impossible franchise and handing it over to Dana Carvey? I recognize there's only one master of disguise, I'm going to use Dana Carvey. We should shout out, I should say in the first hour, the only action sequence that there really is is the rescue of Paris,

where they do do masks for a sector. Kind of like an afterthought. It. It's like an afterthought. It's a bit of an afterthought. There are two deeply abridged fist fight sequences. Oh right, the other one is the loony tunes, like Tom Cruise massacres people off screen. But it also cuts away like fucking Wet Hot American Summer to Joe LaTulio going like, oh my God, he's doing it, no, what?

Master! It's kind of funny. It's kind of funny. It's kind of funny. And then that becomes the light the fuse moment, right? Where the credits hit and Ben David, who fucking loves these movies, has the IMF. I love the light the fuse moments as much as I'm sure he does. Logo tattooed on his arm. David.

Oh, he's doing the thing. People have been asking for a photo of this. The double jointed stretch. Okay, thank you. People need to see it. People need to see it. People need to see it. I'll post it shortly.

Ben David has the fucking IMF logo on his arm, right? You hear the daaaaaa kicking in as Ethan goes like, good job surviving it. And they walk off and he looks at me like this. Like that's the light the fuse moment. And I'm like, I agree. As much as these movies do not have some, like, sacred fucking, like, rulebook, I'd say the greatest consistency across all of the movies is the music kicks in after Ethan has done something so fucking awesome and you're like, I cannot believe he pulled this off. And in this

case, what he's done is faked a cyanide pill and then punched a bunch of people off camera, stabbed them in the chest. No, he killed them. He cleavered them. He murdered them. Okay, so I love the Light the Fuse moment in Ghost Protocol so much, because he literally says, Light the Fuse, and it's then the visual presentation of that's so cool.

Obviously in Five, it's just him pulling the shoot on the plane thing. Which rules. Which rocks, and you're just like, hell yeah, what is it in Fallout? In Fallout, it's fucking the Wolf Blitzer momentitzer moment where they tricked him into giving up the code right in dead reckoning I remember it being cool. I remember being pretty pumped up Yeah Why am I not remembering what it is in dead reckoning and I watched it recently I mean too obviously it's the the free climbing Yeah, which is fine.

Which is like the pinnacle. No, no, but it's when he throws the sunglasses. But I'm saying it's off of that. It's so cool. Yeah. Dead Reckoning opens with the submarine, and then it goes to him getting the message. It happens deep in. The first thing after that is the airport sequence,

which I fucking love. I love airport sequence. Oh, it's him breaking into Kit Ridge with the mask. Oh, which is great. And putting the mask back on. How do you expect to sneak out? Then he puts the Kit Ridge mask on. It's not quite that kind of moment. I think Ghost Protocol Rogue Nation is maybe the peak of the Fuse moments, I think.

Sure, yes, but you want that feeling of like, that son of a bitch, he pulled it off. And this movie is like faking it where it's like, we don't quite have it, but if we don't put it here, it's not gonna happen for an hour and a half. We need to do the credits. Truly. Yeah.

Right. So then he has the very brief fist fight there that largely, and the knife fight, mass murder that happens largely off camera. He has the very brief sort of like sneak in to get Paris out of jail. Pom Klementev, I would learn to make pasta from scratch. It's not that hard. You just need like eggs and flour and stuff. Well, but let's tell her it's really hard.

It took a lot of work. He, those are the only two things of any kind of like action adjacency. But beyond that, we're also not getting a thing that I think is wholly lacking from this movie. Which is one of my favorite things of Mission Impossible. Not the stunt sequences, but the sort of like puzzle game, how do we solve this? A million percent. Kind of hasty things. We don't have anything like Ethan and Benji breaking into the Kremlin with the weird screen.

We don't have anything like the airport and who's got the key. Like this sort of- And those are always my favorite parts. Ground level sort of using their smarts kind of shit. I agree. I think it's the problem that the stakes are too high. Yeah. That like now that it's nuclear armageddon, it's sort of like, well, we can't be having

as much silly fun. By the end, they have like assembled a makeshift version of this where there are like five concurrent actions and you have like Dunlop with the bomb. Right. Haley's got to do the quick grab. But that's different. How it's doing the surgery. It's not quite the same sequence.

But it at least gave me the juice of every member of the team has to do something at the same time. Like why am I not cutting to Jar Jar? Like, you know, got a big orb. What if they did that? That's one of my favorite things in the Mission Impossible franchise is that every movie has Jar Jar like, you know, got a big orb. What if they did that? That's one of my favorite things in the Mission Impossible franchise, is that every movie has Jar Jar juggling an orb, dropping it, feeling like a klutz, but actually in the process, knocking out a bunch of battle droids.

And that's what Mission Impossible is about, if you ask me. It's about Jar Jar Binks. Yes. And another thing that's totally missing from this movie, is people forget that Jar Jar actually, in his power as a senator senator is one of the people who granted Palpatine the power. He did not one. I think he's the one. That is a plot thread that is totally dropped in this film. I just am in such a Star Wars mood these days that I'm like, maybe we gotta do the prequels again. Guys.

David, motherfucker. You motherfucker. I have pitched that so many times and every time you make your stinky poo poo face you got I don't want to do Star Wars again I pitched it for 400 for episode 500. I wanted it to be our 10th anniversary episode We revisit Phantom Menace with context and we didn't do it for a 10th anniversary because you went stinky poo poo And now you want to do it. Okay, maybe we slotted in. What did we do for our 10th anniversary? Nothing. Nothing. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

We released the last Crusade episode. That was a good episode. I just have some notes that I took at my screening last night that I just want to make sure we address. Ethan was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Yeah, JJ texted us last night. JJ was fired for being too excited about this. Yeah. Um, I said...

But that's literally, you just see it in his file, right? Yeah, but interesting character detail. No one's like, what was it like? Uh, cold Madison winters or whatever. We should also mention that, like, multiple, in terms of, like, talking about this movie having, like, repetition of the same beat over and over again, five different characters across the three hours of this movie fire.

JJ. That is true. Ethan looks into he shoots the lens. Kitridge is like, and fire that guy. JJ, you are fired. He's got tears in his eyes. Trust me on this. You're fired. Angela Bassett breaks the biscuit and the note inside on the present station area. You're JJ.

Fire JJ. And USS Fire JJ is sitting with the submarine. When he gets an entity's cough and the entity is like, and above all else, JJ must be fired. I'm so excited. We haven't really talked about this. We're all going to meet JJ for the first time. None of us have ever met JJ in person.

I've known him longer than you guys. I too have never met him. Our upcoming live show, Town Hall. At our upcoming live show. I've known him longer than you guys. And I too have never met him. Yeah. Our upcoming live show, Town Hall. Our upcoming live show. Tickets still available June 6th. That's right. Blank Check finally requests an audience.

With King Ralph. With King Ralph. Yeah, it's gonna be like a live episode. We're not gonna watch the movie at Town Hall. No, we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna talk about it with a lot of, you know, fun little interactive bits. A lot of fun little actor.

Well, a couple. That's not gonna be a problem. That's gonna be little actor. Well, that's not good. That's always a problem. Yeah, me a lot. But anyway, yeah, we're gonna meet JJ for the first time. We're gonna do a lot of fun little interactive bits. We're gonna explain Gabriel's backstory. We're gonna tell you who that woman was.

Oh yeah, well that's coming. What if McCrory's like, now we'll do a ninth movie, I'll explain it then. We'll answer all of that in Jack Reacher Three. Okay, wait, sorry. You're going back to Jack Re sorry. Gabriel's coming back! Some more notes. I like that they have a defibrillator in the torture chamber.

Is that standard? You know how they bring him back to life after his fake... Right, and then he flips it on them. Yeah, I just thought that was interesting. Better safe than sorry. Luther's nerfs. What's she thinking about all this? Great question.

But this is where I'm like, what is happening? Weird commute. Yeah. Like... Yeah, hang a left at the dungeon. Right. Take go to Charing Cross Station and then into the dungeon. Ben's eyes just lit up. He's googling nursing school.

Yeah, okay. And then there this whole the entity is counting on you hating me So we have to do the one thing it doesn't expect Which I got a lot of problems with them and they say stuff like this all over the movie of like whoa This is the one thing the entity won't predict like and I'm like doesn't Entities like learning so did the entity not watch Mission Impossible? No. Dead Reckoning? No, they didn't have time. You know, that movie underperformed because the entity didn't buy any tickets. No, I, Marie, this is a great point and this gets into the repetition of story beats, right?

He keeps saying to people, I need you to trust me and for us to work together because the entity isn't expecting that and that's the only way we can beat it. But they work together in every movie! He says later, like, the entity isn't intelligent, it's only working off of what we've done in the past. It doesn't have ideas of its own, right? Which I'm like, I like as a conceit. Sure, I like as a let's make fun of AI thing. Totally, and I'm like that's the potential of having the villain be AI rather than a human is this idea of it thinks it's smarter than him because it has the data. Ted Sarandos vibe. Totally.

But he keeps saying the entity thinks it knows what I'm going to do and I have to get ahead of it. The entity is never fucking like doing that. The entity tells him at the beginning, this is exactly what I'm going to do. And he's just like, I'll meet you there in five days. And Ethan keeps saying to people, we need to do this so the entity doesn't... There's no feeling of like, fuck, the entity anticipated this and it cut me off at the pass.

This is what people complained about this in the last movie and I kind of gave the last movie a break, but it's tough to have your villain be a screensaver with no personality, that has no motivations, that has no particular, like, personality. There was one point where Ethan says that, and it's when he's talking to Shay Wiggum. Mm.

And they're leaning into each other, and it's like there's the one thing the entity doesn't expect us to do, and I was like, kiss. Kiss, Nick, out. And I really thought that might happen, but of course, it didn't. So when he gets dragged in front of Bassett and Co.

Oh, Lord, can we move on? No, no, no, no, in handcuffs, right? Uh-huh. It didn't. So when he gets dragged in front of Bassett and co. Oh, Lord. Can we move on? No, no, no, no. In handcuffs, right? Uh-huh. I'm like, that can be the info dump for the entire fucking movie. And then it's like, we gotta get you on this up.

When they're saying you gotta go to Hannah Waddingham, I'm like, oh, is she gonna... He needs her approval to do some cool action sequence? Doesn't happen. But we do see some naval planes, naval land and take off. You see that, right? But like danger zone, you got some danger zone. No fucking set piece. The movie doesn't really kick into gear until he gets on the submarine.

Part of this is that. Which the movie should be starting basically like you're saying with the submarine, because that's how the last movie ends is we got to get to that. So it should start with Bassett being like, here's the briefing and then the plane drops him in the middle of the ocean. He gets to that submarine. It should start with Bassett being like, here's the briefing, and then the plane drops him in the middle of the ocean, he gets on the submarine. Like, everything else before that doesn't fucking matter. I also think this movie makes the mistake of being like,

well, Ethan's been off the grid for two months. The president sends him a message. He has to get the team back together, right? He reconvenes with Benji and Grace. He recruits Degas and Paris. And then he goes in the coffin. Luther dies. He goes in the coffin. And almost immediately he's like, guys, I got to go solo. Benji, you lead the team. And I'm like, why doesn't this movie just start with Ethan's been off the grid and Benji's leading the team without him?

I think Simon Pegg is very good in this movie. I think he's doing yeoman's work watching it the second time it stood out for me even more. He doesn't really have an arc to play, but what I think he is doing very well is this quiet, man, we have been watching Benji for 20 years. He's evolved. And in this movie, he actually has to lead the team. He's not trying to be Ethan Hunt. He's not trying to be an action hero. But when he's doing the briefings and the plane and shit, I'm like, I buy that this guy who is a fucking tech nerd behind the desk, comic relief character, has the authority to tell people what to do, right? And like, there's a history there and it's good.

