TAKE ONE Presents... - The Impossipod 8: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING (2025)

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

Simon and Jim reach the end of the Mission: Impossible franchise with 2025's MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING. They discuss the film's shockingly shoddy first half, the disconnect between the dialogue's apocalyptic exposition and what we're actually shown on screen of the world, how the film continues DEAD RECKONING's attempt to grapple with themes around AI and post-truth but never manages to do so successfully, what a shame it is that they separate Ethan Hunt from the rest of the team for such long stretches of the film, the emotional core that emerges towards the middle of the film from a surprising source, and how the film builds to a decent climax but unfortunately it's the same climax they already did in FALLOUT.Content warnings: the COVID-19 pandemic; cult leadership and the Church of Scientology; violent deaths including murder and assassination; terrorist bombings and nuclear weaponry; submersibles and drowning; aviation disasters and parachuting.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/FUI8ZJF4

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

Hello. How are you doing? Good. I'm going to do my best in this episode to not go on a rant about Matthew is it Matthew, yeah Matthew Vaughn, yeah Yes, we don't want to do that again

A bit of a segue in the last episode I'll do my best I'll do my best I can't promise anything We'll try We'll save that until the series where we watch all of Matthew Vaughn's films Sorry who's the we

In that sentence He says with rising alarm in his voice Me and I don't know If I could find a toy in my life That would be That would be the perfect person to do it but I think we're scraping the bowel. Talking tories have you thrown in the river.

Surprisingly, I don't hang out with a lot of toys. It's weird. I'm in an echo chamber. It's probably not a surprise to anybody now that this podcast series is not what some people describe as a bipartisan. Anyway. No, no. More on that later.

Yeah, so we have finished. We've reached the end of the Mission Impossible franchise because today we're discussing Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning Not Dead Reckoning Part 2, that doesn't exist and will never exist This is Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning directed by Christopher McCrory

from a screenplay he co-wrote with Eric Jenderson So this only just came out For us This came out earlier this year I normally ask what's your experience I've seen this I guess you just went to the cinema to see it right Yeah, and it would have been, at the time of recording, it would have been, what, about three weeks ago, maybe, something like that.

Yeah. Yeah, we've also, we've also entered that kind of, like, the, where, like, so I wrote a review of it for take one, so I have written about this film. It's not quite giving me quite the same levels of anxiety as when we were doing the xenopod, and I'd written about Prometheus, because it was about a decade plus between what I was writing and what I was saying. Like, you know, I'm not expecting to be kind of wildly inconsistent in this instance. Not that I was with Peretheus, but, you know, you always wonder whether your opinion of a film is going to turn around over time. I'm not, you know, we'll get into it with this film. We'll get into it with this film, but yeah. Yep, yep.

So, yeah, I mean, same. I saw it in June. It came out in May. I saw it in June because I was waiting a while while we were recording episodes. I wanted to watch all the Mission Impossible films. in order. So I wanted to wait until I'd seen Dead Reckoning, which had to wait for certain recording dates and blah, blah, blah. But yes, essentially I just went to Cine World in Glasgow, the tallest cinema in the world. And yeah, it was fine. It was quite an empty screening

because I got to it quite, quite far through its theatrical run, like I say, June when it came out in May. So yeah, this will be a bit of a different episode to the normal format of our episodes, you can refer to our episodes on Alien Romulus and Jurassic World Rebirth for these kind of newer releases. Normally, you know, I make notes as I'm going along as I'm watching it at home, make notes on the structure and then run through it kind of scene by scene. Can't do that here because I didn't have a note pack open to note every scene in the Cine World. Yeah, we'll talk a bit about production, we'll talk a bit about 2025 in film, how it's looked so far this year, and hopefully not repeat too much from the Jurassic World Rebirth episode,

and then get into the film, run through it a little bit with kind of less structure than normal and give our thoughts on it, I reckon. Has that sound? Yep. So Mission Impossible, the final reckoning came about after, in 2019, Tom Cruise announced that the 7th and 8th Mission Impossible films would be shot back to back. Now that didn't end up happening, presumably because of COVID, because of there was disruption to the Hollywood labour industry with the writer strike and the other strikes in Hollywood. That didn't happen. They ended up shooting Dead Reckoning Part 1

and then going back to shoot Final Reckoning. And I actually heard, and you put in your notes, Christopher McCrory said that the plan for Final Reckoning changed after Dead Reckoning came out. I heard this on Blank Check podcast, where they were talking about 28 years later, and they happened to mention that the plan submission impossible final reckoning changed. I'm not sure on the specifics of that.

I'm not sure what plot elements changed. But, yeah, they certainly did do some adjustments after seeing the reception towards dead reckoning. Yeah, and then they filmed it in 2022, filming in Malta, in South Africa, in Norway. They filmed aboard the USS George H.W. Bush, which is a US Navy aircraft carrier. And it's something that we'll probably get into when we're talking about the film I find interesting is the presence of this aircraft carrier actually

is kind of fascinating to me because this film feels a lot more militaristic than the other ones to me. You know, the apparatus of kind of like the American military and espionage it's always been floating around these films, of course it has. There's something about this one though

where it just feels a little bit more, it's leaning on it especially heavily here I think and I find that interesting as a kind of final well allegedly for now final entry yeah I have more on that and the politics of that

which we can get into later but just in terms of production you know it's notable that this is a production that has worked hand in hand with the US military like you know Marvel films do this Marvel films work with the U.S. Air Force and other big blockbusters, you know, obviously get consultants from U.S. military and work closely with the U.S. military. Here they've clearly worked with the U.S. Navy to get aboard the aircraft carrier

and to film scenes in and around it. It's just part of this tying up of the Hollywood industrial complex with the military industrial complex that takes place these days. Marvel films often get a lot more criticism for it than this has received, for example. I don't think I've heard anyone criticise this film being too militaristic and jingoistic. Well, that's the thing. It kind of slips under the radar a little bit. I mean, I think the Transformers films get criticised a lot for it. There's a film that I'll compare this to that got criticised for it.

But, yeah, it's an odd one. Yeah, so this came out in May, 2025, at its premiere in Tokyo. before coming out worldwide. It was also screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Interestingly, earlier this year. Yeah, I mean, normally we run through the box office for the year

we're looking at, and I'll do that, but this is a box office in flux because we're recording partway through 2025. This episode's coming out in 2025. There's some potential behemoths on the horizon. Yeah, so I was going to ask, you know, what has, what does

2025 look like to you? as a film critic so far. It's an interesting. I mean, like, if you start with the... If you start with kind of like, at the time that we're recording, right, what the big box office numbers are. It's a bit of a strange one, actually, right? Because there's two massive movies. Why don't I run through the box office and then we'll discuss...

Run through it, run through it, because there's a few things that just jump out at me as you know um odd and i think they're worth commenting on so when you do it or give a rundown of it and we'll go from there so highest grossing films of 2025 with the caveat that this year is still ongoing so this could change nejar two at number one a Minecraft movie at number two Lilo and Stitch number three mission possible final reckoning at number four detective Chinatown 1900 captain america brave new world thunderbolts asteris How to Train Your Dragon, Sinners, and then Final Destination Blood Lions at number 10. So, it's a weird one. It's really weird.

I think this is probably one of the first, the first kind of like box offices we've looked at. Well, it's not the first one, but I think it's really one of the key examples of, because I'm looking here at worldwide box office, right? And the amount of money that has been made by the how to train your dragon, live action inverted remake and the Lilon Stitch live action

inverted commas remake is incredible right and that's a real sort of you know because we've spoken a lot understandably right across you know the xenopod the dynopod and this about

you know Hollywood and frankly audiences love of sequels right It's a real thing. We see this time and time again. You can even see it here. Not particularly well-received Captain America, Brave New World, but Staelan made quite a lot of money. Probably not enough money for the absurd budget that film, but, you know, whatever. It's a big film, right? But one thing we haven't really touched on, because we haven't really had the context for needing to do so, is the concept of the reboot, right? you know like because even the alien, like of the films that we've spoken

about, the closest things that have hewed to it have been kind of like you know, some of the later alien films and Jurassic World Yeah, but they were still sequels. Yeah, right? But they were still sequels. They still kind of like existed as part of the

contour is these things, right? And these, this is a real trend going on right now, right? If you go further down the list, you can get Snow White, which is the same thing. It's like, you know, this live action, action remake of an animated classic. That's a real thing that's kicking around, right?

And I think we've passed over in the past things like, you know, the Beast Re-Make, Lion King, the Jungle Book, I think, was another one. Like, you know, there's a lot of these things kicking around. That's been a real trend, I would say, over the last maybe 10 years or so, as we're speaking. You know, people seem to be cynical about sequels or say they are, but this is kind of the new trend. We're going to remake and, you know, and it's kind of something you see across different media as well. I see it a lot. I don't game a lot these days, but I see this a lot in computer games, you know.

