The Watch - Exploring 'Castle Rock' and a 'Mission: Impossible' Retrospective | The Watch (Ep. 277)

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald take a look at the latest addition to the Stephen King universe, 'Castle Rock' (02:00). Then, to celebrate the upcoming release of 'Mission: Impossible — Fallout,' they look back at the franchise (23:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by the ringer.com because the ringer.com and the ringer podcast network is stacked with stuff to read and listen to. We've got a great new article by Brian Curtis on how Bob Lee became ESPN's most important reporter. Shea Serrano wrote about the first mission impossible and why it's his favorite of the Tom Cruise film series. Roger Sherman wrote on why everyone still hates Dwight Howard and Miles Surrey did a kind of timeline for Deadwood's long bumpy road to move. It's finally being made as a movie by HBO. On the podcast network, Against All Odds with Cousin Sal, had a two-part fantasy football primer. Bachelor party dove into the fantasy suite episode this week.

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Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the wringer.com and joining me in the studio. He's got the knock list. It's Andy Greenwald. I was sitting real low in my chair there. You really just started the podcast. I'm going to try and keep your energy up.

It's Thursday. It's hot in Los Angeles. It's hot. It's hot. We don't really call it that anymore. I do. Okay. You know, I have a lot of conversations about our podcasting schedule that sometimes

you're not privy to. Really? No. I'm just trying to start a bit here. Andy, today we're going to talk a little bit about Castle Rock, the Hulu series that debuted on Wednesday. That is the sort of televisualization of the Stephen Kingverse. Season two is called Millie Rock. Did you know that? Season three is called Rock Boys in a building. So we're going to talk a little bit about the first three episodes which were released on Hulu on Wednesday.

And then later we'll talk a little bit about our love for the Mission Impossible franchise. Monday we will talk about Mission Impossible. Fallout, colon dash Fallout. It's a mission colon impossible dash fallout. Yeah. The bane of copy editors everywhere. Shout out to Craig.

Nah, come on. Typographers everywhere love this franchise above all others. Jim Cunningham's on the decks today. You know, let's just get right into Castle Rock. Do you feel like you have any news you want to address? That I'd like to address. There's a couple standing issues between us. Okay.

No, I don't think so. I just, you know, we haven't seen each other since I was here yesterday in the studio. recording something for a project that's coming up. Oh, yeah, for sure. And you walked in. It was a little bit like I felt like you caught me in the hotel room with the secretary. You know what I mean? Like there was a moment.

I just wanted, now that we're on the mic. I was incredibly supportive of you exploring other opportunities. Are we good? Yeah, as long as it means the same for me. Wow. Well, wait, so this is a Tom and Shiv situation now. Basically. Wow.

One night of freedom. Okay. It's a closed circuit. We will also on Monday be talking about Succession, although I should mention that we will do recapables episodes on the Ringer podcast Network for the last two episodes of Succession. And I believe I am on the first one. Oh, so you are cheating on me. Yeah, constantly. I'm a philanderer.

It's more of you who's more of like my Mennonite wife, who I expect to be faithful to me. What's weird. Our Mennonites really faithful to a little. When we're not on the microphone, I only speak in old German to you. It's churn butter. Let's get going. Castle Rock. This one was announced last February.

So last February was announced Hulu and J.J. Abrams and Stephen King were collaborating on this. Televisionization. They're going to bring the stories of Stephen King, the feel of Stephen King to life. But not explicitly adapt any one Stephen King story. It was more about the sort of the essence of his world centering around these small towns in Maine, which they tend to Castle Rock, Derry for it. and it would have nods to specific stories, but that it was going to be a new story

that kind of existed in this universe. And then cut to July 2018, we finally released these episodes. And I think that the time is very ripe for this to be a successful show. There is a dearth of kind of, I don't know if you'd want to call it, conventional wisdom says this is the best show on TV

or everybody is watching this one thing. But we don't have a stranger things this summer. we don't have a Game of Thrones this summer. Something like this that captures both drama and genre at the same time, there's a huge market out there for it. They do the Hulu release schedule where they drop three at once and then it'll be one a week going forward, which is actually, I think, weirdly because I don't like a lot of Hulu shows,

but this is probably the ideal way to release television in 2018, if you ask me? Certainly for a new show. Yeah. So let's just get right into it. Did you think that this was, I mean, are you into this show? Yes and no. It's challenging because I think that, and maybe this is actually indicative of where TV is in 2018, I think my feelings about this show are intertwined with my feelings about the idea behind the show

