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This week, on The Best Kind of Business as Usual:
This week Greg and Joe celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Mission Impossible movie that saved the Mission Impossible universe from itself. The episode opens with a startlingly stressful countdown that threatens Joe with a potentially dangerous beer run. Much like the movie, this episode is basically a very well-financed Alias episode, and a massive love letter to everyone involved in Mission:Impossible III.
Joe watched it and forgot to take notes. Greg watched it twice this week. Let’s just say David Hallgren has some explaining to do.
Along the way: the full behind-the-scenes history of how this movie almost wasn’t this movie; why Variety’s description of Tom Cruise may be the truest sentence ever written; and of course many reviews that briefly become contenders for the name of this podcast. (DING)
Also: One of the very best silent helicopters in history, the drinking game that requires a volleyball-style rotation, and Greg’s first-ever “small sip” ruling. Joe’s honest back of the box calls it exactly what it is. It’s our movie through and through.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watched this week. They are trying to track down something called The Rabbit’s Foot. My question for you this week is where’s the rabbit’s foot? And I should let you know if you don’t answer me by the time I count to ten. Imma to ask you to get a beer downstairs out of the fridge.
Greg: I thought I got you the rabbit foot. I can get it for you. I didn’t know you took it. You have it. I got you the rabbit’s foot, right? No one. Oh, are you sure I can get it? I know where it is. I just need to go to the store and I can get it. It’s none of the store to shoot, is it?
Greg: I don’t know where it is. Maybe it’s in my car. Can I go? Can I go look in my car real quick? No. Three. Oh, crap. This is not going anywhere. And I don’t want to go downstairs. I always fall down those stairs. So this is this is bad news for me. It’s probably for probably is probably at my office.
Greg: I’ll just go. I’ll just be right back. Just like, give me, like, five minutes. I’ll be right back. It’s just right across the street. I swear it’s not in your office, and you won’t be right back. Five. You don’t know that. I could be right back. You’re right. I probably don’t know that. Six. Oh, shoot. I don’t know what to say anymore.
Greg: I’ll get it. This. Trust me on this. I have it, I have it, it’s close. It’s got to be. Maybe I just maybe I dropped it. Maybe it’s behind you. If you looked on the floor behind you. I’m going to send our intern downstairs to show you. I’m serious.
Joe: They just fell on the stairs. Do you think I’m messing around? Seven.
Greg: Okay, okay. I don’t know where it is, but I can get it. I swear, I thought I gave it to you, and our poor intern is probably dead. I’m going to call 911. Is that all right?
Joe: Speaking of nine.
Greg: Eight, that makes no sense.
Joe: Yes it does. Nine.
Greg: Oh, no.
Joe: Ten.
Greg: All right, I’ll go downstairs and get you the stinking beer.
Clip: Agent confirmed.
Clip: To go live on my mark five.
Clip: You have a wife, a girlfriend for three. Whoever she is, I’m going to find her. Two, I’m going to hurt her. One.
Clip: And then I’m going to kill you right in front of her.
Clip: What are you not telling me?
Clip: It’s Hunt.
Clip: I know it’s Hunt.
Clip: You will never go through. What? You don’t think I’ll do it?
Joe: The year is 2006, and J.J. Abrams steps up to the plate to make his very first feature film. We are talking about Tom cruise, Michelle Monaghan, Ving Rhames, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Billy Crudup, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Keri Russell, Maggie Q in her first American film, Simon Pegg, Eddie Marsan, Laurence Fishburne is in this movie as well. There is so much we need to talk about here on the 20th anniversary of a movie you said last week, Joe is maybe your favorite.
Joe: No second favorite Mission Impossible movie. So I have never meant this more than I mean it right now. Joe Sky-Tucker, what makes Mission Impossible three a great bad movie?
Greg: This movie is riveting to me. Yeah, and I had been a little while since I had seen this movie, but not I mean, I think within the last year I have seen this movie.
Joe: Okay?
Greg: And I had almost like completely forgotten everything that had happened as what it felt like. It was almost like I was watching it for the first time. Usually I’m taking pretty copious notes when I watch these movies and the movies I’ve seen before. And so, like the drinking games are pretty easy and they become obvious. Yeah, I took so few notes because I was just riveted the entire time I was watching this movie, and I enjoyed every second of it.
Greg: There’s something about when Tom cruise at his best in these movies, and he’s on the edge of losing it. To me, that is just so much fun to watch. And the way this movie opens, yeah, you’re just hooked instantly.
Joe: Much like the beginning of this episode.
Greg: Yeah, exactly. I know it’s like a mirror image of each other and we’re being honest. So yeah, this and I know that this is not necessarily beloved within the the Mission Impossible universe, but I really enjoy this movie every time I’ve watched it. And it’s probably been 4 or 5 times that I’ve seen it over the course of the years that it’s been out.
Greg: And again, every time I watch it, it’s I almost forget how good it is. The action sequences are really tight. Real explosions, mostly some really fun stuff that happens. It’s kind of the beginning of Tom cruise, like showing off how he’s doing all his own stunts. So there’s my favorite action scenes when they’re on the bridge with the helicopters, and there’s an explosion that, like, blows him into a car and he keeps running.
Greg: That’s so fun. I like the fact that he has kind of retired or he has, you know, he’s become a trainer now and he’s helping people in the. And the conceit of the movie is that one of the people that he trained, one of his best pupils, maybe his first is in trouble. And so he’s got like, they’re pulling him back in.
Joe: So I.
Greg: It’s great. You know, I love all of that. And it’s so fun to see Philip Seymour Hoffman. Yeah, I wanted more of him. He is. He’s one of those actors that you forget how good he is and then he’s just magnetic on the screen. So I just loved watching this movie. And, you know, we’re going to have a special episode where I rank the order of the Mission Impossible movies.
Greg: So stay tuned for that. I’m going to toss it to you, Greg, as someone who really has opened my eyes to what this franchise is and you love it, you’re probably like fan number one. Like of anyone I know you love these movies more than anyone, so what makes Mission Impossible three a great I don’t even say bad.
Greg: What makes it a great movie?
Joe: Yeah, totally. This movie. There’s so much to say about it. Starting with J.J. Abrams. Such an inspired choice. Same with Brian De Palma, same with John Woo. I think the world in 2006 was ready for alias, the film, which is exactly what this is. Yeah, to an almost embarrassing degree. In retrospect, sometimes it’s. But I actually in 2006, I don’t think.
Joe: I don’t think I’d ever seen alias. Yeah, when this movie came out. So I didn’t know what we were dealing with here. I rewatched the alias pilot this week to kind of prepare for this, and it’s pretty noticeable how 1 to 1 this movie is. Yeah. To that, I also watched a bit of the lost pilot, which he had just made right before he did this.
Joe: And a lot of the same people, same editors, same music, a lot of the same people. It’s very similar. I mean, it’s really just big budget television is what’s happening in this movie in terms of Mission Impossible. It is really throwing away the handbook and starting over in a lot of ways. Who is Ethan Hunt and does he have an emotional life?