I remember playing Final Fantasy. Seven is like a, you know, 10, 11 year old, and now there's like a three-part remake of it or something. Yes, that's a trend that we've not spoken about. It's very evident in some of those films there. Yeah, I think they made all the Resident Evil films, Resident Evil games again as well. of upgraded them and, you know, re-release them. But yeah, it's certainly a thing that, I don't know, reflects a certain arrested development, maybe, in Hollywood, if not in wider culture. I mean, I'd honestly say in wider culture.

I think it's seen in audiences, you know. I mean, people can turn around and say, we want new original stuff, like all they want, but then, you know, the Lion King live action slash CGI remake, It's like, what was it, 1.6 billion or something, you know. Yeah. You know. So earlier this year, 28 years later came out,

and I've seen a lot of discourse on the 28 days later franchise subreddit with people talking about how it's not what they wanted, it's not what they expected, because they wanted a more nostalgic, more, I don't know, remake of 28 days later. And for my money, we're not talking about 28 years later now, But for my money, Danny Boyle has made something more innovative and more original in 28 years later, which audiences are, which fans of the franchise are upset about. Yeah, which I find interesting, right, because, like, something I've criticised other film franchises, I've mainly criticised the Marvel's cinematic universe with this, is when it was going through that period where, like, frankly, you could put up, like, Spider-Man clapping two symbols together for two hours and it would probably make a billion dollars, right? I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'd even stop short with calling it a particularly good film, but it is an interesting film, like,

it's trying to do stuff that I'm kind of like, ah, okay, that's interesting you went that route, and it's like, it makes it more interesting, but, you know, clearly a lot of people don't, don't want that. They want the sugar rush of recognising things. And I think we saw that with alien Romulus to a certain extent, actually, in terms of how that was received versus how we spoke about it. Yes, no, agreed.

But yeah, in terms of 2025 so far, I don't think it's been a particularly memorable year for film. So, I, you know, there's a few things here that stand out to me. Sinners is terrific. I think that's

of the kind of like things that have made a splash, a big hit in 2025 so far I think that's the one that kind of like stands out to me I think yeah and talking like UK release dates I think there's other films I think I've probably liked more but in terms of that balance

between kind of being interesting but also being you know big budget and glossy and stuff I think Sinners is probably to stand out yeah and maybe I'm being unfair on the year I'm saying this because I fill out my favourite films of the year list as I go through the year so I don't forget things and I currently have five in out of a top ten and we're about halfway through the year so that's about on track really and then a lot will come out during kind of

festival season and in the lead up to the Oscars to expand that so maybe it's not as bad as I'm thinking but yeah I mean this is a context in which Final Reckoning comes out so like I say we'll run through the plot a little bit but it won't be as detailed as normal and we'll we'll discuss our thoughts and everyone listening should be grateful for that for this two hour and 50 minute film yeah not to prejudice what I'm going to say

about that but anyway yeah uh-huh yeah the franchise inflation is in full effect because I think this is the longest the longest Mission Impossible film so we we start with I mean the film starts two months after the last film

So Ethan is in hiding, he has the key from the last film and he gets a briefing from Angela Bassett, who is playing Sloan, who is now the president, who used to be in the previous films, the head of the CIA. I don't know what Tom Cruise, I don't know what Ethan Hunt has been doing for two months. At the end of Dead Reckoning Part 1, it certainly seemed like they were on track to go straight to this submarine. They had all the information, they had the key. and instead Tom Cruise hangs around for two months.

The tone of this briefing is also, it is different to the other ones in the series. It's very sort of like, please Jesus, emerge from your cave and roll back the stone. You know, it's a little, you know, we'll get into that a little bit, I think. But yeah, it's very, you know, and it uses it as an opportunity to kind of like, you know, clumsily kind of insert footage from the previous films. in a sort of, you know, previously on Mission Impossible type way, and it's, it's very, it's very weird. Yeah, I mean, I'll just, I'll just say it up front. This first hour of the film is maybe the shonkiest hour of Blockbuster filmmaking that I think I can remember, or that I've ever seen. There are repeated unnecessary flashbacks, like, through the entire franchise, you know, we go back through Ethan's entire history.

repeated information the dialogue is shocking and that it feels like over 50% of this first hour is either an extreme close-up or a Dutch angle and it feels like an unsuccessful attempt to ape Brian de Palmer

which was more subtle even in the last film even in Dead Reckoning Part 1 but here this first hour is shocking really yeah it's a bit strange It's almost like it's trying to create this kind of, like, air of escalating, this air of escalating panic, right?

Particularly as we start to get into kind of like what the entity is causing nation states to do thing, which we'll get into. But it does have, I will say, the same issue that I think that attempt in Dead Reckoning did, which is it's trying to do it, but it doesn't, you know, this creation of like that De Palma, like, paranoia with the Dutch angles and sweaty close-ups and stuff but it doesn't have the patience it doesn't have the patience it's in a rush to kind of like deliver all this exposition so we can

move on it's not it's not a carefully crafted way to do it and I think that was clear in the last film I think it's kind of been dialed up to 11 in the first bit of this film though yeah yeah Brian Taloico

wrote a review for Roger Ebert.com where he said that this movie forgets so much of what this makes this franchise memorable in an unwieldy and truly clunky first hour that plays like the longest previously on you've ever seen repetitive and pretentious to the point of parody it's the worst segment in the entire franchise and i have to agree like this first hour like to say maybe the worst hour of a blockbuster film i've ever seen it's it's dreadful i don't know if i'd go that far i think it but I think it's definitely the shankiest hour in this franchise.

Yes. Like by some distance, I would say. And it's funny, I was watching a short interview that Christopher Macquarie did about how the reaction to Dead Reckoning changed how they approached this film, right? And there was a lot of talk about kind of like getting stuff out of the way, right? and I just I'm going to come back to that I'm going to come back to that because I think there are certain things they've done with this film because Dead Reckoning kind of got

you know it didn't make as much money as he would have wanted I wouldn't say it was a great response it wasn't a bad one I don't think but like it wasn't that same sort of like you know the rapturous reception that the previous three films effectively got and I'm a profound

I think he's this has really been over This has really been overthought, and they've kind of cocked it up, frankly. Yeah. So within the context of the film, we get a lot of exposition in this first hour, including Erica. Erica Sloan tells us that the entity has taken control of digital systems worldwide. And this is causing massive financial instability across the world. a kind of

doomsday cult has arisen to do the entity's bidding and to usher in this new age led by AI and the entity is seizing control one by one of global nuclear systems of the, what, what is it, seven countries that have nuclear

nuclear systems? Something like that. I don't know. I stop being attention, but I think however many it is, You, you know, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, the States, the UK, France, like, you know, they're all, they're all there. I think something that's worth noting at this point is, what I was quite interested by here is that they do actually explicitly name the countries, right? It's not obfuscated away, right? No, I did appreciate that.

Yeah, which I find interesting, because that's not something that these films have leaned into before. Yeah, it's interesting that this comes out in the context of about, what, two weeks after this film came out, Israel started bombing Iran to kind of deter it from developing nuclear weapons, allegedly. Yeah, bombing their nuclear development sites in Iran, like I say, allegedly. But Israel is fully represented in this film as a nuclear power, along with, like you say, Pakistan. India, the US, the UK. So yeah, there is this disconnect immediately for me in the way that the world is shown to be falling into apocalypse. The world is shown, we're told that the world is falling into apocalypse. That's all these doomsday cults. Ethan walks through, he walks from Trafalgar Square underground station through Trafalgar Square to wherever he's going and there are crowds of

people, you know, chanting and angry and blah, blah, blah. But he's walking through London to go to a black tie event at the US Embassy. And I just felt this disconnect between, you know, the world is plunging into chaos, and yet there's still black tie events at major embassies. Like, it never felt to me like the world was actually ending. There was no kind of material depiction of the world ending, over than these montages of people saying, yeah, usher in AI, this

Scottish man that they go to several times. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that, yes, of course one of the most prominent doomsday cultors is obviously Scottish man. That's, yeah, that was another entry in the litany of

Scottish people being mad or otherwise in film. And actually not the series first one, because of course like Sean Ambrose in Mission Possible too, do Grace Scott was using his own accent, right? So, you know.

