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Greg & Joe dive deep into the 7th Mission:Impossible film to prepare for the 8th movie, AKA the most exciting thing in 2025.
Joe’s Back of the Box
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is back and facing his most challenging foe yet a sentient AI called the Entity. Now in a race to keep the only means of stopping the Entity out of the hands of those who want to control it for their own gain, Ethan and his gang of misfits and thieves must do the impossible yet again. Heros will fall, blood will be spilled, villains will change, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The mission, should you choose to accept it, is no less than saving human kind…
The REAL Back of the Box
Tom Cruise rides a motorcycle without a helmet, runs very fast over a long distance, and almost cries so that you can see tears welling in his eyes. Now that that is out of the way we can talk about Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, which is basically the plot of Fast 7. It’s almost like they said, we can do that, but better. And they are mostly right. Like all movies setting up a grand finale, it leaves the viewers stuck in the liminal space of Mission Impossible movies. That said the three main set pieces which include an airport, the streets of Venice, and a train are spectacular. It might not reach the heights of action that Mission Impossible Fallout does, it is not far behind in what is proving to be one, if not, the greatest action film series’ ever.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Welcome to the show, everybody. This is such an exciting week for us at Great Bad Movies, because the new Mission Impossible movie is coming out. Mission impossible eight Final Reckoning. And to get ready for that, we decided to talk about the seventh movie to kind of lead up to it, and we had such a long conversation that we’re actually going to bring you the show in two parts this week.
Greg: So today’s episode is going to be Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning part one. Part one. Joe, how are you feeling today?
Joe: It’s the best. Really reminds me of John Wick.
Greg: That doesn’t really answer what I asked you, but whatever. Are you excited about, the new Mission Impossible?
Joe: Greg, I couldn’t disagree with you more.
Greg: Is Joe not here?
Joe: You’re so right, Greg. Trying hard to. You are right a lot.
Greg: Okay, maybe we should just get to the show mission impossible dead reckoning, part one. Part one. Let’s do it. Joe. In the episode that we released last, we talked about director Gavin O’Connor and the movie he had made. The account I brought up that he had directed a different movie that was about UFC fighters, and here’s how I described UFC fighters.
Greg: Gavin O’Connor, who directed this movie. He also directed a movie called warrior.
Joe: You ever seen that movie? I don’t think so. I think it’s about UHF wrestlers.
Greg: I said they were UHF wrestlers. My question for you this week is.
Joe: Do you think will.
Greg: Win Best podcast at the Golden Globes in 2026 their new award?
Joe: I hope so, especially if Weird Al Yankovic is the guest judge for this. Isn’t UHF one of his movies? Yeah, I think we watched that together.
Greg: For sure we did, and.
Joe: It was one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I don’t know if it holds up now, but that’s all I think about. I think that’s what I thought of in my head, too. It’s like Weird Al Yankovic and, Michael Richards in it. Yep.
Greg: I’m in. All right. So we’ll definitely be there. Here’s the tell if we’re going to win Weird Al Yankovic presents the award.
Joe: Okay, let’s.
Greg: Get to the show.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Clip: Ethan, this machine of yours.
Clip: Is gonna cost you dearly.
Clip: The world is changing. Truth is vanishing. War is coming. It’s been a long time. Fan. You’ve no idea the power represented. Listen to me. The world’s coming after you. His fate is written. Shall we write yours too? If anything happens, there’s no place that.
Clip: I’ll go to kill you. That he’s written.
Clip: Ethan.
Clip: What’s your objective here? Life will always matter.
Clip: More to me than I am.
Clip: None of our lives can matter more than this mission. I don’t accept that.
Greg: The year is 2023. Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie team up once again to make the seventh installment of the Mission Impossible series. This one, at the time of release was called Dead Reckoning Part one. We are talking about Tom cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames.
Joe: Simon Pegg, Rebecca.
Greg: Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Clements from Guardians of the Galaxy coming back from Mission Impossible one, Henry’s journey is Kittridge, fresh off of Fast and Furious four, six, and nine. We’ve got Shea Whigham, literally fresh off of Top Gun Maverick. We’ve got Greg, Tarzan Davis, and Charles Parnell. And don’t forget that Carrie, always from The Princess Bride, is also in this movie.
Greg: And Rob Delaney makes an appearance. Joe Skye Tucker, where do we even start with this.
Joe: This achievement in film? What makes Mission Cullen impossible? Dead reckoning Part one.
Greg: A great bad movie.
Joe: So many things. I watched this movie last night. We watched it together in the theater.
Greg: True Imax. Yeah, we.
Joe: Watched the first half together one other time or the first third because it’s a really freaking long movie.
Greg: Honestly, just accidentally, we just press play and then sat there and watched it.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. And then I watched it at least one other time between that time and now. Yeah. So this is a movie that we have watched a number of times. Yeah, yeah. It’s I and I don’t say this lightly, I think this is the quintessential great bad movie. Wow. Even more so than Fast five.
Greg: I’m listening.
Joe: It has literally every single one of our stock drinking games within the first hour. Yep. And to me, when we created them, we created them. For a movie like this, it takes itself a little bit more seriously, I think, than fast five and the Fast and the furious verse.
Greg: Yeah, I agree.
Joe: I also have a theory about this movie that I like to run past you in a second. Okay, but it’s not even that there’s a question. This is a great bad this is.
Greg: A great bad movie. Yeah.
Joe: There’s no surprise when we get to the rating at the end of it. I love this movie. I like it more every time I watch it. It’s still not as good of an action movie as Mission Impossible six, which I still hold as the best action movie ever. But it is probably my second favorite Mission Impossible movie.
Joe: Wow a mission possible two might beat it out but no I can’t I can’t even make that play. So it’s really fun. But I love your thoughts on it. And I have lots of questions for you. As someone who is more steeped in the canon of the Mission Impossible averse than I am, I’m writing your coattails a fan, that’s what I’m saying.
Joe: So what are your thoughts on this movie?
Greg: This is my favorite kind of movie. And so when we went to go see it in the theater, it was just, I mean, I think I put my arms in the air at least once. And I know that I did that. The previous two movies as well, just like literally pumping double fists in the air like this is happening.
Greg: We’re really getting to live the life we want to live right now. I mean, it’s an adventure. It’s an action movie. It’s a mystery. It’s a spy movie. So I’m obviously very forgiving of any movie that’s in any of those categories. But when you put them all together, it’s just unbelievable. But other series that might be kind of like, this is like the Bourne movies.
Greg: Those are pretty serious. I loved a long stretch of the Fast and Furious movies. We’ve talked about those quite a bit on the show. I mean, many chapters of the James Bond history. This actually has the tone of a few of the James Bonds that have been out there. All that said, this is my favorite movie franchise hands down.
Greg: There is no better movie franchise in my mind than the for me, than the Mission Impossible series. I placed that on it when I saw the fourth one in the theater, or at first occurred to me that that could be happening because it was a little bit of a weird, bumpy road. One, two, three and four. And at the end of four I just thought, this might be a thing.
Greg: And by the time I saw the fifth one, I was like, no, this is my favorite franchise. So it’s been my favorite franchise for quite a while. And something that’s interesting since the fifth one is Christopher McQuarrie has directed all of them and written he co-wrote this one, but he’s, you know, been kind of like Tom Cruise’s writer guy since Valkyrie, and I think every movie.
Greg: So it’s just the greatest. I think you could teach a grad level film school on this film. All the different aspects of it, all the different things that are going on. If you look at it on every level, it’s peak creativity, storytelling, action, locations, special effects that you can’t really tell are special effects a lot of the time.
Greg: And, you know, I’m a person who’s obsessed with the creative process. And something that’s awesome about these films is Christopher McQuarrie is an open book about how they make these and how they make their decisions, and he’s willing to do, I mean, in some cases.
Joe: 6 to 8.
Greg: Hour interviews about each movie. If you if you look at the Empire Film podcast, which is a great podcast, I think he did like six hours on Mission Impossible Fallout. He did like nine hours on this movie, and it got to be a bit much by the end. So for me, in both the just sitting there and enjoying it, just loving a great bad movie and all its greatness and badness, but then also kind of hearing about the creative process behind it, it’s awesome.
Greg: So I don’t even know where should we start talking about this movie?
Joe: So I have a couple questions for you. Okay?
Greg: Okay.
Joe: And this is something that I have been mulling over because it is the seventh in the series.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: And it follows weirdly closely the seventh fast and the furious movie. So I don’t know if they saw Fast and Furious seven and said, there’s a great story here, but we can do it better. Okay. Or is it an homage because you have gods, I sure. Which is the same thing as the entity, basically. Yeah. I can’t tell if they like, took it as a jumping off point of saying, here are some really interesting things that are happening and fast seven that I like to borrow.