Joe: Really? The show Mission Impossible was always about the connection of the team, and the guy who made that show couldn’t have cared less about their home life. And so this movie kind of breaks from that Mission Impossible kind of DNA and tries to wrestle with, what if Ethan Hunt had a regular life, and what would it be like when spy stuff kind of intersected with that?
Joe: Yeah, and apparently he almost starts crying every time that intersection happens.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: We get the middle distance stare from Tom cruise and it’s amazing. And he just stops talking. He does a weird thing with his jaw, and we get about 30s of him just staring at something.
Greg: Yeah. So if you’re playing along and you have the drinking game, Tom cruise tears, you’re in trouble in this movie, is what I’m saying.
Joe: So I love this movie in retrospect, because it is the thing that gave us the rest of the Mission Impossible movies. I think it kind of saved the franchise, and this was a franchise that I loved the first movie, and I loved the second movie. Yeah, but when the third one came out, I thought, oh, okay, we might be onto something.
Joe: And by the time the fourth came out, it was officially solidified. Kind of the bad robot of this series, which was J.J. Abrams production company. It was official, you know, we’re going to give a huge budget to people who are trying to make characters that who they are actually matters, and the action scenes actually need to mean something to the characters, and that they try to keep that going throughout.
Joe: So this movie means a lot in that it basically established that the rest of the Mission Impossible movies could be incredible. Is this movie incredible? I think this movie is way better than I think it’s going to be every time I press play. Yeah, and I watched it twice this week and really, really loved it. There are a couple things in there where I kind of wonder what’s going on, but for the most part, I really adore this movie quite a bit.
Greg: Yeah, I think this movie has some of the, for its time, best action sequences there. Really tight feel very to me and throughout. So there are you know, we’ve kind of gotten to a point with a lot of action movies where they’re like, they’re setting up the set piece and that’s a big, you know, production. And I feel like start to finish, there’s really strong action sequences that are surprising and go in different directions than I wasn’t expecting.
Greg: And I always love that. There’s an amazing scene on a bridge with, you know, silent helicopters and, you know, kind of reminiscent of True Lies and all kinds of fun stuff. There in you have Tom cruise being, you know, an explosion happening and sending him into a car as he’s running away from it. Yet him jumping across a big chunk of the bridge that has been blown away for no reason, really.
Greg: He’s like, he’s got to be ten feet closer to the helicopter when he shoots at it. That’s the only reason.
Joe: That’s ridiculous.
Greg: Yeah. So yeah, you know, and throughout, like if we walk through the plot of the movie, you’d be like, that’s the most ridiculous thing ever. But it just does tie together. But it’s it’s our movie. It’s, you know, every time we’re in the middle of it and, you know, you start going, well, what? Why is that? And how did he get here so fast?
Greg: You’re like, you’ve missed the entire point of these movies. To me, it’s. Yeah. And I do feel like because of the character Ethan Hunt, you know, he’s home. He’s he’s got a home life, he’s married, he’s being pulled back in. And the way it opens, it just not sure how he’s going to get out of it. And I love that.
Greg: And this is my second favorite Mission Impossible movie. I just really love this movie. I think it’s so well done. And again, like you said, this sets the franchise back on track. Like this is the fast four for this franchise where it’s like, okay, this is what this franchise is. This is what it can be. Let’s see where we can go from here.
Greg: And the heights that they get to are spectacular. And I think you have said this before is like the floor and the ceiling of these movies are very close to each other. Yeah. And so and this to me is one of the on the high end. But we don’t get six, we don’t get five, six and seven, which I think are probably high water marks in terms of like what they’re able to put on screen from an action perspective without this movie.
Greg: And so I appreciate that about it. I love this movie. That’s why I’m saying.
Joe: I just love how you discredit for so much. I hate for.
Joe: I cannot wait to watch for with you sometime.
Greg: I know, and.
Joe: I’m gonna.
Greg: Love it. I’m going to like, be like totally back in on for my, you know, we’ll see.
Joe: Yeah. I mean, this is you are setting yourself up for the best viewing experience of a movie possible.
Greg: That’s true. I know I’m going to go in with very low expectations and I’m going.
Joe: To come out.
Greg: Four is the best. Four is now the new six.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, I saw Mission Impossible three I think three times in the theater. The first two times I was excited about it. The third time it was a it was a bachelor party and I felt a fatigue. That third time. I remember in the theater, I started to see a little bit of a seems and for some reason after that I just thought, I don’t know that I needed to see that movie much anymore.
Joe: And so now I’ve watched it. I don’t know, four times since then, five times since then, and it’s always so much better than I remember it. Yeah, this movie, though, the history of this movie is kind of interesting. Can I give you, like, a little bit of a lightning round of the history of this movie?
Greg: Yes, please.
Joe: Do you remember when we covered Mission Impossible to on that episode two years ago, where there was an Oliver Stone version of that movie? That didn’t happen because Woo’s shot went long. Well, there was a David Fincher version of this movie that didn’t happen. He was the first director that signed on to make Mission Impossible three.
Greg: What a different movie that would have been.
Joe: Yeah, it would have been right after Panic Room. Okay. So it would have been his fifth movie.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: Yeah. Got alien three seven game, Panic Room, Mission impossible three. That’s a pretty good run right there.
Greg: Yeah. Oh, and Fight Club two.
Joe: Oh, and Fight Club. How did I forget Fight club okay. So it would have been, I guess the sixth movie. And it was going to be a very dark movie. Go figure. Yeah, it was going to be a PG 13 Mission Impossible movie that had to do with organ trafficking out of Africa. Human organ trafficking.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: That checks out.
Greg: Yeah. Who’s the director of Fincher? Oh, yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. That that tracks.
Joe: And so that kind of just started to fall apart I think, because, well, what he said actually at the time was by the time a third movie is happening in a franchise, a lot of people have decided they know what it should be and what it is. And it’s pretty hard to step in as someone who’s trying to be creative in that situation.
Joe: So he leaves. It’s amicable, and director Joe Carnahan steps in and is officially attached to make Mission Impossible three. He has a script that’s been written by Frank Darabont. Is that ring a bell? Yes he did. He wrote and directed The Shawshank Redemption. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he wrote and directed The Green Mile. He was really big in The Walking Dead, and also just he was writing lots of scripts.
Joe: I think at the time this movie was in pre-production and weeks away from shooting. They had set spilled, they had a different cast. Ving Rhames was in there, but it also starred Carrie-Anne Moss and Scarlett Johansson. Wow.
Greg: That could have been awesome to Scarlett.
Joe: Johansson did like fighting prep like he was about to shoot. I read that 15 months into this process, Joe Carnahan quit and he he regretted it. He was like 33. He’s like, I realized I should have just done. I should have just shut up and done my thing. But his whole thing was he wanted to make a punk rock Mission Impossible movie with the script that they had, it was going to cost $50 million, which was like a gazillion dollars for Joe Carnahan, and Mission Impossible three was going to shoot.