What do you not like about Scottish people, Tom? Huh? Yeah, so he goes to this Black Tie event, which I don't understand why it's happening, and he meets up with Grace, Haley Atwell, from the last film. He gets captured

by Gabriel, the mysterious Gabriel, and Gabriel gives a lot of exposition again about the power of the entity, and actually about the rabbit's foot from Mission Impossible 3 because it turns out the rabbit's foot was not as we assumed a biological

chemical weapon it was an artificial weapon this this choice is fascinating it was the seeds of what would become the entity okay

which of course I find this Where do I even start with this, right? First of all, there is something quite amusing to me that it just obliterates the, you know, the JJ Abrams mystery box, like, pretty early on, right? It's like, you know what, you know what, that little mystery box you set up from nearly 20 years ago,

fuck you, it's gone, done. Right, you know, I find that like endlessly amusing to me. In the same way that there's like so many strands from Force Awakens, like, that Abram set up, and then just got absolutely shit-canned later on. There's something just quite funny about it, but it's just, did he watch Mission Impossible 3? Because, like, you know, it was clear, like, it's not just me, right? It was clearly set up as being, like, some sort of biological or chemical thing.

Yeah, I mean, it had, like, biological and chemical symbols on it. Yeah, like, he's running around kind of, like, the street to, like, not want it to break open or get run over or something, presumably because he thinks that, you know, like, are we saying that it was just like a frickin' USB stick in there? Like, what are we, you know, like, what we're talking about? I, I, it's a weird, it's a weird moment. And I think it's like, it's really, like, we've already had, at this point, the flashbacks during the briefing to kind of like Ethan Hunt's previous exploits. And now we've got this, where it's like, oh, you know, the mission, the mission possible three rabbits.

its foot. That was a thing. It all links together. And it's going and I'm sitting here watching it's going, oh no, it's doing it. It's doing the remember Barry's approach. Like, that's what it's doing. It's been

wanting to do this for about, or more accurately, Christopher McQuarrie has been wanting to do this for like three films at this point and are finally going full hog on it. There's more graceful ways to incorporate it. Like maybe the entity managed to get hold of the rabbit's foot and

use it as a biological weapon or threaten to use it as a biological weapon. For example, Gabriel seems to have access to unlimited nuclear bombs. He had a nuclear bomb in Dubai Airport in the last one. He's got at least two nuclear bombs here, one that

Luther deactivates and one in the climax. One of those could have been the rabbit's foot, but like, where is he getting these? It's like the computer game rucksack, but for just nuclear bombs. Yes. He always just has a nuclear bomb at his disposal.

Yeah. Israel don't want to be bombing Iran. They want to be bombing Gabriel. Actually, you know, so he has access to so many nuclear bombs across this is dead wrecking. His face should be up on that screen. He flags of the different countries, actually. The seven nuclear powers

and Gabriel just Essie Morales' his face just right up there. with that like something like shit eating evil grin should we talk about Gabriel now because we're never going to get any more information he's never going to play any more significant role yeah I do something else I want to say

about the whole rabbit's foot thing but yeah let's talk about Gabriel right because I think this little segment he gets here is really his only yeah this is it is like his chunkiest his only actual significant moment I mean he he will reappear at the end for like the final set piece But, I mean, frankly, you could have anybody in that point, at that point in the film.

Yeah, so. Yeah, so Gabriel is played by S.A. Morales from the last film. Nicholas Holt was originally cast, but he had a scheduling conflict and meant he had to drop out. So they cast S.A. Morales instead. When they cast him, Christopher McCrory decided that the similarity in age between Tom Cruise and S.A. Morales meant that it was a good opportunity to say that they had met earlier in life. to tie Gabriel into Ethan Hunt's backstory in a way. And so we get these flashbacks in this film and in Dead Reck in Part 1 of Gabriel kind of looming over a woman and Ethan is screaming

and it's a mystery as to what happened there. And it's a mystery that is never resolved. Like they just don't go back to it in this film. It's incredibly frustrating. We never find out who Gabriel is or who this woman was. Yeah. And, you know, so that interview I referenced before for Christopher Coy, I watched again, he actually talks about this, right? And basically, one, the justification, so there's a couple of things that I find kind of fascinating about this, right?

One is the film's sort of enthusiasm to tie itself back to any, any previous mission possible film, possible, through whatever means and whatever tenuous connection, more of which we will come to. later in this discussion, except its own fucking predecessor. Like, it's utterly bizarre, right? And one, one phrase, so the guy interviewing Christopher Quarry, he asked, he kind of alludes to this. And Christopher McQuarrie actually says something, which is really quite really. Everything you have questions about in the movie, we shot the shit out of it, right? And he's kind of alluding to this idea that kind of like, you know, they need to make

difficult choices about what worked. and he's talking about, you know, what they did differently with this film in response to Dead Reckoning Part 1, right? And basically, one of the justifications he gives for not including more of the Ethan Gabriel, and I think the woman's name is Marie. I think she is actually, she does actually have a name, right? Don't quote me on that. That might be incorrect, because, I mean, within the text of the film, it's completely irrelevant, right? Was that the film was delayed, right? You know, because you said it was meant to be short back to back. it wasn't in the end, and quote-unquote, the greater distance

from Dead Reckoning Part 1, right? But in the very same interview, he talks about like, you know, sound design decisions and wanting it to work for whole media, right? Where presumably, there's not going to be that same distance from Dead Reckoning

part 1. So it's very odd and contradictory, right? I personally think they probably just got themselves tied up in knots and didn't, and just didn't end up doing it but the thing that makes me laugh about this is he's saying sort of like well we didn't want to include it and ultimately it doesn't

and he's talking about how it ultimately doesn't have any effect on the film and I agree with him right I think this story you know if you look at this with Dead Reckoning Part 1 in here you don't need that right you don't need Ethan's backstory here and I think this is one of the to talk about modern trends I think this obsession

with backstory is one of the sort of like things that really winds me up up. But the thing that I find frustrates me greatly about this was, it was you that introduced it, Christopher. You're the one who put it in dead reckoning. Yeah. That was you.

Like this is not a you know, this is not like a J.J. Abrams doing the Force Awakens and leaves a load of stuff dangling that Ryan Johnson has no interest in continuing, right? That's not the situation here. You made that film. That was your

work. What are you talking about? It's weird. I don't, there's something very strange and contradictory going on here, and it feels like a film that has just been grossly overthought, you know? Like, I'll make more general comments at the end, but I found that, that strange, that strange, because he's clearly trying to explain why, but there's holes in it everywhere. Yeah, it comes across as both overfought and underplanned. Like, like you say, you wrote this, you know, you wrote it into the first film in this two-parter. It just seems like you didn't plan for it at all. Like, you planned for the set pieces, sure. But then, like I said, for the last film,

you just connected a story between them in a way that doesn't really work or make sense. You know, like, I don't need a five or ten-minute sequence. It's like a flashback that explains what happened between the two of them. But it's just, it is not referenced at all. Yeah. I don't know who Gabriel is. I don't know.

what his backstory is. I don't know what kind of role he has. Like, why does he want to work for the entity? What is his motivation? What does he want? Where do he keep getting these nuclear bums? I mean, the thing is, right? The thing that I think is the worst

thing about it is, like, when he appears in dead reckoning, right? It unsettles Ethan Hunt, right? That's the thing, right? His presence unsettles him. But in terms of kind of like, you know, one of the whole things is like, you know, friendship, character, oh, it's got an emotional punch. Yeah, but you never find out

why this guy unsettles him so much. Yeah, that's an interesting character. I know why he unsettles me. He unsettles me, because for anybody who goes to the Odeon frequently, they have a little introduction where it's like the film is about to start and there's like a magician guy who wears the top hat looks scarily like Ezi Morales.

That was a confusing thing to see before the film. So that's why he unsettles me. I have no idea why he unsettles Ethan Hunt. This has reminded me of something I forgot, which is before the film even starts there is a creepy intro from Tom Cruise himself I'm glad we're coming back to this there's a creepy intro from Tom Cruise himself

where he's not quite looking down the barrel of the camera but he says we made this for you this is the way it's meant to be seen we did this for you that just feeds into the kind of messianic figure of Tom Cruise please love me audience

the kind of savior of cinema mythos that has been built up around Tom Cruise I didn't like it I found it very strange that it was weird I it yeah I felt like I felt like you know I mean I don't want to go too much into the extra textual stuff about Tom Cruise because we did plenty of that in particularly the last episode

but it did feel like he was then about to start talking to me about thetons or something you know it felt like you know that I don't know if you've seen peep show when sort of like jazz goes to kind of like a church of Scientology as a joke and then they kind of like lure him into a conversation but like it felt like that it felt like that to me I was like

what's your game here Cruz you know but yeah it was weird particularly when he said and also he did that thing where it's kind of like you know the way it was meant to be seen and even as somebody who loves cinemas loves going to the cinema and I think the

theatrical experience is something to be preserved and courage, it really fucking pisses me off when people say that. It's like, you know, it's, you know, okay, so every other viewing of it is invalid. Okay, all right. Yeah, exactly.