Joe: Yeah, taking the premise of this, I that can find anybody anywhere and then and then they take it to the next level. Yeah. Yeah. Fast seven kind of this is when the, when it starts to kind of go down the road of CGI, just every, everything is CGI. Whereas up to that point they’d really done practical effects as Justin Lin talks about.
Joe: And then in the fifth one, the sixth one as well. And this movie to me is way better on the stunts. Yeah. On the action scenes, you have it bookmarked on both sides by two really big kind of set pieces, both the the airport and then the train at the end.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: You have very similar stunts. So if you’ve seen fast seven, you know, there’s like the famous one two Paul Walker running up, the bus as it’s falling off the cliff. Similar things and shots. Yeah. And then Mission Impossible seven and says, hold my beer. Yeah, one bus is fine. How about 3 or 4 different train cars?
Greg: I remember my first bus.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. So I can’t tell if it’s just like a jumping off point or it’s kind of kismet. And they didn’t really reference that at all. But to me, they both have set pieces in the Middle East that happened. That was in my head as I watched it. Yeah. So that’s my like open question to you. Do you think that they’re trying to do this?
Joe: They fast. Haven’t had a good idea. But this is us putting into the Mission Impossible ends and making it so much better than anyone else could have ever thought.
Greg: And I really doubt it. Honestly. I wonder if they even saw it. To tell you the truth, Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie. They view the Fast and Furious franchise as a nice franchise for right now. The standard they make these movies to the Mission Impossible movies to is these have to work forever. And so they try to, route them in kind of film history.
Greg: So that it will make sense down the road. Kind of like if you’re making a rock and roll record now, you should probably understand how the Rolling Stones recorded guitars, because that’s what rock and roll guitars sound like. And so that’s what these guys are doing when they’re making these movies as well. They’re really rooting it in film history.
Greg: And I don’t think they like the Fast and Furious movies.
Joe: To be honest.
Greg: I don’t think those movies are really on their radar.
Joe: I mean, that tracks yeah, there’s so much that’s happening, especially in those. I don’t want to say they aren’t action scenes, but the the airport scene at the beginning.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: And then the train scene, they’re referencing kind of some of the old classic mystery and spy movies. Yeah, yeah. But really the action happens in the middle of it if you want. Like classic action movie like The Streets of Rome or Venice really is like your classic action sequence.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: The rest are kind of set ups for what I would call kind of a spy mystery, with a little bit of action thrown in it. Was that what they were going for in the kind of set up to this movie?
Greg: Boy, I don’t know. I can tell you that the initial idea for what Christopher McQuarrie wanted to do was make a train movie, like a movie from 1964 called The Train. It was directed by John Frankenheimer, had Burt Lancaster in it, and he said, that is, if you want to watch one of the best practical action movies in history, watch that movie, because it’s really trains just doing all kinds of stuff.
Greg: And you can watch the trailer online. It’s like five minutes long. It’s the longest trailer you’ve ever seen, but the explosions that are happening in camera, real explosions, they’re unbelievable. And I don’t know if I’m actually going to go back and watch. 1964 is the train, but I might, you know, if it’s that kind of night, I’ve gone back to look at, really old silent films because, you know, Christopher McQuarrie just talked me into it.
Greg: So I don’t know, I think they they probably came up with a bunch of action set pieces that they wanted to do. And then, you know, they kind of wrote a story around it in some ways. And also, the elephant in the room on this movie is they had struggled so much keeping the story together in the sixth one and the fifth one that Christopher McQuarrie said, let’s just stop trying to do that.
Greg: Let’s make two movies. We’ve got enough story for two movies, let’s make two movies. And so they also had to plan out action scenes for two different movies, and I bet the better ones are in the eighth one. I mean, that is, for me, the thing I keep going back and forth on with this movie is it’s a part one in the title.
Greg: When it came out, they’ve taken that part went off. It’s now just Dead Reckoning. And the new movie is called The Final Reckoning. And so this movie is definitely a part one in the way that Dune one was a part one, and the way that the latest Spider-Verse movies were in between 1 and 2. So I have two big problems with this movie.
Joe: Okay, let’s hear them.
Greg: I have to say, it’s pretty frustrating for me that this movie feels pretty long.
Greg: I bet if they took out everything that was setting us up for eight, it would be a perfect movie. That’s my take on it. I also trust this crew that they’re going to make a pretty entertaining movie that’s coming out the weekend after this episode drops. Which for us is in a week and a half.
Joe: Oh, my gosh, can you believe it? Yeah.
Greg: I’ve been waiting for this thing for so long.
Greg: So I really struggle with how kind of drawn out this movie is. And when I feel that fatigue, I think, what if you weren’t setting up an eighth movie, guys, what if you were just making a seventh? I bet it would be more taut. It would be a lot like five and six, honestly. So that’s my first big qualm with this movie.
Joe: Yeah I think as a movie that is a part one or however you want to frame it, I think it does one of the better jobs of being standalone. Yeah. Where it does end with a good resolution, you kind of get to a point where, you know, I don’t just like total cliffhanger. The worst example of this was back to the future two, which is just get to the third one.
Joe: There’s no heart to it. There’s no like arc. It’s it’s very clearly a movie designed to get to to, the third act, essentially. Yeah. This movie is long, and I think my biggest struggle with it, honestly, is Hayley Atwell character. Grace.
Greg: Grace, yeah.
Joe: Just drives me crazy. And to me, that’s also the sign of a great actress in a role. But her kind of always on the run. Like there’s a point where just like, just shoot her and be done with it, you know? And like, I don’t care if it’s Tom cruise, the shooting her or the FBI or the bad guy Gabriel or whoever, but, you know, great.
Greg: Let her go.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. Like if you’re in the room, if you’re asking me to choose between Grace and Elsa Foust, there is no competition. Yeah. On who I would want to see. And the eighth one and live on and do their own eight Mission Impossible versus side movies in.
Greg: The same horrible arena.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So Grace is the hardest character for me. They’re trying to, like, pass the torch to her in some sense, and I think we’re supposed to feel some sort of sympathy for her. And all I feel throughout it is annoyance that she is there. And some of it, as I feel like they’re making some nods to like someone like the 40s and 50s movies and The Third Man and those sorts of kind of spy kind of will.
Joe: They won’t they love interest kind of movies. Sure. And so that’s where it drags for me. And yet when I think about it, what would I want to cut from it? I can’t really think of anything I’d want to cut from it. Because it does work really well as a movie start to finish. So it’s an interesting challenge of I don’t know what I would cut.
Joe: And also I feel like it is too long.
Greg: There was a hilarious review in the Times UK. They gave it a very negative review in this movie and it was pretty hilarious. And they loved the first six. So this isn’t like somebody who just has it out for these people. But he described Grace as being played by a permanently startled Hayley Atwell.
Joe: Yeah, which she’s just gotta be. She’s just.
Greg: Constantly startled, a bit like Frodo and in the Lord of the rings, just constantly startled by everything. And Hayley Atwell is incredible. I feel like she’s probably one of the best performers that we have on the planet right now. Yeah, but what you’re getting at there is my number two biggest problem with this movie, and that is that my very favorite character in this series is Elsa Foust, Rebecca Ferguson’s character.
Greg: And I think for that reason, Mission Impossible five is my favorite Mission Impossible movie. I think six is obviously like a modern miracle of a movie, but we get introduced to Elsa Foust in the fifth one. And also, Christopher McQuarrie is making what he thinks Will be his one and only Mission Impossible movie because they had changed directors every movie up until that point.
Greg: And so he was directing it like he was never going to get the chance to do another one. So anytime we’re away from her and we’re away from her quite a bit in this movie, I am just kind of thinking, Where’s Elsa? Like, I feel a tension in the movie. Wait, the most interesting person in the series is not on screen, but she’s in this movie.
Greg: Was she busy? It turns out she signed a three movie contract with these guys and decided not to re-up. And so they knew that she wasn’t going to be coming back. And so I suppose knowing that from behind the scenes, I get why they’re trying to hand off, you know, what we feel for her to another co-lead for Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell is incredible.
Greg: Although she is a thief and so was Tandy Newton in Mission Impossible to. So why wasn’t a Tandy Newton you know in this movie. All that to say, I think it’s a big mark on this movie for me while I’m watching it. I’m just constantly wondering where else I found this.
Joe: Yeah. And I think it makes it a little easier for me to handle her leaving, because I had heard that she didn’t want to do anymore, and she was kind of done with action or whatever or. Yeah, you know, so I was like, okay, if it was, a mutual decision. Yeah. And she didn’t want to do it.
