Thoughts on Mission: Impossible - Fallout

I am baffled by the Mission: Impossible franchise. Whenever a new sequel comes out, I find myself trying to comprehend why the series has maintained such continued popularity. It's been about a month since I saw Fallout, and I'm still puzzling over it.

What's particularly strange about the Mission: Impossible franchise is that it comes from the tail end of the 1990's trend of adapting popular 1960's TV shows to film. This trend failed to garnish any lasting franchises outside of Mission: Impossible, although I suppose the Addams Family movies live on in the form of sassy Buzzfeed gifs of Angelica Huston. It just seems so perplexing that a convoluted spy movie based on a 60's TV show would have been a hit in the first place. I'd rather imagine a world where the world is championing the release of the sixth Brady Bunch film.

Part of what is so weird about the Mission franchise is that they're always more or less the same story. Ethan Hunt is inevitably betrayed by the government because they think he's gone rogue. The execution is always far more complicated than that, of course. Far, far more complicated. There's an onslaught of jargon and exposition that only serves to muddle up who Ethan is pursuing and why. It's as if the producers of the series saw the James Bond film The Living Daylights and thought "heck, I can make a spy story even more pointlessly twisty than that".

In this entry, there's a baddie that's dealing plutonium to other baddies, and Ethan has to intercept both the villain and the plot device. The complication here is that there's also a mole in the US government that's decided to frame Ethan as the mole. It doesn't help Ethan's case that he bungled up the plutonium-getting operation in the opening minutes of the film. In the strangest moment of Fallout, Hunt leaves a briefcase of plutonium unattended while he runs off to save his pal. I'm sure it's entirely possible to shoot a gun and hold a briefcase at the same time, but the movie decides to ignore this for plot convenience.

I can only assume the continued draw to the Mission: Impossible series is Tom Cruise's crazed death wish, which has only gotten stronger as he gets older. Every film (except M:I III) has a signature action setpiece and a few "Tom Cruise did that for real" stunts. In Fallout, Cruise reaches peak insanity, jumping from buildings (and breaking his ankle! For real!), piloting helicopters, and all sorts of action movie mayhem. In an age where movies rely more on digital effects and flashy camerawork to aid their action scenes, it's refreshing to see a film series that still prioritizes doing it practically.

That being said, it's beginning to feel like Cruise's stunt spectaculars are less for the sake of entertaining audiences, and more for his own personal need to maintain an image of the cool, hip movie star. Assuming a Mission: Impossible 7 is produced, Cruise, who is currently 56, could wind up in a similar "too old for the role" situation as Roger Moore (who was 58 at the time) in A View to a Kill. To his credit, Moore at least tried to play his final performance as James Bond as more of a dirty old man character, but I doubt Cruise's superstar ego will allow him to play Ethan Hunt as a cool, totally-not-old action hero.

Skepticism about Cruise's motivations aside, the action scenes in Fallout are incredible. The bathroom fistfight is fantastic, reaching The Raid levels of kinetic brutality. Walls, sinks, and mirrors explode on impact like they're made of eggshells. It's ridiculous and intense, and the excitement generated by this scene does a lot to help coast through the next half hour of rote spy stuff. The climactic helicopter duel is magnificent, too. It's a weird composite of the finale of The Living Daylights (seriously, that must have been the inspiration for this whole series) and the RV scene from The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Ethan Hunt dangles from a helicopter, commandeers it, crashes it, and dangles off a cliff face, hanging from the helicopter's cable. If you are even remotely afraid of heights (and I am, quite a lot), it's enough to get your palms sweating. This great bit of action is intercut with a not-so-great side plot of Hunt's sidekicks trying to defuse a nuclear bomb. It's about as silly and over the top as you would expect from a spy movie. They even try to fake out the audience that the bomb has really gone off! Did they really think that would fool anyone? They already got their one goofy "the bad guys won" fake-out in the film's opening.

It's not really fair to say whether Fallout is "good" or "bad" because, like most films in long-running series, they begin to develop themes, plot elements, and more that are reused as the series go on. Series like this begin to develop their own internal logic and system of expectations. By the time the sixth Mission: Impossible film rolls around, audiences have an idea of what to expect. Through that lens, Fallout is a good Mission: Impossible film, maybe even the best. These movies are all about whizzbang spectacle, and this has some of the most spectacular things to look at in the series. Whether or not you get anything out of this film will, of course, depend on you. As much as I like the big action scenes, I find the lengthy sections of espionage and exposition a chore to sit through. The series overall doesn't particularly appeal to me, but clearly millions of theatergoers worldwide don't mind sitting through the superflulous stuff to get to the big set pieces.