Joe: And then Tom cruise was going to make War of the worlds with Steven Spielberg. Joe Carnahan quits, and he did something that was a little crazy. He actually, like, turned on a camera and recorded his conversation with Tom cruise and Tom cruise had talked him out of quitting a few times, I think, at that point. So anyways, he leaves.
Joe: Tom Cruise can’t sleep. Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg and Paula Wagner had gone to J.J. Abrams office to ask him to write War of the worlds. At that point, J.J. Abrams was making lost, and he couldn’t do it. And he was like, it’s career suicide. But I have to say no because I’m making this other thing. So they get David Koepp to work on that movie and go on their way.
Joe: And then on their way out, J.J. Abrams assistant gives the first season, maybe the first two seasons of alias on DVD to Tom cruise. Tom Cruise is having trouble sleeping and just starts binging alias, and as he’s watching alias, he’s just like, this should just be Mission Impossible. We should just work with this guy. And so he calls him up and offers it to him.
Joe: So Tom cruise gives him the Frank Darabont script and goes to meet with him. And J.J. Abrams says it’s great, but it’s not what I would make. And Tom cruise says, well, what would you make? And J.J. Abrams pitches the whole, what is the internal life of Ethan Hunt actually like? What if Ethan Hunt had a regular life when he was home?
Joe: And Tom cruise says, great, let’s make that movie. And they completely flip the schedules so that J.J. Abrams and his two writers who had worked with him on everything. Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the three of them go off to write it, and Tom cruise calls Steven Spielberg and says, let’s do War of the worlds now, and I’ll do Mission Impossible three next.
Joe: So we’re of the worlds is just like forced through and just starts. And so that movie, when people talk about that movie, I guess they always talk about the accelerated production schedule of it. And it’s because it was supposed to happen months later, right? And it just is suddenly happening. So they make that movie and then they make Mission Impossible three.
Joe: It’s really interesting. You know, we talked about in the Mission Impossible two episode, how do you turn a movie into a franchise? Yeah, that was something they wrestled with a lot on the second one, unsuccessfully in my mind. And in this one, I think they succeeded.
Greg: Yeah, the second one sticks out to me in terms of who this character is, is like one of these things is not like the other. And there’s kind of like a, I don’t know, a cockiness to Ethan Hunt in the second one that isn’t there in my favorite ones. And so the first one is great classic spy noir.
Greg: And then this one you do get just the stakes being so high for him of like, he’s out. He’s been out being pulled back in. Yep. You know he wants to get home to his wife but he can’t. And he’s got you know he’s got to save the world kind of. But there is a personal ness to what is happening on the screen that I really like.
Greg: And that’s where I feel like this franchise is at its best. When Tom cruise is kind of like silly and kind of laughing, and we get some of that a little bit in seven, like the first half of seven kind of feels like that to me. Mission impossible seven. Mission possible seven. Yes. Not seven. Yeah.
Joe: You know, with Gwyneth.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: What a different movie that is with Tom cruise.
Greg: But I think that there’s kind of a glib ness that doesn’t always work for me when it’s on screen. And this movie feels like Ethan Hunt’s motivations are very personal throughout. And he’s trying. Yeah. While he is trying to save the world, he is also trying to save his family. You know, how many times can he jump out of a building and how many parachutes does he have?
Greg: And all of those sorts of things that happen in every Mission Impossible movie, and I love every single one of them. And then I feel like Christopher McQuarrie, when he takes up the franchise and five goes back through and carries through a lot of those, basically what our tropes to the universe that I just love. Like there are moments where he’s like almost hit by a car in this one, and it turns out to be the gang that’s there to get him.
Greg: Like his group, I think, happens in five, six, seven and eight different points. Yeah, just, you know, randomly a car pulls up and they open the door and it’s, you know, they’re ready to their rescuing him type of stuff. Like I like those are beyond ridiculous. But now you see the origins of it. And it’s just a chef’s kiss every time it happens on screen.
Greg: You know.
Joe: He’s just broken out of a building in Shanghai where he stole the rabbit’s foot. Yeah, and he’s in the middle of the street, and they almost hit him. And they say, get in there on their way. And he says, who is? And he says, they say building security and they’re pissed.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: That kind of stuff happens so much. This is a lighter movie than MI had had in the past for sure. Yeah. They tried to lighten up the first one a few times with like, Emilio Estevez was in it. You don’t get any of that, but it rings a little false. There isn’t that connective tissue between the characters in the movie the way that there are in this movie, and in the very first scene that they filmed in this movie, the very first shot was them in Italy writing that speedboat down the river.
Joe: That was the first shot. That was the first day. And the direction that J.J. Abrams gave them before they took off was you guys had just pulled off an impossible mission. And so you’re a little bit celebratory right now. So go ahead and like, razz each other. Go ahead and like, you know, make fun of each other and kind of give each other a tough time and celebrate.
Joe: And you can see that, like, he’s addressing this group about to act for the first time. And Tom cruise is like, let’s do it. And the rest of them were like, what? You can kind of see. Like there’s this moment where it’s like, okay, yeah. And then as you see them drive by, they’re saying things to each other.
Joe: Declan has his arm around Maggie. Q they’re like laughing a little bit. It’s pretty incredible. Just like day one first shot. Yeah, that was his direction. You need to be connecting because you’re a group that just pulled off an impossible mission.
Greg: Yeah that’s awesome. And Ving Rhames throughout is giving Tom cruise a hard time. Yeah. And it’s awesome. It just does enlightens the mood just in the right ways. Because it does. Because it like all of our movies, it takes a self impossibly seriously at these critical moments. And I think, you know, the other thing we should mention is Philip Seymour Hoffman in this movie is just spectacular.
Greg: You know, he’s one of those actors, you forget how amazing he is. And everybody that’s ever worked with him just talks about him being on a totally different level. And he is so good in this as the bad guy. He’s not in the movie very much. It’s a very small part actually. Yeah. You know, I don’t think he’d ever played like a bad guy like this.
Greg: He’d been like he was a character actor, really, you know, well regarded. Yeah. And action movie, bad guy tropes everywhere. And he is so good. I could watch him. I want him to be the bad guy in everything.
Joe: Seriously, he’s often mentioned as, like, the best bad guy in the series. He won the Oscar right around this time. I think they were in post-production when he won the Oscar for Capote.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: But he had just made that. So I mean, like, he is in his heyday. Yeah. You know, he is a one of one. Yeah. And I really miss him. Yeah. You know, he passed him a few years ago.
Greg: I’m trying to think now of Beth, of the bad guys in this series.
Joe: Do you want to read them?
Greg: We may need to rank them. I might have to be a special episode off the top of my head. It’s hard to rank them. He is probably the best. I mean, the bad guys in these are not necessarily always given a lot to work with anyway, so.