And I like him with the junior members. I think all of that's fun. Let Ethan just go to the fucking president, go to the submarine. The second he gets in the submarine, the movie starts to have a little juice. It's gay as hell. president, go to the submarine. The second he gets in the submarine, the movie starts to have a little juice. It's gay as hell. Oh, love the gay submarine.

Everyone in this submarine is good. And Tramell Tillman is, like, fucking magical... Well, he really... -...in this movie. -...he's a really great performer. Just full stop. But I think he really gets how to bounce off of Tom Cruise in an interesting way. And not to do... God bless Hannah Waddingham, who is a good actor, I like her.

But she's more just kind of doing like, I'm a stern authority figure. And instead for him to have this kind of weird personality, which kind of tracks for someone who lives in a sub where they can't ever go outside. Where you're like, yeah, these guys are all little, like sort of off kilter. I truly, yesterday in IMAX, three of his line deliveries got applause.

Yeah, because he rocks. At both screenings, he got lots of. I mean, that's what he's like in Severance, too. It's just where you're just like, what an interesting way to read that line. Totally. You know, like. Yeah, and he's so good, and you're just like, I don't need three other authority figures being like, I guess I'll trust you.

It's so much more fun to just have him give the hard sell to this one guy and the one guy be like, dude, I was on board the second you broke into the submarine. Like, all right, let's fucking go. Basically, like, I'm a madman. You're a madman. Yeah. You don't have to sell me on this shit. They match each other's freaks.

Like, yeah. Ben David turns to me at one point and goes, I assume this is a bad time to go to the bathroom. And I go, now is actually a great time to go to the bathroom. He thought it was a bad time because it's when Katie O'Brien and the rest of the team is showing him the equipment of the fucking oxygen tank. This is great. His lungs are going to explode if he breathes out. It's kind of the classic thing where they're like, you can't let this, this, this or this fail. And I'm like, so all those things are going to fail.

Right. And he was like, so this is important. And I was like, go to the bathroom now. He comes back one scene later, they're about to launch him out of the submarine and they basically repeat all of that information again. And I turned to Ben David and I go, everything you missed is being said now. I went to the bathroom during the Hine and Wattingham scene.

I'm like, nothing lost here. There's so much shit like this. And then when you get to the submarine, the submarine rules. If this movie was truly Christopher McCrory and Tom Cruise showing up on video and being like, Hey, we want to apologize. This one got away from us. We didn't figure out the story. Here are two great set pieces. And you literally just showed me the entire submarine sequence and the entire biplane sequence. I would be like I strongly endorse spending $25 to go see that NIMEX Like the movie those two things are so fucking good and top level that this movie cannot be a complete failure

Because they are executed so well. I found the submarine sequence very interesting. It is very good very upsetting I was so I was so I kept thinking about the Titanic submarine people who got um well They got I mean on a live they got they get on a live I mean they got liquefied right like it's like at least there's no like weird frozen They got kind of more scanners. Okay, wait So before we get really into the submarine sequence, I'm gonna watch the hell out of that Netflix documentary. That's just Together shit I already know but just being like and then that crazy guy thought he could get in a fucking soup can and like just drop

It down with a place Yeah, he did and did he pay the price like those fucking Sometimes Netflix will put something on their main carousel like that. Yeah, where it's like hey, here's a cup of poison Do you want it? I'm like, yeah, I want to drink the poison. Of course. Tasty, tasty poison. This is going to be horribly made. It is like. It was made in two minutes.

Right. And also it's like super like morose and creepy that I want to watch this. Why would it, it's like, but like, it's like me like being like, I need to read a Wikipedia entry about some disaster. Yeah, which I love. That's like my sweet spot. Anyway, before we get too into the underwater pieces,

I want to talk about what's happening at the SOSUS listening station with Dunlop. Which is, by the way, another thing where I'm like, the movie is president, then rest of team arrives at Dunlop's cabin, then Ethan gets dropped off at Submarine, and like the first 15 minutes of this movie are hidden. Yeah. Um, I am obs...

What's her name? Like, Tapilsa or something? I mean, look it up. Dunlowe's wife. This, of course, is the man who Ethan gave diarrhea. Yeah, they didn't talk about the diarrhea at all. DePisa. DePisa. It has always made him one of my favorite characters

in the Mission Impossible franchise. Because he has tummy troubles like you do. He has tummy troubles and it fucked up his entire life. Yeah. Ethan put diarrhea juice in his coffee through a pen. You remember they squished the diarrhea juice? Oh, I remember. And it does look a little, you're like,

I don't want that in my coffee. First of all, my cup of coffee is ruined. It's not gonna taste good second of all me shit my brains I'm gonna make my own coffee if you know what I'm saying My own hot brew anyway The to get the knock list the the infamous yes mission possible drop here is the guy Who that movie sets up is gonna be fucking reassigned because of... Right, and he got reassigned to the Bering Sea, and now he listens for maybe the Titan exploding or whatever.

And he did happen to hear when the Sevastopol exploded, so he'll know where it is maybe. But his department is also getting doged. Yeah, it's getting doged. They keep cutting it down, they keep taking equipment away, they never update the systems, he's working on a very very analog level when he's introduced. I was like, okay, is this a little too cute? I was so pleasantly surprised that he is in the rest of the movie Oh, I'm like it is what transcends it being dumb fan service shit is that you're like no

We're actually gonna make this a real character and a real guy and also now that Luther's dead He kind of fills the lo the Luther role, right? Like he's really good at- He's the, I can explain how something works technically. I can strip some wires for you. Brock Saxon, he's got an incredible voice. He's done a lot of voiceover work in the last 15 years, I think, especially in video games.

And he just clearly has that authority where he can be like, Ethan, there's two wires. We must cut them. Um, he's great. Nice. Cool.'s two wires. We must cut them. He's great, nice. Cool. Yeah. I mean, I agree, totally agree. Seems to do, yeah, he does some theater,

he does some, yeah, I don't know. He's definitely worked less in recent years, so it's nice for him that he's back. But he's fun. They got a lot of bookcases in their home, which they use a lot. I like their house. It looks cozy. It looks really cozy. It's sad that it burns down. I was feeling for their house. which they use a lot. I like their house. It looks cozy. It looks really cozy.

It's sad that it burns down. I was feeling for their house. Their house is really cute. Unfortunately, it's been occupied by Russians. Who's the Russian guy? I like him, too. Who's that guy? He's in a lot of stuff I feel like. I don't know, but I know his first name is Captain.

It's another example, though, of, like, these sort of fun little side-supporting guys. Pacha Linchikov. We like him, we like Trimel, we like Kitty O'Brien. All these people are taking an hour to enter and no one is fun for the first hour of the movie. Like no new performers are popping for the first hour, period. Yeah, he's in Miami Vice, he's in Crystal Skull.

I remember him in Crystal Skull. He's got such a face. He's not the Ants guy. I think he's not the Ants guy, but he's in that. Okay. Right, in that group. Is he the Ants guy? Let me see, I know the Ants guy's name. I'll recognize it.

It is not. He's Russian soldier Roosevelt. That guy's name is like, it's something with a K, I want to say. But like Romulan commander in Star Trek. Yeah, he was in, he's in the Abram Star Trek. Do I know him from a TV show? Maybe he's on a lot of TV.

I mean, look, he's playing a lot of like, Yuris and Ivans. Deadwood, he was on 16 episodes of Deadwood as Blazunov. Oh, fuck, that's right. That's a minor character, but he is like around. Yeah, okay. So great actor, love to see him. Lovely. But there's, yeah great actor. Love to see him. Lovely.

But there's, yeah, there's an action sequence here. It's a little, I mean, yeah. They have like another set of keys. Yeah. Yeah, that's revealed kind of late. Which is so like, kind of, they're too really, really annoying, deflating reveals. It's the fact that the Russians

have a dupe of the cruciform key. So the whole cruciform key thing becomes irrelevant. And the other thing is that Dunlop, you know, like halfway through him and Benji trying to put together a drive, he's like, yeah, so by the way, I can just give you the coordinates. I haven't memorized. I haven't memorized. But, but, yet, like, Rolf Saxon nails the delivery of like, you know, the coordinates. And what does he say? He says like, you know the coordinates. And what does he say?

He says, like, down to the centimeter. No. Yeah. Down to the last square meter. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Like, that's another thing I love in Mission Impossible movies is just a really good character actor saying something with such importance. Down to the square meter. There was another line in the sequence that made me laugh the second time I saw the movie where Haley Atwell is trying

to talk to the Russians as humans. Yeah, she's trying to be like, can we get the world to end? Let's forget the sides of it, but she goes, forget about us being Americans and you being Russians, we're just humans. I'm like, girl, you and Simon Pegg are British. Yes.

Like Paris is French are British. Yes. Like, Paris is French. British is hell. So why are we saying that we're American? Right, you should be like, hey, by the way, fuck America. None of us like America. We're not here for America, man. True, America.

But he's got his good joke where she's, like, trying to appeal to, like, your family. Like, the world's like, I have no family. Not even Doug. Not even Doug. Um, I, look, I'm obviously horny as hell for Pom, but I do like what they do with her character in this movie, which is like none of these movies in their team have had a wild card.

And I like that they're sort of like, she's part of the team and everyone kind of doesn't trust her. She's drinking all the time. Yep. They know she's a mass murderer. It just kind of feels like if you accidentally said like you should kill that guy, she like, you'd be like, I was kidding.

She's already like buried a knife in his skull or whatever. She's like Wolverine or whatever and she keeps making like French quips I like that they commit to her only speaking in French and that the other characters now have to be bilingual But right what's happening right? It's like those guys are at the cabin trying to get the coordinates because Ethan is under the water Yeah with the sub and he needs like they need to know where to find to match up and they're basically like we're about to enter His dark zone where we won't be able to send a signal if we don't send you out now We never will and like your team needs to be able to find you in order to save you from the other side of the ice But what's so cool about Ethan in the sub is that there's no dialogue. It's scary. It feels like a swerve for the series.

Yes. It feels like it's like 15 minutes long. It's so long to not have like Peg, you know, Benji being like, you gotta go to level three. And you're watching it and it is like every single shot, you're like, how did people not die doing this? I was like holding my breath. Not just crews on camera, but like how did no crew people die? Anytime. The thing that really got me was when the nukes would,

um, like just bump into each other or that would fall into a specific pattern that would make it impossible for him to go around them or, you know, I was just like, oh my god, like, this is, this is a nightmare. The kind of like very subtle sort of escalation that they're so good at building in these movies of, like, watching silently him having to do the math of, like, fuck, my only way to get through this tunnel is to lose the oxygen pack.

Right? Oh, my god. I'm gonna be caught on this blade unless I get rid of the suit. Like, making these sort of sacrifices that, like, raise the stakes over and over and over again, it's so good. I kept thinking of the fucking Soderbergh quote that I'm gonna paraphrase about watching Mad Max Fury Road,

where he's like, my whole life is trying to figure out thinking about how to stage sequences. And if you asked me to do one sequence in that movie, I would put a gun in my mouth. Well, I'm like, I actually don't understand how you make this. Then the fact that the... I'm not equating myself to Soderbergh, but I like watch it and I'm like, I don't understand how they successfully got this footage.

