TAKE ONE Presents... - The Impossipod 4: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL (2011)

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Simon and Jim discuss Brad Bird's live-action feature directorial debut, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL, a zenith of the Mission: Impossible franchise. They get into how this film finally strikes the right tone for the franchise and how that tone will be carried forward from this point, the clear intent to replace Tom Cruise in the franchise that doesn't get carried forward, how this franchise addresses Tom Cruise's aging body in an interesting way for an action franchise, and how this film is part of Hollywood desperately trying to make Jeremy Renner happen.Content warnings: nuclear war and nuclear extremism; terrorist attacks on buildings including 9/11; Russian military invasions including the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia; climbing at dangerous heights and vertigo; sexual coercion and exploitation.Our theme song is Star - X - Impossible Mission (Mission Impossible Theme PsyTrance Remix) by EDM Non-Stop (https://soundcloud.com/edm-non-stop/star-x-impossible-mission) licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/PPYF3E2I

Your mission should you choose to accept it is to obtain photographic proof, theft, shadow glitzin through his buyer, and apprehend with both. As always, should you or any member of your ion force be caught or kill Secretary of Missabal? Hello and welcome to Take On Presents the Impossopod. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to listen to us watch all the Mission Impossible franchise films in order, contextualizing them and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Jim Ross. Hello, Jim. Hello, hello. How are you?

I'm good. At the point we're recording this, I'm coming off the back of several weeks of low-level family. this has been constant so I'm in a good mood because I'm actually feeling healthy for about the first time in about two months so yeah we're back good not bad we're ready to go and we're covering Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol

the 2011 film and I'll lay my cards on the table the best Mission Impossible film oh why we're laying some controversial cards on the table right from the off here this one slaps this one's great from the jump and remains great we'll get into why but

I like this film a great deal. I also like this film and when we get to the end of the series we'll have our inevitable kind of debate about which one is the best and at the time of recording I haven't quite figured that out in my head what I will see is

that this is a fucking unbelievable improvement from the last film yeah huge upgrade from Mission Impossible 3 and Mission Impossible 2 like leaps and bounds above them I mean we'll get into why and kind of like why we think that but yeah it just doesn't compare

it's like night and day frankly so Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol the fourth Mission Impossible film following Mission Impossible 3 obviously which was directed by J.J. Abrams this one is directed by Brad Bird this is his live action directorial debut but he had directed animated films

in the past I think the Incredibles and the Iron Giant, right, off the top of my head? Yeah, probably more than that. Yes, those are the ones are most familiar with. Yes, those are the biggies. So, again, they've given this franchise over to a director having a debut, even if not his film debut, his live action directorial debut.

They basically knew that they wanted to make another mission possible soon after Mission Impossible free, despite it earning less than its predecessors at the box office, because its critical reception was better than that of Mission Impossible 2 which isn't difficult but JJ Abrams had a other commitment so he said he wouldn't return but he would produce the film alongside Tom Cruise they were originally going to drop the Mission Impossible name so it was just going to be ghost protocol or something

similar to that and they compared this to Christopher Nolan's Batman film the Dark Knight but they ultimately decided not to do that And hanging over all of this film, which we will get into, is the kind of idea of replacing Tom Cruise in the franchise and setting up a potential lead if Cruz decided to quit the franchise. So we'll talk about that when we come to it, I think, but that's felt behind the production. And then they filmed the thing all over the place, Budapest, Mumbai, Dubai, Prague, Moscow. A whole load of places, the original screenwriters were Josh Applebaum and Andre Nimick, who wrote the film's screenplay, but Tom Cruise brought in the screenwriter Christopher McCroy, with whom he had worked on the 2008 film Valkyrie to do an uncredited rewrite. So McCrory described what he did as simplifying and bringing clarity.

He made the kind of central plot simpler and smoothed off the rough edges. So McCrory doesn't get a screenplay credit for this film, but it's important for the future of the franchise that this is where he was brought in, and that Cruz brought him in, and Cruz obviously likes him and has a report with him. So the film got released in 2011, specifically December 2011. comes out just before Christmas and it becomes one of the highest grossing films of 2011 so 2011 for film

scout tafeoia of roger ebert.com considers the year 2011 as the best year for cinema and he wrote an article countering the idea that 1939 his film's best year overall saying 2011 is the best year and he talked about like drive the tree of life The Adventures of Tintin, question mark and Sherlock Holmes

A Game of Shadows I'm a defender of the Adventures of Tintin He said that 2011 housed not just some of the greatest art films of our age but a revolution in the language of Blockbuster filmmaking one big budget action film after another used digital cameras to show the world

behind explosions in Starker, Stranger Light Yeah, I I mean, I don't know how much I agree. I mean, I think if you, so I've never particularly subscribed to this idea, right? That, you know, that years in film can vary in quality widely, right? I think, broadly speaking, there's always some really good films. There's some good blockbuster films which are smarter than you think. There's some blockbuster films that are wildly dumber than you think.

there are some absolutely horrendous things, right? If you're lucky, you'll get a masterpiece. If you're very unlucky, you'll get one of these absolute turkeys, right? But I don't think it actually really varies that much. And, like, I don't know, I do take his point, but I'm looking at kind of like things that made money in, you know, everything I'm looking at here on this box office list made kind of like, you know, $100 million plus, right? So I take his point about, say, the tree of life, right, which wouldn't have done that much box office. But for every tree of life, we have another prestige picture, like, The Iron Lady. I mean, it was a load of rubbish, frankly.

And I'm looking at it, like, there are good films there. I also have got a bit of a fondness for this kind of weird film, because I think this was the first year that I kind of, like, really leapt into the whole film criticism thing. Right, this is when the 2011 Cambridge Film Festival, I did a lot of work there. Drive is something that sits there because I didn't do the interview, but I sat in on an interview with Nicholas Winding Refing. He was in Cambridge, Florida. You know, like, I have a lot of fondness for this year in film. I think there's also quite a lot of, I think there's also quite a lot of overrated stuff here and some stuff that is just a flat-out turkey. I mean, if we're looking at big name stuff, I mean, this is also your Green Lantern, the Green Horn it came out. You know, I mean, like, listen, I feel like, you know, I take the point. There's some really, really fantastic films came out this year, but, like, I think we're being a bit selective. with our memory here, to be honest. The reason I mentioned this kind of contextualizing of the year from this film critic is because of the stark contrast it has with the box office. So I'm going to read through the box office as we usually do.

And these are, apart from one film, all sequels. Like every single one is a sequel, a franchise sequel. And the one that isn't is, you know, big IP. So it's a, you know, we're not getting away. from that. 2011 was the first year to have three films crossed the billion dollar milestone as well. We're talking big money at the box office. Or maybe that's just an artifact of inflation.

Who knows? But yes, the highest grossing films of 2011 are at number one, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part two. Transformers, Dark of the Moon. Pirates of the Caribbean on Stranger Tides, which is the fourth one, I think. The Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn, part one. So we are also into this era of breaking films into two parts with Harry Potter and Twilight. Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol at number five. Kung Fu Panda 2 at number 6.