Joe: He’s really benefited by that in medias res opening of this movie. It’s pretty intense. Yeah. And by the way, straight out of alias. But he is elevating it and so is Tom cruise. We hadn’t seen Tom cruise Unhinged like this. Yeah, Tom cruise isn’t doing just the stare into the middle distance welling up eyes. He actually cries in this movie, which is not his usual M.O., but I mean, it’s like right after he thinks Julia’s been shot, that tier actually happens, which is pretty crazy.
Greg: Yeah, that scene start to finish is so good. And as you see it, you get to see it twice because it opens the movie and then you see everything kind of. And then it flashes back and then you come back. It is so good. And Tom cruise is great because he goes through all the different emotions, basically goes through all the stages of grief within the, you know, as Philip Seymour Hoffman is counting to ten, you know, trying to extract this information from Tom cruise and and as you find out, he has given him the rabbit’s foot, but he’s just testing him.
Greg: But you don’t know. And it’s so good. It is so good. There’s a little bit of a twist. I’ll save it. I won’t spoil that for everyone. If you’re if you haven’t seen this movie and kind of how that scene ends, but that scene as an opening is riveting to me.
Joe: Are we not spoiling something for the first time.
Greg: For the first time ever.
Joe: In the show? Yes. Okay. We will keep that secret.
Greg: There we go.
Joe: There it is. You know what? I don’t have that initial scene that we reenacted perfectly. I’d say that on this episode, but I do have the other famous scene of Owen Davian and Ethan Hunt talking on the plane.
Clip: And you’re going to tell us everything. Every buyer you’ve worked with, every organization.
Clip: What the hell was your.
Clip: Name, names, contacts, inventory list? You have a.
Clip: My wife girlfriend.
Clip: It’s up to you how this goes.
Clip: If you see, you know what I’m going to do next? I’m going to find her. Whoever she is, I’m going to find her and I’m going to hurt her.
Clip: You were apprehended carrying details of the location of something codenamed the Rabbit’s foot.
Clip: I’m going to make her bleed and cry and call out your name. And you’re not going to be able to do shit. You know why?
Clip: What is your rabbit’s foot?
Clip: Because you’re gonna be this close to dead.
Clip: And who is.
Clip: The buyer? And then I’m going to kill you right in front of her.
Joe: It’s pretty memorable. That really sticks with you.
Greg: I love that scene. I sort of like they’re literally. They’re having two separate conversations. Yeah.
Joe: And it’s.
Greg: So good. He’s literally tied to a chair in a plane. And after that is like almost dropped out of the plane. But it is so stark and like, startlingly evil. It’s one of those where it’s like he has no power because he’s tied to a chair, but also feels like he has all the power in that scene. It’s wild.
Joe: Right after that, he says, you really have no idea what’s happening to you. You really think you’re in control right now. I love it when bad guys say that, or when somebody says that to the protagonist. Just to take a little bit of that control away, you know?
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah, it’s a good move. Yeah. Great bad movies. We can’t finish the conversation that needs to happen about Philip Seymour Hoffman without saying that he that Tom cruise eventually puts on a Philip Seymour Hoffman mask in this movie. Yeah. And then Philip Seymour Hoffman is then acting as Tom cruise, acting as Philip Seymour Hoffman. Yeah. And he moves completely differently.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That’s crazy.
Joe: He changes his performance. It’s so great. There’s a couple of moments where it’s like, okay, that’s clearly Philip Seymour Hoffman and not Tom cruise with a mask on. Yeah, but like when he starts, like, climbing around something, he’s like jumping around and he’s moving like, I’ve never seen Philip Seymour Hoffman move in my life.
Greg: It’s startling to see how. Well, it’s like one of those, like, this is what a great. This is why you bring a great actor into this moment.
Joe: Yeah. This movie shows us a few things that we hadn’t seen before. One is how they get the voice thing to work, that they kind of tape over there, over the throat, and now they sound exactly like somebody else. They have to get somebody to read something. And by the way, this happens in the season finale of season one of alias that J.J. Abrams wrote and directed.
Joe: Anyways, all of the ideas in this movie are basically from alias, and that’s actually kind of what makes it awesome, because alias was pretty incredible. This is more coherent, believe it or not, than alias, which is great, but here is the text that he had to read for his voice thing to work, which just made me laugh. This is Philip Seymour Hoffman as Tom cruise with a Philip Seymour Hoffman mask on, holding down actual Philip Seymour Hoffman saying, I need you to read this card.
Clip: Read this slowly.
Clip: Read it.
Clip: The pleasure of Busby’s company is what I most enjoy. He put attack on Miss Yankees chair when she called him a horrible boy.
Clip: Flinging two kittens across the width.
Clip: Of the room.
Clip: I count on his schemes to reveal that. What the hell is this?
Clip: Finish.
Clip: Alpha, you’re about to have a visitor.
Clip: Finish the way it is, Michael.
Clip: Got it.
Joe: So, like, they show things about the process in this movie that we hadn’t seen before that you’d think would be really laborious and dumb. But it’s super fun.
Greg: Yeah. Things that they kind of speed over in the later movies. I really like it. Also getting to check the trope of downloading a file under pressure to me as again.
Joe: So.
Greg: Great, another chef’s kiss moment.
Joe: So yeah yeah. Let’s talk about Michelle Monaghan. She plays Julia. They live in a house together. They have a party. They’re getting engaged. We meet her two sisters. We meet her brother in law. We meet her brother. Who is the dude from Breaking Bad?
Greg: Yeah. Aaron Paul’s and this. There’s also just a wide variety of J.J. Abrams cameos. So, yeah, people that are from all of his shows just pop up in this movie and little cameos here and there.
Joe: Greg Grunberg, is that who you’re thinking of?
Greg: Yeah. Greg Grunberg, Keri Russell from Felicity, because he created Felicity. Yeah, multiple other people. And then just like that party scene is just a who’s who of like TV actors in the big, you know, in the big time. It’s pretty fun to see all of them in there.
Joe: The other two writers of the movie are at that party as well. Awesome. And they’re talking to two people. I wonder if that’s their wives. I wonder if it’s just. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I wanted to mention you were talking about how there’s, like, a personal connection in this movie and something about Keri Russell, who is the one who’s been kidnaped, and that’s why he actually goes on this mission, even though he’s kind of.
Joe: That’s how they pull him back in. He says that she’s like his sister. And so it is like family has is in trouble. So he needs to go save her.
Greg: Yeah. They’re really like playing up that this is a special circumstance to bring him back in. And he wouldn’t do this for just anyone. It’s got to be for Keri Russell.
Joe: So Michelle Monaghan do you buy that. They are in love. And there’s this is basically the last one of the last movies we get romance in with Tom cruise.
Greg: It’s a little rough in spots.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: She’s very forgiving of the fact that he has cover stories, that he works for the Department of Transportation. Right. And all of a sudden has to go away on emergency business.