I think of... Go, yeah, I would say go take a long walk off a short pier, but you'd probably film it and release it in cinema, so, you know, anyway. That would be quite a stunt. Yeah. That's why they're making the stunt category at the Oscars. Yeah, I did,

I was talking to someone the other day who speculated that the whole reason they are making the stunt category at the Oscars is to give Tom Cruise an Oscar. Yeah. Like, it is being designed for that. Yeah. It would be funny if it doesn't happen. I have quite, I have some quite

controversial views about the idea of a stunt category at the Oscars, but, you know, I'll keep them to myself. That's by the bye. For now. So, after all this exposition from Gabriel, They go to somewhere else, I think it's Austria, to recruit Gabriel's former assassin, Paris, from Clementeiv, and Briggs, who is the guy who was hanging out with Shea Wiggum in the last film. On the way, Shea Wiggum is Briggs.

Yes, no, you're right, yes. No, quite right. How could I forget Briggs' name? How could we forget these incredibly memorable characters? But after Gabriel gets away, Ethan finds his little coffin thing that he uses to communicate with the entity and kind of directly plug into it. And so Ethan gets straight into it and he gets visions of this nuclear apocalypse

and the entity says, I need access to the doomsday vault in South Africa. This vision of global thermonuclear war genuinely pretty good genuinely pretty chilling that that worked well for me but this is like a 30 second moment in this first hour yeah i think the thing that like it's another example of kind of like there's the kernel of something decent in here you know like because like the big the dude go big on the whole like truth is vanishing thing and you know this is this little sequence kind of it feels like it has that edge of silliness that these films should have you know like him descending into this coffin like I think in the phrase is like some sort of like digital nozzerato type thing like it's weird

in a sort of like engaging in slightly silly way and it's like it kind of breaks through the portentousness that this film has had up to this point and frankly we'll continue to have after this point with the one brief exception which we'll get to

in a minute but it's still a bit of a strange a bit of a strange thing, right? Because by having it interact directly and they've done the rabbit's foot, you're kind of partially to blame for this Ethan thing going on. It actually had a weird echo of Avengers

Age of Ultron to me. Yeah. You know, kind of like, you know, and Ultron being ultimately the fault of Tony Stark. Like, it's weird. It's another one of these instances where these films have like an echo of something that's going on

in another blockbuster. But usually, usually it has this sort of edge of fun and silliness which you know brings something different here it doesn't yeah like it does have that like portentousness apart from kind of like the kind of physical setup here but it's it's a strange one it is a strange one yeah I mean age of Ultron is a good comparison

because the entity the enemy in that film is an AI is a robot but he feels more physicalized I mean partly that's because he has a silly James Spader robot body but he feels more of a threat he feels more omnipresent he feels more able to take things over here the end the I said this in the last film but the entity still doesn't feel like a threat you know we're continually told how it's rewriting history how it's rewriting true from blah blah blah but we don't see it you know as I was walking home from the cinema I was walking down a

a street in Glasgow and I saw an advert for a pizza place and it used an image that I recognized immediately as generative AI like it had that that hallmark of the quality of the image you know what I mean there's a certain style there's certain quality to the lines

and that got me thinking about this idea of AI slowly seeping into our lives like slowly appearing in like Google results and in adverts for pizza places and that's interesting but the film isn't interested in that kind of insidious creeping into the world

it's barely interested in its own premise of the entity overturning objective reality and creating lies throughout the world you know we're just told that the entity has taken over and that's it that's all we see of it and that's the thing it kind of wants to have its cake and eat it because it wants to because I would argue it alludes to that right but that's all it ever does right because you know the stuff about kind of like you know truth is vanishing and I think after he you know after I think it's like I can't remember it's a rewarding I think it's a warning given to him

before he goes into this kind of like you know sarcophagus to communicate with it type thing and it says it will change you right there is this idea and this is what I mean by kind of like there is the kernel is something more interesting here maybe it's a bit too lofty for a mission possible film but like you know, that's neither here nor there, where it's like, this slow creep, right? This idea of the slow creep of artificial intelligence, and more particularly like machine learning, I think, and like the interaction between the two, that kind of results in us abandoning solidarity, and, you know, feeding paranoia and, you know, oppositional thinking, right? That there's always an enemy within.

And that's what's interesting about this Doomsday cult that they kind of deal with very briefly, right? It was spoken before about how kind of like there's avatars for the deep state in previous films, right? And I think particularly Rogue Nation is the one where I was talking about it. But, like, that's kind of what they got going on here. but they don't do anything with it this time, right? And I think that that's a, this idea of kind of like something which removes our, like, or makes us minimize and ignore our humanity and solidarity could be an interesting thing, right? And how that plays up against kind of like this, you know, messianic do-gooding hero.

Like, that could be kind of an interesting comparison going on there. but it doesn't do anything with it. It goes the sky net but duller route. That is what it does. I mean, essentially, it leans into basically what happened, or, you know, I mean, ultimately, spoiler alert, it is avoided. But ultimately, what it's building towards is the end of Terminator 3, right? We've done this before.

This has already happened. And it's an odd one, because it wants to have its cake and it's, I need it, It's kind of alluding to this deeper idea which, you know, would have more impact on characters. But at the end of it, it just goes back to flags on a map and, you know, which nuclear missiles are under our control and which aren't. It's, yeah, it doesn't have the conviction to stick with it. It wants something easy. Yeah. It never really feels properly dealt with.

It points to this theme, but never really works with it. And it's frustrating because it could be interesting. So, yes, he communicates with the entity. But then he has to rush back to where Lufor is. Lufor has been secluded himself designing a poison pill, which is malware that will rewrite the entity or whatever, make it vulnerable. So he runs back to Lufor, but Gabriel has stolen the poison pill and has trapped Lufa with a bomb, a nuclear bomb underlund.

that he has to diffuse. So Lufa sacrifices himself to minimize the blast to ensure it wouldn't go off, but the DNA is still go off and blah, blah, blah. And Ethan is sad because his friend has died. His friend Vingrams who has been in every one of these films. Luther also appears to be dying of something else unrelated to that,

like he has a hospital bed in his little lair. So he's dying of two things at once, which again feels like they didn't plan. properly. There's also, is another example of, right, and you alluded to it, in the last film, Macquarie's scripts, or at least his script for this and dead reckoning, they're so overcomplicated. Yeah, they're so, there's too many, there's too many things, right?

And this thing was like, there's a kernel of one that I'll go on to talk about later with this poison pill that Luther has developed, right? but also the fact that he's going to get killed but he's been off the grid and he's also dying so he's going to die anyway so he's okay with it because he's okay with dying because he was dying anyway but he's also okay with it because the lives are so it's oh oh god god just you know like good god just let them have their little friendship moment like why there are so many things here you know it's there's too many elements there's too many elements you mean you know you know you know you know you know you know you know You don't have to fill a two-hour, 50-minute film. You could make a 90-minute film or a two-hour film. You could slim all this down. Yeah. But Ethan is, he turns himself in, I suppose,

and he's taken over to an emergency operation center in the US, where the kind of US intelligence command is meeting. I think it's during the plane ride to there that he has a chat with Shayor Wigam, you know, who plays, Jasper Briggs But he doesn't just play Or does he?

He's not just Briggs, that name we all remember because Ethan reveals that he's Jim Phelps Jr. He's John Voight's son John Voigt was in the first film and Shera Wigam is playing Jim Phelps Jr.

Okay? I The funny thing, right, the comparison I've made to do it, so I elude, I chose in the written review I did of this to not reveal that he was Jim Phelps Jr. Nor reveal kind of like who character callbacks were, right? Well, yeah, I do. Such a monumental twist, such a twist that has such an impact on the plot.

Well, you say this, because like after I wrote this review, I put a thing up on Blue Sky, where I was kind of like, I pointed out, like, stupid character reveals, right? and I allude to it in the review. I did Star Trek Into Darkness, right? Spoiler alerts for every film I'm about to mention, by the way, right? Star Trek Into Darkness, you know, when Benedict Cumberbatch is John Harrison, oh no, he's not, he's Cannes, right?