and the media property manipulation behind the show and the IP stewardship behind the show and the decision making behind the show. To run the tape back a little bit, this is what happens after Fargo is successful. This is what happens after we have. entered into this post-gold rush age of, you know, needing to sell TV on the poster, needing to get people to understand what it is before they commit to watching it, because how hard is it to get people to watch anything these days? Fargo is the model because it's an adaptation of an existing property, but kind of not,

kind of sideways. It kind of wraps its arms around the Cohn brothers as a creative force and surfs those waves and Noah Holly is very, obviously very talented but also very nimble at borrowing, re-contextualizing, repurposing, remixing, and

being quite original in the process. Fargo seems like it's like the ideal way of doing things this day in age where you get some name recognition to get in the door but then you make it something that's entirely your own. That's why I chose to adapt a novel that's been out of print for 15 years because yo, the old heads

what else they're going to do? They're going to watch TV. So this is the thing. You explain this to someone, and it's a great elevator pitch. It's a great idea. People know what Stephen King stories feel like. They've been watching adaptations of them for as long as they've been reading the books.

I would argue that our imagination about what Stephen King's stories are versus what they actually are if you read them is quite different at this point. I remember when I started reading Stephen King books when I was in middle school, and I learned that his characters sometimes used the epithet whoremonger.

Like, that was something that, like, a guy said before he got impaled. I think we have more of an idea of, like, idyllic small towns that are corrupted by some sort of almost supernatural, if not supernatural, evil. Yeah, what are the lasting, I mean, we're thinking about Stand By Me often. It is way back in the public consciousness, right? But this is a lot of preamble to say, I get it. And I think a lot of good decisions were made along the way. I think the cast is exceptional.

I mean, Andre Holland, for my money, was pound for pound, one of, if not the best actor on TV when he was on the Nick. Sissy SpaceSec, obviously, incredible actor. Bill Camp just seems quite at home in this world. Sorry, Bill Scarsgaard obviously feels quite at home in this world after it last

year. Always here for Melanie Lindke, always here for Jane Levy. Scott Glenn. It goes on and on and on. I can answer, we can... You hear where I'm going. No, I can do this really quickly. If you strip all the Stephen King stuff out, is this show worth watching? Is a show about a

a lawyer returning to his hometown because he has mysteriously asked to represent a nameless inmate who is discovered in an abandoned wing of a prison and it's the mystery of who this guy is and why this lawyer left town in the first place. That's a pretty cool story. It is.

But then you mate that with, let's make sure we're covering 30 years of time with flashbacks and side doors. and all of this random sort of lattice work to bring together other Stephen King stories, whether it's naming Jane Levy's character Jackie Torrance or having Terry O'Quinn's warden character make an explicit reference to stand by me and the story of the body. Is that colliding?

Would you watch this show if there was nothing about Stephen King attached to it? I might surprise you with my answer. I think I would be more inclined to watch it. I agree with you. I think that the weirdly, it's reversed. I think I thought that what this would be, would be the bones of Stephen King's stories with some muscle and sinew added that was original.

In fact, the bones of this show are surprisingly strong and original and interesting in this day and age, and yet there's so much else hung on. it and so many nods and winks and, you know, I don't know all the references. So maybe I probably am qualified to say that I find it a drag when I feel them leaning into them, you know, to things that I don't understand or don't necessarily catch on the first or third viewing. The production budget and obviously the cast budget on the show is exceptional. This is, you know, I've said this before in the last few weeks. This is obviously where my head is at, but to film the

show in New England and to get locations like this and to, again, completely create a place. It's outstanding. I mean, the level of care given to it is really special. And some of the stray details, like Melanie Lindski's character, having a mild opiate addiction when, you know, the opioid crisis in America is definitely hitting New England. It's hitting New England hard. And that's been relatively not unreported on, but unpotrayed, not, you know, in mainstream entertainment, I think often of Tony Bourdain's episode in Massachusetts to think about that. I love that detail.

You know, there is an original moment in the third episode that I won't spoil, but it involves Melanie Linsky stumbling upon something very bizarre,

like a children's game or a play that they're doing. And it is a real what the fuck is going on moment, the sort of which TV doesn't often traffic in. Not scary in the way a mainstream audience might think

Stephen King is scary, but scary in the way the dude in the bear suit getting up at the top of the stairs and looking at Nicholson and The Shining is scary. Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason, who created the show out of these strands of Stephen King stories, also made the show Manhattan. They're very talented. And I think they're very talented at making an ensemble show.