And the fact that the sub is on a shelf and it keeps turning. Have you ever seen the Jameriquai video? Oh, of course. It's kind of like that. It is. It is. It's kind of like that. But right, it's like, it's got this inception thing where, Oh, of course. It's kind of like that. It is. It is. It's kind of like that. But right, it's like, it's got this inception thing where because the sub keeps tilting

on its axis where the water is in the sub that is like half sort of flooded. Right, but it's filling, yeah. Keeps changing directions. I think they just do a good job communicating all of the changes happening without anyone being like, Ethan, the sub has moved and now it's filling with water over here or whatever. Which, like, we enjoy when the movies do that kind of thing, but it's all the more impressive that they pull off

the sequence without that, which gives it a different tone than anything we've seen in any level. It also is, it puts the first part of the movie in such stark relief because it's them over-explaining everything with dialogue versus in this sequence when they're just relying purely on visual information and staging. Did you know that your Miracwais third album, Traveling Without Moving, is the highest selling funk album in the history of the world?

No. Isn't that hilarious? That is actually shocking. I mean, they are though, they're a pretty huge band. Well, that's the virtual insanity moment. I think that's their peak. There, it's just him. JK.

Him in that hat. Big hats. Maybe you should do some big hats. Just walk in one day with a big furry top hat. I kind of have a big knock in. And I don't know. Just walk in one day with a big furry top hat. I kind of have a big knock. And just don't comment on it. So I feel like a big hat accentuates that I have a big head.

Ben. What's up, Griff? America loves Tracker. The show. Tracker. CBS is Tracker. Justin Hartley is Tracker. It's impressive.

Holter Shaw, lone wolf survivalist with extensive tracking skills who travels the country as a rewardist. My man just picks up a little bit of dirt and he could like figure out where somebody going. He tracks things. And why are we all staying glued to the tube watching Tracker week after week?

Because we want to see what kind of awesome adventures he gets into. And it's wish fulfillment. We're living out our dream lives. We all wish we could track the way that he does. Yes! Because I know I have a hard time tracking where my money goes. Geez, you're telling me. I'm a mess.

Yeah, I can keep track of this thing and I own it until I give it away in exchange for goods or services I truly don't know what's coming in what's coming out. I'm dining out. I'm eating food. I'm putting food in my system I'm handing money out of my wallet over to a restaurant. Yeah, and I go where did that thing stuff go? No idea not to mention food delivery online shopping Retail therapy ever heard of it? Ben, you get some packages delivered to the office. I do get a lot of packages, you know, and I got to tell you truly if I was charged twice, I wouldn't even know it.

Ben, here's the thing I do sometimes. Okay? Yeah. I order clothes, they come to my home, I wear them, then I call up a rideshare service, which takes me to a home. I wear them then I call up a ride share service Which takes me to a restaurant where I pay money food and then go out and see an expensive concert Yeah, I hear it and I'm not getting rich doing that no everyone else is getting rich around me and I've lost track Well, here's the thing grab finances can be messy and confusing Monarch money acts like your personal CFO, giving you full visibility and control so you can stop earning and start growing.

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Owen Gleiberman's review of this for Variety. He spends like half the review just talking about the biplane sequence, but everything he says about it feels like it also could apply to the submarine. And the review feels very indicative to the response to this movie, which is like you walk out of the theater being like, holy shit, that biplane sequence, two thumbs up. Like you end on such a high. But what he was saying, which I think this is like triply true formarine because it has zero dialogue, is the ultimate miracle of what Tom Cruise is pulling off isn't just that he's like putting himself in these crazy situations and not dying. It is that he is acting. That he is actually successfully

emoting in a nuanced way in a sequence like this where he's conveying all of this without words on his face while wearing a stupid helmet. You know? And you're seeing him do the math. all of this without words on his face while wearing a stupid helmet. I love how stupid the helmet is. Because I love how it exaggerates the features of his face, which feels very, like, unvain. Even though we talk about this movie as being kind of a vanity project. Totally. I mean, they talk about this with the Halo jump in Fallout. That they, like, needed to design a special helmet to make his face readable.

So, A, it needs to have the lights inside of it. Otherwise his face would get lost on camera and B, it feels like if they don't magnify it, you won't see his expressions. Um, but speaking of lack of vanity, you feel the fact that this movie has footage shot across five different years in like his face changes a lot. Like when they greenlit this movie, he was 58, and now he's 63 or 60.

I mean, whatever my math is. We get it, we get it. Yeah, you're just like, you're really acutely feeling in this one, like he is pushing against the absolute limits of like staying young and looking like, you know, he doesn't want to be fucking as much as he keeps saying that Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones is an inspiration to him and what he wants to keep doing and keep making these movies into

his eighties. You're like Harrison Ford's like, fuck it. I'm gray. I'm old. These movies are about me being old. He was so ready to make that transition, Harrison Ford, to be a grumpy old man. And this movie is Ethan still just like holding onto

the final embers of the idea that he is like youthful. One thing I want to address, also just looking at my notes, we haven't really talked about the doomsday cult that- Yeah, that's because the movie doesn't address it. The movie doesn't really get into it. But... They're just like, that exists, people, and it's... They're setting it up right at the start,

like people are so under the sway of the entity that anyone could be a threat. And that basically just comes up once on the submarine. It manifests twice. Twice. The other time, the secret service agent in the war room. Yeah. But we have to bring up the time on the submarine

because Tom beats the shit out of guy by saying You spend too much time on the internet that line makes me laugh. I think it's funny. It feels a little I agree cute Yeah, it makes me laugh and then immediately go like They made me laugh. So I don't want to be too much of a grump. Yeah Um, I also want to note that I love Tom's little pod Kovach bag. Oh Sure. He's got a little podkova sack. He got a little podkova sack. I like how he has to like take the little podkova out,

put it in the little plastic bag and zip it up and carry it with him and make sure he doesn't drop it. I'm like, oh, that's cute. I really think the sub-sequence is great. I just, I wanted a giant octopus. Sure. That's so true. You know, that's just one of those things where it's like, it's been buried at the bottom of the ocean. Right, right, right, right, right.

And there should be a big creature inside now. We're going to Atlantis. There needs to be like, well, you know those anglerfishes, the ones that got the big scary teeth that has a light? Yes. Oh my God, that's a great calmer. But we might not be deep enough in the ocean. This was another thing that was confusing me

because I'm like, he can't physically be down that deep. No, it's on a cliff. But it's on a shelf. So it's pretty close, too. But also, if it's that close, how come no one could find it? Totally. No, it was looking. That's another thing. No, everyone was looking.

The last movie ends with Ethan having both parts of the key and being like, I'm going to the submarine, I know where the submarine is, and the final shot is the submarine, and you're like, he's going straight there. It takes him 90 minutes to get there in this movie. Actually, wait, sorry guys, I can't, I don't have the coordinates.

What am I talking about? You forgot everything. And right, and like after the submarine, he exits, they heal him in the puffy tent. Haley Atwell has this very odd sexually charged scene with him. Very booby. Where she's also, well,

not to, homina homina homina, but this is a movie that features like three of the most beautiful women on the planet, in my humble opinion. There is the shot of her rescuing him that is framed as her bosom coming into frame first. That did get me a little hot and bothered. Well, I was just rewatching my favorite scene

from Mission Impossible 2, which is when, I guess it's when Tom and Tandy meet for the first time where they're in the bathtub together when she's doing the heist. I know the scene you're talking about. There's a shot where it's from her perspective, she's on top of him and he's in the bathtub like this, with his, like, arms behind his head.

But you see her tits in the foreground. Like, so they populate, like, her cleavage populates the bottom half of the frame, which I am like, oh, that's a really funny shot. CRAZY SHOT. I mean, this is Tom in, like, fetal position, and you're like, oh, he's got the bends, he's dying, no one's gonna rescue him,

and then in slow motion, boobs lower down. Yes. Well, in the tank top, she's a the bends, he's dying, no one's gonna rescue him. And then in slow motion boobs lower down. Yes. Like that, well in the tank top, she's a good looking lady. She is a good looking lady. I was talking about this with my husband yesterday. Wow, humble wreck. Yeah.

You guys have a conversation there. We talk, we're married, we see each other in the hospital. Good lines of communication, mostly nice. Yeah. The decision to make Ethan asexual, that happens when?

After Michelle Monahan. Basically. I mean, he's too horny and I think no one really dug it. Oh, I did. I love how horny he is in that movie. But that is, that is the divorce. It doesn't work for me. Right. That is the post divorce movie.

And it's also like the... My take on Mission Impossible 2 has always been that guy's having a mental breakdown over the death of his team, and he's like, I'm so good, look at how cool I am. I grew my hair out, I have sunglasses. I'm like a little fucking biscuit. I actually like being alone. And then in three, it's like, he's gonna settle down.

He's met a nice lady, They're going to get married. He's working with forest like he's not allowed to love. She must. He can only look at her from afar. You know, and that is it also introduced like a bit of a Paula. Like is it after that her dead love in the same way that he is until you realize that Paula Patton's only got eyes for Sawyer from right. I think Paula Patton is a misdirect of, but like that, but then they're both the same way that he is until you realize that he's... Paulipatton's still got eyes for Sawyer. It's Sawyer from Lost.

I think Paulipatton is a misdirect of... But then they're both great. He has Friisahn with Ilsa. Friisahn. But that's the whole Ilsa thing that I love, is that you're like, part of this is almost them recognizing, I get you and both of us know we could never actually be with another person. That it's sort of just like the creative juice of being like, fuck, we're the same. But then, like, we talked about this when...

Hayley Atwell was introduced in the last movie, where we were like, there's gotta be something more. I thought she was gonna be his daughter. Yes. Yes. Who's daughter? I thought Hayley Atwell was gonna be Ethan's daughter because of how much they were hiding her name in the previous movie.

Ethan's daughter? Yes. much they were hiding her name in the previous movie. Ethan's daughter? Yes. With who? With Marie. The dead lady. Barty? Yes, with me. My child. Yeah.

But she dies. I know the math doesn't totally work out that Marie is Haley Atwell's mother. Yes. But you know what? It doesn't completely lie. This franchise is all about impossible things. Oh, but that would have stunk. I'm glad they didn't do that. It would have been really stupid.

She's not his love interest. He's treating her as more of a mentor mentee sort of thing. But then also you have these scenes in this movie where they are cuddling in bed. But also he just doesn't kiss her. This is Macquarie Backfire stuff, right? He talks so much about like, we shot a lot of scenes with Marie, she had her own character poster, and then we decided to save that stuff

for the second movie. You'll get a lot of answers on her. And the idea of Gabriel being a guy from Ethan's past is irrelevant in this movie. Gabriel could be anyone. He could be a new character. I'm willing to believe that they did film stuff and they did have stuff planned and that everyone kind of came to their senses and was like, I don't think anyone cares

enough. And the way these movies are made, the way these movies are made, it's not even like, oh they filmed a bunch of stuff and cut it out, it's that they probably shot three different versions of them and then used none of them. Like people asking why this movie cost $400 million and saying like, but it doesn't even have CGI characters, like how could it cost this much? The answer is that the amount of stuff that is not on screen is mind-boggling. Not just the alternate versions and possibly entire action sequences that were cut out wholesale. There's like paparazzi footage of stunts shot in major cities over the last five years

that there are not elements of in either of these last two movies. I don't remember. It might have been... It was either the biplane sequence in this movie or it was like the helicopter chase with Henry Cavill. It's what opens the GQ article that just came out. Uh-huh. Where they talk about how they shot... It's the Cavill helicopter. that just came out where they talk about how they shot 80 hours of footage of that

stunt and it is 12 minutes in the movie. Right. I mean I heard there was a 40 minute version assembly of the opening Sevastopol disaster from Dead Reckoning part one. There was 40 minutes of dialogue. Like the amount of shit they throw out on these movies is crazy and also like these movies shot in insane circumstances and world events and like they continued to pay everyone during Shutdowns of production it's part of why these movies were so expensive and why actors Desperately want out of them and keep begging to have their characters killed off is because when someone signs up for one of these movies They're like, here's the deal. You have no script and we own you for two and a half years. At any moment, we might call you up and say, you need to get on a plane to Bulgaria right

now because we've written a bunch of shit. And then you get to Bulgaria and they go, never mind. The sequence is cut. And you have to reshoot things 10 times to fix the plot. So people get so aggravated working on these movies and he keeps losing, especially like his above the line crew. There's a reason these movies don't hold on to DPs, you know, is because even when they come away from it and they're like, fuck, it did work for what a nightmare it was, it was a triumph. Those people still walk away and go,

the fucking life's too short. I don't need this again. I want to see my kids, right? Lauren Balfe, who has scored the last three movies. And rules. Or six and seven. Five, six and seven. No, he didn't do five.