Joe: Or, you.
Greg: Know, when called to a conference, he’s got to leave. I’ll be back in two days.
Joe: Right. He cries when he talks about it. Yeah.
Greg: And then there’s a scene where at the party where he’s talking about it, you know, traffic patterns and, you know, and Greg Grunberg is. And they’re going, oh, my God, that’s so boring.
Clip: I’m married. I would too. Okay.
Greg: So it’s kind of a funny little moment. Their chemistry is fine. It’s not amazing. But it does for me. Set up six when they meet again in the last the last act of that movie. And that’s such a great what a needle drop or record scratch or whatever the right moment is where it’s like, yeah, oh, this person’s back and there’s some history and you know, all of that, but I think I’m the wrong person.
Greg: To answer the romance question, what do you think of the romance as as the one that has has a heart and does does approve of romance. And as such.
Joe: I really like it in this movie. Maybe because we just don’t get it much anymore and it’s because of this movie. In the circumstances surrounding the release of this movie that we kind of don’t get it anymore. This movie is when the couch jumping happened.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: It was the release of this movie that he was on Oprah to promote, I think, and he had fallen in love with Katie Holmes.
Greg: Right, right, right.
Joe: Around the release of this movie that happened. And people were kind of like, what’s up with him? And then he got in the thing with Brooke Shields, where she had had postpartum depression, and he was telling her she didn’t need to take something for that.
Greg: Yeah, that’s right. I’ve forgotten all of that.
Joe: Sumner Redstone, is that the guy’s name who ran Paramount or owned Paramount or something he liked, canceled his contract and banned him from the lot, saying someone who’s, like, actively trying to harm the box office of his movies is not someone who we want to be in business with. I think he fired his whole team. There was a hard reset that happened after this movie came out.
Joe: It was a really rough kind of patch for him, and I think something he learned was people don’t want to see him talk about romance. Yeah, or be romantic in movies. And we kind of didn’t get it anymore. That’s the whole point of the 20 minutes I just. Right.
Greg: And it’s weird to think about because he’s like, he is currently, you know, 20 years now, later, one of the most famous people on the planet.
Joe: So it really was like after this, after this, Lions for lambs came out, which was a movie that on paper should have been my favorite movie of all time. Meryl Streep, Tom cruise, Robert Redford should have been incredible, wasn’t great. The next year, he kind of had a bit part in Tropic Thunder, where he played Les Grossman, and it was, you know, people sort of sort of came around to him a little bit like, okay, he has a sense of humor at least.
Joe: And then he was in Valkyrie, written by Christopher McQuarrie. That’s when he meets Christopher McQuarrie in 2008, directed by Bryan Singer. Valkyrie is a pretty good movie. Have you ever seen that movie?
Greg: I have not seen that.
Joe: And then there’s a lot of up and down. I think the reason that he was able to make it out of this kind of fallow period was the Mission Impossible series. He makes Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol. You got to ghost that protocol sometimes. Yeah, and that does really well. It is reviewed better and makes more money than any of the movies before Edge of Tomorrow comes out a couple of years after that.
Joe: Mission impossible five.
Greg: Oblivion somewhere in there.
Joe: The reason we know and love Tom cruise is because of Mission Impossible series. I think that’s kind of the thing that made him what he is.
Greg: Or I think remade him in some ways because he kind of looked at like 80s and 90s. Where is he going to go? And then this just sets him off on a yeah, I totally agree. And I think also can’t be undersold how great Edge of Tomorrow is as a movie.
Joe: Yeah. Oh, great. Great movie.
Greg: Yeah. Check out that episode. It’s so much better than you think it’s going to be. And whatever you think, it’s how good it’s going to be. It’s going to be better than that. I don’t want to set the bar too high, but it’s probably the greatest movie that’s ever been made, ever.
Joe: Yeah, I don’t think that’s overstating.
Greg: The history of the world.
Joe: Yeah, I think you should definitely go back and listen to that episode as well. Yeah. You know, that was the last time I remember you saying I forgot to write notes.
Greg: Yeah. So Tom cruise has got got me. Here’s to you, Tom cruise.
Joe: Okay, we have more actors we have to talk about in the movie. Let’s do it. The bench on this thing is so deep. Keri Russell, by the way, is incredible. Yeah, she’s so good. In that opening kind of Berlin sequence. There’s a slow motion throwing of the gun to her so she can take somebody out. That’s just incredible that that scene is very John Lewis.
Greg: For sure.
Joe: In a way that I am entirely okay with. You know, it also has kind of the first bit of a clunker dumb trope moment in the movie. There are a few of those in this movie that that I just kind of like bump up against. I guess it has the he’s down to one bullet and there’s this bad guy right over there that we need to take care of.
Clip: Oh, no. He got.
Clip: Enough.
Joe: He gets up and shoots his gun.
Joe: Now he has one bullet left. He shoots the guy and he flies out of a window, going, like, 35 miles an hour. Yeah, pretty damn.
Greg: Pretty damn in that line. It’s like classic 80s action movie line. Yeah, that is a really fun scene. And I wanted more Keri Russell in this. I didn’t know that I needed more Keri Russell until I saw this. And there she is being awesome.
Joe: I mean, just perfect movie construction on the part of J.J. Abrams bringing in Felicity, bringing in a ringer, knowing how to make an incredible action scene and make us think like, oh, this is going to be my favorite movie with these two. Yeah. And then she quickly dies after that. Spoilers for the first 20 minutes of Mission Impossible three.
Greg: I point out that I did not spoil that. That was that was great.
Joe: I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. But when she dies, you feel it? Yeah, because of a few reasons. But one is this scene is so good. I’m ready for 100 more. Yeah. What did you think of that helicopter chase?
Greg: I thought I wanted more, honestly.
Joe: You did?
Greg: Yeah. Interesting. Give me two more minutes of the helicopter chase.
Joe: I think that’s the weakest point of the movie. Okay. It is the most CGI.
Greg: Yeah, it is very heavy in that moment.
Joe: There’s all kinds of practical stuff going on. They filmed it outside of Palm Springs, where there are windmills. There are real helicopters flying through those things. They also did a bunch of miniatures that just look incredible. But then, like when blades are flying through the air and then landing next to the sheep. Yeah, looks super fake. When the one falls down onto like a truck, it looks super fake.
Joe: And I was reminded that in 2006, that’s like a virtue signal to me. Like, we’ve got a budget on this one and we’re going to use it on some special effects, which I took as a positive at the time. And now I just feel like it looks aged, you know? Yeah, it looks not so great.
Greg: It’s like that classic line from Jurassic Park. Just because you could doesn’t mean you should, you know? Honestly, Deep Blue Sea does this while was like, just blow it up. You don’t need the extra like little laugh at the end or the sheep is safe, like the scene is going to be. You know, you cut that one second out of the movie.