Fast 5, the Hangover Part 2, the Smurfs, which I mention as the only non-sequal, and Cars 2. So all sequels, all big temple franchises. is an interesting box office. Yeah, it's also looking down it a little bit further down the list. I think the thing that I find interesting about it is, right, so the film we're talking about Ghost Protocol here, right? It's sitting in number five. I think of all the films that have been listed there in the top ten,

I would say critically, this is probably the one which has aged the best, right? I haven't seen Kung Fu Panda 2, right? So I can't speak too heavily to that. So I recently heard a Going Rogue episode. Going Rogue is a great podcast detailing the production of films. And they did an episode on Kung Fu Panda 4, talking about how Kung Fu Panda 2 is really good, like genuinely a high point for the franchise.

Okay. So let's include that here. But the rest of them, I wouldn't say, I mean Fast 5, I think, you know, you got to kind of like separate its retrospect from at the time. time, right? I think it's reasonably well regarded, but I think people prefer other films in the franchise. But I genuinely think you probably

have to go down to about number I've got 14 here, right? Rise of the Planet of the Apes made just under half a billion dollars. I think that's probably pretty well regarded and you've got to go pretty far down before you start to get things that are unambiguously kind of

liked, right? I'm not going to say to anybody thinks. They're masterpieces or anything like that necessarily. But like, you know, there are genuinely good films, right? Because I will defend the adventures of Tintin that's sitting at just under 400 million, but like, you know, it wasn't particularly well regarded. It's wild to me, because I remember reviewing this on the radio in this year, real steel, like the Hugh Jackman boxing thing, it's sitting in it like

it's wild to me that's that high up, because I mean, I just feel like that's one of these films where, if you describe the concept, I don't think people would believe you they existed, right? In terms of kind of like stuff that's actually, you know, you've got to go pretty far down. And to the point about the article you mentioned earlier, some of them are really good, right? You know, some of these films are really good, but, like, they're not making a dent

at the box office. I mean, you could argue one of the most accomplished ones is Hugo, and it's at 38. You know, I mean, we're going pretty far down here before we start to get with, you know, things that are, you know, really making an impact. And in terms of, again, living in the scene, I mean, you know, we covered

this in other series. of living in the world of the sequel. I mean, you go further down the list and we still are, right? Piss and boots, a spin-off, Sherlock Combs, a game of Shadows, is the second of the Robert, the Guy Ritchie, Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock

things, which was also kind of like, you know, this is a roundabout when, you know, Sherlock the TV sees with its peak, Rio, animated, Rise of Planet Apes, reboot, Thor, early entry in the MCU, Captain America, you've got a reboot of X, but, like, you know,

You have to go really far down this list before you're not really firmly in sequel territory. Yeah, it's just another stark comparison with 1996 where we started, which had, you know, drama films and thrillers and films for grown-ups in the box office. I don't really buy this 2000. I mean, to be clear, I don't really buy the 1999 was a great year for Phil Midder. or it's the best ever year for film. I don't buy that as. I certainly don't buy the 2011 is.

Pick a year and I will find me a year and I will find you a brilliant film from that year. Anybody can play that game, you know. Yeah, yeah. But yes, that's the context in which Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol comes out. And yeah, shall we get into the film? Shall we crack on?

Yep, let's go for it. So the film opens in Bruce. Budapest. Soya from Lost, he's running across the rooftop of the Budapest train station before jumping off the building while shooting two guys above him. It's sick. He's then walking away, but Leah Sadoo comes up and shoots him, leaves him for dead, and steals his bag. Very nonchalantly as well. Very nonchalantly, yeah. Very French. I saw a speculation on a letterbox review

that there's some subtext here about replacing Cruz so Josh Holloway could be an Ethan surrogate but is immediately killed and the letterbox reviewer interpreted this as a dunk on JJ Abrams because Josh Holloway was in Lost which JJ Abrams produced and was a major force behind I don't see it quite frankly.

I mean, isn't Abrams a producer for... Abrams is a producer on this film. Like, I don't think they're symbolically killing J.J. Abrams in the way that this review... I don't see that myself. I think, um... We'll talk to it when we get to, Jomey Renner. But, yeah, I think Josh Holloway is not... He's kind of brought in as an Ethan surrogate to some extent, but the kind of symbolism

behind killing him is not killing Abrams. So we cut to a Moscow prison, Simon Peggs Benji from the last film, is outside in a van hacking the prison systems and opening cell doors quietly. There's no music on this heist bit, and it works really well to build tension through silence, right up until Benji starts playing a Dean Martin track into the speakers. Ethan Hunt walks out of his cell to this music, and he goes back for his friend Bogdan, rather than go straight to the extraction point. but they eventually get to the extraction point and there's a whole make for him. Yeah. Because apparently Tom Cruise

has been incredibly convincing as a Russian prisoner, a Russian dissident. Which, judging by how convincing he was as an Italian truck driver a few films ago. I don't really I'm not buying that, but anyway. We're going to see him as a Russian general later in the film.

And yes. But yeah, they get to the extraction point and agent, And Agent Carter has made a hall for them in the sewers. Agent Carter is played by Paula Patton. On the way out, Ethan says, like the fuse and their opening titles begin. We get the full-on Mission Impossible theme, which it feels like we haven't got for the past two films, as this fuse goes through scenes of the film.

And it's really fun and dynamic, and I think Michael Jekino's work on the score is really a lot better than his work on Mission Impossible 3. Like, he brings the energy to this scene in a cool way. Yeah, I also feel in these opening scenes, there's actually a bit of a sort of love of cinema that actually comes through a little bit as well, right? Because I think, you know, because when we're in the cell with Ethan, he's throwing a bouncy ball against the wall,

and I think, I find it hard to believe that's not a reference to the great escape, right? Yeah. You know? So there's that. And also, the other thing that I found quite funny is the opening titles, right? They like the fuse, and then we follow the fuse,

and it's dynamic. and sort of like, you know, wild. It's actually quite David Finchery. You know, it kind of feels a little bit like the opening credits to panic room, fight club, stuff like that, you know. And some of the interests, you know, and it's like, it's not a part of the film per se, but it's kind of like it's showing, it's showing an imagination and a kind of like dynamism with the movement of the image, which was really lacking in particularly Mission Possible 3. And I wouldn't say it was lacking in Mission Possible too, but it was done in a different way that I don't think was really suiting the style of what they were going for. So even early on, I think it's setting itself up as a much more cinematic entry.

Yeah, Brad Bird immediately seems a lot more competent with kind of blocking and cinematography and camera placement, intentional camera placement, and is thinking about how these shots look. So it looks a lot more beautiful and dynamic than I think anything in the previous two films. Yeah. So Ethan needed to get his friend Bogdan out for his intel. They pass him along to some other IMF team. Benji reveals that he's passed his field exam and that's why he's here. And the back and forth between Ethan Hunt and Benji is really fun in this film.