He did Rogue Nation. No, he didn't. Who did Rogue Nation? Joe Kramer. Really? Yeah, I listen to it all the time, it rocks. Wild, that is a great score. Joe Kramer was the guy who did Way of the Gun, Jack Reacher.

He was Macquarie's original guy. So he did the last one. and the Rogue Nation score rocks. He was announced as doing the score for this one. His name was taken off the movie. Although he has like a score consultant credit or something. His name was taken off the movie eight weeks ago. There is a weird credit in this film that's something akin to like score produced by, and it is two of like Lorne Balfe's associates who usually help him on his work,

but it doesn't even have a traditional like composer or score by credit. It is very clear that they were changing stuff so much and needed so much new material and redoing it that at a certain point he walked away. That's wild considering he's such a workhorse. Totally. And that's like a post-production job.

Like, and there's stuff like the submarine sequence that plays out silently that doesn't have any underscoring which on top of the lack of dialogue I think lends at this weird power It does work the rest of the movie is like largely Overscored and you feel that they did not have time to develop new themes and they're just like We need another version of the Schifrin score, right? To your point of there should be an octopus as much as I like the silence of Do kind of wish that when he's in the sub room it's Neptune god of the sea here's my pitch oh shit manta ray

I was thinking of the guy from I was the black man Ray just a huge one just a big one you can't fail with this it just flies at Aquaman. That's cool too. A manta ray, just a huge one. Just a big one. You can't fail with this. It just flies, Tom Cruise, he's like, eh, that's it. First half of the Sevastopol, dead silence, right? No dialogue, no music. Right. Second half, blacky racist thing.

As things are getting worse and things are tilting, right? It's like, oh man, how could this situation become even deadlier? You hear a little, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. Oh no, there's a hot crustacean band. Oh, Sebastian's there. But they're all wearing puffer coats. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. They're under the sea. Right. Wailing. Right. And they're telling him to stay down there and it maybe tempts him.

He's like, maybe it is better down where it's wet. Right, and they have Mermaid Marie, the ghost of his dead girlfriend. No, me. Yes, oh yeah, I'm sorry. Literally me, yes. These are the kind of story decisions I don't understand why they abandoned in this film.

Oh, the mermaid. The crustacean band, Mermaid Marie, it's actually Marie out. Once he's out, this is what I was trying to do, it's like, okay, everyone's united, all the devices have been recovered. We're going to South Africa. There is one clear plan for the rest of the movie.

There's a magic, like, digital tomb that the entity wants to go inside. We have to put it there. I think the movie is basically good from this moment on. There are a little gripes, bits and pieces of gripes I have, but it basically works from this moment on in like just giving me the basics of what my lizard brain wants for a Mission Impossible movie. Can I tell you my favorite part of the last sequence of the movie?

It's actually, it's not part of the IMF crew stuff. It's from the Mount Weather, Virginia Crisis Command Center. The fail safe. Or no. They have to come up with an American city to sacrifice. Have you ever seen Failsafe, the Lumet movie? No. In Failsafe, they nuke New York, essentially as an apology for accidentally...

Well, I'm spoiling Failsafe. It's an apology for accidentally nuking Moscow. Wait, so something as big as New York? In Failsafe, it's literally New York. They don't tell you what it is. They just were like, let's just be honest. It was Houston. Well, my guess was Phoenix.

Sure. I was going to say Columbus. I think Phoenix, everyone would be like, OK, it is funny that the line of dialogue is president, do we have your approval to do the thing to the city that you chose? Yeah.

They go out of their way. And they're like, she chose something off screen in between cuts. And they're repeating it back to her while not saying the name of the city. That city that you selected... Which is like, such a funny choice to do that. They'll say that it's literally New York,

and it's the same kind of thing of like, we will be seen as hostile and blamed for this if we don't make ourselves look like we were also part of the attack and the president has to make that kind of decision. It's a fucking awesome movie. I also feel like the way those scenes are staged from the moment they proposed this idea, shot and edited, feels very much referencing.

Sure, I'm sure it is. The Lumet sort of classic close-up. Are they really sweaty in Failsafe? Because I like how sweaty they are. Failsafe has the fucking 12 Angry Men thing where you're like, these are the most exciting close-up. Are they really sweaty in Failsafe? Because I like how sweaty they are. Failsafe has the fucking 12 Angry Men thing, where you're like, these are the most exciting close-ups I've ever seen in my life of people discussing shit. And it's got that, but there is something kind of silly

about the sort of like, cut to Offerman, cut to McAleen, where I'm like, yeah, these aren't characters. No, and also... So I don't really... You can't make me care about both of them. I'm complaining, and I feel like I'm being... Yeah, right. Only one cube-headed man. Wait, Peck!

Uh, like I'm complaining and I feel like I'm being a grumpy guts because I was very involved for basically all this movie, but especially the latter half. I'm sitting next to you. You're biting your nails. You're shifting around. You're eating a hot dog. I do.

Submarine and biplane. And then I rolled right from there to Planet Hollywood. He had a bi dog. I had two. Submarine and biplane. And then I rolled right from there to Planet Hollywood. He had a biplane of hot dogs. Planet Hollywood coming soon. To different faith. Those are the two sequences I saw you lean in. And when they got to the fail safe stuff, we looked at each other and we were like, this is kind of fun.

Fail safe. This is kind of fun, the fail safe thing. But it was taking a while. It takes a bit of a time. But no, I basically like all this. The biplane stuff, what can you say? It's taken a while. It takes a bit of a time, but no, I basically like all this, the biplane stuff, what can you say, it's crazy. If you read the Zach Barron story,

it's the classic like Tom met with like wing walkers where he's like, I wanna like hang between the wings and like be in zero G and like, and they were like, that's not possible. And he was like, find me more wing walkers to talk to. Someone who tells me it is possible, right? Like, and you're like, ah, Tom, you're so crazy. One of my favorite parts of-

How low to the ground it is is so- That's what scared me the most. But when we were at the Museum of the Moving Image exhibit, there is a digital biography of Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise that you can swipe through. You can sort of like touch screen, open the fact file on Tom Cruise. And Marie turns to me and she's like 12. You can like sort of like touch screen, open the fact file on Tom Cruise. It is 12 pages long.

And Marie turns to me and she's like, how are they gonna describe Tom Cruise as if this is like, you reading this fact file is your first exposure to the guy? It is like, there's like one page about his like movie career. And then the remainder of it is all about the different certifications he has and crazy shit. The specific planes that he's licensed to fly, his free diving training, the fact that

he's one of only 36 civilians made an honorary naval aviator, and there is absolutely nothing about his personal life. They have like a 10 plus minute straight to straight-to-camera interview with Tom Cruise in some undisclosed screening room that plays in a corner of the Museum of the Moving Image exhibit that they said was basically shot just for this. Yes. And he keeps saying stuff like,

when I'm not making movies, I'm like learning things that I can apply to movies later. Right? You're like, this guy... And I know when we talk about him this way, people are like, why do the Blank Check team love to fucking sanctify Tom Cruise and make him a deity? I think what we find interesting is like the balance between how admirable it is and how sad and broken it belies him being.

That there is nothing else. And like he has some other interview I saw with him recently and obviously like post fucking couch jump every interview he does is so controlled he has like the number of anecdotes that he wants to say and he only wants to talk about the process. I felt him being a little more vulnerable on this obviously within guardrails. There was some interview where they were talking about like you just like live for this stuff? You love it. Like, you're there every day.

And this idea we have of, like, Tom Cruise gets a rush from the things that everyone else would be terrified by. And they're talking about the biplane sequence. And he was like, I remember one day we woke up and we were supposed to film our 10th consecutive day on the biplanes, and I saw that it was raining. And the interviewer's like, oh, and you're Tom Cruise, you must have been so angry.

You must have been like, let's go out in the rain anyway. And he was like, no, I was like, oh, thank God. I need a day off from this. Now then, of course, he immediately filters it into a Tom Cruise way of like, I'm not going to be able to do 10 more days unless I give my body one day to recharge. He wasn't like, I'm going to lounge on the couch

and like fucking watch Young Sheldon. Maybe he does. Maybe. But He wasn't like, I'm going to lounge on the couch and like fucking watch Young Sheldon. Maybe he does. Maybe. But he was admitting like, no, of course I'm a human being and I'm getting to a point where I'm not invincible. But yet, what else is going on in this guy's life? And like, I feel like Rebecca Ferguson,

there's an interview that's circulating around recently that we posted in our group chat, where she's just sort of like, when we had days off, he would just like go to set. Right. And like prep stuff. He likes being in movies. And when like the movies got shut down because of like COVID and the strikes, it didn't feel like it was just this feeling of like, I have to save the industry.

It was, I don't know what I'm doing if productions aren't happening. In a way, which really tracks with Ethan Hunt as a character. Absolutely. Which is what has made these movies increasingly interesting. But it's also out of hand. And I think there is no way to top things anymore. Not that he couldn't make more Mission Impossible where he does some crazy stunt. But I'm not kind of like, what do I need Ethan Hunt to do at this point? Okay. And that's what Marie's also saying about nuclear Armageddon is Like the only other thing that could is like we have to introduce like Kaiju or aliens that right but then you're in

Squits back I agree with you that like the only way you can heighten from this is like I agree with you that the only way you can heighten from this is like pulpy sci-fi concepts, which then feel like they're betraying what Mr. Mollins was. It would be something to do with space and it would be a disaster. Right. It would suck. It's why I think this movie should have a slightly greater sense of finality is you almost feel like the only way for him to come back and do this again is if they actually

put it to bed for a bit and he makes one in like 10 years, and he's older, and it's a different movie. What I actually think they should do is never do one of these again. I think they won't. I think they just have backed themselves into a corner where they can't fucking top themselves. And you feel that panic in this movie. And like, what I want from the end of this movie, like from the literal ending of this movie,

I don't want him to die, I don't give a shit, right? When the parachute catches on fire, it does feel like there is certainly a version of this that they shot where he dies and he fought them on it. Right. There's the notion of like, is he going to become the IMF director, which feels like the cleanest, neatest way to do a thing where you're like, and then the doors open where he could still be mentor if they did spin off movies, but also he can always come back.

I was like, he's gonna give us some ending where there's a sense of a closing of a chapter, but also he can come back whenever he wants and be like, hey, you guys miss me, right? In my heart of hearts, I was hoping that even though I know Ilsa's dead, that it would be like, okay, well, he's off. They're both...

It's a Dark Knight Rises. Yeah, they're both dead, but no, they're just... Even if it would have been too cute, it is the only happy ending you can imagine for this character. What I actually felt I wanted is when he lands in the middle of the field and you see the cowherds, and I'm gonna pitch this badly because I haven't quite cracked the right version of this, but you have this moment where you're like,

oh, everyone thinks he's dead. The rest of the team who are all celebrated think he's dead. Yeah, so maybe he actually gets to walk off Jack Bauer style and be like, I'm presumed dead, I can go do whatever I want. That's what I kind of want. I want an ending where he's just like,

I'm not retired, I'm not dead, but they think I'm dead, I can walk away, and there's this sort of mystery of like, I'm not retired, I'm not dead, but they think I'm dead. I can walk away. And there's this sort of mystery of like, what is this guy gonna do? I kinda hate fucking Kitridge and Phelps meeting him in the field. The handshake is so absurd. This sort of like, hey, I love you man moment.