Greg: It doesn’t make it any better, but it could make it worse. And I think it does make it worse in moments like that.
Joe: What they were trying to do was create scale to show you how big everything was in the real world. They were like scale cues, which I guess is a big deal in special effects. But that’s also when I thought, that looks kind of fake. Yeah. Something I loved about the making of this movie is the special effects guy was looking at what they were doing outside the helicopter while they were fake flying around.
Joe: It was just like on a gimbal, right? And they’re just these lights flying all over it just things are flashing all over the place. And the guy said, what’s your explanation for all those lights? And the guy said, I have no idea, but doesn’t it look great?
Greg: That’s what I want from a special effects person. That’s exactly what I want.
Joe: He’s like, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. And so but just, you know, there’s just lights flickering around, you know, when they’re flying around and it’s awesome. And so that whole scene, them in the helicopter are pretty great. I feel like I could have used two minutes less. You went two minutes more. We’re going to compromise.
Greg: Yeah. We’ll just keep it the same.
Joe: It’s the perfect helicopter. Yeah.
Greg: Perfect helicopter. All right.
Joe: So Keri Russell doesn’t make it. Let’s move on to who we meet right after that. And that is Laurence Fishburne. Yeah. Laurence Fishburne is in this movie. Joe.
Greg: Yeah. Just showing up out of nowhere. Yeah, he’s one of those, like, I completely forget he’s in this movie. Until we hit that point, I’m like, Laurence Fishburne is in this movie. Awesome. Yeah, yeah, he’s I’m always happy to see him. This is where you see, oh, there’s a full team behind everything and some kind of palace intrigue of like, is Laurence Fishburne good or bad?
Greg: And we don’t know.
Joe: There’s an office. Yeah, it’s totally just the CIA or SD six in alias. Yeah. So we get to the Home Office, and the Home office is a pretty awesome looking office, by the way. Yeah. And Laurence Fishburne has been cast as the sassy police chief, basically.
Greg: You know, calling them into the office. You know, if you go rogue one more time, I swear to God, I’m going to suspend you type of thing.
Joe: Like just slightly class year. But also he’s he’s funny. He says tough stuff. He’s Laurence Fishburne.
Clip: Yeah. Mr. brass, it’s unacceptable to judges in Paris is confidence. It’s unacceptable that chocolate makes you fat. But I’ve eaten my share. And guess what?
Joe: That’s the whole thing. Yeah, that gives them a look and moves on. Yeah. In the very first scene with Laurence Fishburne, it was like, okay, this is going to be a good scenario. Whatever happens. Yeah. And every scene that he’s in is so entertaining. Yeah. When they think Tom cruise is the bad guy and they catch him, this is Laurence Fishburne speech to him.
Clip: Now, I am not a stranger to disrespect. You don’t get to where I am without developing a thick skin. But what I won’t stand for, what I will lose sleep over, and I love my sleep, is the idea of an irresponsible rogue agent working in my office. So I’m going to slow things way down here.
Clip: You can look at me with those judgmental, incriminating eyes all you want, but I do not. I won’t bleed on the flag to make sure the stripes stay red.
Greg: What a great line.
Joe: I mean, it’s kind of dumb, but you know it. It’s his first movie. I’m going to give it to him. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah, it’s totally from J.J. Abrams perspective. It feels like I may never get this opportunity again. I am throwing the kitchen sink into this script, into this every scene.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. Everything is a little. There’s a it’s like it’s just turned up a little bit, maybe too much in spots. But I am here for it. I just, I loved every second of it.
Joe: I think this movie makes more sense than probably the rest of the movies, all of the next five movies or whatever it is. I think this movie makes more sense than those. Yeah, it’s almost like they prided themselves on being pretty confusing. Yeah, and so I like that this one is like, oh, I actually kind of understand what’s happening here.
Joe: This is great. Yeah.
Greg: I mean, I know you’ve talked about this when we’ve done the other some of the other ones, but it’s like, you know, Christopher Macquarie’s thing was like, okay, we need to bring the group together and like, walk through the plot at different places so that we know what’s happening with the action around it. Yeah. And this one, they kind of spread the exposition off.
Greg: It’s kind of a classic. You know, there’s a twist in this of like, they’re setting Laurence Fishburne up to be the bad guy throughout the whole thing of like he’s the mole. And turns out he isn’t. It’s a it is a little bit more weird to say, delicately handled in a mission impossible movie of what the plot is and who’s good and who can you trust throughout.
Greg: You know, obviously you kind of have the Philip Seymour Hoffman character, but there’s some other, you know, who’s he feeding information to or being fed information from within the Impossible Mission Force?
Joe: Yeah, totally. Ving Rhames returns the only person to be in every movie. He’s great. Yeah, the Luther character is just rock solid Billy Crudup. Where do you stand on Billy Crudup in this movie?
Greg: He’s fine. He’s just like anyone could have played that character. It’s pretty. One note to me. He’s fine, though. I don’t do anything terrible. You know, I don’t. He’s one of those. He’s kind of a that guy for me, you know, I yeah. You know, it’s like, oh, what is it. What have I seen him in? And then every time I see him in something I kind of, I Google him and go, oh yeah, Billy Crudup.
Greg: This is the time I’m going to remember him.
Joe: And then.
Greg: Out of my brain and like, oh, who is that guy? So yeah, he’s kind of that for me in this movie.
Joe: So he’s kind of oddly dressed like Tom cruise in this movie. They kind of gave him a similar haircut. They gave him some kind of like, middle school facial hair. Right?
Greg: I wonder if they’re trying to, like, tell the story that they’re trying to tell is like, that’s the trajectory that Tom cruise would be on of, like, you know, you move up. And so Billy Crudup as him in five years, once you’re out of the field and back, you know, in the office type of thing, I don’t know.
Joe: But he ends up being just a horrible, rogue, racist person working for the IMF. Yeah, yeah. His speech at the end, which I also think was a bit overwritten, he and J.J. Abrams and Tom cruise were working on that right up to the end. In fact, that morning, I think they finished those pages so late that Billy Crudup hadn’t actually seen them.
Joe: And so while he’s giving that speech, kind of explaining everything to Tom cruise of what he’s been up to, Tom cruise is actually holding the lines that’s like against his chest. And Billy Crudup is he actually is just reading the lines as if he’s like, on Saturday Night Live. That’s so funny to me. That’s awesome. Let’s keep going through the crew.
Joe: Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
Greg: I’m always happy to see him in movies, and I always wonder why he wasn’t one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.
Joe: Totally.
Greg: I know that he’s had drinking problems throughout his career and throughout his life, right? And he has talked at length about those, but he’s always a welcome sight for me.
Joe: Yeah, he’s really good, though. That wasn’t the case on this movie and I think everybody enjoyed working with him. He. I watched this twice in the last week and realized, oh, he has more going on in this movie than I remembered. You know, you do kind of get little flourishes of his character, the Declan character, more than I remembered.