Like, it really taps into Cruz's comedic chops and Pegg's obvious comedy background, as well as, like, they seem to have a clear affection for one another. Like, Tom Cruise seems to genuinely like Simon Pegg and vice versa. So from this prison scene where they're communicating through the surveillance system to all of Benji's scenes out in the field, it's a really good dynamic that really brings some fun to the film. Yeah, and I'll talk more about Pegg later on, right? Because here's a much bigger role in this one.

I think it's a good decision because he gives it in terms of like the the dynamics and the tone of the character interactions he gives it a real shot in the arm here right? It has a real I'll talk about it more later but basically it brings a dynamic which I think is a lot easier to sit in right and it's a lot easier to sit with this set of characters

than it was in well I mean definitely in two because it wasn't a set of characters it was essentially just Ethan Hunt but certainly also even Mission Possible 3 it's more interesting, right? And I think a lot of that comes down to Pegg's performance and delivery. I'm a big fan of him in this film. I remember even the first time I watched the film

way back kind of like around when it came out really kind of enjoy it. And that was also kind of pretend around about the time that I was sort of like really two or three years out from having discovered spaced right and this sort of thing. So I was kind of into Peg as a performer at that point

anyway. But yeah, he gives it a real shot in the arm here, I think. Yeah, no Pegg, Pegg can be really good. and I'm thinking about his films with Edgar Wright you know, Sean of the Dead Hot Fuzz is a standout for me where he essentially plays the straight man but he does it so well

like that that's that takes comedic timing and stuff of its own and he does it really well opposite Nick Frost of course but he's really good so we get into the kind of main thrust of the plot Carter tells Ethan about Sawyer from Lost

who was out to intercept a file as part of an IMF operation in Hungary, and we flash back a little too before Sawyer was killed. So he has these cool augmented reality contact lenses that he uses to intercept someone carrying documents and he steals the suitcase. We see him die again, Carter runs along and hears his last words. Ultimately, they're after someone called Cobalt, who wants to detonate a nuclear weapon. He is a nuclear extremist who believes that setting off a nuclear weapon will trigger a chain of nuclear retaliations, which leads to global thermonuclear war, for some reason. Ethan gets an IMF briefing from a telephone, telling him his mission is to penetrate the Kremlin archive room disguised as a Russian general. Benji establishes that Ethan was in prison for an unsanctioned hit, and he split from him.

his wife. They're going into the Kremlin. Ethan and Benji are disguised as Russian military. And the Kremlin heist is tremendous fun. Like it's a standout sequence of this franchise

in general, not just this film. Yeah, Ethan and Benji going in disguise. Carter has a micro camera tied to a balloon. There's all kinds of fun touches. There's kinds of big Russian male choirs, in the soundtrack for this heist

before they eventually settle into the Mission Impossible theme because in terms of geopolitics this film talks about tension between Russia and the US in a far more playful way than you would get these days

where there is genuine political tension between Russia and the West precipitated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine but back in 2011 there's fun in this dynamic between Russia and the US tension and Russia is very Soviet coded in this Russian male choirs, soldiers marching in formation

the bigness of the Kremlin and Red Square is all very Soviet but the centrepiece of this heist is a traversal down a long corridor to the archive room so they lure the guard away from his desk they set up this very cool mobile projection screen which dynamically shows what is behind it effectively masking their approach as they move with it like this is really fun spycraft nonsense which is just the right side of cartoony so he's got this yeah camera on one side and at one point peg accidentally gets in the camera so his head is blown up to massive proportions and he's

mostly silent as well apart from they've got a little squeaky thing that makes a water dripping sound to lower the car away. It's very fun. Yeah. I think that's one of the best things about the sequence. It's one of the things I've got written down here. It's just goofy enough, right? It's absurd, right?

Certainly the time the film was made. I don't think this technology exists. If it does exist, it doesn't exist with this level of polish to be able to pull off a Kremlin heist, right? But it's so well staged and it's so well paced. And in particular kind of like, I'm glad you mentioned the fact that it's very

quiet points because I think the key thing is it knows when to not do much, right? It can be restrained when it needs to be. In a way that the first film was, right? If you think back to the Langley Heist, right, it had that same quality of knowing

when to dial it back to kind of like let the tension fill the vacuum in a way that the second and third films really do not. Yeah, I'm thinking back to the Berlin mission, which is kind of the first action sequence in Mission Impossible 3

which is loud and bumbastic and you have no idea about the space because it hasn't been set up whereas here this is quiet and fun and you know about the space because the space is integral they need to get down this long corridor so we need to know where they are

and where the guards are it's a lot better it's nice that Bradbird has remembered that these films about rubber masks and spires should be fun so Ethan reaches the archive room and the tapes but the cases are all blank they hear someone intercept their radio

and they're set up as bombers they hurriedly escape there's a fun moment where Ethan turns from Russian to a very stereotypical American in a movement he just turns his jacket inside out and it's a leather jacket

and he's got a Bruce Springsteen t-shirt on underneath his Russian general uniform so he's walking away through Red Square and suddenly the Kremlin explodes and even wakes up handcuffed to a stretcher in a Russian hospital. I don't want to get too far ahead in terms of the franchise, but I saw that the Kremlin explosion is in the new trailer

for the upcoming Mission Impossible film, Final Reckoning. And I think they're reckoning this Kremlin thing as an effort to kill Ethan Hunt that failed in the latest film. I'm interested. Like you, I don't want to get too far ahead of things Because also, at the time we're recording this, right, the maybe final, I don't know. But certainly the next edition of the series is not,

the film series is not out yet. But I'm pretty sure I also, and I saw it written somewhere in a right-up and when I was watching the most recent trailer, I'm convinced I saw it myself. I think the rabbit's foot is all, like the rabbit's foot from the previous film also gets a brief shot. in the new trailer So I think they're going full

kind of like into the mission possible lore Even though they're tying everything together Yeah I do get that impression So I'll be interested to see what they do with that Because it's one of the things that we'll talk about When we get into later Later segments in the series

Particularly I would say Maybe not the next one But certainly the one after Fallout The film starts to kind of like Play more with its own the films start to play more with their own history, right? I don't think it is

really not at this point here, and I think for in terms of playing with its history, I think when it eventually does start doing it, it kind of ignores two and three at a certain extent. But yeah, we'll talk about that more when we come to it, but I find it's interesting like some of the things that we're talking about here

that we'll pop up again later. Ethan is handcuffed to a stretcher in a Russian hospital. There's a another fun touch where the subtitles appear in Cyrillic and gradually focus into English as Ethan comes round. And it reminded me of that moment in The Hunt for Red October, where Sean Connery is speaking Russian and he zooms in on his mouth. I'll probably mention this moment before.