You know, absolutely fucking irrelevant to the film at hand, right? You know, what's significant about the name Cairn in that universe? Like, nothing, nobody cares, right? and then it was done again with Spector where Christoph Waltz is Franz Oberhouser oh man with a shadowy pass oh actually I've taken my mother's name dramatic pause

dramatic pause for the crowd to gasp what's his name Ernst Stavreau Blofeld again doesn't fucking matter within the world of the Daniel just nonsense right and it's the same thing here but just even less consequential right

it's just like at least the name has some residence in this universe but it's like so what yeah like they don't go back to it like they'd set up is kind of like oh is he trying to get revenge on anything is that why he hates him yeah kind of kind of but also it's his job

to be after he's also like he was in the last film he's fine he doesn't want to be his dad yeah that's it that it never comes up again he has no like even more like in some ways it's actually worse than those other two because whilst the name has some residence in

sort of like in film universe the guy himself has absolutely no consequence on this film whatsoever none at all like at least the other ones ended up the main goddamn villains but this absolutely

nothing but no I didn't I didn't do it explicitly in the written review because I put a post up where I put these things up and somebody criticised me because in the alt text I heard that he was Jim Phelps Jr it makes absolutely no difference

this is not a spoiler basically I'm sorry like yeah oh dear it doesn't matter it never comes up again it feels like a reshoot it feels like they just

could have taken this maybe re-shot this scene or shot this scene later and inserted it into the film because it has no impact whatsoever on any of the subsequent plot or character motivation or character beats

and I think is this not the same sequence where he starts playing McCrigger's knife? No, that's later, that's later, but yeah, yeah. I'm getting confused because they're on planes for both of them. Yeah. Yeah, so Ethan is taken to the

emergency operation centre where he meets some characters who will keep flashing back to through the rest of the film. Erica Sloan, the president, Nick Offerman, who is some army general, and that guy from Mind Hunter and Mark Gatis for some reason, and they're

watching out for nuclear weapons facilities across the world slowly being taken over by the entity. Oh, and Kittredge. Kittridge, Henry Cheney is there as well. Which, again, that kind of sums up what the rule of the suburbs where you just go, oh yeah, and he's there too.

Yeah, he's there too. But even needs to convince Sloan to give him an aircraft carrier so he can go to the Sevastopol, which is a submarine that was revealed at the end of the last film, and it seemed like he could have just gone there straight away. Like, that should have been

the mission instead of sitting on it for two months. So he splits up the team and Ethan goes on his own to the aircraft carrier, the US George H.W. Bush, while Grace and Benji and Paris and Degas travel to the Bering Sea to find out the pinpoint location of the Sevastopol, which has sunk into the Arctic Ocean. It's a real shame that they separate Ethan Hunt from the rest of the team for such a long stretches of this film because it even works best when he's part of a team Tom Cruise works best playing off other people

and he's just on his own for such long stretches for going to the aircraft carrier for going to the submarine and he's just completely separate from the rest of the ensemble It's also not good I mean it feels like it's again just splitting up right

because it's not quite the sort of like solo Messiah stuff from Mission Possible 2 where like they're just flat out wasn't a team but like frankly even Mission Possible 3 did this bit better you know yeah like that was that was one of the that was one of the few good things about Mission Possible 3 and they've kind of you know they've not got rid of it completely but it's just mucked it up pretty substantially yeah so even goes to the aircraft carrier uh which takes him to where the submarine is and he dives into the ocean and he goes into the submarine and he meets the commander of the submarine

Trammell Tillman, Milchek from Severance, who is great, who is a breath of fresh air. He's having fun with it. He continually refers to Ethan Hunt as Mister, which is a fun character beat, and he's fantastic. Yeah, I actually wonder if there's a different script of this film where in this kind of like getting access to the kind of military apparatus he needs to get to the Sevastopol, right? I do wonder if there's a version of this that makes greater use of Tremel Tillman because... They should be. Yeah, because one thing that we skipped right past here, because frankly, the film skips right past it, is Hannah Waddingham, right?

Oh yeah, Hannah Waddingham. Is she a captain or an admiral? She's in charge of the aircraft carrier anyway, right? And completely wasted, really. I mean, she doesn't really get a chance to do anything. So I do wonder if there is a version of this where there is more with Tremel Tillman because it feels like he knows what sort of... There's something about his performance here where I think he knows what type of film this should be. Right? There's a fizz and an energy to his line deliveries that is absent just about everybody else in the entire film. Yeah. Like he He manages to blend his performance between kind of the fun of a Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol and the serious kind of submarine espionage of a Crimson Tide or a Hunt for Red October.

He brings that blend of performance, which no one else does, and which the film itself can't reconcile. Yeah, it's weird, and I don't, and I don't want to overblow it, right? Because he doesn't have a huge role here, but to me, it kind of, It just says so much that he sticks out in this film. And that shouldn't be the case, right? It really shouldn't be, right? That sort of performance shouldn't stand out as much as it does, right? And I'm not trying to play, like, his skills as an actor,

because particularly I've just finished the second season seven, so I think he's superb. But it's just a case of the rest of the film should be up to that level and tone. and it's not No he's great So meanwhile the rest of the team travelled to an island in the Bering Sea Which is home to a cold water And naval sonar hour away

That will tell us where the Swastopol is And there they meet Bill Dunlow Who is a former CIA analyst Who was the guy that was sick in a bin In Mission Impossible When Ethan Hunt broke into the CIA So he has been exiled here He's played by Rolf Saxon

And he's terrific like surprise MVP of the movie he's he's fantastic he imbues bill dunla with such character and warmth and humanity he is great and part of that is because of how he interacts with his wife tepisa so tepisa is an indigenous arctic woman she's played by lucy tulugachuk and she is also terrific like they have a real chemistry and like a real warmth to their relationship. And it feels like has an actual relationship that is meaningful, that is emotional. There's scenes together that made me tear up between these two in a way I wasn't for any other relationship in the film. Yeah, I think, and it's interesting, right, because his presence here is effectively one of these glorified callbacks. Yeah. You know,

like it genuinely is but the thing is his performance here as Dunlow is really much better than this film has any right to ask of him it is by far in the way in my view

the probably the best performance in the film like so I spoke about Tremel Trillman I think that's a really great performance but it is pretty fleeting right but Donlo kind of like hangs around for an extended period as does his wife right yeah and the dynamic that the two of them have it feels like one of the few kind of like characters in this case in character dynamics when you're talking about the two of them that actually kind of bring some sort of personal emotional stakes that are worth paying attention to right like you i found myself actually concerned about one of them being left without the other if something was to happen and kind of like you know what was going to happen like i found myself caring about that

And for characters that have just been introduced halfway through this film, right, effectively, right? Because, I mean, you know, Dundle, I mean, the last time he appeared was in Mission Impossible 1, who was just a guy, really, is remarkable, right? And I think that again comes down to the performances there. This is actually the part of the film that I actually think works the best, to be honest.

Yeah. Is this role in that relationship? Yeah, he is terrific, and she is great. And it's remarkable how much, character they both get from their appearance. They're fantastic. And yeah, she's wonderful as well. She's the executive director for the Nanavut Independent Television Network. She does the whole film speaking in Unuktitut, which is an indigenous language in the Arctic. And she's terrific. And they have a great relationship that really plays well on screen. You know,

Bill Dunlow gives a little speech when he meets up with Ethan later in the film about how Ethan actually saved him and how he's the happiest he's ever been, how he's met Tapisa and forged his life together, even in the cold of the Arctic. It's tremendous. And the funny thing is, there's an echo of something here, again, which could have been better, right? Because a phrase that this film leans on a lot, and it's one that I actually quite, from a philosophical point of view actually quite like, right, is this idea that, you know, our lives are the sum of our choices, right? This is something that kind of comes up again and again, right? And to an extent, and I don't know, it's maybe something to do with, like, my own personal background

here, and that, you know, I am now, you know, not to turn this into the gym podcast, happily married, I have a wonderful daughter, but frankly, it comes from a period in life, where I was still very fortunate, but kind of like, you know, I don't think from like a sort of like professional kind of like path, I don't think it was really what I ended up doing during that period. I ended up pursuing a PhD that I didn't finish. Looking back on it, I don't think that was particularly worth doing, right? But as a result of that, I met my now wife. I now, as a result, have my daughter. Like, you know, so it's a case of this idea that, you know, if you look at any one thing that happened to you in isolation, it can be kind of like, you know, or welling are not great, but ultimately it's about where you end up. And he's kind of embodying that, right? Because there's the assumption in the film that he will kind of hate Ethan because he destroyed his career and had him exiled. And he's the complete opposite. It's like, well, yeah, okay, that wasn't great. But, you know, look at me now, right? I would be somewhere different. And I don't know if I would want to be somewhere different. I love where I

am now. And there's something about that and that relationship and that callback, which actually works with this idea like, you know, our lives are to some of our choices. There's a really interesting idea there, but again, it doesn't really kind of go into it.

And I feel like that it could have been the kind of emotional core of the film. Right? But it's not. It kind of like jettisons it. Well, yeah. You know, it doesn't really do anything with it. No, it's not intended to be the emotional core of the film

but for me it absolutely was like it's the far of the film I felt most strongly about even if the film is clearly positioning Ethan and his friends as core to it, even more so yeah I think it's notable that

it's this original character by this new actor newish to the franchise that I'm glomming on to like he's great Tremel Tillman's great I want new characters I want something new.