Joe: Okay. I’m totally fine with people like having agency and making that choice behind whatever. I totally agree with you. As you know, counterpoint to Tom Cruise’s character, his Ethan Hunt as Ilsa Foust. Yeah. And it was needed within the franchise.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: And so without her, it just feels different. So I totally agree.
Greg: Yeah. And to be clear, she does have a lot of awesome scenes in this movie. Yeah, but yeah, her absence is felt. I feel like yeah.
Joe: I have another question for you.
Greg: Go for it.
Joe: And I was trying to remember Mission Impossible one. Because they also ends on a train scene. Yep. How many homages to the first Mission Impossible are in this one?
Greg: I think throughout the movie they do occasionally allude to things like the rabbit’s foot is in more than just three, and, Jim Phelps, I don’t think he was in season one of the show of Mission Impossible. The boss in the first season. One was this guy named Briggs and Shea Whigham. Last name in this movie is Briggs.
Greg: And so there’s like a question of, is he the son of the original boss?
Joe: Right.
Greg: In the show, Christopher McQuarrie is not at all interested in fan service in movies, right? He said it’s fun for just a second, but for that second that it’s fun for you. You’re no longer thinking about the movie that you’re watching. And so it ruins the movie you’re watching. And so he’s like he gets the intention behind it, but he just has no interest in it because he’s, you’re purposefully getting the people in the theater to stop paying attention to your movie.
Joe: Right.
Greg: By scratching an itch that they have from being a fan of.
Joe: Other things. So. Right. So you thought an Easter egg, you know, got to drop this ten different things and that the super fans are going to go crazy about online.
Greg: And no, I don’t think so. His Easter eggs will allude to like story points. I think like an Easter egg in this movie is, when they are in the National Defense Office, whatever that is at the beginning. And by in the beginning, I mean like 25 minutes into the movie before the credits.
Joe: Know.
Greg: When they’re in Carrie Elway’s office and all the national security people are there, there is a picture of the president behind them on the wall. Did you notice that?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And Angela Bassett is just right there on the wall as an Easter egg.
Greg: And they don’t make any mention. She wasn’t available for the movie. But she’s president now in this world. And so you know that’s that’s alluding to the story. You know I think she is in the eighth one. Right. Anyways I think there are probably Easter eggs throughout this movie that that are story based. And that’s all that Christopher McQuarrie is interested in.
Joe: So I have some other questions for you. Go for it. Why is the pair of keys? Yeah, that is the central theme of this movie of like what they’re trying to find look like the cheapest penny arcade thing you could have gotten. That bothers me and has bothered me every single time I’ve watched this movie. And like, that was the design on the key that you wanted to do.
Joe: They just look so cheap and dumb to me that it bothers me every single time I see those keys.
Greg: I didn’t that didn’t occur to me at all. But I did want to say, you said, you know, we do. It does tell a full story by the end of the two hours and 40 minutes or whatever, this movie is 45 minutes. And I was gonna say, yeah, we got the key. That’s the whole.
Joe: Story. I mean, yeah, so.
Greg: I have no idea why the key looks like that. I wonder if it’s like, based on an old school key. And that’s what, like, an old ancient key would look like or something. I don’t know if it would have those lights on it. If it did.
Joe: I don’t know. It does. Every time I see it. It looks so cheap to me. Like, yeah. It’s just like you could do better.
Greg: Okay. What’s your next question?
Joe: Why does cartridges attache or whoever it is look like Willem Dafoe? The person that Tom cruise is impersonating to get into that meeting is.
Joe: That, that that was my question. Like, were the they just not with Willem Dafoe not available to come in for like a day to do this. And so they found you’re getting.
Greg: Dafoe vibes,
Joe: Yeah. That was that that every time I watch this movie, I’m like, is that Willem Dafoe is brother? My what? I totally.
Greg: Totally Dave Dafoe.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: David Apo and how many times do they cut to that guy in that scene?
Joe: So many. It is now that I know what I mean. The first time we saw them, you know, you kind of we are expecting something to happen. Yeah. You know, and I think the first time I saw it, I thought that maybe that person was going to come in and kill everyone in there. You think he is?
Greg: Sure.
Joe: Yeah. And then it turned out to be Ethan Hunt. Of course. And then, you know, everything kind of makes sense from there, but. Right. He’s an interesting looking person, is all I’ll say. And they utilize that to full effect. Yeah. Every every shot. But he’s over the shoulder of somebody just to like, lurk in the background and not say a word.
Greg: But yeah I think that scene could have been cut down and they could have cut to him less.
Greg: There’s a lot of trying to remind you what the plot of this movie is.
Greg: And there’s kind of a modern day thing where they’re trying to overexplain things in movies redundantly so that people on their phones will catch it. Yeah. I kind of doubt that’s what these guys are doing. But they must have gotten cards. I still don’t understand what this is and kind of preview screenings and, it gets a little bit long.
Joe: I do like that scene because I think it’s so funny because they are referencing things that have been talked about in other movies. Sure. And like that whole we just leave word and, well, let’s choose a list of whether or not to participate. It’s so awesome.
Greg: We were laughing so hard in the theater. When that scene happens, it’s hilarious that the seventh movie is making fun of the whole premise, you know?
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: But that’s also a scene where they sell the bad.
Joe: Guy.
Greg: More than I think any bad guy has ever been sold in history. Should we listen to some of this scene of them selling the bad guy?
Clip: So what are we dealing with? This entity has multiple personalities at times behaving like a computer virus and a tapeworm and a botnet, distorting any and all digital information with which it comes in contact. Once infected, nothing recorded, stored or transmitted digitally can be trusted as fact. At the outset, it concentrated primarily on news and social media, which was of little concern to us as it often suited our purposes until six months ago, when the entity breached Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate and assimilated their top secret active learning AI before vanishing into the cloud.
Clip: Subsequent attacks increased 10,000 fold overnight, spreading exponentially, indicating that the entity has since become sentient. You’re telling me this thing has a mind of its own? Over the last three weeks alone, it has access to our satellite telecommunications, the Federal Reserve, the stock market, and the national power grid, NASA, and the combined branches of our military. And we’re not alone.
Clip: It has penetrated the world and European central banks gained entry to the major defense, finance and infrastructure systems of Russia, India, Israel, Australasia, all of Europe. And what did it do to all of these systems? Exactly. Nothing. Nothing. It came and it went, leaving fingerprints where they could easily be found and sending a very clear message I shall return whatever its ultimate goal is, we’re powerless to stop it.
Greg: Okay, I’m going to cut that off halfway through the signing of the bad guy.
Joe: That’s halfway through. It is so good. It is the equivalent of the John Wick sell. The good guy. And then they do it for Gabriel who is his avatar in the real world as well. Not to this level, but there’s a whole scene where they talk about him and his nickname of the Dark Messiah, which is just the glory.
Greg: Amazing. I think I saw them open for an I guess nails one time. I think.
Joe: So, yeah.
Greg: Let’s listen to Ilsa sell Gabriel.
Clip: Does he have a name? He calls himself Gabriel.
Clip: You’ve known?
Clip: There is no knowing him. He has no recorded past the entity. Made sure of that. He’s a dark Messiah. The entity’s chosen messenger. And he sees death as a gift he wants to share with the rest of the world.
Greg: But then, like, a minute later, Tom cruise says, I know this guy better than you. He doesn’t love death. He loves the suffering it causes. There’s so much of this movie where everybody is whispering in that tone and finishing each other’s sentences, and it is exhausting sometimes to me.
Joe: And then we have selling the Good Guys short, the FBI agents do of Tom cruise right before as they’re on the helicopter coming and you have that clip or.
Greg: Oh, my gosh, I totally do have that.
Joe: Okay, this is Shea.
Greg: Whigham selling the good guy.
Clip: Listen up. An American operative with a grievance against his country is missing and has malfunctioned.
Clip: His agenda represents a threat to our national interest, and he must be neutralized at all cost. Anything in this man’s possession is of vital importance. It must be captured intact. The man himself is expendable. He is not to be underestimated. Hey, master of infiltration, deception, sabotage and psych warfare, for all intents and purposes, ladies and gentlemen, a mind reading, shapeshifting incarnation of chaos.
Clip: So for your safety and the safety of those around you, do not consider him secure. Unless you have driven a wooden stake through.
Joe: His open heart. This is not a drill.
Greg: Amazing.
Joe: I may have to add this is not a drill to our trope list.
Greg: Absolutely, totally. So I feel like that had shades of Edge of Tomorrow and Bill Paxton’s, you know, famous monologue from that that Christopher McQuarrie wrote. And so I feel like that kind of, stuff gets a little bit out of control in this movie.
Joe: I agreed.
Greg: And he’s only co-writing this movie, so I’m not sure I feel like dialog was probably on him.
Joe: I guess it feels bloated in places.