And boy, I wish it was that other show. Yeah, I think that my thing goes beyond that to, I definitely agree that there is some sort of, are you recconning the story that you have for the Stephenkin universe or are you recconning the Stephenkin universe for a story that you have? I can't tell. It doesn't necessarily matter, but there's something I do want to bring up because I think it's something that's tripping up a lot of dramas right now. Comedy doesn't seem to have this problem at all for obvious reasons.

But I think that there are, and I've been trying to articulate this for a while on the pod and in some of the writing that I've been doing, but there is like we're going towards a house style with a lot of these streaming sites. both in terms of the narrative pacing and in terms of the composition and visual style of the shows so much so that when a show comes along

that is different it can feel breathtaking like end of the fucking world when a show comes along that feels and looks different you get a ton of credit just for that you know and there is a certain

uniformity to handmaids to this to to even even something superficially like Mindhunter, which is probably one of my favorite shows of the last few years. Or Ozark.

There is like a certain crispness of composition, a kind of almost like tumbler aesthetic where you're like working from screenshots of David Fincher movies from the mid-2000s or something. This is not to disparage anybody who works on those shows or any of the achievements that those shows. I have varying amounts of time for each of those shows, obviously. But there is a certain deliberateness of pace

that borders on molasses. is slow. Yeah. And you think about what I pitched you, the, the kernel of this story. Yeah. Lawyer returns home to defend an unknown inmate who is discovered in a jail. That I'm in. So the 30 minutes we spend in the pilot slowly building up to like the arrival,

the emergence of Andre Holland's character is, it just feels so wasteful. It just feels like, hey, did you like Shawshank Redemption? Because like you should watch this show, totally. Yeah. everybody likes Shawshank Redemption. I understand why you put it at the front of the line and you bend over backwards to show us that. But there is a certain kind of...

The things that have happened in the first three episodes can be condensed into about 45 minutes. Possibly less. Yes. I think... Here's a context to put this in. Obviously, we've been talking about succession a lot. Obviously, we're having great time talking about succession.

It has been interesting how... Well, not interesting because I think we've trafficked in this as well. I guess I'll just say it's noteworthy. how controversial the show has been only because it does seem to be universally acknowledged by diehard fans of the show that it doesn't start with the bang. That you kind of have to get into, you know, your mileage may vary. Some people say three, some people say four, I was more five, six kind of guy. I love it now.

And I am completely sympathetic to the point that not just critics have been, have made, like Alan Seppenwall or Jim Ponywasik said these replied to me on Twitter about this, but also just casual fans, come on man, I got a life. There's a hundred other things to watch. Yeah, we say that all the time about stuff. Make your point.

But the difference here that I would say is that in those early episodes of Succession, there was a lot of story. And did I enjoy the story? Did I think the characters were calibrated well? That was my issue with it. But they were going through story and they were setting up story,

but they were giving us story at the same time. What this show is giving us for three episodes is mood. That's a tougher cell, especially when it is a mood that is partially spiked with artificial sweeteners, and that artificial sweeteners is nostalgia.

It is not a unique mood. It is a mood there trying to evoke within us that already exists. And I understand the choice that they're making where it's like, this needs to be a slow, the air is still in summer when this guy gets there.

It's very, the town has been unincorporated. It's, quote, no longer on the map, according to the Jane Levy character. There's a feeling that somebody describes it as Fallujah. There's a, the overhead shots which are, I just feel like

the first line item thing that must go on budgets now is a drone to do overhead shots of whatever you're shooting. But the overhead shots of these factories that are sort of caved in and this town that seems to have been forgotten by history are all really effective in setting the tone.

But the actual storytelling moves at such a drip and is so needlessly expanded to all these different parts of the spider web that I feel like it actually does a disservice to what you're getting at, which is that there is a good story here and there are excellent actors on hand. Let's think about the decisions that Sean Thomason and their writing staff made, and they're very clever and smart.

You know, everything you were just saying is accurate and accurate for probably what a pitch was for a show like this that may have even existed before those guys came on when, you know, they realized who had the rights and bad robot came on board and they got the king to sign off on it. The idea of the forgotten town and the ghostly town and the collapse and everything, sure. What they've added to this is that idea of the private prison and everyone in town works for it. And so that's the industry of the town. That is a contemporary idea that is a fun wrinkle to a classic Stephen King story.