He zooms in on his mouth and then zooms out and he's speaking English. Well, what can I say? It's an excellent moment. Terrific. Listen, I'm pretty sure we've managed to get through two entire seasons in this podcast without me doing Sean Conner impression I think I asked you to do it on the last episode and you didn't I absolutely refused So Ethan knows that he's been set up as a team leader

Of the bombing operation or supposed a team leader He uses the paperclip to escape and he climbs out a window There's an SVR agent who comes after him I actually wrote KGB throughout my notes That these guys were KGB That's that Soviet coding coming here Yeah, exactly and realize the KGB doesn't exist and hasn't existed for years

so it's an SVR agent I might refer to him as KGB throughout this who knows but the SVR agent sort of comes up and dares him to jump into the dumpster from several stories up and he's hesitant about doing it because this is he's not throughout this film he does these heroic things but he's hesitant to do so and it creates a nice tension that you don't see in a lot of spy films. I'm thinking of like Michael, Michael, Jason Bourne leaping into danger and parkoing across rooftops

and the same with Daniel Craig as James Bond. Here Cruz is hesitant, which I like. He's, he's, he knows that what he's doing is tough on his body. and dangerous, and that creates a fun tension that really works for the character. And it's also interesting when you think about kind of recent films in the same, broadly speaking, genre, but also where we are in terms of blockbuster films, right? Because this is the same year that Thor has come out and Captain America's come out. We're on the precipice right now of the Marvel Cinematic Universe taking off, right?

The Avengers will come out the year after. We're also kind of like a year out from Skyfall being released, which I think I don't personally regard as the best of the Daniel Craig Bonds, but I think a lot of people do. And then you've got, well, we come to talk about Jeremy Renner, I'm sure we'll end up talking about the Bourne legacy. Yes. But the thing that's interesting about it is some of these, some of the spy films and the espionishers and the action films, right? And I'm also thinking about kind of like some of the fast and furious films that are coming out after this. Various Dwayne the Rock Johnson vehicles around this time, right? Even when it's not a superhero film, some of the stuff that they are doing is indistinguishable from superheroics.

Yes, exactly. You know, there's little, you're invited to awe at what they are doing, not to bask in the tension of whether they can do it. and what the consequences could be, right? In particular, I'm thinking about a lot of the stuff that, you know, Daniel Craig does in Skyfall, I think even, you know, Spector we think about it afterwards, right? They're super heroic acts, they're not heroic acts, right? And I think that's where there's a distinct difference here, right? You know, you've got, you've got Ethan Hunt clinging to the side of a building

in just a pair of trousers, right? clearly reluctant to do it and we'll talk this will come up again when we get to the Dubai sequence but it's the case of there is a sense of you know I'm going to you know it's there's a determination there's not necessarily a confidence in what he's doing he's doing it because he feels he has to do it

not because he knows he can right and it introduces it's a very engaging kind of form of attention that I think kind of makes it all feel a little bit more tangible Yeah, so there's an article, a book chapter by Lisa Persk that I've mentioned before called Confronting the Impossibility of Impossible Bodies, Tom Cruise and the aging male action hero movie, that talks about Cruz, how Cruz uses his body. And I've referred to this article before, but it specifically mentions Ghost Protocol as the point where this tension is created.

So Cruz, Perce says, frequently now plays characters within whom attention exists between hesitating uncertainty about whether the body can still match its younger capacities and an openness to trying anyway. Such characters are, in a sense, a response to the phenomenological force of Cruz's own body in motion, which increasingly pulls in two directions, between the normative implications of visible aging on the one hand and the achievement of the same levels of stretching acrobatic agility that we are familiar with, from earlier in his action career on the other. Cruz retains a flexible relation to aging that marks him out from other aging action stars,

but not because he is still forever young. So I think that's interesting, particularly in the light of what we'll discuss, this idea of replacing Cruz in this film, because he is aging, and he is visibly aging, but he uses that to his advantage in this film, where the tension between his aging body and the stunts he has to do

becomes a central dramatic tension and it works really well I think so Ethan jumps as we say and he steals some clothes and liaises with the IMF he meets with the secretary of the IMF here played uncredited by Tom Wilkinson and his chief analyst who is played by Jeremy Renner even draws an identity kit on his hand

of the suspicious man he saw and Renner identifies him even decides he must be Cobalt and he blew up the Kremlin to cover his tracks for stealing something. But the USA has invoked Ghost Protocol, the titular Ghost Protocol, and the entire IMF has been disavowed. Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme. You can walk out because that's the title of the film. Wilkinson tells him that he must escape,

but if he fails, he'll be branded as a terrorist. But before he can fake his escape, the car is attacked for real, and Wilkinson is shot in the head, and Ethan and Brand, Jeremy Renner's character, escape for real. So there's a brief scene of them walking through Moscow that establishes their differences. Brand, Jeremy Renner, is more analytical and Ethan is more intuitive. Brand has an audience surrogate energy that clearly sets him up as a replacement protagonist. He has to have things spelled out for him, but he's developing.

He's a young spy who is getting better. And I don't think this film has dated. at all. I think this film feels kind of fresh. The thing that dates it the most is it's from the brief period where Hollywood was trying to make Jeremy Renner happen and didn't manage to. So around this time, he's

picked for a replacement, Jason Bourne, in the Bourne is it Legacy? Yeah. The Born Legacy and he's Hawkeye in the Avengers films. And none of these roles I don't know, sore for Jeremy Renner. I mean, especially not the born one.

Yeah, the born one is a one film and done thing. But he never comes into his own as an action hero in a way that Hollywood seemed to be really trying to push for this brief three-year window or whatever. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I also don't think that's where... It's really not where Jeremy Renner's strengths lie, Because, I mean, I think a lot of this came off the back of the heart walker, right?

And then probably maybe the town as well, right? I think that's where he kind of, like, became more known. But if you think about even things that he's done since, which I think are good, they've been reasonably few and far between, to be perfectly honest with you, because I think so much of his time to be taken up with the MCU. But I'm thinking about things like Wind River, I think, he was quite good in. I quite enjoyed that as a film. Yes.

I think is probably his career high point since the heart locker for me but you think about the action hero is not you know I mean he pulls off the Hawkeye role pretty

pretty well and he has that sort of like every man humor that I think kind of you know balances things out quite well there but I don't think he was ever did I'm surprised this is the direction that he because presumably he had a role in this

he and like you know his age or you know whoever was involved in his career. I'm surprised that's the Ritouk initially because it doesn't seem like a good fit. It doesn't seem like a good fit and it turns out not to be a good fit as he doesn't become the next

Tom Cruise. Yeah, so Ethan and Brand escape. They get to a train carriage. Ethan does a retinal scan on a moving train which is fun to access his hidden IMF cash. And then Ethan briefs the team on Hendricks, a.k.a. Cobalt. Hendrix is played by Michael