Joe: Maggie Q is maybe one of my favorite people that has ever been in movies. She’s so good. She’s in this movie. Those are first American movie, even though she’s from Hawaii. She was part of Jackie Chan’s crew. And so she came over from there, from Hong Kong. They tried to give them a little bit. I think they needed more for sure.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I feel like they keep trying to find someone, other people that can kind of keep up with Ethan Hunt and Tom cruise, you know, we find Benji, so we have we have that with Simon Pegg, and then we have Ving Rhames. And Tom cruise really is like the trio that kind of anchors the work. But they’re still they really have been searching for that other people around the edges, you know, and I feel like they kind of were just throwing actors at it.
Greg: So I think Maggie Q is great in this. And, you know, to me, it reminds me a little bit of her character from Die Hard for. So maybe there’s some crossover that can happen if we’re really lucky that we can have Isaac Slade come in and talk about Maggie Q and the crossover world of Mission Impossible and Die Hard that we’re dying to have.
Joe: So I heard for being his favorite Die Hard movie, yes, I heard for was her next movie after this one, I think.
Greg: There you go. So this is just a continuation. It’s the same character in a lot of ways.
Joe: So she’s more serious than that one. She’s a bit more girlish in this one. You know, when she she’s saying like a prayer for Ethan, when they’re when she’s in the van with Declan, that’s like, they’re they’re their moment in the movie. Yeah.
Greg: That’s awesome. I like that they kept that in the movie.
Joe: I do too, but I also kind of wonder why it’s there. It makes me wish there was more.
Greg: It feels like. Yeah, there was a lot more of that written and they just cut out probably for time. I mean, it’s what it’s pushing two hours or just over two hours.
Joe: So I think this is the shortest mission impossible.
Greg: Maybe that’s kind of wild.
Joe: It doesn’t feel like the shortest to me.
Joe: So definitely could have used more Jonathan Rhys Meyers, although he does actually like run into the Vatican for real in this movie.
Greg: Awesome.
Joe: They asked if they could get that establishing shot of him parking in front and running in, and the Vatican said, no, you’re not. No one is allowed to film here. I don’t think a movie has ever been filmed there.
Greg: Awesome.
Joe: And what they did was they set up like a filming scenario right by there, and it was nuns and women in bikinis. It was like they were feeling like a water commercial, or it was like a music video or something. They had cameras. It was like a full crew, but they weren’t actually running the cameras. Right? They were just pretending.
Joe: And so whenever they would yell action and do something over there, they would pull up the what is it like, DHL, the like delivery van in front of the Vatican and steal a shot of Jonathan Rhys Meyers running into the Vatican. And they did it like three times before they realized what they were doing and they kicked him out.
Joe: Awesome. So they stole that shot. And then everything else was filmed, you know, like an hour away in Rome. Yeah.
Greg: That’s probably the bear with me when I say this line, the fake is part about this movie was how easy it was for them to get into the Vatican, where he just basically jumps over the like, Tom Cruise jumps over.
Joe: The wall, basically.
Greg: And there’s a little bit with them, like moving cameras and putting pictures in front of it. So, you know, they don’t notice. Which now that I think about it, should be a trope of messing with security cameras. So yeah, whatever that is. But that was pretty silly that like, he just basically jumps over the wall, drops in, and then it’s in a priest robes and then he’s just into the Vatican.
Greg: Yeah. Willy nilly.
Joe: So he just run up the wall. That’s all you do.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Okay. And obviously when you get to the top of the wall, you say this.
Clip: Humpty Dumpty.
Clip: Sat on a wall.
Joe: There’s a lot of those in this movie. And I loved every single one of them. Lots of just random, stupid things that they say. Totally winking in the audience, you know? Yes, but you mentioned it’s an easy mission. Let’s hear them talk about if this is going to be an easy mission or not. Breaking into the to the Vatican.
Clip: Our mission.
Clip: Is to get in and kidnap Damien.
Clip: I don’t know why he’s so happy. I did remind him that the Vatican is the Vatican, a 109 acre sovereign state in the middle of Rome, surrounded by a 60ft wall which is monitored 24 over seven with over 200 CCTV cameras.
Clip: That’s not even what makes it a challenge. Getting Damien is good, but getting his buyers is even better. If they realize he’s been grabbed, they’ll disappear.
Joe: So later in the movie, they go to Shanghai and they realize they need to break into a building to get the rabbit’s foot. And it’s like, oh my gosh, we’re doing it again. So let’s do it again.
Clip: Where the hell.
Clip: To get your wife? You’ll need the rabbit’s foot. According to the plans from David’s briefcase, it’s in a laboratory on the 56th floor of the Hengshan Lu building, which is a nightmare for just about every reason.
Clip: The Chinese military contract. We have no pull, no details. The good news is, whatever it is, the rabbit’s foot small so we can steal it. The bad news? We got to steal it.
Clip: From a thief’s point of view, this is worst case scenario. The security guards are all privately contracted. Former People’s Liberation.
Clip: Army access to the lab is by a private elevator that can only be activated by persons inside.
Clip: All of it surveilled by security cameras within the building.
Clip: Feel like the roof?
Clip: Four guards full time, two on each rooftop.
Clip: Langley was a cakewalk compared to this one.
Joe: Langley was a cakewalk compared to this because it’s the third one. We got up the stakes.
Greg: Well, it’s awesome. So they then don’t even really show any of that. That happens.
Joe: I love that so much. We don’t see any of the inside of the building.
Greg: What I assume is it’s the what happened is exactly what happens in Mission Impossible two when he parachutes into the building.
Joe: Then.
Greg: And has to get out because it is eerily similar. And I feel like they either had a moment or they just. I love the choice to not show. They just kind of show. He catches, he gets it. And always see is the aftermath of him trying to escape with right the rabbit’s foot, you know, which I appreciate. But again, those are scenes that under Christopher Macquarie’s care are even more like.
Greg: And then there are sharks that are also patrolled by alligators that are also trained by the, you know, whatever. And it just goes on and on and on. It’s so great.
Joe: Yeah, they make a whole thing about how he’s going to get onto the building. He builds like a full chrome and he jumps off a building and swings. And man that shot when they go to Shanghai and we’re kind of like over the city. And then eventually we get to Ethan standing on a building and the camera just goes right behind him is incredible.
Joe: Yeah. Like that is peak filmmaking going on there? Yeah, I’ve watched that shot 4 to 5 times. Every time I watch this movie. Like, how on earth did they do this? Like, where is the scene? How did it go from being like a drone shot to or a helicopter shot right to him? And the truth is, is it’s just a special effects shot where that whole city.
Joe: Those buildings are fake, And he is standing on top of a garage at George’s World at Universal Studios.
Greg: Amazing.
Joe: But the special effects guy was looking at J.J. Abrams storyboards and said, you know, it would be really cool if we didn’t cut from like, a far out shot to a close up of Ethan. We just made that one shot. And since this was J.J. Abrams first movie, he was like, you can do that. How do you do that?