Similarly, what Melanie Linsky's character is doing where she's buying an abandoned place and trying to turn into a mixed-use space, like a we work with a mall and a food court with Panini's or whatever, that's a modern idea. The opiate stuff is a modern idea. Even Andre Holland, with his job being a death row attorney and his role in society, and the way the show explicitly talks about race in the fact that he was adopted by this beloved family, he was one of the few black people in town. He visually remains one of the few black people in town. The show is trying things and trying interesting things, but it does feel both in terms of the storytelling and in terms of the shackles placed on the show by the conceit that it's happening in molasses. Yeah, and I think also the, this is actually something that I think hampers a couple of different Stephen King adaptions. Because I think that there is a point where Stephen King's stories start to fall apart, which is usually when you get to the conclusion. He's really good at mood.

He's really good at setting things up. He's really good at establishing groups of people being challenged by these extraordinary circumstances. But when it actually, and when it's nut-cutting time, he's like, it's evil, lurking underneath the ground. It's always evil. Yeah. And that's fine, but that's where it starts to get difficult. So these shows and these movies, even it, which I thought was quite good, has a certain, as the thing goes along, gets a little bit less, not even plausible, but just even watchable, you know? And that hasn't affected Castle Rock yet.

But there is a weird for everything that you're talking about that feels so present and present day. and urgent, there's just no urgency in the show at all. No, it's very hard to give people everything. You know, if what the thing that made me worry about the show, honestly, this is such nitpicking, but the opening credits are pages of Stephen King books. That's fan-fick stuff, man. And I think that the show ought to aspire to be more than that. And frankly, I think the people making it certainly aspire for it to be more than that.

This is, what I'm complaining about is marketing, but it's marketing that's indicative of the central problem that they're struggling against. So it will be worth seeing if they can shake some of this off. I think some reviews of the show where people have seen much further ahead than we have, have expressed optimism. Yeah. They're good directors working on future episodes. We'll see. I had two notes for you.

Well, one note. For me. Well, just about the show before we move on. You know, a couple years ago, Grantland, I made a running list of, like, pet peeves in television shows, which is definitely going to come to bite me in the ass now, like one million times I'm owning that. How many times in Breyer Patch does somebody say I'm a good man? I'm a good man. I mean, that's basically the first line.

It's weirdly, it's Rosario Dawson's character who says that. Yeah. So it's a little bit of a twist. But if I were to do an updated version of that list, one thing I would add to it would be ordinary people behaving in ways that they've only seen people behave in cop movies. And one egregious example of this in the show that I'm sorry, I'm looking at things on this level now, but it took me right out of it, is in the third episode when, Andrei Hollins, Henry Dever character has a meet with the prison guard who has been serving, you know,

been feeding information. And their choice of meeting meetup is in a road in the woods and they pull up their cars opposite direction of each other. Yeah, like the wire or something. Yeah. I would never like, who would, what is the choreography? Like, do you think they both understood or did they both drive at each other? And then I was like a meet queue where it's like, no, no, you go. Oh, no, you turn. You do a three point turn.

Right. Friends get out of the car. have a conversation. Second point, I feel like either you've been lying to me or America has been lying to me. Probably the latter. Because I didn't,

how could we have made it this far? We talked about this last week. How could we have made it this far into our run as ephemorous skimming podcasters and not understand the weighted significance of the surname Pangborn?

Is this a thing in King lore? Yes, he's a character in King stories. So I guess Scott Derrickson who made Doctor Strange or when Dan Harmon was throwing alts, I don't know who named the most legendary pickup basketball player of our time.

Benjamin Bratt's Jonathan Pangborn. But all of a sudden we have Scott Glenn here. As Alan Pangborn. Do you think there's a connection between Dr. Strange universe and the King universe? My only hope is yes and that someone can open the Eye of Agamato and Scott Glenn can travel through it and become a more interesting character.

Like that would be truly mystic arts than I would be into it. All right, well, we'll probably check in on this again once it's supposed to get good. You have to. I mean, Andre Holland is starring in a TV show. Like, he's worth it. Yeah, he's great in this show.

I just, it's just a real, really slow out of the blocks. But that being said, your point's well taken, that we gave succession a chance. We've asked people to give succession a chance. We should do the same for Castle Rock. Although I think it's trending differently. it's worth noting. I think because the nature of the show,

I weirdly, well, we'll leave it. You had more confidence in Succession being better than Castle Rock being better? I had the same amount of confidence in my becoming a fan of them, which is low. Like a diehard, like the fact that I really love Succession now still surprises me.