Where Phelps- It did save the world. Yeah, but Phelps points a gun at him, then turns the gun around, turns it into a handshake. And it's then it becomes a bro shake. It's the predator bro shake. Then it's like a pat on the back. Hey, you're all right by me.

Yeah, it's a little silly. It is another example of like it's three beats in one. You could get away with one of these. The audience starts laughing at how overstated it is. He hands the pod COVID to Kit Rich, who seemingly thinks that that is what the entity is stored in, but it's busted and it's burnt, and he sort of has this disappointment of like, oh fuck, you destroyed it, I can't control it. Well, it is what it is.

They don't know that the entity is stored in something else. 5D optical drive. And then it's like we cut to London and all of them meet there and give each other a nod, and Haley Atwell opens a case and the drives in there and she hands it to him. The thing that he says he doesn't want. Like I like that in that scene where she saves him, he's just like, I'm not God. No one should have this. It should be destroyed. And at the end, the movie feels like it's being like,

no, he is our God and he should control it. It does I guess. And it dresses me out. Yeah, why does he still have it? I'm like you should destroy it Throw it under a car. He's just gonna like an Apple store and just be like We'll just plug it in and just be like what's up? I miss you In a way, you're maybe the best friend I've ever had right? Right. Can I go back in the coffin? Um Some stuff I want to address because we're we just talked about the end of the movie

But there's some I just wanted to mention talk about like the actual final We just talked about the end of the movie, but there's something... I just wanted to mention that I don't like the actual final emotional notes. But we can circle back and fill in. I like how Gabriel gets his head bisected. Yeah, that was really great. I loved that. Because he's annoying. He's so annoying.

And he was doing like mustache twirling shit, Richard. I'm like, no, we don't need that. I also like that they set up on the plane the sort of like, here's the crazy plan, we need to get Gabriel to work with us. And it's a classic mission impossible, that's so risky. And he's like, but it's the only way. And then you get there and immediately everything goes wrong, Gabriel's guys shoot carriage, Kittreds interrupts,

all this shit. And you're like, now the difficult plan they had outlined for us. It's even crazier and harder. We've got another bomb that needs to be diffused. And I like that Dunlough and his wife volunteered to do it. We already talked about this, but Tarzan's like, I guess I'll hang out with you guys.

It's like a chaperone. I like that anytime the wife is like, I'll see you again, you believe her. She's always right. And Dunlough's basically like, Luther, like, this is a suicide mission. In order to like, defuse the bomb, I'm going to have to die with it. But also he's like, I don't know how to dismantle a bomb. Right.

I always like someone being a little like over their skin. The lady who plays the wife, the wife is called Topisa, is called Lucy Tulukadjuk, I believe. Her and Ralph Jackson get a split with card. They do. Which I can't remember. And she was in that film,

do you remember that film? Atana Jarruth, The Fast Runner. Oh yeah, yeah. Which she's the lead of that movie. Which was like a Canadian Inuit movie that like maybe didn't get an Oscar nomination but was at least like kind of in the running and was this cool Inuit movie where you don't,

you never see anything. Anyway, she's cool. He has a line where he's like, wait a second, there's maybe a way out of this. And they're like, what? And he goes, the wires are repeated in triplicate. Or he says- They're triple redundant. The wires are triple.

Which is kind of like how the exposition exists. I was like, this is a metaphor for the movie that he's like, actually they built this wrong. There are actually three wires serving the same function. I can cut one of them, we have 10 seconds to- Right, we're not even talking about, of course, how Benji has been shot in one of the crossfires here. It turns into the pit.

Right, he's having surgery done on him. Me too, that's good Mission Impossible escalation. He hides the bullet from Ethan because he doesn't want him to get upset. He treats him like a little child. But I think it's also like, well, Ethan will fucking probably try to do something he knows about that.

Right, he's not a human being. We have to like, he's just like, won't let people die. He'll just start running somewhere really fast. He just runs in a circle. Greg plays this really well. Pom plays this really well. When she's like really upset and stressed and also like, I kill people.

The tears come to her eyes. I'm like, oh my God, girl, like you did it. But that dialogue exchange of, does anyone here know surgery? And she says, I kill people. And he like, oh my god, girl, like you did it. But that dialogue exchange of does anyone here know surgery? And she says, I kill people if he says good enough. Yeah, love it. Love it. And then all of the like back and forth of like using her flask, both to like chill themselves out and to disinfect all the objects is really good. Yeah. And right.

Gabriel says to him, you're going to give me the control and I'm gonna get out of here on a biplane. It's analog. It's a perfect plan. It's such a perfect plan. I have a backup. And you're like, oh wow, wonder what that backup's gonna do. I wonder who's gonna drive that? Yeah. Little guy. But it's the plane stuff rocks. Right. That's the fucking poster and it's the thing they've been selling in the trailers. And when you get to it it is Thrilling and it is thrilling much like the submarine sequence how long it lasts Yeah, like in in babysitting they ever mentioned Acer Ehrlich and trying to calm him down

He was like having a mini meltdown in the back of a lift and I started going like hey Acer Do you know about Tom Cruise? Tom Cruise is this guy who does crazy things and I I started showing him Mission Impossible stunts and just being like, he's a good guy and he's trying to stop the bad guys. It's all fake and it's really safe, but isn't he silly? And I was showing him stuff like the plane from the beginning of Rogue Nation, which to me is still one of the craziest shots. And yet that lasts for like 60 seconds. And in this you're like, there are 800 setups, it feels like, from so many angles of him relative to this plane,

where you're like, how, did this shoot for four months? I think they, I mean, like, the way it's described in the Baron interview, not that sequence, but the helicopter sequence, just of like them having to radio Tom Cruise being like, a little left, a little right, that's your shot. Okay, stay in that. They have to be telling him over the radio, like, the camera's here, all that. And he has to act while he's flying the plane.

That's the magic. Which is crazy. But they have to do so many months of prep and rehearsals and practice and coaching before they can ever put this in front of camera. And then how hard it must be to get multiple takes. Right? Like if the take doesn't work, it probably is like four hours before they can get

another one up and then you have time for one more take before the sun sets. It is, uh, it's just, it's wild shit. And as we said, he's like emoting during this and he's like maintaining a continuity of like the characters. Emotions of like the arc of what he's trying to solve. And there is such good kind of like, you know, Gabriel's monologuing a little bit, but like largely silent telegraphing of like the things on his neck, he's got to get the thing, the cockpit's here, where's the other pilot. That's one of the shots that almost astounds me the most is when Ethan finally ejects the other pilot

and you just watch him slowly fall out of frame to the ground. And I'm like, I know that guy just pulled the parachute the second he was out of frame and that guy's a stunt diver or whatever, but it still feels unreal. My favorite is always going to be the Burj Khalifa. It's my favorite.

Here's the gripe. Saw it, Night Max. Uh, our friends, the Doughboys have been doing a Mission Impossible series, and they were talking about how Burj Khalifa and IMAX was the greatest shit in the world. And there is a sanctity to it of, they don't even try to replicate it, the aspect ratio thing on home video or streaming releases, because that thing only works if you have this crazy tall screen and suddenly the world of the movie goes like, poof, and it expands in a way you can't imagine. You see shots of the Burj Khalifa in this.

I'm seeing the movie in IMAX. I'm like, why aren't you showing me this IMAX footage? If you're going to do 8,000 flashbacks, at least give me the flashbacks in IMAX, because I'm seeing sequences that I know I have previously seen in this format. I wonder if there's an interesting technical reason. Possibly. Yeah.

Or like this movie was finished five minutes before they had to deliver. Probably. Yeah. But I was like, man, this would have been my chance to see two seconds of the Burj Khalifa again. These movies went very digital with the last one and Macquarie explains why at length in Empire Magazine,

you pay 50 bucks, you can hear him say it or whatever it is, right? You have to pay money now. And it's probably partly because it's so insane how they make them or whatever. But I do miss the look of the earlier movies. Well, yeah, these two basically had to be digital largely because of the pandemic. And just workflow is becoming somewhat more complicated. And longer. Do you folks know what they did with Final Destination Bloodlines in IMAX? No, I saw it at the Alamo.

It is the only time I can think of where the filmmakers have used the aspect ratio change as a deliberate storytelling tool with rules that they do not break. I saw it in IMAX and I don't even... Hunger Games does that, but go on. What does Hunger Games do? In Hunger Games Catching Fire, when she enters the arena, it switches to IMAX. And it is one of the coolest uses of IMAX I've ever seen.

I didn't see any of those in IMAX. What is the thing in Bloodlines? I saw it in IMAX. I don't remember. Every time death is present, the screen slowly... That nasty guy Death slowly grows. Isn't the best part in Bloodlines when the grandma's like, yelling at Death like, I see you! Yeah.

But it's... They don't do the, like, hard cut thing. No, that rocks. That rocks. It's very slowly grows, and it's usually coupled with a camera move and the score going a little off. And so you're suddenly like... Those guys who made the Kim Possible Disney Channel movie or whatever, they popped off.

My favorite contestants on On the Lot, I referred to them as the Jennifer Hudson of On the Lot, where when they got eliminated, it was like, what the fuck is this show? And I'm the only person who was still watching that show at that point. And it is so satisfying to see them make good. You have not seen this movie yet, Ben? No.

Fall Destination Bloodlines is... You're going to love it. I was kind of shocked that you guys were so hyped on it. make good. You have not seen this movie yet, Ben? No. Final Destination Bloodlines is... You're gonna love it. I was kind of shocked that you guys were like so hyped on it. It is so fucking good. And it also pulls off some of the shit that like fucking Final Reckoning's trying to do of tying back to previous movies in a way that is really smart and doesn't feel fan-service-y. Feels like deepening. Like I, on paper, I have no problem with the idea of making the rabbit's foot the, like, origin of the entity.

Because the rabbit's foot thing is still so annoying and is brought up all the time as JJ being way too cute and in your face about the MacGuffin thing. It doesn't actually matter. Right. In a way where I'm like, I get that it doesn't matter, but the second that you're making jokes about the fact that it doesn't matter you're telling me to not take your movie seriously You're like saying like and by the way, this is all fucking bullshit Where I'm like I'm into you retconning the rabbit's foot to have been something so that that feels less galling and glib but

Too much going on in this movie but too much going on in this movie. Like, you can't have that be one of 8,000 elements that's sort of just thrown at you and then never talked about again. Can I ask a question about the ending of this movie that I'm truly confused about? And this is like, I don't think of myself as a particularly stupid movie watcher.

You're a very intelligent person and a very film literate person. I like how we had opposite answers. But thank you, Griffin, and fuck you, David. You know, Marie and I are very close. Yeah. Our deaths are close together, our birthdays are really close.

So we're really similar. We're both the same age as the Lucas talking baby. Hey, do you know that Marie and I- You guys both just looked at me like I was supposed to go like, whoa! Do you know that Marie and I... You guys both just looked at me like I was supposed to go like, Whoa! Do you know that Marie and I are really close to Mikey? Baby Mikey. What a dream.

Yeah. And his desk is in between the two of ours and his birthday. Are you guys having like a mental episode right now? It's called friendship, David. Try it sometime. Okay. But okay, the whole, the plan to defeat the entity. Does cyberspace go offline? Okay, the whole, the plan to defeat the entity.