Nykvist, the Swedish actor. And Hendricks is, as I said, a nuclear extremist. So Cobalt, aka Hendricks, needs the activation codes which Leah Sodeau stole from Josh Holloway, and she's going to sell them in Dubai. So the team need to head to Dubai to get the codes ahead of Hendricks. So we can't use them to set up the nukes. So they head to Dubai and they sell this plan of creating a double room in the Birch Khalifa to fool the baddies into selling the codes to them. And this leads to the central

scene in the Birch Khalifa, whose sheer size, the sheer size of the building is conveyed through some big old drone or helicopter shops. And this location works so well that it is effectively copied in the video game Hitman 3, which is a kind of spy espionage game where the first mission in the third game is set in this Dubai Hotel. It's called the, it's Burge something or other, not Khalifa, but it's effectively the same location. So the firewalls on the server room at the Burge are too secure, so Benji says they have to be accessed from outside of the building.

even is very reluctant to climb the outside of the building to access the server room because he's like 100 stories up or whatever but it's the only way which um i have been on the observation deck at the birch caliphah and i don't blame him it's pretty terrifying frankly even behind glass no thank you i i stood on the observation platform at the top of the sears tower in chicago is it the sears tower or the willis tower

these days. I don't know. I still call it the Sears Tower, I don't know. Yeah, I think it might be the worst tower now, or was. Anyway, it's got a glass floor, so I stood on the glass floor at the top of that floor, like one second, and I was done. Because I'd gone all the way up there, I thought I might as well, and I hated every second of it. No. Not for me, Clive, no.

But this scene is great. Ethan has to climb out onto the Birch Khalifa and you really feel the height and the dangerousness of what he's doing which is helped by Ethan's Cruze's reluctance to do it so there's fun performances it's got a sense of energy

and Brad Bird is very good at using the camera to convey the scale of the building and therefore the danger of the height and I believe Cruz actually did climb out onto the Birge Califah he obviously had guide ropes and stuff that are CD'd out. But he did doubt that.

A few folk I know a few folk I know saw this happening actually because this was during a period in life where I'd left home but my parents actually lived in Dubai when this was filmed. Ah. So they sort of happened.

Yeah, it was quite a big... It was sort of the talk of the town, if you like. You know. Yeah, it's not every day someone free climbs the Birch Khalifa. No. I think honestly, this sequence is...

This sequence and I'm going to include kind of the whole sequence right which I'm sure you'll go on to describe more but this entire kind of like sequence in Dubai around kind of you know getting the exchange between leis adieu and kind of Nyquist well it's meant to be Nyquist Hedgman but we'll get into that um I'll include the whole sequence here is really I think as good as anything that has been put to film in this series yeah it's it's top nuts stuff yeah and honestly the contrast like the contrast between how Brad Bird and his team use the camera and the framing

and the shots that they choose during this sequence particularly when Hunt goes out out the window right? It's just night and day compared to Abrams in the last one. It's just it really like watching because I watched these back to back during my rewatch

I watched three and then I went straight into four and there was something about that that really just put across like how performance functary the last one was compared to this. It's, you know, the way the camera kind of like floats out from kind of like, you know, solid ground hotel floor to like this like unbelievably sort of, you know, inconceivable height. And then there's another movement where I'm pretty sure I saw visual effects breakdown of it at some point where basically it's followed hunt outside and then it pans around to reveal this oncoming sandstorm, right? which I'm sure you'll get to in a minute and it's like

when you start to think about it it's like the mechanics of how that shot it's not a simple shot I mean it looks simple but the effect it has in terms of your understanding of space and what the peril is that he's facing is profound

and it just it shows a level of craft and care for the moving image and an understanding of space and how to use it and take the audience with you that is just not present and certainly the previous film I think as good as John Wu could be

it's not there in the second film either I think it is there in the first one we'll talk about direct comparisons probably more when we get to the end of this series but honestly it's like night and day and I think this is the sequence that really brings it home

I don't think this film is perfect by any means but this sequence can't really fault it yeah I didn't watch them back to back like you did but still going from watching Missed and Impossible 3 to watching Ghost Protocol I still had this feeling of like here we fucking go

now we're talking this is this is the good stuff this is why I came here for yes this is why we're doing this franchise and yeah like you say the narrative setting up this sandstorm heading towards the city which won't come into play for another 20 minutes or so

in the film is still important structural work that that gets done and he's clearly setting stuff up for later. So Ethan is scaling the building and he's got his electro-Hedishan gloves. One of them starts failing and he has to chuck one away so he's only climbing with one sticky glove. Reaches the server room but falls while breaking the exterior glass and he has to climb back up. Meanwhile the team set everything on their floor to look like a different floor while layers to do comes up a little early. This has a potential to be

very complicated as a setup. You know, there's two floors that they're set up to look the same and they're doing two separate buys with two duke groups of people. But I think the way it's shot and the way it's structured, it's all fairly clear what's going on at any one moment. Even using the makeshift line to jump from the server room and swing back into their room and it all looks like work. It all looks like exertion and nothing goes effortlessly. So it feels dangerous. It's not all slick and sand it off. So because Hendrix Man has brought someone to verify the codes that throws a spanner into the works, they're going to have to hand over the actual launch codes.

Also, the mask machine breaks, so they have to go on without masks, and hope that Sado doesn't know what Hendrix Men looks like. And it's this stuff, this accumulation of tiny complications that builds tension that was absent in Mission Impossible Free, where things go quite smooth. So this whole sequence works because it balances this action of the stunts with the tension of the spycraft and things going wrong. And there's cool gadgets. Like Benji has a fake arm at one point when he's disguised as a waiter. There's a suitcase printer.

There's a printer that is in the suitcase, which is linked to Renner's contact lenses so he can scan things and print things straight away. It's very cool. So this all goes off. At the last moment, after having poor diamonds, just right into her purse, like right into her purse, just jangling around with her lipstick and her wallet and whatnot. Yeah, it's going to be down there with, you know, a couple of forgotten receipts, maybe a bit of an old crisp or something, you know. Some crumbs at the bottom of my bag.

Oh, and also a diamond from a couple of weeks ago. Leosideau notices Brandt's contact lenses and fleas. Brandon Ethan fend off Sedu's henchman while Carter fights Leia Sadoo and Benji tries to delay Hendrix's man So Ethan is about to get to Hendrix's man Where he's intercepted by the SVR people And he has to fight his way free

So then Ethan has to do his signature run Where he's running very fast with his arms pumping After Hendrix's man While a Sandstorm descends on Dubai This turns into a car chase With Ethan using a tracker on his foot phone to follow him through the sandstorm. He loses them, but at the last minute, Hendrix's man is revealed to have been Hendrix all along. He was just wearing a rubber mask. And Leicadoo gets

cooked out of window. The team regroup, and there's a lot of tension due to the various things that went wrong. Ethan accuses Brandt of not really being an analyst, and Renner is further set up as an enigmatic new protagonist in a way that will not continue. So Ethan heads out on his own, Well, Brent gives his backstory to Benji and Carter. Serbians killed Julia, Ethan's wife from the past film, and Ethan killed the Serbians as revenge, and that was why he was in prison. Ethan meets up with Bogdan via a brief cameo from Andreas Vinovsky, who was Max's henchman in Mission Impossible.