I did think that with the way that the stories were being told, that it would write its ship and people would love it. Sure. I did not think it was going to be as good as it is. Okay. So we'll take a quick break. We'll be right back after word from our sponsor to talk about Mission Impossible. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Gillette. And you know,

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performance delivered to your door and find Gillette 5 at Gilletteondemand.com. Subscribe today. All right, Greenwald, we're back. We want to talk a little bit about the Mission Impossible franchise because we've got Fallout coming this weekend. It's by all accounts, one of the best movies of the year. People are hype for this. Yeah, people are really excited about just, I think that people are really thirsty for good movies right now.

In a way that I don't mean to say that they're not usually. But I do wonder, because the Mission Impossible franchise itself seems to have gone through this kind of critical rehabilitation, especially over the last year or so. Yeah. I think people really liked Rogue Nation. I love Rogue Nation. I love Rogue Nation.

But it's interesting to go back through the movies and go back through the timeline and remember a time when, and I talked about this on the rewatchables, when the Bourne movies kind of came through and just like wiped this series out. Yeah. And they needed to like basically reboot the entire thing

with Abrams on three. And I wanted to kind of go back through the movies and kind of talk about which ones were our favorites and which ones weren't and why they worked and why they didn't. But just generally speaking, what do you think it is right now about why we seem to be so down for this franchise? Well, I think it's twofold. One, this series at this point, and certainly the star at this moment, both have a completely concrete and fixed sense of identity in the movie going public and behind the scenes. Tom Cruise knows that he is a stuntman at this point, that we

We go to movies to see him do extreme things and potentially die on camera. Like, he is basically willing to do that and comes close every time he makes one of these movies. Furthermore, these movies do not put on airs. They are fun. They are exciting. And then they are over. Yeah, they're 85% McGuffins and 15%, or actually 50% McGuffins and 50% dudes hanging off of buildings. Done at an expert level.

Yeah. Without overthinking it. I mean, to go back to movies to Ghost Protocol and climbing of the Birch Khalifa in, is that in Dubai? What's complicated about that? It's just a small man climbing the tallest building in the world. Well, it's complicated about it is that it's not the way that Fasten the Furious. So it's beautifully simple. I mean, I know that there's nothing simple about the plot or the mechanics of these movies,

but there is something pure and elemental about that in a way that I think is universally translated. and appreciate it. There's something about it that is kind of pure at a time when, look, everyone who listens to this podcast, I loved Infinity War,

but you got to know a lot of stuff and you got to watch a lot of other stuff and you got to appreciate the ocean, not just the wave. And it's not the case of these movies. The larger point that I want to make, though, before we get into it, is they've been Paramount

and the people behind it, which is essentially Tom Cruise, have been incredibly savvy about this. Obviously, the series has been his safety blanket. He's returned to it and recovered from various, whether it's critical dips or just when his brand seemed pretty toxic when he's jumping on couches. To see how this franchise has evolved over what year of the first movie coming out, 96. So 20, that's crazy. It's our adult life.

Six movies in, it's the year we met. Yeah. Six movies in 22 years. When it started, it was almost like it was at the very beginning of this, we're going to use existing IP to do stuff. And the fact that, you know, looking at the way the industry was, it was like they had to get Brian De Palma to give it the imprimatur of artistry. You know, Tom Cruise was serious. These movies were summer movies, but they had to have some.

Yeah, and Cruz was still very much a guy who was doing Rain Man. Who's Oscar chasing in his spare time. And would do Jerry McGuire later that year and was done born on the 4th of July and was very much in the mix in the... these awards movies. And I think the conception was for a while that these were going to be unrelated, no serialization, but showcase pieces

for the world's best directors. So De Palma and then Wu doing the second one. And then there was this dip. And then the movies... Two was the dip. Two was the dip. But I'm saying that the movies kind of were canny about becoming TV in a way before

TV meant literally Marvel as a channel and they make episodes of a show. movies were probably the what we thought of as franchises when we were growing up before Marvel came along for exactly the same reasons you're talking about. But this is essentially American James Bond and I think that that was always going to be

that was always their intent. Let's update, let's digitize, let's get a fresh set of paint but essentially have a super spy who is physically indestructible but relatable and devilishly charming. Is he relatable? I think that in the first movie

he is. I think the first movie Ethan Hunt is pretty much like Jerry McGuire with a leather jacket. Right. And then as it goes on, especially after Wu, resets it as this huge action thing. And it's like motorcycles, ballet dancing in the air and guys pulling

guns on each other at zero G's in the hair. And then they actually did do a really interesting to me three is still the most interesting movie of this franchise because it adds a emotional layer to it that wasn't there

since the Prague height, the initial Prague scene and the first one. Losing a wife is much more I mean, your mileage may vary. I think it's more challenging to someone's existence than losing Emilio Estaviz. I don't know. I've never met the man. But what happens is basically

there is this reboot they started up at three again, but once three is relatively well regarded, they're like, well we have to keep making these. And they've made a concerted effort to pretty much do away with any recognizable quote unquote universe. Whether you understand what the