Greg: I think the tale here is when anyone in this movie says the very something, something the very incarnation of whatever. That is a classic.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Christopher McQuarrie there’s one of these in most of these movies, like in the.
Joe: Fifth.
Greg: One, maybe the sixth one, it was Alec Baldwin. I think it might have been that in the fifth one as well.
Joe: I think. So I think he’s in both. Right? Yeah.
Greg: He kind of had to get these out.
Greg: Then for some reason with Alec Baldwin, you’re cool with it.
Joe: Yeah, it’s one of those were the set up to like those action scenes or like that big I would guess I would put it in the terms of an action scene that they’re in the airport, but yeah, they’re getting to the airport and then something’s going to happen. And then kind of high jinks and capers. Yeah. All over the place.
Joe: Sure. And it’s really fun because you have multiple storylines happening at the same time. Yeah. Which is I think they do a really good job of marrying all of that together. But it’s hard because there’s not a lot of places to put the plot. And so they kind of cram it. Yeah, around those big sequences.
Greg: Of course. Of course. So that’s their secret.
Joe: Yeah. I’m pretty forgiving of it in this movie. Yeah, totally. And yet I totally can see, like there’s the easily 20 minutes that they could trim out of this movie. You think so? Hours and 40 minutes feels it’s long.
Greg: You said 20 minutes in the commentary for this movie with the editor and Christopher McQuarrie. They said that after they finished Mission Impossible Fallout, the sixth one, they decided, let’s see if we can cut more out to make it more streamlined. And they cut five minutes out of it and an entirely fell apart. And so they put it back in.
Greg: They said, I guess we’ve got it down to what it can be.
Joe: I mean, I get it. I remember there’s a director’s cut of Natural Born Killers. Oliver Stone and that’s one of my favorite movies. I remember seeing it with you in the theater. I was the first time I’d ever seen a movie like that. Yeah. And it was overwhelming. Yeah. And it’s a movie I’ve come to really love.
Joe: And I think it’s still. I haven’t watched it in a while, but I probably holds up today of, like, really being like, holding up a mirror to our violent culture. And the director’s cut of it is only like five minutes longer. Than the original. But it adds a different shade to the madness that’s happening. And there’s a really interesting moment and Oliver Stone is just talking about one of the scenes and he said you know the original the scene of this was a little bit longer and I cut it down more out of just to cut time out of it, and I regret it.
Joe: I was like, yeah. And it wasn’t even like a big moment in the movie. But just like he said, pressure that I put on myself and I probably shouldn’t have felt it and should have kept it in the movie. And so I often wonder about that with, with these because it’s like you’d almost have to cut out an entire subplot within it instead of just making each scene shorter.
Joe: You’d almost have to, like, take out an element out of the movie. Yeah.
Greg: I definitely think it’s overcrowded. I think there’s probably 1 or 2 too many characters in this movie. Like, usually when I read who’s in the movie? I don’t read that many names. Yeah. And that is why Rebecca Ferguson didn’t up. She said, you know, we all have what we want from certain characters. She said, what I wanted for Elsa was for her to be rogue all the time.
Greg: And she said in this movie she started to feel like she was becoming part of the team. And that’s not who she wanted Elsa to be. I think.
Joe: It’s fair.
Greg: That’s that. Yeah. But I say don’t add new people. But then Pom Klementieff is one of my very favorite parts of the movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: She speaks only French.
Greg: Her name is Paris. When she was auditioning for the movie, it was with Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie. And she was reading the lines and she was saying, I’m so sorry. I struggle with English sometimes. It’s not my first language. And Tom cruise said, well, what’s your first language? She said, French and Tom cruise just like yelled for Christopher McQuarrie just yelled like McHugh.
Greg: McHugh said, I’m way ahead of you. Let’s say all of your lines in French don’t speak English. What do subtitles. And so she did that in the audition and they hired her. Such a great move.
Joe: Yeah, I’m trying to think of, like, there are scenes that you could cut. Now, I wouldn’t cut this one because it gives us a drinking game of of having Interpol in it. But there’s a scene where Gabriel comes to see the chief of police who’s just arrested. Hayley Atwell is character. Yeah, you could totally cut that out. And nothing changes within really.
Joe: Anything that happens other than it’s kind of building him up. There’s probably something that it moves forward a little bit.
Greg: He was looking for the key.
Greg: And he was showing that he’s all knowing. Yeah. And he’s showing that he will put a knife through somebody’s hand on a desk I guess. Yeah. He’s bad guy.
Joe: Yeah. He’s just bad guy. But there’s even that like it turns out that that wasn’t even where the key was that you didn’t have the key on her. Right? Right.
Greg: Guess he was supposed to play Gabriel in this movie, Nicholas Hoult.
Joe: Oh, I would, I like that.
Greg: He was in Fury Road about a.
Joe: Boy. It’s one of my favorite actors that’s. You’ve seen in everything.
Greg: Yeah. He, said yes. And he was hired and then, because of delays in the movie, had to honor another commitment.
Joe: I mean, I do feel like now he sign Morales, he’s been around and lots of things, and I think he does a fine job on this. But I do feel like that was an opportunity for having a an actor with more gravitas in it. Yeah. Which is a total shots fired it. You sign Ramos unintentionally. I’m sure you’re a lovely person, but.
Greg: It seems like he’s all gravitas.
Joe: I meant Nicholas Hoult, and that role would have been. Yeah. Awesome.
Greg: Yeah. And he’s not in the eighth one because he is Lex Luthor in Superman coming out. The summer missed opportunity. Okay, I think if we were to walk through the movie, I would probably need to push back on. You said there aren’t that many action scenes in this movie because it starts out with like a nuclear submarine, basically modern day Red October is what it is.
Greg: Just another Akula class Russian submarine. No big deal. The Sebastopol. It’s snuck up to every navy in the world and undetected. And that’s where we meet the entity. And then the entity decides to like off the Sebastopol.
Joe: I’m trying to think of how I would define an action sequence. I don’t feel like it needs more action sequences. I think it’s the especially the big set pieces. And I would throw the submarine scene into that as well. They’re almost like short films. Yeah you’re right. You have like the submarine scene. You have the cinema and the airport, the desert.
Joe: They have the car chase. Right. And then the nighttime rave, which totally could have been pulled out of a John Wick movie. Yes. Oh, sure. If you’re asking about a John Wick reference there, I think that you might have.
Greg: Really warmed up this this.
Joe: Episode. Right. We’re ready. And then the train sequence, obviously.
Greg: Yeah. Oh, the jump.
Joe: The jump off to get onto the train.
Greg: Right. What do you think of the entity as a bad guy?
Joe: I like it because in conjunction with Gabriel who is the messenger. Yeah. It works. There’s that scene right before the, in the like rave where he’s like, I don’t care. I know that the key will be dropped at my feet. So right now, the only thing that matters is this. Yeah. And so it’s, you know, it was an interesting take on a bad guy where it’s like, not just trying to get right to the point.
Joe: It’s like, I know what’s going to happen. And that’s kind of what they’re going into. There’s a little bit too much. What if it’s some of like, what if they’ve already thought of this and what? And it’s just like.
Greg: That happens in five and six to yeah.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. But that was that was fine. And that was kind of silly and funny. But you know, I think as a bad guy, I mean the entity itself is kind of it’s silly, but it needs, and needs Esai Morales to be the, the face of it. Yeah. Kind of the action of it. And I think it works.
Joe: It worked for me.
Greg: Totally. I’m so glad they put a human being’s face to I. Yeah. And he was like, mainlining I in that box in the train. He had like, that mask on. Was he, like, plugged in the matrix dealer in kung fu while he was in there?
Joe: Perhaps, you know, or it’s the red light therapy to keep you young or to help with your skin or whatever. I don’t know, there are lots of. I have a lot of theories, but nothing that’s, proven out yet.
Greg: I think that was supposed to be just an oxygen mask. And then when I think afterwards, when they were editing it, they were like, oh, is that like an entity thing? And they’re like, it is now. And they gave it the noise. Yeah. And put a little screen on it.
Joe: I wonder what the foley artist did to make that noise. That’s kind of got a growl or. Yeah, it’s very emblematic to me also of like Jurassic Park and how they made the dinosaur noises. Yeah.
Greg: So do you want to hear.
Joe: Yeah, 100%.
Greg: The guy who was doing sound for the movie, like the sound effects his daughter call them and said, hey, the sound bar is broken at our house. Am I doing something wrong? And he said, oh, I don’t know. So he goes to his house and his Sonos soundbar is making that sound, And so he’s trying to figure out how to fix it and he can’t fix it.
Greg: It’s just making all of those sounds. And he just thought, well, I might as well record it.