Tying these films together a little bit. You know, Ethan gets a bag pot on his head in that first film, and he gets a bag pot on his head and gives a kind of eye roll that this is happening again from the same person. It links him with an arm dealer who can tell him where Hendricks is. They follow the lead to Mumbai, and they have to do another heist. So in this one, they need to get satellite codes from an Indian billionaire. So Ethan and Carter infiltrate a party, while Brant uses a fancy magnet suit to leap into a server room

while Benger catches him with a little magnetic robot. Again, this was replicated by the Hitman Games, where there's an Indian billionaire in the level in Mumbai who you have to kill, and the kind of Mumbai saging of it and the opulent location is all replicated in that game, which I think is testament to how well the set pieces work in this. So in this sequence, Carter is used as a sexual lure. This is like one of the only moments that she is really sexualized,

in the films. She's played by Paula Patton, who is an attractive woman, but she is not sexualized in the same way, in nearly the same way, as Tandyway Newton was in Mission Impossible too. So Ilaria Boncori in her journal article, a reading of the after-death of the heroin in Mission Impossible, says that while a female villain slash assassin character is present, later I do, the positive female character is here referred to by the use of her professional title as Agent Carter. She is a woman who displays skills in physical combat with men, has previous experience of team leadership, and is an integral part of the team. Her clothing choices are appropriate to the task at hand, as she wears dark, combat-friendly clothing,

as well as a dress suit paired with heels. And later in the sequence I'm talking about, a turquoise dress for an evening event. Now this plot still involves her being used for her looks, she is sent to seduce a man who is a source of information, but she is instrumental for other reasons in the success of the mission. While still in a secondary and subordinate position, Boncari says, she is considerably less sexualized than Tandy Ray Newton and is no longer a romantic object for the hero, like Julia, Ethan's wife, from the first one.

So it feels, the kind of sexual politics feel better in this film the treatment of women is better in this film than in the previous two films there's a bit of that we're slipping over into a bit of the MCU

everyone's hot but no one's horny situation but we're not quite there yet because of this one scene I think where Carter is sexualized and used as a sexual lure but we're not quite into

the kind of rotating identity kit of brunettes that this film will get into, this franchise will get into. Yeah, I think it's also, this is another

one where comparing it with one of its immediate, well not immediate, one of its predecessors, is really just, again, like night and day because I think the thing that I find interesting about this is, this is basically exactly the same thing that Tandyway Newton's character

was used for in Mission Possible too, right? I mean, essentially that it is effectively the same. Now, it's less emphasized here. It's more fleeting. But the principle is effectively the same. It's like the deployment of, you know,

the cliche deployment of feminine wiles to get information and, you know, dupe someone, right? But the manner in which it's done and even the presentation of who it's been done to and the way that reflects on the character and what they're being asked to do here is again like night and day

like I mean Sean Ambrose, right do Grey Scott's character in the second film he's ahead of the game here he knows what is being done and he is effectively sort of counter-exploiting

Tandyway Newton's character she's being exploited by the IMF and then she gets counter-exploited by him here right Carter right Paul Patton's got she has the upper hand at every stage right and she's basically treating this particular thing she has to do is that with disdain effectively and who she's doing it to um anil kapoor's bridge character he's he's presented as a

as a buffoon you know the joke is on it where isn't mission possible to there was no joke right and it was just it was kind of misogynist and horrible here there is a joke right there is an underlying joke here and it's on the subject of the seduction basically and it's just it really shows like how much more you know on equal footing this character has been placed right because it's very easy to forget and indeed this is one of the things we criticize mission possible too for tandy bayneut's character isn't accomplished thief in that film she's skilled and like you know the role that she's been brought into and so is paula patten's character here but the Just the entire tone and presentation of how this particular task is put upon a female protagonist,

it's completely night and day, just night and day. And we get to see Agent Carter being successful and professional in a way we don't with Tandy Way Newton's character. We're just told she is an excellent thief. But here we get to see Agent Carter contribute to the missions in the previous scenes, kick Lear Sadoo out of a 100-story window and do more than just be a sexual lure. But you're right, the way it is framed is entirely different.

It is night and day. So she is distracting the Indian billionaire. Meanwhile, Brandt, Jeremy Renner, has to jump down an air shaft in his magnet suit, and the little robot at the bottom will generate a magnetic field that will catch him before he falls into a fan yeah there's a fan at the bottom of the shaft

that they've turned off and again Renner plays this were a reluctance that works he's like doing stretches before he jumps and psyching himself up saying you know this magnet so it won't work to Benji

it's fun and it's it works Peggy's very good as well at kind of being exasperated with Brandt for his refusal to trust the magnet suit. So Hendrix hijacks the billionaire's satellite

to steal his Russian nuclear warhead, and this puts Brandt in danger as the fan restarts, and it gets very hot in the server room. Ethan and Carter escape, and they speed off to where Hendrix is taking control of the satellite, but the Mumbai streets are very busy, so they end up being too late, and Hendricks launches the nuclear

missile, which heads towards San Francisco. And Benji's like, oh, it's too late, we can't, we can't do it. but Ethan won't think no for an answer and he speeds faster towards Hendricks and the launch device briefcase which they need to turn it off even pursues Hendricks into a big fancy car park

that's one of the circular car parks with the kind of automated lift while Brant goes after the henchman and Benji tries to fix the satellite relay even in Hendricks fighting the car park with Hendricks ultimately opting

to jump to his death in a way that will prevent Ethan from getting to the briefcase. Ethan drives a car over the edge so he can get down to the briefcase just in time to turn it off. And a few seconds to go, Brandt returns the power to the relay,

even disables the warhead. It grazes a building in San Francisco but splashes safely into the sea without detonating. Mission accomplished. And I think he says mission accomplished, right? He does. He says mission accomplished

while he presses the button. it doesn't work, and that's fun. Yeah, it's, um, I know it, I have slightly mixed feelings about this, uh, car park sequence. I do think occasionally it leaps maybe a little bit too close to slightly slapstick, if I'm being honest. Yeah, where, this isn't the best sequence in the film. Um, no, it's, it's just, the film needs a climax and driving a car from the top of a car park is as good as anything else. Yeah, no, I mean, like, the conclusion of it in terms of kind of like, you know, it's, you know, pitching this determination hunt has

against the same thing that Hendricks has is quite addressed like the fact that the guy will throw himself to his death to like avoid Hunt getting what he wants and then Hunt follows up with another one of these you know we've already discussed this kind of like you know the reluctant

dare devil things that you know come with a cost because he wrecks himself pretty badly doing this right it's not like it's not one of the you know it's not Indiana Jones rolling out of the fridge and you know Kington of Crystal Skull. He's pretty beat up having driven this car, you know, as he would be. Off a ledge, right? As you would be. I'm going to take this opportunity, you know, to just talk a little bit about Michael Nyquist as the villain here, right? As Kurt Hendricks. Because I find that it's an interesting one, this, in that he's not very interesting, right? And I think, I think this is probably one of the, one of the, I don't want to say shortcomings, but less accomplished parts.