Does cyberspace go offline? Marie, you are not stupid. This is a thing the movie does. Multiple critics asked me this, like after the movie screened. Where they're like, wait, so does cyberspace go away or not? Because everything seems fine. The final sequence basically is- But no one has iPhones.

No. Okay. The final sequence basically is- But no one has iPhones. No. Okay. The final sequence is centered around- Like if cyberspace, like if like the internet went away, like that, I think that would be fairly bad because like a lot of stuff is sort of like tied to that. Right. Right? Yeah, including freaking podcasts.

We'd be fucked. We'd be fucked. Let's get the entity. We have to plug it back in! There's just one podcast that is just the entity going like, brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-brr-br-brr-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br-br And he has very, very, very aromatic balls, thanks to his manscaped wipes. Or whatever. Or whatever. Then you're always just like, oh, do you know shaving cream, deodorant, and you're like, 50 ball wipes.

Crop duster. Crop protector. I think that early in the film, obviously, they're like, you can't do that. You would destroy cyberspace, which is so bad. And at the end of the movie, it's either just like, no, that didn't happen because of what they did. They did it right.

Because it's basically this underground archive in Africa that controls all of the information of the internet, which is why it's protected. No, but it's only the things that someone chooses to save. It's like a library of Congress. It's like a backup. Yeah. Like a big backup. It's like a big zip drive.

Right. Remember those? Right. But that if the entity gets in there, he'll have access to everything. I mean, this is the whole final setup of it that I do find effective where it's like they need a Haley Outwell because the difference between a good pickpocket and a great pickpocket is a blink of an eye. And basically if she pulls it, she pulls it a millisecond too early. It won't work. They don't capture the enemy.

I was worried that she wasn't gonna do it. Me too. I thought she was gonna fuck it up. I still find it satisfying. It's satisfying. The shot of her doing the yank. Yeah, it's cool. Got me both times. It's great.

But again, I'm like, I kind of would have liked it if he killed cyberspace. Because then that would have felt like, okay, well this... We're done. I wanted to see him fight the entity. Welcome to society. Like fist fight. Yeah, I think we needed a lawn mower man style. Like he's like, wow.

Like he comes out and materializes. Superman 2 has a version of that where the evil computer turns it into a lady. Perfectly. It's 3. It's 3. Superman 3. Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. But you want that. Yeah. Yeah, I do.

Yeah. I mean, I don't... As I was watching the final scene, I'm like, okay, so. But you want that. Yeah, I do. Yeah, I mean, I don't... As I was watching the final scene, I'm like, okay, so we did like a hard reset on tech. No one in Trafalgar Square is looking at their iPhones. They're just people living in the moment. You know what? And that's all we want. And that's all you can want. I was like, you know what? That's so nice.

I vastly prefer the greatest ending of Recent Memory, which is Ready Player One, where they're like, you can have your phones, but can you take like one to two days off a week? And everyone's like, okay. The greatest moment in Recent... The ending in Recent Memory is fucking bloodlines. The final moment of bloodlines is unbelievable. It is. I mean, I loved it and I was very satisfied

by the final moment of bloodlines. That is what every Final Destination movie does. I rewatched it was good in the run-up to that And it's that always hits that every final destination moment movie ends with someone being like we're in the clear And then the worst thing happens bloodlines does acknowledge that Mary Elizabeth Winstead or is it to know the girl from two? Yeah, she survives, but there's a similar ironic ending. There is, but she's the only one, Tony Todd does shout her out, who actually pulled it off. I like the fucking, the way Bloodlines handles the cannon.

Me too. Yeah. Yeah. Really good movie, I'm really impressed, had a great time. The only movie I've ever been to where a child dies and the entire audience like, celebrates. The only thing I'll say and everyone's saying is like,

I don't like the CGI gore. Not in a way where I'm like, I won't look at this, but I'm just like, I understand why this is what we do now. I understand it's way easier. It also is basically a trademark of that franchise. It is. They've been doing CGI kills the whole time. Basically since one, right?

Certainly since two. Yeah, two, absolutely. And like, but it never quite, it's why Final Destination will always be a sort of B tier for me. Because, let's say it, those movies are not scary. They're fun. They're mostly, the folks think better as comedies.

I don't think they've ever been scary. No, like, you know, all right, I'll take it back. Cause things like the plane crash sometimes will be visceral enough for a minute or two. Where do you find the plane crash episode? Or the logs. Well, yes. For a minute or two, you're like, this is intense, this is scary. I think it's intense more than it's scary.

I think the movie will sometimes get thriller-type jolts. Yes. But there's never like fucking slasher movie like, oh fuck. Not really. In this one, I had to look away anytime Like the piercings came into play They get the thriller tension, you know There was that tweet of like Don Draper in the movie theater right where it was like watching Final Destination and like a screw starts to come loose

Like specifically body piercings are like a big ick for me. Like, I'm not trying to yell. You're not judging. I'm not judging. It's just if, like, that is a fear of mine to get yanked by a piercing. When that fucking MRI goes into research mode. They should not put it in research mode, by the way. By the way, and let this be a lesson to all of our listeners never put it in research mode

No, no, no, no, and you're gonna I do love that Final Destination posits that like every MRI machine could like implode the hospital if left right turned on That's why you never get a prince Edward piercing It's an Albert. Fuck. We're gonna talk about this when we cover King Ralph Excuse me, maybe Prince Edward piercing is a different thing. No, but I'm assuming we're gonna just do like a lot of royal family digressions. I'm reading a really great Diana book right now about Diana world. David, am I allowed to say, especially if this helps move tickets,

we are in advanced negotiations to un-retire the bit for One Night Only, live and on stage. One night only, one night only, we will retire the bit for One Night Only, live and on stage. One night only, one night only, we will retire the bit. We are also in advance negotiations to license the entire Dreamgirls songbook, which we plan to perform from beginning to end. We're gonna do that one about how we're a tree. Yeah.

Remember there's that one tree that was. We are a family, like a giant tree. Yeah, where you're like, isn't this supposed to be a motel musical? Tom Cruise is in this film. This is his only film this year that I know of. Wait, let me just check on him to make sure you're right about that.

Next year, he's in a, what's been described as a comedy, being directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Described as a comedy? Yes. Really? Huh. But it's also... Now, it's being described as a comedy

by that crazy Mexican, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Yeah. What was it the Sean Penn called him on the Oscar stage? Well, he said like, someone checked this man's green card and call ICE. Let me find the exact interview because he spoke very highly of Tom Cruise in an interview. I guess he was at Cannes because they're doing

a 20th anniversary for a Morris Perros screening or something. And he said, okay, well, let me, let's move past all the Tom Cruise, all the Morris Perros talk. This is the last Beetlejuice Ring Pop. The final recognize? I'm so glad.

We need to get some proper snacks now. I know. Costco ring, baby. Is it okay if I have? Yeah, of course. You just want to make sure. He says, this is what he says. Costco, baby. It's okay if I have it? Of course you do. Just wanted to make sure. He says, this is what he says. Hey, Ben, how are you gonna fit that ring pop on your hand

when you got a fucking wedding ring on there already? One night only, one night only. Producer Ben is married. He is a family, like a giant tree. Here's what Mr. Inyorichu says. This is a wild comedy of catastrophic proportions. It's insane. Tom makes me laugh every day. The range I discovered working with him is impressive. For me as a director, I was so fucking,

Jesus, Alondra, impressed and happy. So that's fun. The second you said a giant comedy, I turned into a fucking Looney Tunes puff of dust so I could refund my tickets immediately I think Tom is really a little comedy. It's a wild comedy of human nature. I like him a comedy You know who I don't trust making comedy Baby one of the great comedies of all time. Okay, look what I think I'm

Had a joke or two in it, I guess that movie is absolutely considered Minority here, but I really like the... I find everything he does in Tropic Thunder to be really cringy. I agree. I don't like... I don't love that performance... perform, whatever. Whatever the fuck he's doing. I don't like Tropic Thunder that much. I like Tropic Thunder.

I rewatched it recently and I liked it a little more than I used to, but I do feel like it's all overstated. It's just so fucking... And I don't care about subtlety, but it is like so... everything's so over-cranked in it. It's just like there is a good movie in it, and it kind of annoys me. Like, some of the crew's stuff, like, out of context,

is kind of funny. I think that... And him dancing at the end is funny. McConaughey is like on fire in that thing. Well, that's because McConaughey was just on fire in life. But that's the quiet start of the McConaissance that no one gave him credit for. And I'm like, McConaughey to me is doing a more incisive, like damning portrayal of Hollywood bullshitters

than Cruz is, but Cruz just has the fucking makeup in the hands. I know, but it just, it feels... And I'm realizing I never saw Bardo. I have not seen any recently. Has anyone? Oh, I assume someone did since, uh... Marie Bardo? Celine?

You're looking at me right now. False Chronicle of Truths right over here. Yeah. Isn't that what it was called? I love... Okay. Back to Mission Impossible. Love when Tom refers to the entity as the Lord of Lies.

That part's good when he's like, we can get one of her. I want that kind of self-serious shit. But it's a tightrope, and these movies have walked it fairly well, and I do feel like this one is just not quite as good walking the tightrope, but I still liked it and had a good time. Everyone got so mad at me for putting it seventh on my Mission Impossible list. The floor for me is like four stars. Also, by the way...

On Mission Impossible movies. Like, I don't, like, they can be stupid and I will just love them. I think you and I ranked it the same way and people on our subreddit... I think people are mad that we put it below three. But they were also just getting mad about it before they had seen it.

Yes, that's true. And I was seeing this, I'm also on the Mission Impossible subreddit and as early reviews were coming in, everyone was like, well, we don't have to trust them. Maybe they're insane. The Lord of Lies! Right. There was this feeling of like... I saw a lot of panics. Before you guys saw it at Ben's wedding celebration,

Erlich was there and he had seen it. We were panicked. And he was like, it's bad. And we're like, fuck you. You don't have good opinions. Well, I just say that to him all the time. Just anytime he speaks, really. But it's still kind of crazy to me that you threw a wallet at his head.

He fucking deserved it. I should do that all the time. You do it all the time? No, I should. I should do it more. Every day he's been at Cannes, he's been at Cannes for a while. I mean, he's back now. Yeah, he's back.

12 or 13 days. His wife, who is single parenting, has the griffin, just would just text me like, another day, you know what I mean? Like every morning we're just like, he should hang his head in shame. Yeah. Yeah, well, he saw 32 movies.

How terrible he reviewed movies. Exactly, it's disgusting. On the beach, no less. These are things you hate viewing. Going, it's disgusting. On the beach, no less. These are things you hate doing. Going to screenings, going to the beach, trying to review, honestly. I hate when people complain about Cannes.

What do you mean complain about going to Cannes? Yeah, I'm like, fuck you. Yeah, it just seems kind of nice. It seems great. It's like if you're gonna go to a busy film festival, seems like a pretty fun one. That seems like the best one to go to. You get to spot Jeff Wells everywhere.

Jeff Wells, it seems also, by the way, he did the opposite of Ehrlich. He saw like five movies in 20 days or whatever. Ehrlich landed and sent me... He'd be like logging on Hollywood elsewhere like, feel a little tired today. It felt like Ehrlich sent me a picture of Jeff Wells within 45 minutes of him landing at the airport. Like he was just like immediately

here he is. Who is funding Jeff Wells' Patreon that gets him to Cannes. Like who's... Great question. I don't know what to tell you. What shadowy entity? The entity. It's the entity.

The entity. You're not subscribed to HG Plus? I'm not. Was I supposed to be? Yeah. It's a government decree. You have to support small businesses. Well, not only... No, I find this movie very frustrating.