Greg: And so he started playing Mission Impossible five through it. And so what the noise is, is Mission Impossible five going through a broken Sonos speaker?
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: Isn’t that amazing?
Joe: That is something only a Foley artist would be like. Oh, I heard I better record this. Yeah, yeah.
Greg: But he, you know, his job is to just constantly record sounds, not knowing if they’re going to make it into the movie or not. And if they don’t make it into a movie, you know, they’ll just have it for the next thing if they need it. You know, it’s owned by Paramount Pictures. And so at that point, there was no use for that sound, and they actually finished the movie, or they were working on the movie and they were doing friends and family screenings, and it was the director, Edgar Wright, from Ant-Man and Hot Fuzz.
Greg: Shaun of the dead.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: He walked up to them afterwards and said, I really feel like the entity needs a sound. Why didn’t you ever cut to like, you know, musical cue whenever you talked about the the entity or whenever the entity was going on and they said, what are you talking about? Every time we mentioned the entity that that theme played and he said, oh, but it wasn’t like every time you showed the entity, they said, oh, that’s a good point.
Greg: We need a sound effect for when we show the entity. And they had filmed that party scene where the entity kind of graphic is all over the walls. That was just a graphic on the walls at the party. That was not what the entity looked like. And they realized later, oh, that should just be what the entity looks.
Joe: Like, right? So that’s why, yeah.
Greg: Let’s talk about right after despite launching countermeasure after countermeasure from two to.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: The Sebastopol goes down. And we get to some food delivery like some DoorDash is being delivered to Ethan Haim. And Ethan says you forgot to say the thing or whatever. It’s like the guy’s first day. And so he says the thing and, Ethan’s response is like, it’s a pretty good you know, here’s why we do what we do in the IMF.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Very lofty. Like we do it for others, not for us. And then when the guy’s leaving, he says, welcome to the IMF. You made a good choice.
Joe: And the oath is incredible.
Greg: And the fact that there was a choice that they were given at some point, I really like that aspect of this movie. What was your take on like The Oath and The Choice?
Joe: I was all on board with that. And if you don’t have the choice mentioning the choice as a drinking game, then what are you doing with your life?
Greg: Over. Yeah.
Joe: Show’s over. Why are you even listening to this podcast if you don’t expect that to.
Greg: Be one listener, you need to know that you have two trusted hosts that both have that on their drinking games list right.
Joe: Now. Guaranteed. Guaranteed. Yeah, I like that. You know, it’s like there’s a little bit of levity that happens with that right before. But is that this scene right after this vast the ball goes under. Yeah. Okay.
Greg: Oh, by the way, on the submarine they grow sweatier and sweatier as the scene goes. And the makeup person labeled them sweat on one sweat pan to and sweat on three other. And they said they were following true Tony Scott rules with the face sweat.
Joe: Off
Greg: Sweat con one that made me laugh so hard.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: So inside the delivery bag is not food. It is the mission.
Greg: And the mission.
Joe: Voice is Eugene.
Greg: Kittridge.
Joe: Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Greg: How excited were you that Kittridge was in this movie? I was so stoked that Kittridge was in this movie.
Joe: I didn’t know Kittridge from the other ones. I like him as a character, so I didn’t remember him from the first one. Okay, okay. Forgive me, super fans out there. Yeah, but I like him as a character. It’s interesting because he doesn’t fully trust Ethan Hunt, right? Or like him. Yeah, yeah. And I think the feeling is mutual.
Joe: But there’s also they’re both on the same side. Yeah. And so that was that was interesting. And so I like Kittridge as a like kind of a, a little bit more of a complicated hero than just Alec Baldwin’s character, who kind of goes from antagonist to protagonist right over the course of, like, one movie or one. Yeah.
Greg: So very fast and furious ish. They must be watching those movies.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: The mission briefing is super old school, which I really liked. And, they show that Ilsa has half of the cruciform key, which means two keys that slide into each other to make a super key. And her reward is $50 million.
Joe: Yeah, to.
Greg: Find her is $50 million. What do you think your reward would be?
Joe: Joe is so much lower than that. It’s. It’s probably like $500.
Greg: 500.
Joe: Yeah, I’m pretty easy to find. Sorry. Live a boring life. And I’m not, you know, one of the most dangerous people on the planet. So. Okay, you know.
Greg: Can you shoot a gun with one eye open, or do you need a patch?
Joe: No, I can do it. I know that I know that Rebecca Ferguson struggles with that. So I’m probably better than Nelson thousand a guard. Yeah. Only is the only regard that I better than those vows.
Greg: I love that they cut to Elsa Foust. She has an eyepatch because what they learned that day is she can’t close one of her eyes. She has to close both eyes or no eyes. Those are her options.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: It’s there. It’s like eye patch. Let’s do this. And it is so awesome. I love the eyepatch.
Joe: So yeah, me too. It was just like I didn’t even question it. It’s like, that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know.
Greg: Of course, Ilsa Faust has the coolest eyepatch in history. Yeah, I’m sure they made a bunch. And she picked one out, just like on Star Wars, where they let people choose their lightsaber.
Joe: And the funny piece about that scene to me, because it, like, instantly cuts to the desert. And, bounty hunters chasing her. Sure. So Ethan Hunt is arguably the most capable spy or agent on the planet. Can get out of any scrape. Yeah, and there he is, making a mistake that I would make. Where, like one sand dune behind the people chasing him.
Joe: He’s just like his head is above it, like sending a signal to Ilsa, and somehow she just knows that it’s him. Yeah, yeah. To that, there’s that face of, like. Sure, Ethan. Yeah, I love those moment. Those are where it gets a little fast and furious for me. Or they don’t show that these doing, like, some special sign or special code.
Joe: Maybe that was my assumption, but I just like Ethan. Yeah. And then he’s they start shooting at him instantly and he has to like, run into the sandstorm. Right. So that was a little like silly for me of his Ethan Hunt. And yet he’s doing is making a mistake I would make if I were sure the first time or it’s, you know, it’s.
Greg: Kind of like in The accountant. He makes some flagrant mistakes to be found.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Don’t forget they ride by and he has his horse down on the ground and is able to like get his horse up off the ground while he’s on it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Which is just about the greatest movie move I’ve ever seen.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And they were obsessed with how Clint Eastwood did this in The Outlaw Josey Wales. And so they wanted to do it.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: They said that they only had an hour where they could do that shot, where the sun was in the right position. Those horses that run by could only do that, you know, 2 or 3 times. And that horse could only get up 2 or 3 times a day. And so for an hour a day, four days in a row.
Greg: This is very Tony Scott, you know, during magic hour going to try and get a shot.
Greg: Also I guess that horse knew what to do when they said action. So they had to stop saying action. Awesome. And so they couldn’t yell action. And Tom cruise had to be the one that got it off the ground. Yeah. So he had to get some sort of signal to do that. And I guess that horse, there were times where he was supposed to stop and it didn’t.
Greg: And there’s a shot in the movie where it, like, almost barreled over the camera.
Joe: And.
Greg: It was supposed to stop just shy of the camera.
Greg: And they decided to use that instead. They’re like all right. Well I guess he’s barreling to for Rebecca Ferguson. Let’s just do that.
Joe: Nice. The scene where they go into the sandstorm is really the only time where the CGI bothers me.
Greg: Oh interesting.
Joe: Especially when they’re doing like the close hand. The hand combat. It was unnecessary for me. That’s the part that I flagged for the bad CGI. There’s some other moments. Yeah, in the movie. Yeah, where there’s a little too leaning heavily on it. But for the most part, what I always appreciate, and this is to Tom Cruise’s credit, they want to do the stunt.
Joe: Yeah. And I keep coming back to this like, yes, you can do everything with CGI. But it feels different to me, When it’s done real. Yeah. When there’s a real explosion, when there’s real reaction to a stunt. Just as it’s much better for me. And I. Maybe I’m old and that’s what I’m feeling with it, because I know you can do crazy stuff with it, but it just doesn’t feel the same.
Greg: I would love to watch that scene with you and the people who made it, and see if you can say which sand is real and which isn’t. Because what they did was they had a jet engine that was blowing sand at them. And there were scenes where they weren’t using that and they were using CGI because like people didn’t have the goggles on or whatever.
Joe: Right.
Greg: But there are a lot of scenes in there where it’s actually a jet engine throwing sand at the actors.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: So interesting. But obviously like the big cloud in the distance is fake, you know? Yeah. In that scene when he is arriving, she’s getting attacked by people because there’s a $50 million bounty on her head and she has the key. I really lost track of who is who. I kept thinking that like Ethan got hit or she got hit.
Greg: So that’s, that’s one thing in that scene as I kind of lost track of what was going on and where we were off.
Joe: Me too.