the film is it's not he's not a particularly memorable villain what i do find interesting about him though is the way he's framed like yes he is in nuclear shoes but he's also presented and quite a lot is put on i think in his introduction around the fact that he has a scientific and academic background right yes and i think back to kind of like when this film came out and i think this is kind of like when we start to reach kind of the the rising tide of kind of like skepticism around experts and you know anti-intellectualism and it's just it's interesting that kind of

like you know the villain here is not kind of a rogue inverse of hunt as it was in the second film it's not you know it doesn't have that same sort of like post post-arack paranoia

that the third one for all its faults did have and then the first one is kind of like obviously more of a sort of like Cold War throwback this in a way despite the fact the villain is really quite unmemorable in terms of script and screen presence, it is interesting that that's the way

the villain is positioned. And I, you know, we'll come back to in terms of like kind of like how villains are positioned as we go through these films. But I do, that is something I do actually find quite, quite interesting about it. Yeah. You know, along with mission accomplished and kind of like the, you know, him actually

uttering that phrase, which is fairly infamous. But also little things kind of like, you know, to your government, a potential test. is a terrorist is a line that's spoken, right? There are fleeting references in there, and it's one of these things where, you know, you spoke earlier about how kind of like there's a more playful America-Russia tension than there would be if you made this film now, or if you'd made it at the time of the original mission possible, in fact.

But it is interesting that despite that there, there is still the way that the kind of like, you know, the scepticism of the times and what the focus of people's are, the way it still kind of creeps in here and there around the edges and I think that's one way it shows up here. Yeah, the villain's a little thin, like you say,

and he is a strategist, he's kind of a think tank analyst who wants to provoke nuclear war between the US and Russia. There's not a great deal more than that, so it feels a little, it feels a little divorce from kind of real-world politics

more so than perhaps Mission Impossible 3 which was a kind of post-Iraq post-9-11 piece and in fact Pat Cassells in an article I've touched on before from the Los Angeles Review of Books

which talks about the franchise and its kind of overview of politics and unaccountability says the film's politics moving forward disassociate themselves from the real world. This dissociation is the very basis of the plot of protocol, in which Hunt is framed for blowing up the Kremlin, fraying a nuclear standoff between two global superpowers. It's a setup that feels ripe for the kind of State Department frills you'd find in a Tom Clancy novel, yet the entire diplomatic aftermath is swept under the rug in a single

line. Tom Wilkinson says tension between the United States and Russia hasn't been this high since the Cuban-Bissau crisis. But you don't feel that tension. Apart from the SVRA agents chasing Ethan and Cobalt Hendricks stealing the nuke, you don't feel Russia-U.S. tension. So divorced, says Kassel, is ghost protocol from the reality of modern East-West relations, but the secretary drops that he was scheduled,

presumably on behalf of the United States, to accept the order of friendship from the Russian Prime Minister. Yeah, that lineaged. It's entirely divorced. This is the head. This is the secretary of a covert espionage force who specifically intervene on the US's behalf overseas. They're not getting the order of friendship from Russia.

Yeah, it's also interesting, because the other thing is, there's like how divorce this is from real world geopolitics, let's say. It's kind of easy to look at it now and say that, right? Particularly, you know, we're recording this in 2025, and, you know, we're at the point now where the, the war in Ukraine has been going on for what it's over three years now yeah yeah and you know and the the the geopolitical landscape now makes it very easy to say well this is completely

divorce from reality right it's also divorced from the reality at the time right i mean it's very easy to forget that yes that russia invaded georgia in 2008 right i mean that's very fresh in the memory here i can't I can't recall off the top of my head, actually, when they annexed Crimea, right? But, like, it's not like, you know, it's not like Russia's, like, some benign entity during this period, right? It's doing, like, it's doing the sort of things where, looking at the vantage point of 2025, you can see where this is going, right? So, the idea of, kind of, like, you know, the head of a covert operative, you know, a covert operative agency accepting the order of friendship from Russia. It's just like, come on, no.

At this point, Vladimir Putin has served as prime minister of Russia since 2008. In 2012, he'll become president of Russia. So he is firmly establishing his power base and the kind of molding Russia into the shape it will be in the coming years, which ultimately leads to the illegal invasion of Ukraine. but he's yeah there is Russian tension at this point that I think just isn't reflected

in the real world geopolitics of the film you know it's all put on Nyquist who is an extremist an outsider a strategist an expert like you say also present as being from a

geopolitically in this air like fairly neutral country Like, I mean, he is presented, I mean, like, I think a lot has put on the fact that, I mean, he said Russia, but a lot of it's put on the fact that he's Swedish born, I think, you know, in keeping, obviously, with the... Oh, is it, yes, I didn't know if he was, I didn't know if the character was Swedish, I think, if it just was the actor. I can't remember the exact thing, but, like, the fact, like, they do play into the fact that, obviously, like, Nyquist himself is Swedish, right? Yes, it says here he's Swedish-born, a Swedish-born Russian. Yeah. So, yes.

Not quite Russian. So, yeah, it's interesting in that respect. It's easy to say that it's devoid of kind of like a meaningful link to real war politics now, right? But I think it's also important to say it was at the time as well, right? And I looked at the annexation of Crimea happens about three years after this, right? So this is all kind of in motion. This is all happening. but it's obviously not really truly reflected here.

No, which is also reflected in what I mentioned earlier that all of the Russian scenes are very Soviet-coded. In the kind of American mind, Russia is still the Soviet Union. So the nuclear warhead splashes safely into the sea. And Ethan goes for a drink with Lufa, Ving Rhames, in an uncredited cameo, and the rest of the team meet them. And this scene specifically feels like a handover from Cruise and Rames to this new team, to Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg and Paula Patton to take the franchise forward to new heights

and go on new missions on their own. So Ethan gives them phones and stuff and tells them he'll be in touch. Brant tells Ethan that he failed to protect Ethan's wife. But Julie is actually alive and she's doing a cameo from across the water. She smiles at Ethan and waves a sad little goodbye. and Ethan gets a phone call with a new mission referring to a mysterious syndicate

yeah it feels like a it feels like a handover to a new team and yet there is also this thing where Ethan gets this new mission about the syndicate which will lead directly into the plot of the next film so it feels like they're very much hedging their bets

as to whether crews will continue in this role or not which ultimately decides to do and to carry on until he dies in some insane stunt well maybe

we'll see how the final reckoning the upcoming film turns out yeah although I'm willing to bet you know again at the time of recording

we've not seen that entry in the series I'm willing to bet that the final reckoning will not be the final reckoning because after all dead reckoning part one didn't end up being part one

of dead reckoning so you know we'll see well to take an opposite position, we're recording this in April 2025 and I am going to put my cards on the table now

and say the final reckoning will do a no time to die. That is my official prediction. I'm taught of taking this position because you sound completely sceptical. Yeah, I don't think it will. I don't think it will. I think it's going to... I'm reading between the lines here in terms of