IMF is or the syndicate is or who Sean Harris is supposed to be or who Michael Nick Vist is supposed to be in a ghost protocol, it doesn't really matter. I mean, like you could just go to these movies that every movie is going to be about, there's an end of the world situation, only Ethan Hunt

can solve it and he's being chased by his own people and the bad guys. And that's the movie. And there's going to be death-difying stunts. It's interesting to see where the trajectory of where it went from a very hardcore espionage story. Yes, it was. And the first movie, which was awesome, to an action franchise.

And something that is only every time they make it, they have to top the stunt in the previous one. Christopher Macquarie is directed the last two, has been very explicit about like, Tom and I just keep on them up the ante, up the stakes, keep doing it, keep doing it. So it's an interesting trajectory to see it. I'm very into the fact that they have never tried to do

the MI-Share universe, much to Jeremy Renner-Sagrin, I bet. Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing in the room is that this franchise, which is remarkably healthy, you know, this movie sounds great. I cannot wait to see it. I'm thrilled about it. Is completely Tom Cruise's show. And the subtext of Ghost Protocol that was always so fascinating was in the earlier versions of the script, the Brandt character was meant to serve as a potential passing of the torch. Yes.

Because Cruz was getting up there and maybe he would have other things he wanted to do. He would become the Jim Phelps. You know, he would become the guy who's like, your mission if you choose to accept it. Exactly. And then he did not choose to accept this demotion. And the movie was rewritten on the fly. We'll never know the details of what actually happened. But you walk out of that movie and you're like, I'm sorry, what was Jeremy Renner's character doing?

Why was he there? He's neutered in real time on the screen. And now Henry Cavill and Fallout ostensibly plays the same character. Yeah. A skeptical outsider who is new to the group. It's worth noting that for as healthy as the franchise is, is it is entirely dependent on Tom Cruise, which is how Tom Cruise wants it. You say there's no expanded universe. There hasn't been much thought about like, what are we going to do next?

Which is fine. I'm not, I don't work at Paramount. You know, I'm not concerned about that. But there's something refreshing about seeing Alec Baldwin or Angela Bassett show up in these things and just be like, it's fine if they don't make an Angela Bassett spin-off movie. It's fine if they don't make a Simon Pegg hacker movie. It's just like, just let them be these things for as long as Cruz is able to walk upright. Yeah. And that's great. I wanted to quickly go through which ones are your favorites and which ones are

your least favorite. So I'll just say for myself, obviously, I think one is in its own way a masterpiece and is just like this perfect other thing that's different than the rest of the movies in some ways. I agree too. I think that the, and I imagine you talked about this on the rewatchables, but I would say some of the internet technology and computer stuff. We talked about that at length.

Maybe a little pokey, you know, might not have aged all that well. Ranger is what they call Luther in that movie. That's incredible. But that movie, the espionage part is what I love about it. It was really thrilling. And it's also P. Henry Churny, who's just knocking him dead on sharp objects week to week. Ketridge, yeah. He's terrific in the First Mission Impossible.

It's fun to look at this movie now. And maybe some people are saying it at the time, but it's a summer movie. It's the 1996 version of a summer movie. But it definitely was presented to us as very credulous. audience goers at that time at the age of 19 as classier. It was, and it was all, it is complicated. I mean, I talked about this at length on the other pod, but like it is,

it's a 35 minute opening act of this wild psychosexual doppelgangers, you know, with three or four different misdirections. It's a diploma. All taking place in the mist in Prague. Yeah. And it's an actual 35 minute set piece. It's not like a series of scenes.

It's like it moves from one setting to a, another seamlessly. So yeah, one still stands at a test of time. I'm curious about your feelings on three. Are you just skipping two? Well, no, two, like that. I'm going from best to worse. I see.