Greg: Which is unlike these movies for me. Maybe that was on purpose, probably like, oh yeah, the purpose.
Joe: Yeah. That action scene, I would have been happy with it being longer and more. Yeah. Involved. Sure. I know that there. You know, it’s kind of told a little bit in flashback. So I get why. And there’s probably some pressure to tighten up the timing of the movie. But yeah, that’s one of those scenes where you probably could have told the story without that scene.
Joe: You know, if you’re looking to trim out.
Greg: A great introduction for her, though.
Greg: And they got to do the horse thing.
Joe: Where.
Greg: Do you stand on The Outlaw Josey Wales? Have you seen that movie?
Joe: I’m sure I saw it when I was a kid, but I could not remember it. Now if you told me, I don’t know. Have you seen it.
Greg: Yeah, a couple times. Let me give you two great lines from that movie. First of all, Clint Eastwood one time says,
Clip: You get those holes are leaking. I’m gonna help you with a knotted line.
Joe: Which is.
Greg: Just the craziest line in any movie I’ve ever heard, except when, a guy.
Joe: Says.
Clip: There’s another old saying, Senator, don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining.
Greg: That’s like, this is the greatest movie I’ve ever seen.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: Anyways, Josey Wales okay, so sand is a great place to find her. She was there because she had stolen the key and people were trying to find her, so she was like falling asleep at her sniper gun. And then we cut to Tareas getting the, you know, the director of National intelligence meeting, Angela Bassett, on the wall behind him.
Greg: We learn about the other IMF, which is one of the funniest moments in the movie. Should we hear it?
Joe: I think so.
Clip: I sent a man to find her, the only man that she would have entrusted with her half of the key. Oh, does he have it? Kittridge. Well, at present, I don’t know that, sir. He’s refused to come in. Refused? Who the hell is this guy? That’s classified. I’m the goddamn director of National intelligence. What exactly is it? I’m not supposed to know about the IMF, Mr. Kittredge, the world Bank?
Clip: No, that’s the International Monetary Fund. I mean, the other IMF, ours. What does it stand for? Impossible mission force.
Greg: Long pause for a while. You’re not serious?
Clip: I’m afraid he is. And what do they do exactly? It’s just as the name implies. Whatever the rest of us can’t. And who’s in charge? They’re not. Wants to take orders in the traditional sense. Way more or less. Leave word, leave word. Mr. case F operates outside the community and answers directly to the president. So let me get this straight.
Clip: When there’s a mission, none of you can handle, you just leave word for nameless man and hope he gets the job done. Said it, should he choose to accept it. What the hell kind of outfit it’s to choose? What order?
Greg: Amazing this movie can be super funny too.
Greg: We can’t have it all. That’s what Mission Impossible seven is saying. Yeah, Ethan is the guy with the weird face. He’s gotten in there with a mask. So we have a mask in Mission Impossible seven. Everything’s okay in the world. And then he knocks everybody out with I don’t know what was that I.
Joe: Know they are green knock out gas that lasts.
Greg: For like five seconds and then everybody’s fine.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Or everybody’s knocked out. But people who are still in the room are fine.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Doesn’t need to make sense. And has a color.
Joe: Yeah. When it turns from green to white, you know everything is safe. And then you can take your mask off and go from there.
Greg: So when it turns from green to white, everything’s right.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah, we nailed it.
Greg: Oh, we should say Ethan then leaves the room, dressing up as Kittridge and knocks Kittridge out with the Mission Impossible five. Dark ten.
Joe: Oh, nice, I missed that.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is awesome. And it’s the greatest laugh. That’s when we start the credits from the movie. Like 29 minutes in the movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Which Tom cruise was like, we got to do it after that thing because there has to be, like a lift in the mood going into the credits. And that’s when the lift is.
Greg: They tried doing things earlier so there was a lift and they just couldn’t get it. So like we can’t do it. It’s 29 minutes and he’s like why can’t we do it 29 minutes in. It’s the right spot. Why wouldn’t we just do it in the right spot. And I feel like that explains this movie to a tee.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All kinds of things happened just because they felt like it was the right thing to do.
Greg: We don’t need to have the camera straight. It can be doing like crooked Dutch angles the entire movie, just because they need to show that in the frame. It’s not trying to communicate. You know in Hollywood history they would communicate things with Dutch angles. That meant something in this movie. Nope. It’s just they needed to tilt the camera to show everything.
Greg: Don’t overthink it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then we go into the credits. Mission impossible credits. What’s the Joe Skywalker take on Mission Impossible credits?
Joe: I don’t like that. They show things that will come. Really? Yeah, I love it.
Greg: Why don’t you like it?
Joe: Because don’t show me before you’re going to show me.
Greg: No. But do you know what’s going to happen?
Joe: No. But then I’m like, waiting because I’m like, if there’s a scene that I know was coming in the movie and I see, like, a character that might be in trouble in the middle of the movie, but we haven’t seen that scene. I remember that and go, oh, nothing’s going to happen to them in this scene, okay? It drops the stakes for me.
Greg: Oh, interesting. Did you ever watch the show?
Joe: The reboot of it.
Greg: Oh okay. Not the original.
Joe: Not the original.
Greg: They did that on the original show.
Joe: I think they did that on the, on the reboot too. So I get the, the homage that they’re making. Yeah. It’s not my thing. Yeah fine.
Greg: But here’s what’s different about the seventh movie’s opening credits. The entity is actively deleting it as it’s being shown on the screen.
Joe: Interesting.
Greg: That’s why everything gets pixel towards the end. All the credits get pixelated as well. And so some of the things that they show in the opening of the movie aren’t in the movie, because the entity successfully deleted them. Awesome kind of fun, right?
Joe: Yeah. That’s oh, wow.
Greg: It that basically gets us to Shea Whigham. Shea Whigham ran into Christopher McQuarrie at a party and said, man, I like your movies. I want to be in one of your Mission Impossible movies. And Christopher McQuarrie said he had never said this before, but he was just like, okay.
Greg: And then called him when in was time.
Joe: He’s perfect in this. Yeah. And his partner and I don’t I can blanking on his name.
Greg: Greg. Tarzan Davis.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Top gun.
Joe: My favorite thing is those two especially get the the benefit of Hobbs and Shaw travel logic. What does end up where all the action is with no explanation of how they got there, or any or how they have any authority in other countries. Sure. And you just kind of ignore it. And they just kind of are always chasing the action just a little like a half step too slow to actually, right, capture Ethan Hunt and that’s awesome.
Greg: See, I think they could have cut them out. They’re clearly planted for a party.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So there were enough times in the movie I was like, what on earth are these guys doing here?
Joe: I agree that they yeah, that would have probably been a way to trim off ten minutes of the movie. Yeah. There’s some moments where they’re they have conversations about kind of the nature of is he always good? Is he always right? Yeah.
Greg: They allude to the fact that there might be something personal between Shea Whigham and Ethan Hunt, but they never say what it is. And then when they see each other for the first time in that gunfight after the car chase, they’re like hiding behind cars. And when they look at each other, there’s an incredible moment of them recognizing each other and having a moment.
Greg: But we have no idea what was going on in their minds. We’ll find out in the next movie.
Joe: A slow motion look in the middle of chaos. Yes, maybe. Yeah. If you’re if you’re drinking at home, drinking along with that.
Joe: They also share one in the airport that’s a little less true. Pronounced.
Greg: Yep. Shea Whigham in the airport keeps grabbing people’s faces to see if it’s somebody with a mask.
Joe: Yeah, that is so.
Greg: Every time he does it I laugh so hard.
Greg: He asked if he could do that and they said it was, it was an idea that had been thrown around early on. But never died. And he said can I do that in the scene. They’re like no. And then they filmed the take and then afterwards they were like actually yeah, go for it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then when he does that to Kittridge at the end, that was an improv. That was not planned.
Joe: Nice. I love those moments where you get a real honest reaction from the actor. Yeah. You touching my face for totally. As I think about it you could totally lose those characters. Yeah. Yeah. They don’t really push the plot forward in any appreciable way. If you shaved them out of the movie you wouldn’t miss them. Yeah. So yeah, I agree totally.
Joe: I like them as characters. They have moments where they’re fun and sell the good guy.
Greg: But Briggs and they got the greatest.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then we’re at the airport. Tom Cruise has an amazing blue suit on, by the way.
Joe: Every time I watch that scene, I’m like, I need that suit. Yeah, everyone should have that suit. Yeah. Whoever dressed him, it was perfect. Yeah.
Greg: And I mean, like, if you look at the composition of the shots of all the background players and him, I mean, he is the one in the blue suits.
Joe: Yeah. It’s so obvious.