But yeah, at this CIA base, Bill Dunlose there, he has memorized the coordinates of the Savastopol, because, I don't know, Carrie Alwheres came to destroy the tapes and whatever, and he knew it was significant, so he memorized it and blah, blah, blah. And then the Russians turn up, Russian Special Forces turn up to also get the coordinates.

It doesn't really matter. But I mention it only because the Russians turn up to get the coordinates, and Benji says, but you can't get there without the key. And then Benji says, oh you must have a duplicate key and I'm like are you fucking kidding me they spent the whole last film

in this unique key that was the only one in the world and you're defusing that immediately by saying yeah they have a duplicate which we don't even see on screen I think it's also worth noting here that the Russian specials they're all dressed up like

fucking storm troopers in this scene yeah so there is something about the politics of this film that feels very regressive that gets back into a kind of Cold War era you know US versus the Russians

frame where the Russians are just straightforwardly the bad guys and you know there's not really discussion of their nuclear arsenal it just gets taken over by the entity same with China and Pakistan and whatever

but there is this this kind of jingoistic like you said at the top of the episode militaristic aspect of this film that hasn't been in previous mission impossible films like it's a lot more involved

with US military apparatus and intelligence apparatus so you know there's generals there's aircraft carrier commanders there's submarine commanders along with like you know previous films have kind of like focused on a we'll figure it out

type approach like you know we'll do what we need to do to get it done right from the start here in order to achieve what he needs to do Not only does he want, but he needs access to the US military apparatus. He cannot achieve this mission without it, basically. He can't be rogue anymore, despite what the film says about how rogue he is. He's not, because he needs an aircraft carrier.

He needs transport to a submarine. And in terms of politics, it's a little incoherent. The film starts by saying, you know, this is uncharted territory. Nation states don't exist. They don't matter anymore in the face of the entity. but then nation-states become super important and there's a load of flags of nations on nuclear missiles all through the latter half of the film

and it just feels very US-centric and very nation-stated you can't have it in both ways we can't have the world uniting in the face of this global threat and also the US being at war with... But also we're not and we all need to bomb each other proactively. the Russians are the enemy

they won't work with us they have duplicate keys and blah blah blah I was very frustrated when they said they had a duplicate key is I think my point because it's it makes it feels like it makes the whole last film redundant you know

and why should I get emotionally invested in any of this if things that I get told are uniquely important just aren't it's also it's also the latest thing of there are two

many mcuffins in this film. Yeah, so we've got the... There's poison pills. There's keys. There's a podcova. Whatever the fuck a pod cova is, right? This is what I think Ethan is off to retrieve whilst this sequence you're talking about is going

on, right? It's just like just stop, I do not care. Like, there's too many. There's too many. Yeah. Ethan is on the submarine. He fends off an assassin. Doesn't matter. It feels like they needed a fight aboard the submarine and so went back and wrote into the earlier

part of the film that there's a doomsday cult that means that there can be someone on the submarine to game doesn't matter not exciting i guess i think the key reason for this and actually this is probably the which i didn't know in the the review i wrote but i find it it did stand out to me was it feels like not only did they need a fight scene but they needed a fight scene with tom cruise and his underwear uh yeah i guess so i feel like there's a lot more kind of like foregrounding of Cruz's physique in this film for some reason

and there's something there about kind of like... Well yeah we talked on previous episodes about the kind of aging body, the aging hero and how that's represented he's not a muscle man but he's well built especially for his age yeah

and as it's foregrounded more here like previously it's been more kind of like demonstrated in the feats that he under takes, whereas here, up until maybe the final set piece, I do think it's actually based a lot more than aesthetics, but which feels like a slight

shift. Yeah, no, I can see that. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what it means, but yeah. So Ethan, talking of his body, climbs into an experimental diving suit and dives down to the Sevastopol, and there is a long sequence on the Sevastopol, on the

submarine, where he's navigating through it, and it's largely doesn't have music, it largely just relies on the sound of him going through the submarine and the bangs and the echoes as he traverses this doomed and capsized submarine. And for me, I was surprised how from this point onwards the film is actually pretty decent. Like it builds to a pretty decent second half that more or less hangs together. And I think it starts at this submarine sequence, which I quite enjoyed.

We have reached our first point where I think you and I will disagree about this film. And I think, judging by what we've said so far, I think we're broadly aligned in our thoughts on kind of the film as a whole, probably. To me, this didn't really work, right? And I have very, so again, in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I didn't talk about this sequence explicitly in that written review. But I did allude to it quite strongly because I have very mixed feelings about this, right? So in terms of kind of like the length of time it is given, and the fact that it's dialogue-free, and it largely kind of relies on, you know, diagetic sound to kind of create the atmosphere. I'm quite impressed with it in that way, right, and it's impressive that a film of this sort has the patience to do this, right? I've criticised Macquarie for not having patience before in terms of kind of like the pacing of his Dutch angle dialogue scenes and this sort of thing, right?

it does here and I find that interesting that it is given time to settle in yeah I think that's why I admire it like just just they're getting rid of the choppy editing and they're just focusing for 15 straight minutes on this on this sequence on this 10 sequence of him going down to the summary yeah right so in that sense I like it like for me this is where the film should have started this should have been the first scene yeah and this is this is where it kind of leads me into a point right that being said I return to the points that we've made before about Macquarie being competent, but lacking for me visual inventiveness. The thing that I will say about this sequence is there is no flair whatsoever to me, right? And as a result,

because we are so deep into this film now that has had so much talking going on, I did find it, maybe to my discredit, extremely dull. Right? Yeah. Because at this point, at this point, basically what my reception to the scene reflects in my view a problem with the pacing of this film, right? And this is why I think your point about kind of like this should have been the opening

of the film, you know, in terms of a set piece or something, yes, I think it probably should have been. Yeah. Right? Because it's it would draw you in, it's intriguing is this the submarine he's on, what's it's getting? It's so clearly where he was going at the end of the last film. Exactly, right?

So, in that sense, I think this could have been a good scene but the lack of the lack of visual flare that is being displayed means it kind of sap should it kind of sapped my energy to be honest at this point because like you've built you've already built up to this right

you've already built up to this and it's kind of indicative to me of this entire film like we're kind of like it would build to a set piece that like fizzed with energy here it's just kind of like it's it's so slow it's so slow and it's a case of like the way they've

constructed this film means that even the things that should be good are just completely drained of energy and yeah so I found it a very frustrating sequence I wanted to like it because I thought it was a brave way to go about doing it but it would have been

more effective had there not been over an hour of interminably dull shit to this point. Well, yeah, I'm thinking of that first hour as well in my reaction to this, because I think after that first hour of incredibly bad

filmmaking, incredibly shunky filmmaking, I was just relieved that we seem to be back on course. Like, oh, Bill Dunlowe's turned up, and he's really surprisingly good. Oh, Tramble Tillman's great. Oh, this submarine sequence is really actually pretty tense and good. So I think I was just

relieved that we seem to be back on on some kind of course. on some kind of track. So Eiffon dives down to the submarine and he retrieves the Podkova, which is basically a hard drive containing the entity's source code. He puts it in a little bag

and he takes it back to the surface. Do not start me on this. I didn't put it in the review because it's a very cinemasin's thing but I'm really like... I'm only mentioning it because it's all in caps in your notes. Yeah, exactly, but that's what I've got.

A Ziploc baggie, right? Let's be clear. Like he's not gone down like, you know, I know, 40 meters or something to like some shipwreck using like a scuba tank. He's got like some science fiction experimental high pressure suit which he's gone down to. He's like a mile underwater and he's been told he can't ascend too quickly or he'll die from the bends and blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and I've got like this thing which is going to avert the apocalypse and you need to destroy something that you've explicitly said as an anti-god, right? thus implying that this thing is God, right? And you brought a Ziploc sandwich bag?

This is mad. It's just, it's just, honestly, I was kind of just like, just like, what, like, seriously, you've not got, like, some little fancy spy gizmo that has, like, positive pressure in it so it doesn't leak or something, like, you know, no, no, I've got, like, a Ziplot baggie, like, the sort that you, like, chuck into your trolley at IKEA, you know, you go past, they've got their little. little half-liter ones. Oh yeah, I'll chuck that in. I might need that when I need to dive down over a mile to a submarine to save the world.

So, yeah, Ethan gets, it gets the pod cover in his little sandwich back, and head... Seriously, I wouldn't trust my phone in that if I went swimming. It's ridiculous. He gets the pod cover, and he rapidly ascends, and it has to go immediately into an inflatable decompression chamber. A word, Podkova, a word that will be used altogether much too frequently in the remainder of this film, frankly. It's far too much. Give me the Podkova, Ethan. We should have called this series the Podkova, but we didn't know.