So three, I would just say that it still stands the test of time because it has the single best performance in the entire franchise, which is Hoffman, as Owen Davian. Watching him in the interrogation scenes with Cruz is still like a great YouTube hang. If you just were like, and if you ever needed, a two-minute resume for Philip Seymour Hoffman and to see

this guy who, you know, can do Eugene O'Neill and can do Kenneth Lonergan and all these things, just watch him like completely dismantle Tom Cruise in a scene and make the emotional stakes of a scene that is actually on its face, like telling you it's bullshit

because it's about something called the rabbit's foot, which we never actually understand what that is. Ultimate Abrams. Him going completely for broke. You would think that he was acting like, and there was never going to be another movie made ever again after this. And it is awe-inspiring to see that. That scene and the Bardem interrogation scene in Skyfall are linked in my mind as just being like

the great carnivores of our time at an all-you-can-eat-all-you-can-eat-Harris. Yeah, it's like watching like late-90s Pedro pitch in the miners. It's pretty cool. and I think I So you rewatch that movie recently? Three? Three. Yeah, it makes no sense.

I haven't watched it in a while. I think, you know, in some ways, when I say it's peak JJ Abrams, I mean it as a compliment in that I think he works best when he tense his fingers, Jonasera style, and it's just like,

I see the problems and I see where this, in the franchise, I see where it could be going, and I see what strings to pull and what wires to solder together. The thought behind it, everything from,

giving him an emotional backstory and reason to do things, to recognizing the fundamental nonsense of McGuffins, to getting Philip Seymour Hoffman to be in this movie. All of these decisions are exceptional and paved the way for what's to come, but I cannot help, I cannot shake the feeling that it's just, it's just a mess. He's the,

JJ Abrams is probably, you know, when you write an article online, you're like, you're always looking for the angle. And I think JJ Abrams in movies is the king of angles. Totally. His, you can feel him say, himself, what haven't we seen Ethan Hunt do? We haven't seen him at a barbecue. We haven't seen him at a 7-Eleven. We haven't seen him with his wife. Let's show that. And it's not always

successful. It's not always suitable for that character. And it doesn't really, it doesn't, you couldn't make a series of movies in which Ethan Hunt was doing barbecues and ball games. But for one moment, it actually completely reinvigorates the series because we've gone through this complete bullshit factory of two and then three kind of grounds him again. I also want to give a shout out to Carrie Russell's performance in that. Oh yeah. Because that was also a reinvention and a recasting and a reframing.

After Felicity, right? Coming off of Felicity and she's great in this part and you don't get to the Americans without this cameo. Oh, probably not, no. So then of the post three movies, Rogue Nation Ghost Protocol, and we haven't seen Fallout obviously, but do you have a preference between Rogue Nation

and Ghost Protocol? Rogue Nation. Yeah. I think I think, you know, I think Ghost Protocol is terrifically entertaining for all the reasons we've been laying out about this franchise

I mean if I if there was one complaint I get more than any other in my career as a podcaster with you it's people who are basically

like just sit and enjoy it you know just watch it's just not don't think about things so much I that fundamentally yeah maybe except for Mission

Impossible movies which are there even when they're bad they're fun and even if I can't quiet that part of my brain in Ghost Protocol I am

in low moments, I'm like, what did Jeremy Renner think he was supposed to be doing here? What was the first version of this? Sure. So the metadrama takes over for the drama. Rogue Nation just knows what it is. And if JJ Abrams is the king of takes, Macquarie,

who is one of the most highly regarded and highly compensated rewriters and script doctors in Hollywood, he's a king of knowing what he's got. He doesn't change anything fundamentally. He just steers everything to the best version of itself. and Road Nation does not, I believe, at any moment take itself seriously. Not too seriously.

It's not, it's not Baird and one is McCrory, yeah. It's not the Miller and Lord version of this universe. It's just like there's nothing wrong with just letting him try to hold his breath for 30 minutes or whatever the hell that scene is. Let's go. And Rebecca Ferguson is terrific in it. Now, what I'm curious about, I can't wait to see fall out, we're going to talk about it Monday. I don't remember a fucking thing about Rogue Nation. You don't need to, though.

But I believe it's a direct sequel. Sure, the same way that these most recent bonds, it really helps if you understand. But that dragged for me. The bonds? The most recent bonds when it's just like... Oh, the last bond sucked. But Skyfall can exist outside of Quantum and Solis and Casino Royale,

even though they're all essentially related. Building up to Skyfall, yes. After that, I would say no. But, okay. All right. I'm telling you, man. So where are you with that? So I put Rogue Nation. Yeah, Rogue Nation above Ghost Protocol.