I still... I think you're more frustrated than I, but I'm not disagreeing with you. Yeah. It is just... I get it. So sloppy, and I would forgive a lot of its messiness if it were also trimmer. Like, it's not like, oh, there are scenes that are badly executed,

or threads that are poorly tied together. It's also just like, guys, do less. Do less fucking take most of this out. I think Macquarie is a better filmmaker than Abrams. Speaking to this rank, me ranking this below three, but three for its flaws and occasional kind of, you know, lens flurry. I can't even see what's going on stuff, as Philip Seymour Hoffman in it. It's got very fun kind of team stuff in it, generally.

It's a fairly complete idea. Right, exactly. It's got a story it's telling in two hours, pretty compelling cruises, very locked in in it. Hoffman alone is like giving it a full star. It's a totally entertaining movie. Like, I have it below... To me, it's sort of like Fallout Ghost Protocol. That's where it's just like, the madness just came together so perfectly.

Rogue Nation's right up there. Yeah, it's those three from the top tier. And then the De Palma movie is so special and silly and fun, I think people slightly overrate it. I think so too. Because De Palma is such a madman, and it's so fun to watch any De Palma movie. But that's right. I put that and Dead Reckoning... Correct.

On a similar tier. We're in the same spot. And then... and three is at the bottom of that tier and like... This and two are the only ones that actively frustrate me while I'm watching them. I like this way more than two. I don't like two. There's been a lot of two-revisionism out there, including from Marie Bardo with her false chronicle of truth. I mean, two is another, like the good stuff in it is great, but there's less good stuff in it than in this.

The villain in it is disastrous. He's so bad. Sorry, Ducre. I don't know what you're up to right now. But at least he was, he made a great Wolverine. We all saw him play that character to Wild Success for 25 years and everything worked out for him. What is he doing? He's married to Claire Forlani. I did know that.

You can get her. Seriously. I got no complaints about that. They both are like Scottish actors who like had a moment at the end of the 90s, beginning of the 2000s and then were never seen from again. Do you think they just sit at home and talk about that, go like, man, it really almost happened, huh? Crazy how we're Scottish.

Yeah, she was the spokesperson for some fucking doers. Doers? Yeah. I think she still is. I think that's pretty much like funding their entire lifestyle. Yeah, I like those commercials. Get those doers jacks. He played Arthur Miller in My Week with Merriplein,

which was a real kind of jump scare casting of like, oh, fuck, you're still around? And then he went like a... Yeah, he pulled the mask off. It was really fun to see some of the masks You're still around? And then he went like a... Yeah, he pulled the mask off. It was really fun to see some of the masks at the Mo-Me exhibit. They got the Wolf Blitzer mask. They got the Blitz. They got the fucking...

This was another thing we saw that we commented on. They have a couple of the Life Casts, right? And like the Hoffman mask. And we were talking about, especially in an era where you still literally had to do plaster head casts, now they can do the head scans. So you don't have, like, you're not suffocated and your skin isn't being pulled down.

And it gets all jowly and depressed. It looks like a death mask. Right, so they all look like death masks because people, like... The wolf blitz went especially haunting. Right, they're just, like, so blank and, like, gravity's fighting against them and whatever. And then you look at the Tom Cruise head cast

and you're like, fuck, that has presence. Yeah, like, he's staring straight ahead. The man's famous. The man just, he's got whatever weird, yeah. He sacrificed everything at the altar of being able to turn it on and get it done. We're wrapping up here in my opinion, but my point that I was trying to make a million years ago

when I brought up Pinyaritú is like, Cruise making that movie, whether or not it's good, whether or not it's a laugh-out-loud comedy. I'm hearing it's actually secretly wedding crashers too. It's like, it really feels like him very consciously announcing to the world, like, okay. And him signing the deal with DeLuca. Correct. Like the stickman of... I'm done with the last 10 plus years of stunts and action and all that. I'm making a movie where the second lead is Sandra Huler.

Like, you know, I'm making something that's o-tourist and interesting. I mean, you know, it's a fascinating thing of, like, Top Gun was supposed to come out in 2020. I think they did some serious re-editing with the delays and figured out a way to improve the movie, but it wasn't like they did re-shoots or anything. They made some structural changes that I, Macquarie talks about being like, with the little extra time we cracked a couple things, right?

But that movie was basically in the can in 2019. Obviously it doesn't come out until 2022 and saves the theaters, but he has spent the last five years of his life just working on these two movies, which is insane. And they have taken him from his late 50s into his early 60s. And I agree with you that it did feel like him throwing down a gauntlet of being like, I'm making a deal with DeLuca. I'm going over to Warner Brothers.

We're retitling Dead Reckoning Part II into the final reckoning. Maybe this is a transition point in my career. I'm in my mid 60s. I'm close to my 60s. I'm in my mid 60s. And there are all these other movies that he and Macquarie keep saying that they want to make that are original films that keep getting pushed back because he'll rope Macquarie into. So go make them. Yet another.

Yep. I do not want another one of these. I want him to be done with this. I want it to be done. Yes. I want it to be done. Fast XI, let Leterrier cook. It is a...

Let Momoa cook. No, but it is an analog for me where I'm like, F9, I was like, oh my god, they got this thing back on track, so I'm happy with this movie, you know. Yeah. And then, you know, Lin is back. I think he drilled back into what I missed. And then X is such a deflating experience for me where I'm like, guys, I'd actually be happier if you never finished this. It would be so weird if that was the end of the whole franchise. Right. It's just like a dam exploding on him.

It truly feels like it's been three years and they are no closer to making the next movie. It certainly seems like it's still at the Vin Diesel Instagram post stage of development. An absolute log jam. Ben. What's up, man? You're getting into fashion. grandpa's stage of development. An absolute logjam. Ben. What's up man?

You're getting into fashion all the time. Yep, yep, yep. I've been for years. For years you've been getting in. Yes. Media res. I'm not big on trends, as you know. I'm big on clothes that feel good and last.

Right, you're about comfort. I'm about comfort and I'm about ease and that's why I keep going back to Quince. Their lightweight layers and high quality staples have become my everyday essentials. They make me feel like a grownup man. Dressed in like a grownup. I'm dressing like a grownup man.

You know what I'm saying? Yep. Ding dong. Okay, hold on. Creek. Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle. You seem to be shaking something in your hand. Hey, what's going on here?

What is this place? I'm sorry, who are you? Baby Mikey. Baby Mikey. Look who's talking, speak. Oh, sure, hey, what's up? Baby Mikey. You're, it's a little weird

because your mouth isn't moving. That's not what I do. Okay. That's not really the style. Okay. Yeah, I just like say the things the babies are thinking, you know? Sure, sure, sure, sure.

But I don't really say them out loud. I convey them, I guess via aura. I'm hearing you, so yeah, come on in. Look who's listening. Hey. Hey. Ben. Yeah. What are you here for? Well, when I grow up, I want to dress like a man.

Oh, right, well, there's this great service, Quince. We're actually in the middle of doing an ad read for them. What a quince, Quince. They have all the things that you would want to wear this summer. And I guess something for you, little baby, to aspire to. To aspire to in summer's future. Now, you say all the things. Let me do a little test here to see if they have exactly what I want, okay?

You tell me they sell Italian swim trunks in various colors. Yes men's recycled polyester stretch Tech blazers. Yes Okay, but I'm gonna stump you on this one. There is zero chance that quince sells 100% European linen relaxed long-sleeve shirts. You are gonna be in for a great surprise, they do. They don't sell them in chambray stripe and 2XL, do they? Yes. Well, that's a thing to aspire to. Hey, what do you mind passing the milk?

Sure, here you go. Wah, wah, bah, bah, bah, baby sounds. The best part about Quince is everything that they make is half the cost of similar brands. Oh, that's great. And let me, let me guess. They work directly with top auditors and cut out the middleman. So Quince gives you luxury prices without the markups.

How did you guess that? I got a sort of six cents for these things. Yeah. You seem like you got maybe a sense for business. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I am the child of an accountant. Listen, Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible

manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. Even I know that and I'm a baby. Hey, Ben. What's up, Mikey? Ga-ga-goo-goo. I happen to notice you're looking pretty fly today. Thank you, man. Yeah, I got to say, I've been wearing Quince a lot lately.

I really love their stuff. It was really nice to just like get a bunch of new fresh stuff for the warmer season. Well, tell me about those new fits you're throwing, Ben. Right now I'm rocking the men's ultimate commuter seven inch short. So yeah, I'm showing a lot of gams as you can see, but I just I feel comfortable and I just think that they're really flattering and You know, I like to show leg. What can I say? Hey, man, I'd show him if I had him My legs are like three inches total. You'll get there someday. My baby you'll get there someday a baby

I might have the streetwise sub-law fair of an adult man, but let's remember I am a baby and I gotta tell you too Like with this polo that I'm wearing from them. Yeah. It just, it feels like luxury quality, but it's just not breaking the bank. These are clothes you're not gonna wanna feed to Mr. Toilet Man, let's put it that way. That is exactly, exactly the way I would describe

how I feel about quits. Can't think of a better way to put it. Hey Mikey, this is Griffin again. Do you mind if I just close out the ad with a quick call to action? Basically we're telling our listeners to stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from quints. Go to quints.com slash check for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's a you. That's quince.com slash check

Qinc dot com slash check to get free shipping 365 day returns quince.com slash check. Hey one more thing over here. What's up, Mikey? I got something I need you to order for me. Yeah a fresh diaper. Oh I'm sorry. I'm still a baby. I mean, the fact that The Rock is in the post-credits of Fast 10. Yeah. And now is just kind of like, I'm making A24 movies. Like, it's like, he's not even around for this.

Rock being in the post-credits of Fast X, everyone was like, oh, so he's back for Fast X 2 or whatever? And then he, within a week, posts on Instagram, by the way, what this is setting up is a Solo Hobbs movie. I'm not coming back to mainline Fast and Furious. The next Fast and Furious film is gonna be Solo Hobbs. Something that also seems nowhere closer to happening. No director, no writer attached. Nothing's happening on that franchise. Box office game.

Let things die. How, is the movie, well. We can do it. We can, we can, we can guess. What's gonna be number one? The number one stitch. When we have the Thursday numbers. I think Lilo Stitch is gonna be number one.

It's sure, there's no think about it. That thing's making a ton of money. It looks like it's gonna make at least $150 million. Yes, and I'll tell you what else it looks like. Poopoo. David is pretending to smoke a pink pen. Poop. Are you smoking the poop? Sure.

Number two at the box office. It looks like dog shit. I just want to remind people, one of the first moments of being like, fuck, is Tom Cruise losing a little bit of his heat? It's not the same circumstance. Is Lee Lowenstitch beating Menard Airport? Menard Airport opening weekend and domestic fire. You can't keep Stitch down. That's not the same circumstance. Is Lee Lo and Stitch beating Menard in report? Menard in report opening weekend in domestic finals.

You can't keep Stitch down! That's what we're learning here. I'm just like 23 years later, Cruz went up against Stitch again. This time it feels like he has the confidence of being like I know I'm not going to beat him, I just need to do well. Maybe Final Reckoning should have ended with him saying Ohana means family. Probably. As he meets Benji again. Yeah!

Or like Ilsa comes out of her grave and is like, oh, Hanna means family! Yeah, and then you bring Ving Rhames back as Cobra Bubbles. God, this... Great performance. I'm Luther's brother, Cobra Bubbles. This is all making sense. This is good screenwriting.

Yeah. And the hot crustacean band is there. Yes. Number two at the box office is gonna be Mission Impossible, the final reckoning, it's tracking for like around 80... Oh, 100? I think for the fourth day. Well, we'll see.

Because it got a Memorial Day right. It's going to make some more between 80 and 100, hopefully. Although, Dead Reckoning greatly underperformed the expectations even of a day or two before release. It did. It did. So we'll see, I guess. Number three in America will be Final Destination Blow Lines.