statements that have come out since around kind of like you know maybe we'll do more maybe we won't whereas like it was pretty obvious with no time to die that in my opinion spoilers if you've not seen no time to die so you've got a five second warning here to just fast forward 10 or 30

seconds James Bond dies right but like you know Craig's contract was up I think that was going to happen I don't see this happening here I think they're going to have their cake I need it they're going to leave the door open for him to come back if he needs to maybe I mean even if even if they do do

no time to die like they did the same with Julia in this film and then she turned up at the end so like you can say her character's dead and they'll just not because it's a secret

because of spy stuff so we'll see we will see but anyway that is ghost protocol it's a banger it's a banger all the way through mostly from

the stark difference of Bradbird's direction which is so much more thoughtful about cinematography and how it looks and how it frames the action sequences that works incredibly well it's fun

the mission is fun there are some fun heist sequences you know getting back to the heists really brings it back to Brian de Palmer's Mission Impossible which really works and the dynamics between the cast are a lot stronger than they have been

in previous films I've specifically mentioned you know Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise their dynamic is really fun. Even Tom Cruise and Jeremy Renner have a fun dynamic. That will not continue but it's fun. Yeah. It's something that I think you put in your notes

as well is I think something that this definitely has that the second and third ones do not. And it doesn't lean hard into it because it's not that sort of film. I think it's easy to forget that Tom Cruise, right, for all of his many faults, which we haven't spoken about a huge amount on this episode, but we haven't previous

ones, and I'm sure we will again. Nice. I am, I believe he is a good actor. You know, I think it's easy to kind of forget that now, given that his filmography is so dominated in this late period by mission possible, but he's a good actor, you know, like, I mean,

like, you know, born the 4th of July, Rain Man, a few good men, and even in those films, he has this ability to deliver something comedically, right? You know, I'm thinking about it's kind of like, you know, off-the-cuff Jack Nicholson impression in a few good men, right, and things like that, right? He has comic ability, he has comic timing, but the films have really not given him the opportunity to do that in the second and the third ones.

No, he was also darrow, yeah. Here he does, right, and I think that's probably the best role that Pegg, ends up having here. He brings a sort of, you know, something that's been lacking in the film. He brings a sort of British incredulity to kind of like reacting what's around it. It feels that, you know, and maybe that's easy for me to say because I'm largely familiar with Peg through like the Edgar Wright collaborations and, you know, I came to them after I came to space. There is that kind of like this reaction to it. It's kind of leaning in. It's kind of leaning into kind of how absurd

some of this stuff is but there's an exasperated incredulity to the response without being kind of like arch or ironic about it which I don't think is something that you could do with I don't think it's something you could do

to the same extent with an American actor really and I think that dynamic it introduces it just it stops it it stops it from falling into that kind of like grittiness of Mission Possible three, which I don't think fits of this series, right? It's two, the best entries here anyway, they need to have that sort of capery, heisty, hijinks element to it.

And that doesn't mean they can't be serious and take themselves seriously. I think the next two, the next two, three even, more so the next two films that we're going to talk about. I do think they take themselves seriously, right? not kind of like, you know, they're not ironic in winking, but I think they balance that well and I think that's set up here, right? This is the nucleation point for that dynamic that I think serves the rest of the films really very well. Yeah, they've found the tone to some extent. This is the tone that the films should have, in my opinion, that I don't think the later films entirely get right. They get very close, but they don't entirely

get right but it's a stark contrast to two and three which yeah missed it entirely you know shot the arrow off the range never mind near the target um but this one this one this one gets it this is this is the tone this is the mission impossible franchise this is what distinguishes it from jason born and james bond that there's a funness as an energy uh and this one gets it in a way other films won't. I think this is a candidate for being the best one, right? And at the time of recording, I'm still wrestling with what I think it is or not, frankly. So we'll need to see where I'll land with that. But I think in looking

at kind of the development of this series, I think the other thing that's probably, if you go back to the 2011 time frame, right? And by this time, we've had a few legacy sequels kicking around, they've happened I think this is also the film that convinces people that a long-running film series

like this is truly viable right I think we're starting to move out of the era now of kind of like you do three films and the third and everybody agrees the third one is always the worst one right

you know and there's a there are a long run series kicking around at this point, like, you know, I mean, we discussed a couple of them in the box office thing, like, I mean, we're on to the eight, is it the eighth Harry Potter film at this point, right? You know, which is up and downs, it's on the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film, but I think everybody would generally agree at this point that the second, third and fourth Pirates of Caribbean film, they're not anything compared to the first one. They've also come in much quicker succession. So I think this is

probably the, this is probably the prime example at this point of actually you know what it is possible to revive one of these series because we're coming off the back of two which was generally regarded as pretty bad despite the money it made and three which was kind of middling maybe

considered better but also didn't make as much money as the second one I think this is the one where actually genuinely puts forward that these long running things are actually viable and it's particularly important in the context of the film industry given that we're at the nascent stages of

kind of the all-dominating Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is a slightly different beast, but this idea of getting out of this idea that the sequels to films are always in diminishing returns. I think this really, this kind of sets the bar a little bit here, I think. That's true. I think the rule was that you do free, like you do free films, and then that's it. So, Spider-Man, Sam Ramey's Spider-Man, you do free, and then that's it. story, you do three, and then that's it. And if you don't, you need to reboot the thing completely

in the manner of Nolan and the Dark Night trilogy. Yeah, men in black, you do three, and then that's it. This establishes that you can go on and set up a long-running franchise beyond those initial three. And it can be successful

and critically acclaimed. So yes, I think that's a very good point. So next time, we will be discussing Mission Impossible Rogue Nation, which comes out in 2015, and is the first Mission Impossible film directed by Christopher McCroy. And I'd forgotten that Jeremy Renner is in it, but he is in it. Yes, he is. I'd also forgot. Yes, he is. I know all the stuff I said about him not being in this franchise any longer, because I was completely wrong. But yes, 2015's Mission Impossible

Rogue Nation, which we'll be discussing next month on the podcast. I need to perfect my Sean Harris impersonation by that point I suppose Oh exciting You didn't do that when we discussed him in Prometheus No but he gets more He's different here He's also he gets more chewy lines

In his wish impossible films Like there's only so much you could do with I'm a geologist I love rocks I love rocks I'm a geologist I love rocks Yeah but yeah next next month we will discuss mission impossible reorganization so please join us for that

in the meantime we are on blue sky take one cinema.net take one cinema.net is the website as well like the podcast subscribe to the podcast tell your friends about the podcast we're available on all major podcast platforms and even the small ones i use antenna pod which is an open source podcast player that's great and you can subscribe to us on there as well but yes followers and tell

your friends I'm on Blue Sky at SimonXXX.com I am JimGR dot vSkyi dot social I may change that to an actual domain at some point but I haven't yet determined if I want to do that but I'm pretty much that on every platform

including the now dormant profile I have on the website that shall not be named MySpace I meant B-Beeble So yes Join us next month for Mission Impossible Rogue Nation

And until then We will see you next time Bye You know,