I think you could see Ghost Protocol as something that was probably redone in midstream. I think Brad Bird does a really cool job with it, and the Dubai stuff is incredible. The Sandstorm as well. But I think that Rogue Nation is better. Sometimes there's also a fun running thing in the background is just who shows up to be the red shirts, you know. And who shows up to be the red shirts is often a snapshot of how high. Hollywood thinks pop culture is going at any given moment. And I believe Ghost Protocol is when Josh Holloway,

aka Sawyer on Lost, shows up. Briefly. But I was just like, when I heard that casting, I was like, dope, this guy is the next,

you know, they're going to do the Rockford files. And he's going to be Jim Rockford. And he's going to be this new superstar. And you put him on the big screen with Tom Cruise there. And you're like, oh, no,

he should probably be on CBS. Yeah, right. Which is, I don't even mean it's a shot against him, which it clearly will be received as by the Holloway fan community. It's just that these movies, But these movies are big, and you better be big enough to go with them.

Who, so this movie we get, who do we add to the mix? We get Cavill, we get Bassett, we give Vanessa Kirby. Who's supposed to be incredible in this? No, we get West Bentley back? Bentley back? Bentley season is happening, man. He's on Yellowstone, too? He's really, he's out there.

He's in the sequel to Yellowstone, Yellowstone 2? That's wild. All right, so Monday, Andy and I will do Fallout. We'll do the penultimate succession. Wait, last question before we're going to get out of here. We got to get out of here. I understand. Where do you rank the Mission Impossible franchise?

I'm just putting you on the spot here. So we're going to forget something. This doesn't need to be exhaustive. But of these franchises that are keeping studios afloat, at this point you know they're going to make another one of them, where do you rank Mission Impossible both in terms of consistency and entertainment? And then if you could go broader, like, just value. Against, like, DC and Marvel and Star Wars and Fast and Fury?

and born and what else? Well, outliving born is something that if you had told 2002 me that that was going to happen, I would never have believed you. DC, after watching the Aquaman trailer, I think, safely say that I'm more of a ghost prodie head. You're not bullish on that? On DC. You know, I mean, Marvel, I've lost the ability to discern between its actual value in my life versus the outsized importance it has in my life. Yeah. It's omnipresent.

I know that I'm just showing my ass, but I'm just like a Star Wars guy. Like, that's still probably the most important thing to me. I'm still someone who was like deeply emotionally invested in the solo movie going into it. Yeah. Had that work out. Not great. Yeah. Not great, Bob.

So I would probably say Star Wars is number one for me. I would say if they had continued to make good versions of it, Bourne would be number two. Yeah, definitely. Marvel is sort of outside of it. DC's all the way at the bottom. I'm not a really big fast and furious guy. You know, the purge is pretty high up there for me. It's funny to me that this series, it's almost come full circle.

I think the play with Brian De Palma and Cruz was for this to be the Estead summer movie. Years, decades have passed. There have been five movies since that first one. And once again, that's where we are. I don't know if it's because of lack of other options or not. But this series, it's certainly been made clear with the success. critical success and commercial success of Rogue Nation, but also the warm embrace this movie's already received,

that this is the thinking person summer movie franchise now, which is what it always was intended to be. And it's interesting. And I think they now understand what they have, not only because they cannot yet clone Tom Cruise and make more than one every two years, but they understand the value of not making, not flooding the zone. There's actually a market inefficiency where there is a demand for a movie,

this now where I think maybe earlier in the 2000s people were looking for something a little bit more gritty and real like Bourne. Also, let's not be capitalist capitalism hour here, but, you know, the margins are different. The margins of a Star Wars movie as set out by Disney when they rebooted it and for Catholic Kennedy in charge is they're going to make a movie every year and expect a certain return on those movies every year. And because of that, they're going to, they're going to spend a certain amount to both hire and fire directors and reshoot and add CGI and re-year. And reshoot and reshoot. The margins on this, they're not making the same amount of money as the Star Wars is, but they're also not costing as much. These are hugely expensive movies, but if you

make one every two or three years, you're okay, man. You can ameliorate it, yeah. You're doing okay. Did you say ameliorate? Yeah. God damn, it's time for the weekend. All right, talk to you guys on Monday. Have a great fallout, Baranski's. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Gillette. Gillette offers a variety of shaving products for every guy, regardless of his personal style, skin needs, or budget. I've using the Gillette Mach 3 for about as long as they've been making this thing and I use the Gillette gel. I get up in the morning and I shave probably once or twice a week, I would say. I don't really go full facial hair. I thought you were going to say once or twice a day. I wish. I wish I

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