Without a doubt, a huge hit. Kickin' ass and takin' names. Pretty much guaranteed to be the biggest in the franchise, right? It almost outgrossed domestically every entry in the opening weekend alone. All the Final Destination movies have basically topped out under 60.

Yeah, it was just V that made 66. So yes, this movie's already outgrossed all of them by making it's already made 70 and it's gonna make more. It's a great movie, lots of fun, I don't know. Hard to agree, really, really, really good. They're like one of the most satisfying popcorn movies I've seen in a long time. Yeah, had a great time. Had a great time.

I was at Alamo, I like chicken wings were working for a... It got so many applause breaks and I felt last night at Mission Impossible IMAX, people trying to start it. Yeah. And it wouldn't really take. And Final Destination, Bloodlines, had like ten spontaneous, everyone just being like,

holy shit, that was so cool. It's also, right, that's a movie just made out of the applause breaks, right? Like everything's... We got applause for the beginning of Tony Todd's scene and the end. And the title card. And the title card.

Well, he should get an Oscar nomination. Number four, The Box Office Will Be Sinners, which I'm told has bankrupted Hollywood. One of the most ruinous financial follies ever released. Of all time. I mean, what were they thinking making that movie? We've got ourselves into a state right now where as much as, once again, four months ago,

everyone was like, is Hollywood finally dead? A story that's gotten repeated the last four years in a row, right? Anytime there's a bad season of Box Office because no movies are getting released, there is now like an absolute war for IMAX screens where you're like Sinners was too popular on IMAX screens that now they need to bring it back. Like when Thunderbolts went on IMAX screens that now they need to bring it back. When Thunderbolts went on IMAX, people were like, -"Boo! Get it off!" -"What?" Final Destination only had one week

because it has to hand over to Mission Impossible, which is then shortening its run to bring Sinners back to IMAX. If you make movies that people want to see, they will go see them. Well, no, I don't agree with you at all, and I think it's disgusting that Sinners was made, and they should have made Black Panther five instead. David, I never noticed that property

of Ted Sarandos tattoo on your neck saying people don't actually. People can't walk to theaters. They can't get to them. They don't exist anymore. It is elitist to think that people like sitting in rooms together. Sinners so good.

That aren't their living room. I'm so thrilled for its success. I do think it's just like, it was a shameful moment when that movie opened well and everyone was like, well, it doesn't matter. Yeah. All those people should be like fucking eating crow on Twitch. They should turn their cameras on and for 12 hours live stream eating crow pie. Humble pies for all.

Number five of the box office is a little success story called a Minecraft movie Where the only question now is will it hit one billion dollars despite being stupid garbage? It is another funny thing that like three months ago It was like Mike DeLuca and Pamela Abdi are going to be fired within two days and now they're on such a fucking hot streak I mean fucking Minecraft centers and Final Destination in a row. Some other hits at the box office right now. Accountant 2. Haven't seen it yet.

A film that Warner Brothers gave up and let Amazon make? A really good movie I've heard about called Hurry Up Tomorrow with The Weeknd. I'm hearing that's real fun. Oh Lord. I want to see it. I watched The Idol and I was like, we're acting from this fella please.

I'll tell you what I want to see. I just wish The Weeknd would make something about how he's really horny with a young starlet. I wish, I don't care if it's a TV show, a movie or both, I just think there's this part of this personality that hasn't been explored and he's such a good actor. Number seven. My joke is that he's doing the new version of the Pete Davidson,

I can't stop making movies about myself and my mom. Does it work as a TV show instead? A movie that's performing really well in an exciting way is Friendship. People are going to see that movie. I want to apologize to people in the most recent, well, by the time this episode comes out, it'll be like a couple weeks away. The checkbook. In the checkbook.

Wonderful substack that you run. I'm going to talk about two films that are, you know, accessible for everyone to go see this weekend. And I didn't realize that friendship wasn't in wide release. But it is now. It's now it is. It is getting wider. But I, you know, I'm sorry for being a coastal elite. I truly didn't know that friendship wasn't wide yet because it was in like week

two when I saw it. It was as it was going semi-wide. Uh, I, it is, it feels like we're in that flux state where I'm like trying not to get too excited, but it feels like that movie is working and my fear is that it's going to like hit 2,000 screens, no one shows up and they're like, oh, we've hit the ceiling of this, which keeps happening anytime they're trying to like platform a comedy in the last five years and have something catch on as a word of mouth hit. It feels like it's going to work for this one. I'm praying it does. If this movie makes like 20 million dollars,

it will be such a fucking victory. Yeah. Um, that's all. I mean, there's movies like the amateur and until dawn still sort of working. Yeah amateur working yeah the amateur is pretty boring huh yeah I like when he does the amateur thing oh yeah yeah I'm just an amateur yeah until dawn just a weird doesn't exist movie like an application of a very popular video game with a big director it got to it very popular is strong I would say it had it had its moment like I don't know like eight nine years ago exactly kind of old news. The movie like got delayed for so long. Yeah.

But didn't like Larry Fessenden write that video game and that's kind of where he gets his mic from. Yep, absolutely. And I'm like, maybe you should have let them make the movie. No disrespect to David Sandberg, who I like quite a bit and I think has been stuck in a rut. I like him, but he's in this rut, yeah. Yeah, but maybe like let Larry and Graham make that

Here's here's a little bit of house business. I want to just quickly talk about the episode Let's do the house business I want to talk a little bit of our Patreon just because as people know we tend to record this episode very far in advance and A thing like this that's coming out in a quicker turnaround with a new release and probably will have more What do you want to say about our Patreon? Good opportunity to talk about these things. So over on our Patreon right now, we are doing a series on The Superman films going from Reeve straight through to Cor and Sweat. We will be doing a new release episode on James Gunn Superman. It will be on Patreon as the end of that series. Not a commentary. Not a commentary.

It will be, we will go see of that series. Not a commentary. Not a commentary. No! It will be, we will go see it. We will offer our commentary. We will. On current events. But it will be the same format as this. Yeah, it's a regular episode. Right.

Superman the movie to Man of Steel we're doing as commentary watch-alongs. After that, it is what won our March Madness series, which is 90s indie comic heroes. We have, for a number of reasons, decided to add. We've beefed it out. Two more titles. By popular demand. By popular demand and it helps our scheduling. The mask, the crow.

David's going to Crown Lodge of Lorne here. Tank girl, relax men. Judge Dredd, relax David. Barb Wire, relax Griffin? Added. A film I've never seen. The next one is the relax Griffin. Yeah. Yeah. No, no spawn relax everybody Yeah, mystery men relax

And then just because we have to in my opinion, it's not really Pete Travis's dread a great movie And then we're gonna do something else for the end of here Yeah, that's what we're doing the last two slots to end up the holiday season. Just want people to know that we've added those. But not the new Crow. No. It's just too shitty. We're not gonna do that to people. And also not the many straight to video Crow sequels

and all that. I think there's only one Crow movie worth fucking with at all. And it's the one we're gonna talk about. But we're very excited for that series. Fun, feels like a good moment to talk about Pamela Anderson too. Oh yeah. Maybe I'll make myself available for that episode.

Oh, Marie, you have to watch Barbarian. I'm looking forward to it. Like, wait, you want to see Casablanca with fucking Pam Anderson? Yes, I do. Like, cyberpunk? Yes, sounds great. Sounds great. With Udo Kier as like Julie Wilson.

It's one of those movies that like not even vinegar syndrome has touched but like Australian distributors have made like eight disc 4k It's not a good and I'm like am I gonna fucking but am I gonna pay tariffs for a 4k's hardback? Slipcover barbed wire possibly, but here's the other thing I want to say We we kind of very quietly launched what we're calling the no ad bits tier. It is an ad-free tier due to also popular demand of people for a very long time asking for that. It was a thing that we did kind of suddenly after going back and forth on it for a lot of years. We never really got to message about it. I just want to very clearly say what it is because there has been some confusion.

Our basic $5 tier is still what it always is, the three episodes per month for Blank Check special features. For the $10 tier, you get the entire history of Blank Check. All of them. The entire back catalog and all new episodes, all without ads.

If you get the $10 tier, every single episode is gonna be in that one feed ad free. If you want to listen to old episodes and want to listen to them for free, you still can wherever you get your podcast. But they will have ads that tell you about very normal things. A lot of podcasts these days, especially ones that have been running as long as we have, put older episodes behind a paywall. We're not doing that.

We're totally independent. We're constantly growing and hiring new people and trying to pay them well. But all of this to say, you know, we rely on the ad money. We get that they can be annoying to listen to. And we just went back and forth on the numbers and this is sort of where it landed

for it to be sustainable for us. So if that is the thing you care about for $10, you're getting all the special features content, every new episode and every past episode in one feed minus ads. That's what the deal is. I need you to trust me. One last time.

Next week we are talking about, look who's talking, The Final Reckoning? No. No, it's- Next week we're talking about a little film called Plueless. Right. Our guest on that episode is Heidi Gardner of Saturday Night Live. Of Saturday Night Live.

It's a very fun episode. We do briefly talk about Kansas City. To everyone's total surprise. Yeah. She has a really good Plueless origin story. She does. It's an awesome episode. She's got a great story. You know how we love asking guests, like, what's your history with this movie? Heidi came locked in loaded with one of the best ones.

Oh, I can't wait. It's a very Blanchek-y story. I think anyone who listens to this podcast will love the... will relate to having that specific a memory of the circumstances relating to seeing it for the first time. So, yes. Look Who's Talking, The Final Reckoning will be happening on the aforementioned Patreon, which of course is Look Who's Talking now. But Look Who's Talking 2 will have just come out last week from Exmangelis, so that's what's going on here.

I just watched that movie. And you are so happy, right? It's... It's dog shit. Would you be surprised to hear, I mean, it feels like an easy pun to call it dog shit, and yet it feels like the only accurate way to describe that film. Would you be surprised to hear that this is one of those instances where Ben showed up to a recording and was like, wait, you guys don't like this?

I thought the dog stuff was fun! He liked everything about it! Well, that's... His name is fucking rocks, man! Well, I haven't watched the dog one yet. I'm talking about the one with two, two, two is fast. Two is like bad, but it's also like weird. You're like Lars on Trier's Antichrist. Yeah, it sure. So dark.

Yeah. Yeah. A little dark. Yeah. I kind of love it. All right. Look, we've beaten the film's running time. Let's be done. OK. Good night. Thank you all for listening. Good night. Good luck. Goodbye to Ethan Hunt, possibly forever. Keep a hold on that five D drive, please. Yeah. Yeah Thank you all for listening. Good night. Good luck. Goodbye to Ethan Hunt possibly forever

Let's keep a hold on that 5d drive, please. Yeah. Yeah and like look I will make a real movie Chris Macquarie Not these are real movies None, you know make something let's let's put this out there. Okay. I hope we will be covering Tom Cruise much more in the future Yes upcoming projects. He makes with auteur directors. Possibly people we previously covered, possibly people we'll cover in the future. But I'm just like, I want him to get back to making the kind of thing that we talk about outside of this one franchise. Yes.

Thank you all for listening. And as always, you have to get the cruciform key to the Sylvester pole to unlock the podkova and then use the poison pill in the podkova to force the entity into the five-dimensional drive. The key maker. That's, that's, the key. The key's the king of keys. So then that's the end of the episode, I guess.

But there's not one particular key. It doesn't matter. But there's so many keys. So many. Quantity over quality. And that's that. But there's not one particular key. It doesn't matter. But there's so many keys. So many keys. Quantity over quality. And that's that.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley. Our creative producer is Marie Bardy-Selinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Burch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Olly Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick. Special thanks to David

Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at blankcheckpod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.