We didn't know at the time. Exactly. Can we do that retroactively? So the gang, including Dunlow and his wife now head to war. South Africa, because they know that the entity wants to be in the doomsday vault when it unleashes the nuclear weapons, because, for some reason, it's destroying the earth, whatever, and this is the point where Dunlow hands over the knife from the first film that belonged to John Renaud, over to Ethan, because, yeah, what did I write in my

notes immediately afterwards? Yeah, I read, this is pretty good, yeah. Bill Dunlowe provided over the most significant breach of American intelligence in history, but the CIA did let him keep the sole piece of evidence that the attackers left behind, which was nice of them. That's the bit of the exit, which was nice. Yeah. And yeah, I saw another letterbox review that said,

even as Bill Dunlowe's house burns down and all his possessions go up in flames, he rushes to get the knife that 30 years ago dropped. on his desk that he might one day give to the person who was But Simon, if he didn't retrieve the knife, how would they be able to cut in the shot of Ethan looking at it pensively in the trailer?

Yeah. It wasn't even Ethan's knife. It was on his nose. So the plan is to capture the entity as it enters the doomsday vault, they will make it vulnerable using the podcova

and the poison pill. And that will make it vulnerable in such a way that they can trap it in a five-dimensional USB drive. Like some sort of digital ghostbusters that you can't see. Yeah, whatever, dude.

Whatever, McCrory. Writing science fiction is not McCrory's 40, as we discussed in the last episode, and as we get into here. But I do like the rest of this climax. It's fine, which is in contrast to

the rest of the film. So at the bunker, Gabriel ambushes them with another nuclear bomb. That's in the Wikipedia summit, that's not even me being wary about it. It just says he's got another nuclear bomb. Have you ever played the computer game Worms?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it feels like that. He's just like wandering around landscapes and he just pulls out these ridiculously overblown weapons and just lobs of, you know, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's, yeah. Yeah, so he's got another nuclear bomb, but there's a lot of double crosses in this scene

as Gabriel is intercepted by Ethan and his gang who are then intercepted by Kittredge and Jim Phelps Jr, not that it matters. There's a gunfight and Gabriel flees with the poison pill. He's going to... What, he wants the entity to destroy the world? No, he wants to control of the entity.

He wants to control the entity and to do that, he has to have... the poison pill to threaten the entity. Whatever, man. I don't understand. Or something. Yeah. But he says... Yeah, I think he needs the poison pill to threaten the entity,

but he also needs the pod cover to ensure that nobody will destroy the entity or something. If I destroy the doomsday vault, the entity will have nowhere to hide, and it'll have to work for me. Because I think that the idea's meant to be that this is the only place that it could even digitally

hide because everything will be annihilated. Yes, it's a, a, vault, like the seed vault in Norway, where all the digital information in the world is kept in case of nuclear destruction. But he needs to get to a safe distance, so he has a plane waiting, and he says at one point for redundancy, I actually have two planes waiting, which is lazy foreshadowing. There's a lot about redundancy in this film. There's a lot about redundancy. So there's redundant wires in the nuclear bombs. There's a redundant biplane. There's redundant detonators in the nuclear bombs.

But it reads the question to me of why the poison pill was one of a kind and wasn't made to be redundant by a luther. I mean, the cruciform key from the last film turns out to be redundant as well because there's two of those. Yeah. But yes, Gabriel flees with the poison pill. Ethan has the Podkova, Tapisa, and Bill Dunlow defuse the bomb while Paris, Grace and Benjigan will prepare the bunker to trap the entity.

And then we get this sequence, which is in all the trailers and all the posters of Ethan chasing the bad guy in a biplane over, I think they filmed it in the Lake District, actually, over the South African landscape. And Ethan is grabbing onto the biplane and pursuing this villain who is flying through the skies. It would be a more interesting climax if it wasn't just the repeat of fallout, like beat for beat. Yeah, it really is, even in terms of the structure of it as well. where there's two things to defuse back at the vault that need two separate teams, just like in Fallout, and Ethan is chasing a villain who is flying through the air, just like in Fallout.

It was fine. It was, you know, fine as climaxes go, and I think it mostly works through the editing and the action scenes and choreography and whatnot, but it did just feel very repetitive. It just felt like Christopher McCoy is going back to his height, his high point of the franchise which he thinks is the scene

in Fallout, the climax of Fallout. The thing is though, I it's not that it doesn't work, but it's like I think it's missing things which made that climax and Fallout work better, right? Because even the fact that you know, he's crawling around on the outside

of this plane that Ezi Morales is piloting for a decent chunk of it, right? And the fact that they're biplanes and they're incredibly noisy, just make, to me anyway, it made the whole thing so flat, whereas at least in fallout, you heard, like there was something about the dynamics of the two helicopters that allowed more character beats, right? It allowed kind of like more exclamations and kind of like, you know,

looks to pass across the faces of both Henry Cavill and Tom Cruise that made that a more engaging sequence to me. Here it really is just kind of like Esi Morales flying around and Tom Cruise is crawling around on a plane. And it is very physically. impressive, but it's not, I didn't find it as engaging, right? So, I think it largely works. It's not that it doesn't work, but it does feel like, it does feel like a kind of like slightly underwhelming repeat. It's not just, it's not just a copy of the fallout climax. It feels like a slightly underwhelming repeat of it. Yeah, I'll say another element that didn't work as well in this climax is that Ethan is separated at the end of Fallout from the rest of the team.

team and it feels like he is pulling himself away to kind of sacrifice himself to go after Cavill. Whereas here he spent the whole film away from the rest of the team. So it's not a sharp distinction between him going off on his own. He's been on his own this whole film as this kind of messianic figure who people keep pledging their trust in. So it just doesn't work as well that he's now off on his own chasing the bad guy in the way that only he can. Gabriel dies, Gabriel falls out of the plane or whatever, and we'll never find out what his deal was. I feel bad, you know, so the thing is, I feel bad, this has ended up, like, such a damp squib of role, but I actually quite like Ezi Morales as, like, a screen presence, so I actually, like, I feel like this could have been so much better.

He's good, he's just underwritten, like, criminally underwritten, like, grace is underwritten as well, but Haley Atwell gets more time on screen to flesh out the rule a little bit but Eza Morales just gets nothing to work with it's such a shame I just keep thinking about the thing you said and it's like where's getting all these nuclear

bombs wrong I can't like unthink it now it's just producing like a dirty mom from his back pocket it's like ha ha got you now even yeah

So he falls out of the plane, Ethan looks down and there's a nuclear bomb in the plane, you know, or something. Meanwhile, through this whole bit, we've been cutting back occasionally to the chiefs of staff and Erica Sloan,

the president of the United States as they watch facility after facility fall to the entity. Ultimately, it just ends up with the US left standing because of course it does. And at this point,

as soon as Britain went down and the United States was the only facility, left, I thought, well, they should just shut down their nuclear command, and then the entity won't be able to get it. They've established that earlier in the film. But it takes them another 20 minutes to figure that out, and it's a big dramatic moment when Erica says, no, hang on, we'll just shut down our nuclear command. Yeah. There's another assassin who shoots at the president, but hits Nick Offerman instead, so Nick Offerman dies. It's very sad.

linger on this moment though because I think this is the only time where I think this film displays some level of political comment and I don't really know what to make of it right because the background to this is Nick Offerman like in these in these callbacks and basically does windowless room where a bunch of people look at maps which is another thing which is utterly saps this film of momentum and is incredibly boring to be they look at the maps and they watch the DefCon level rise yeah because at the start of the film, when an entity that they cannot control is taking over nuclear facilities, the film starts at DefCon 3. This seems pretty serious, fellas. Yeah, like really three?

You couldn't go to two. And it creeps up to one, but it seems like it starts on one for me. Yeah, yeah. But the context here is like, basically in the lead up to this, in particular kind of like the shutdown nuclear, he has spent

most of this time disagreeing with this president, right? But he still throws himself in front of the bullet that is deserate. He thinks they should launch a preemptive strike on the nuclear facilities to wipe them out. But nevertheless, he is given his life for that of the

president. And then when you combine this with some other stuff though, so one thing that's also been said here is that there's some message that Luther recorded for Ethan, right, which will come to. But there's a thing here where I don't really know whether the film is going for something where it's like, you know, they want a politics or at least a, you know, public discourse more based in compassion, right? You know, or is it, or it, or it could also be a weasily sort of like, can't we all get a long thing, right? Which is something that films have started to do, right? I criticized Captain America Brave New World for this, right? Which here are some similarities with this film in terms of kind of kind of. like, you know, reverence for and leaning on kind of American military apparatus, right?

And I think that one's particularly egregious. So I'm not really sure which one it is. Unfortunately, I suspect it is the can't we all get a long type of vibe. There's another example I think of how these films are doing the, you know, being all things to all people thing. I think it's just done it more skillfully before. And that sums this film up. It's done a lot of all this stuff more skillfully and more engagingly before.