Greg: It’s amazing. We should point out that this movie was made in the height of Covid. And it is really good for a Covid production. There are other movies that are just so, so obviously Covid productions. But these people are in rooms before there’s a vaccine. This movie was supposed to start filming in February of 2020.
Joe: Crazy.
Greg: And they pushed it back to September. And it was in December that the audio of Tom cruise kind of screaming at the crew because they weren’t wearing masks. I think. They have been working all year over zoom.
Joe: But.
Greg: He’s losing his mind probably the way everybody else was.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But at the airport you know they made like 125 extras look like a thousand. And not with digital effects. If you look there’s really just extras there and they’re just spaced out in a way that fills the frame. It’s pretty amazing. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah I try to remember what I was watching and I think we’ve mentioned it before but sometimes limitations. Yeah. Bring out the best solutions. Yeah. Yeah. Or if they had unlimited time and budget and resources, they could have, you know, easily gotten a thousand people to be there. But because they couldn’t yeah, they had to make it work.
Joe: And sometimes that brings some magic to it. They’re just trying to kind of use classic movie magic. Yeah. Yeah. That scene is so good.
Greg: I do feel like you can’t not see the Covid in this movie, though. Once you think about it, it is kind of everywhere. Like they all had masks on right before they said action. They were in like ten person pods. Some of the scenes were directed over zoom because of contact tracing. Just things you haven’t thought about in a couple of years, you know?
Joe: But.
Greg: Also, here’s my theory. The scenes in this movie that are inside everybody is like whispering, like, this movie is mostly whispering, And I wonder if it was, well, if.
Joe: We don’t speak loudly, we won’t be.
Greg: Sharing Covid with each other as much. That’s my theory.
Joe: Interesting. I hadn’t noticed that before, but it’s it’s tracking for me on on the scenes or even like that opening scene when they’re in Carrie. Always office. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah.
Greg: Super spaced out.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. Spaced out. Yeah. Facing the same direction. Yeah. You’re you’re kind of getting that. They’re talking to him as.
Greg: He’s like.
Joe: Raising that. But yeah it’s an interesting it feels a little different.
Greg: All right. So Benji Luther and Tom Cruise and Ethan Hawke Ethan Hawke I always do that. Ethan Hunt are sitting in a room and they basically, like, restate the plot of the movie, and then try and figure out what they’re going to do next, listen to how quietly they’re talking in the scene.
Clip: A self-aware, self-learning, truth eating digital parasite infesting all of cyberspace.
Clip: Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, and the two halves of this key just might provide the means of controlling this entity. Meaning every government on the planet would kill us just to get that key, including our own. Exactly. Putting us on an unsanctioned mission which has gone rogue before it even started. Meaning this very conversation is technically an act of treason.
Clip: Or as we like to call it, Monday.
Greg: There’s so much whispering.
Greg: I wonder if that was a Covid reaction. And they just went with me.
Joe: Yeah. That’s got to be.
Greg: We’ll see I guess in a if there’s as much whispering.
Joe: I noticed it with Kittridge. Whoever that actor is.
Greg: Henry is there any.
Joe: Very like breath acting. Yeah. In it.
Greg: Totally. So we’re in the airport. The setup is Luther and Benji are like on their laptops.
Greg: And Tom cruise has those aviator glasses on that can see where the cruciform key is secretly in somebody’s pocket. So he finds it and he finds it in somebody and then she takes it. Right.
Joe: This is where. And there are moments in the Mission Impossible movies where their logic is always a little off for me. Yeah. Where instead of just taking the key and then trying to find the other half, they’re going to take the key. And Marriott with his half because he has the other half, and it’s the only way to authenticate it.
Joe: But he’s going to give up his key so that they can follow that key. Right. So that they can get to the, you know, the final end game of it. And to me, that’s such a big risk with, yeah, you have the only thing that can stop the most powerful AI in the world. Sure. And your plan is to just hopefully follow it.
Greg: But they don’t know what it opens.
Joe: Still, you could, like, have both keys and then answer that question instead of actively. And I feel like in other movies they’ve done that too, are like, we’re going to give them the codes to the nuclear bomb, right? And then we’ll figure.
Greg: Out, right? Yeah, this has happened before in these movies.
Joe: Maybe, maybe we just hold on there. Another option, right? I feel like sometimes their brainstorming sessions are a little cut short. So anyway, that’s up my own critique of that. But yeah, they’re in the airport and then he’s following the key. He gets bumped by Hayley Atwell.
Greg: Right.
Joe: And then she’s got to go put it back on him after he captures her or kind of gets it back. And then he’s the person that she took it from is dead. Right.
Greg: Because Pam Clements, she just is in there with a gun.
Joe: Yeah. It wasn’t a.
Greg: Gun under a newspaper.
Joe: Yes. Oh my gosh, it’s so good. Yeah. So classic. Yeah. So those are the moments I love in these movies where they kind of bring in those things.
Greg: And she is there to sell it to a buyer. Is that right? That buyer’s name is Otto von Bork, which is officially the best name I’ve ever heard in my life.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Don’t you wish you could write movies? Just put names like that in it? Yeah. Through face recognition, Benji and Luther are able to, like, say, the whole rap sheet of grace. Apparently, she resisted arrest in Rio. Yeah, probably during the events of Fast.
Joe: Five, I think. So, yeah.
Greg: That’s going to come up in fast 11 for sure.
Joe: Yeah. I liked how every single thing that they had her on was alliterative with her name. So there was resisting arrest in Rio and there was another one. So they just literally did her offenses. And the different cities when they’re going through it.
Greg: So the best. So she flies off in a plane. Oh, well, I guess are we gonna do it? Peace for.
Joe: Peace. My recollection is at the same time that Hayley Atwell and Tom cruise are trying to, like, sort out the key and all of that. Yeah, they find a bag which has been flagged, on to the same flight to Venice. Benji runs off and finds it, and in it is a nuclear device. Or at least that’s what they think with eight cipher keys.
Joe: Whatever. Yeah, that asks questions. This is my biggest pet peeve with this movie. The leaps that they take with this thing that’s asking them riddles. Yeah. And that they’re like trying to get more information about Benjy and that they know all about him. And the questions that they ask him are not super deep. Like, who do you love more than anything else?
Joe: And that’s his friend. That’s like, anybody may have guessed that, Benji, it’s not like a deep question that they then know more and more about you or, you know, are you afraid of dying or like, you think it’s like going really deep and understanding and it gets to know Benji through those questions? Yeah. When really it’s just asking pretty surface level questions that anyone would have the same answers to, quite frankly.
Greg: So they change that scene based on notes from the audience is interesting. What it initially did was it asked him like true psychological questions. And he had a subplot in this movie that he was having trouble with trauma from the sixth movie.
Joe: Yeah. He almost dies on the sixth.
Greg: Right, right. And so he gets asked questions basically like have you ever thought about harming yourself? And he starts divulging how he’s really feeling after the sixth movie and people just really disliked it. They’re like, what on earth is Benji talking about? This is not who we want Benji to be. And so they changed it. And so the intent of that scene was supposed to be kind of a different thing, which we should say in this movie, every scene was originally something else.
Greg: The way they make these movies is almost without a script. They make it as they’re going, and they actually didn’t even write scenes until they had seen a location, and then they would figure out what characters that they had hired to be in this movie would do in this location. That’s basically how these movies are made, which is just so interesting in the creative process and probably maddening for everybody.
Greg: It’s one of the reasons Rebecca Ferguson didn’t want to be in another one. She was offered to be in eight and she said no. She said, selfishly, I just don’t want to sit in a trailer for a year while they’re filming the movie. You know, those movies are really hard to make, and you end up sitting there for a year.
Joe: Yeah, I want to act.
Greg: I could be doing other things.
Joe: So, I get that. I think it’s also part of the magic of those movies.
Greg: Where, yeah.
Joe: It does feel a little disjointed at times, but when they pull it off, yeah, it sticks the landing better than most any other movies do, right? And knowing that I kind of it changes as probably they’re interspersing some of what Benji, his character, is doing in that moment with those other ones. And there’s I think this is probably the funniest Mission Impossible movie.
Joe: Oh yeah, because I kind of lean into, like, the humor and even like the relationship, especially at the beginning between Grace and Ethan is pretty light. Yeah, yeah. And silly. And then you get like a moment where it’s like, you know, they hide the fact that they’re trying to defuze a nuclear bomb from Ethan in the middle of the chase in the airport.
Joe: Right. You must interrupt me. And like, of of course, you should interrupt him for this. Yeah. He knows what’s going on. Like, there are moments like that in this that are really are pretty funny and enjoyable within that.
Greg: Okay, there’s another thing that they were doing with Benji in that interview with the Bomb, and it was they were getting him to say certain things so they could then replicate his voice when talking to Ethan later. That’s what the entity was doing.
Joe: Interesting. I could have used a flashback.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: After that moment.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, because.
Joe: That scene when he’s chasing after the rave. Yeah. And the entity is talking to him, that’s one of, like, the most anxiety producing scenes. Yeah. In the movie for me. Sure of like it gets Benji is cadence about how he directs him and the flashbacks the six of him. Like sending him the wrong direction though. No. My laugh.
Joe: No. Your laugh. Sorry. Right, right. It’s all to, like, separate them so that you know the right people meet up and get killed and. Yeah, yeah. So interesting.
Greg: So he takes the test, it opens up. There’s no bomb inside. Hayley Atwell gets on a plane to Rome. And they need to somehow elude Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis. So Ethan jumps on the roof of.
Joe: The airport somehow gets on the roof of the airport, I don’t know. Yeah, not quite sure how he gets up there, but I’m not again, not worried about it.
Greg: Yeah, probably just because it looked cool.
Joe: And.
Greg: It was outside during Covid.
Joe: Yeah. And you need him running.
Greg: It’s a funny shot when they’re like we can’t find him. And he runs across the windows above them. Yeah, it’s pretty slapstick. Yeah you’re right. They do go for like broader jokes in this movie than they had in others. Yeah, yeah. And then they all go to Rome.
Joe: And then we can have Hobbs and Child logic of Hayley Atwell. Yeah, he’s on her plane to Rome. He is running across the building. Luther and Benji are off to their separate planes. Right. And then next shot is her in Rome being arrested. And then he is her attorney. Yeah.
Greg: That’s how fast he ran.
Joe: Yeah. Super fast. And then we have a drinking game. That is one of my favorites that we’ve never had until this. One of which is I give us the real moment. Yes.
Greg: It’s so good in Italian.
Joe: In Italian, which is all set up for her escaping out of there. And then a great car chase across Venice or Rome or wherever they’re supposed to be.
Greg: She’s in a car and he’s in a motorcycle.
Joe: Right. Okay.
Greg: Yeah. And then she crashes into a bunch of, like, bikes around the city.
Joe: Yeah. She gets hit by a car, which is where we get the.
Greg: Ringing in the ears.
Joe: Ringing in the ears? Yeah. Drinking game.
Greg: Right. Everything’s in slow motion.
Joe: Yeah. 58 minutes in. That ends all of our drinking games. Then they’re together. There’s like, the standoff with the FBI, Shea Whigham, and then Pom, whatever her name is, they’re all there. Yeah. And then they escape in the car, but they’re handcuffed together because he’s tired of her always running off.
Greg: And they backup their car when their doors are open and both of their doors break off because it’s a great bad movie, and we have to break the doors.
Joe: Cars. Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: And now they’re in a chase through Rome.
Greg: And they’re on cobblestones, which it turns out is super hard to drive on.
Joe: Yeah. And if you notice the first shot of her leaving when you leave the police station, the streets are inexplicably wet. Amazing chef’s kiss to just perfection. Basically this podcast is like that is because nobody else is paying attention to that. But I was no, that was the one drinking game when we I remember when we watched it that year, that first hour, I wasn’t sure if we had that one.
Joe: I knew we had every other one. Yeah. And then this time I watched it and I was so much focused on the streets and I cannot tell you the joy that I felt when they were clearly someone had come through with like a fire hose and sprayed them down. Yeah, yeah. And made my day.
Greg: We need to take whatever jersey you were wearing that night when you’re watching that movie and retire it onto the wall into a glass case.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: And put a plaque underneath it.
Joe: Those are the moments when I’m watching these movies, which just are like it for me. Like the streets are like a place where you can’t.
Greg: Explain.
Joe: That. No. And why would you? Do you need to know? No.
Greg: Just looks amazing. Yeah.
Greg: And then palm is in the rocks car from the Fast and Furious movies.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And she is just having the time of her life.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Something you need to know is her reactions as she’s driving or she’s, like, laughing and like, screaming. All real reactions from her as she was getting to do this stuff.
Joe: That’s awesome. Yeah.
Greg: Like she is just having the time of her life.
Joe: That scene is really fun. Yeah, it’s a great car chase. My biggest, again, pet peeve with it is they say we need to get out of this car. So Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell get out of it because they’re too conspicuous in their car.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: They get into this little car that they find this like a the Fiat. Yeah.
Greg: You really got to see it.
Joe: And they’re instantaneously back in the chase. Like it didn’t made no difference whatsoever. But they changed.
Greg: Cars. And this is when every cop gets the notice.
Joe: Yeah yeah yeah. So I think the IMF should invest in better windshield like guarding technology.
Greg: Yeah it’s a good point. The windshield was the issue there.
Joe: Yeah. And not the plot of the movie, but that’s like a scene that they could have totally cut out of the movie.
Greg: It’s so good though. And then this fee it. Sorry, I say fee it from that one song. You really got to see it. The Fiat is like, entirely uncontrollable because that’s apparently what those are like, and they put some kind of engine in it, and then they wanted him to, like, drift in that car. And so he practiced in practice because he’s like a super good stunt driver, but he practiced it like an airport.
Joe: And.
Greg: Not on cobblestones. And what they learned was, you can’t control those cars on cobblestones. And there was a shot where they went around a corner. And then as he was drifting, just the tires fell off.
Joe: The car.
Greg: And it just like, oh, shit, sounded like an explosion, I guess. And it just dropped onto the ground. And so they went. They went through a few Fiats because it just wasn’t meant to do what they were doing. But there are those moments where like, it’s just going in circles when she’s driving it, you know?
Joe: Yeah, it’s so funny.
Greg: And they cut that super wide, far away to show how ridiculous this little thing is. That’s maybe my favorite shot in any funny movie, I think. So when they cut far away.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. And there’s some really funny moments in that where he’s like, go left, left, left. Okay, right. We’re just going right? Yeah, right. All right. Fine. Right. So I’m very curious how eight will be if they carry the tone of that throughout. Yeah. Or if they lean into the humor a little bit more. I think I’ve grown to like it more than I did the first time we watched it.
Joe: It was distracting to me because I was kind of expecting more of a continuation of six. Sure. Yep. And this is a different the different tone to this movie.
Greg: I think eight will probably be if they follow suit, it’ll be different. Okay, because Christopher McQuarrie loved that this series had a different director for each of the five movies, the first five movies, and he said he felt weird doing six after five. And so he said, well, if I’m doing six, I’m going to direct it like I’m a different director.
Greg: And so he picked like different crew people, different influences, different inspirations that he was drawing from.
Joe: It definitely feels like a different movie. Yeah. I mean, 5 to 6.
Greg: Yeah, on purpose.
Joe: And I haven’t seen it. I’ve seen five, probably twice.
Greg: You should come over. Yeah.
Joe: Six. There’s one that I have seen as much as I’ve seen seven. Just because again. Yeah, it’s the best action movie ever made.
Greg: Yeah. You know what else is really good? One, three and four. We’ve already covered two.
Joe: Yeah, I struggle with four.
Greg: I think you need to come over and watch four.
Joe: I think three is better than four.
Greg: Don’t you just kind of wish that like we were stuck on a desert island watching these movies?
Joe: Yeah. Yes I do.
Greg: With no life responsibilities.
Joe: Yeah. Yep.
Greg: There’s a chance we should just start having mission Impossible parties.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: The same way we used to have Bruce Willis parties when we lived together.
Joe: Do you remember this? Yes, I do, I mean, what is ever.
Greg: A die hard. We would watch Hudson Hawk.
Greg: And an episode of moonlighting.
Joe: We were the coolest people in the world.
Greg: I got pulled over by a cop after one of those one time in Bellingham. You know, we were like 19.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And this cop pulled me over and said, have you been drinking? And I said, no. And he said, why are your eyes so bloodshot? And I said, because I just watched six hours of Bruce Willis.
Greg: And it really confused him. So I explained what we had done. And I don’t know if it was respect that I.
Joe: Saw in his eyes. It was.
Greg: But it was an understanding like, okay, okay, that’s probably why.
Joe: Your.
Greg: As bloodshot. Don’t worry.
Joe: About it. That’s amazing.
Greg: He was like moon landing. I was like, yeah, I remember they did that one. That was like The Taming of the shrew. He was like, all right, you can go.
Joe: That is the.
Greg: End of Mission Impossible Dead reckoning, part one. Part one. We’ll be back tomorrow with the second part of this episode. Joe, do you have anything that you want to say about this episode.
Joe: Before we go? That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said. So I don’t know why you were spectacular. Spectacular action scenes all over the place.
Greg: It’s almost like you prerecorded.
Joe: This Franz Kafka.
Greg: Okay, we should just go.