Yeah, I think it's more jingoistic American exceptionalism that, you know, despite their differences, Americans come together to triumph. They can have their disagreements, but in the end, they will protect the office of the president, no matter what, no matter who is in post. But yeah, Ethan manages to jump out of the plane, find a parachute. As he's falling, he inserts the poison pill into the. the Podkova, which I don't know, uses 5G or whatever to transmit this to the entity, the entity goes into the Doomsday Vault and Grace manages to grab the USB just as the entity gets into it. So the world is saved, the entity is diffused and the nuclear weapons are not going to go off. Share Wiggum goes to find Ethan in the field and they shake hands. It says in

Wikipedia, Jasper Briggs revealed to be the son of Ethan's original team leader Jim Feld. helps, makes peace with Ethan for exposing his father as a traitor. I mean, that's a very, very generous reading of what happens in that scene. I mean, I think that is what they're going for, but that handshakes doing a lot of heavy lifting. Yeah, heavy lifting from a scene two hours ago, an hour and a half ago. That otherwise made no impact on the character or the plot. So, yes, there is a farewell message from Lufa in the poison pill that suddenly starts broadcasting. He built a little speaker into it or whatever, so it can broadcast this little

message. That's why he couldn't build a redundant one. Couldn't get the audio engineering, right? Yeah, but it says, congratulations, Ethan, you know, I always knew you'd do it. You're destined to save the world. It's our choices that make us, and you always made the right choice, blah, blah, blah. And then in London, there's a scene in Trafalgar Square, contrasting with the earlier scene in Trafalgar Square, where Grace gives Ethan the drive containing the entity, and he nods meaningfully at Grace and at Benji and to my disappointment not Bill Dunlowe who I think deserved to be in that last scene

after all he did for them it's true equally though let the let the man go rebuild his cabin in the snow just let him chill out and that is the end of the film then the credits roll and that is the end of the Mission Impossible franchise

maybe the end of Ethan Hunt we'll see Or is that what the entity wants you to think? That's another phrase that gets dropped out. Maybe that's exactly what the entity wants you to think, Simon. Yeah, a phrase that is thrown around a lot, but we don't see the entity being that manipulative a lot of the time. Maybe that's because the entity doesn't want you to see that.

I think they wrote an enemy that is too clever for them to write. so it's like You know Yeah Actually you just like That sounds up beautiful Yeah Oh dear to me

So that's the end of the film So like I said I think the first hour Is dreadful Like embarrassingly bad Blotbuster filmmaking And so I was quite surprised That it comes together

In a decent second half from the Sevastopol from the submarine onwards it's pretty good yeah I think I think the latter part of the film is it's competent you know I really do struggle to to go any further than that because even the bits that work even the bits that work well feel like rehashes of things they've done before

and I think the thing that's frustrating about it is that's deliberate yeah that's deliberate you know callbacks and things and other things and it's really frustrating when basically I think the stuff in the film that works the best is original stuff

you know like the you know the relationship between Dunlow and that performance the brief presence of Tremel Tillman those are the things that work well you needed more of that stuff you know yeah and less

you know and just the entire the structure just feels wrong and saps it of energy and it's just like it's just such a it's just such a flat version of it's got kind of like the bits that work from like the best of these films but they've just constructed them and paced them

in a way that just flattens them out for me completely you know there's no it's really lent into this idea of portentous quests towards your destiny you know you know I mean like one film ago like literally one film ago

we had Haley Atwell and Tom Cruise fleeing around Rome in a bright yellow Fiat 500 yeah like if you were to put that in this film it would be complete tonal whiplash

and that shouldn't be the case yeah I didn't really talk about it that they carry over the po-faced self-serious tone from the last film, which is a long way from the kind of fun tone of ghost protocol, and Rogue Nation even. Even, yeah. And it's just dreary, you know, it's all so serious. It's not a fun spy romp.

It's all being so serious, and they take the job so seriously, and now it's a cult, and you have the choice. They have an oath. There's an oath, yeah. Luther recites this oath that he and Ethan. apparently took off-screen in one of the previous films and it's so portentous and so

dreary and serious like chill out these are fun yeah you know there's so many bits that we're just doesn't quite work together because the thing is like just percent because I actually I genuinely think right Gabriel and Ezi Morales that villain

could work with a different tone right he's doing this sort of like you know you know snarling things around pun, and he's producing, as we said, producing nuclear bombs out of his backpack every five minutes, right? It is a villain that could work, but not here, not here, you know? And it's just, the whole thing is bizarre.

I think there's, the other thing that's quite surprising is, Ilsa Faust is not mentioned at all, really. No. Which I find interesting. Now, I understand there's reason, you know, if you go and look kind of like a, kind of, you know, statements Rebecca Ferguson's made. I understand why she's not in this film. It's kind of like more the extra textual stuff about kind of the amount

of commitment that is required to kind of be on call for filming mission possible and I've seen her in interviews make reference to the fact in the gap between these two films. She basically did June 1, June 2 and like two seasons of silo or something like that, right? So

from professional perspective I see why I know why it's happened, but in the context of the narrative of the films and the importance of that character up until kind of like basically the third act of the last film, right? It is bizarre, especially when so much is put on about kind of like, you know, our lives are to some of our choices, friendship, friends are what matters, you always make the right choice and kind of, like, all this sort of stuff.

It's weird. It is strange. And it speaks again to this film's desire to tie back to everything that has happened in this film sees, except the film immediately before it. these two films feel so poorly planned and so poorly constructed I feel like we'll discuss our full franchise rankings in the next episode in the outro episode where we go through this entire franchise

and think about it as a whole but for now as part of this two-part I think this is better than Dead Reckoning part one not by a great deal though I think they're both incredibly shunky in different ways Yeah, I'll keep my powder dry for when we'll be talking about it on the next episode It'd also be a good idea for me to let percolate a little bit But it is

Like when I first saw Dead Reckoning Part 1 And I mentioned this in the last episode I post on social media It is definitely the shonkiest entry since Mission Possible 2 or 3 And I'd kind of softened on it And I didn't, not sure I really thought that anymore Believe it pretty firmly about this one right now Yeah, you know

It's um it's not just like it's got a slight you know the tone's not quite right or I didn't know about or I don't know about this I don't know why they've introduced that straight up the construction of this film the storytelling in this film

is bad and that's that that's the thing for me that doesn't really work you need to have at least competent storytelling to let things like the team dynamic

the set pieces the heists and things and kind of like the fun edges of it shine. You need to do a competent job. It doesn't need to be inventive storytelling, right? In terms of kind of like, you know, plot mechanics. It doesn't need to be that. That's not what these films are about.

It does need to be competent. I believe, for huge swathes of this film, it is incompetent. Yeah, agreed. And everything else suffers as a result. Yeah, it just, it's not well put together. and, you know, I was feeling, I don't know, maybe disappointed, maybe, I was feeling tired by Mission Impossible Fallout, but it's still competently done, it's still competently put together, and these two films just haven't been, they have just been incompetently put together in a very, very frustrating way, but I was wrong in a previous episode, I predicted that Ethan would die at the end of this, and he didn't, so I was wrong, about that. And I guess we'll discuss what that means for the rest of the franchise, for the

future of the franchise in our next episode, I think, where we do our conclusions. Sitting here right now, thinking about it, at the moment I think it is the most disappointed I've been by a blockbuster sequel since the Rise of Skywalker. Wow. Like, really, I do genuinely think it is completely misunderstood what was good about these films. Yeah. You know, and there's been hints of it, right, beforehand. There have been hints of it, even dating back to fallout, I would say.

But here, it's now fully, I think, Christopher Macquarie and Tom Cruise's franchise. And I don't think that's ended up a good thing. I don't think it's ended up a good thing. No, I think I would rather watch Alien Romulus or Jurassic World Dominion than this. yeah that would which is telling so yes that is Mission Impossible

of Highland Reckoning that is the last Mission Impossible film in the franchise the end of the Impossopod journey but we'll do one more episode next month where we discuss what we think of the franchise as a whole its direction its shape

how different directors have moulded it and we'll give our rankings on the franchise as a whole so please do join us then for that next episode. Until then, you can read more film criticism at take1 cinema.net, including Jim's review of this film in textual format. You can follow us both on Blue Sky at Jim J.R and at SimonX.X.com.

And please do tell your friends about the ImpostPod and about Take1 presents. We'll have some ideas about the future in due course. But please do tell your friends and continue to subscribe to the feed and encourage people to subscribe. So, we will return next time with a final episode on Mission Impossible and the end of the Impossible. But thank you for joining us, and bye Jim. See you then.

And goodbye. Thank you.