Joe: Yeah, and that whole crew has remained together with all of J.J. Abrams movies. Awesome. So this really is the beginning of kind of an amazing, like, five movie run. I think it is 5 or 6.
Greg: I think.
Joe: So that he did I mean, he did Star Trek right after this and then Star Trek Into Darkness and Super eight and then those two Star Wars movies. Most of those movies are great. Some of them are some of the best we’ve had in the last chapter of years. So anyways, this crew that came together to make this movie, to make shots like that and just have all these ideas, it just sounds like fun people having fun to me.
Greg: Yeah, again, just like, what can we throw at the wall and what’s do that? It reminds me that I have the same thing when I watch extraction on the one shot scenes of, like, seeing where the cuts are. Yeah. And it’s so fun to watch again. And that’s a movie that within the last couple weeks I’ve watched, I haven’t finished it, but I’ve watched the first half of and I watched the one shot three different times.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: On it. And it’s so good. It’s just so good. I cannot I just love that scene. So I love it when directors are trying something new and different.
Joe: Every time you watch that, though, the Gray Man is just sitting in the corner crying, waiting for you to revisit it.
Greg: I will come back. I’m due. I’m you know, we had a text exchange with David Hallgren, and he has recently watched The Gray Man within the last week. And I felt such pangs of jealousy and envy.
Joe: And shame, honestly.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. Really. So I will be watching The Gray Man in the next week. I can guarantee it.
Joe: I love it. Here is how they distract the guards on top of that building. It’s another one of those. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Clip: Things federal.
Joe: So they have, like, a pitching machine of baseballs. Listen to what it sounds like when a baseball goes through the air.
Clip: Oh, yeah. They’re freaking out. Hit him again.
Joe: Oh, yeah. They’re freaking out.
Greg: That may have been the silliest scene.
Joe: Yeah, in this movie.
Greg: Every time I’m like, wait, what?
Joe: I love it.
Greg: All right. Whatever.
Joe: Yeah, I love it.
Greg: I’m. I’m in. I’m here for it. I just marked off the trope of sound effects of things that don’t actually make that sound.
Joe: So the special effects crew on this movie said that they had to make those baseballs, like, five times bigger than a baseball really would be, so that you can see it and it has some kind of nuclear lighting source so that you can see a baseball flying that far from building to building in nighttime. Oh, by the way, they had the $50 million budget, but that was almost like a negative thing to Paramount.
Joe: They’re like, no, this is supposed to be a big blockbuster. So this movie costs $150 million. Oh, geez. And it came in early and on budget because J.J. Abrams shoots things like he is making a TV show, right? So they really liked working with him because everyone was in a good mood. Everyone was joking around when they needed some sort of fix.
Joe: He’s a writer, so he’d just be like, I don’t know, you need to knock out Julia. Just have somebody put like a sticker on her arm and that makes her pass out. Yeah. And we’re good. That’s all you have to do. It’s a spy movie. Who cares? Yeah, I love that about this movie. Just. You just accept so many things.
Joe: Yeah. All right. We have to get to Benji. This is the introduction of Benji. One of the best characters in the series. Yeah, he worked basically a day on this movie. That’s crazy. He was called back for a second day so he could be part of that celebration in the office at the end of the movie, but he worked for a day.
Greg: That’s awesome.
Joe: You talked about Jonathan Meyers kind of going in and out of having trouble with alcohol. Simon Pegg was massively hungover the day that he was filming this scene, and he he has since quit drinking, and the Mission Impossible crew has been really supportive of him in that process. But yeah, he was not really feeling so good the day that he filmed his scene.
Joe: He said he didn’t get through that whole, like, anti-God speech. He never really got all the way through it successfully because he was just freaking out because he felt so horrible. And he’s in this movie, you know? Right. And just Tom cruise and Ving Rhames are just right there. But then after he had gotten enough of the chunks out, JJ Abrams, who was just a huge fan of his, just said, okay, we’ve got it.
Joe: So just do whatever you want. Now just do your thing. And this is what he does.
Clip: What was Davian doing at the Vatican?
Clip: It’s all got to do with the rabbit’s.
Clip: Foot rabbits for him.
Clip: Yeah.
Clip: Well, I’m assuming.
Clip: It’s.
Clip: Like a code word for something he’s about to sell to an unspecified.
Clip: Buyer for $850 million, by the way. Or maybe it’s not a code word. Maybe it’s just a really, really expensive bunny appendage.
Clip: You have no idea what it is.
Clip: It’s interesting. I used to have this professor at Oxford. Okay, doctor Wickham, his name was, like, this massive fat guy, you know, huge big guy. We still call him, you know, but I won’t tell. You. Used to call him, but he taught biomolecular kinetics and cellular dynamics, and he used to sort of scare the underclassmen with this story about how the world would eventually be eviscerated by technology.
Clip: You see, it was inevitable that a compound would be created, which he referred to as the anti-God. It was like an accelerated mutator, a sort of like an unstoppable force of destructive power that would just lay waste to everything, to buildings and parks and streets and children and ice cream parlors. You know, so whenever I see, like a rogue organization willing to spend this amount of money on a mystery tech, I always assume it’s the anti-God end of the world kind of stuff, you know?
Clip: But no, I don’t have any idea what it is. I was just speculating.
Greg: Or the gods eye or the entity as they will. I mean, God’s eye is from fast seven, but that’s very Simon Pegg in a nutshell. To me.
Joe: My only issue with it is he sounds exactly like Marshall from alias, but Simon Pegg is incredible and what he’s doing here is amazing. But also just they don’t tell you what it is, but they tell you it could be horrible.
Greg: I like that better. Yeah, then it’s the nuclear codes or, you know, it’s just like, yeah, because they’re always trying to stop this, you know, the thing that’s going to end the world. Yeah. So not telling us what it is to me is even better. I love that little mystery of like, yeah, these people want it. These are bad people.
Greg: They shouldn’t have it. So let’s stop them. And it doesn’t really matter what it is.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: You know, it’s perfect. I love that.
Joe: What do you think of the drone attacking the caravan that has Davian in it on the bridge?
Greg: I love that scene. That scene is great.
Joe: Unbelievable.
Greg: Now, drones and drone warfare. Pretty, you know, one common. So it’s one of the first times we’ve seen that sort of thing in a movie. Yeah. And you get the classic silent helicopter moment out of it.
Joe: One of our best.
Greg: Oh, good. I know I texted you when I was watching it, and then I don’t know how you like. Is this literally saved on your phone? It’s just like, in case someone is watching my three and you’re like, silent helicopter. You have it at the ready because.
Joe: No, I don’t. Okay.
Greg: So 10s later I had that clip.
Joe: Yeah. How do we tell people what we’re talking about here?
Greg: Oh, there’s a scene with a silent helicopter. The classic. Like there’s no helicopter that you’ve seen at all in this scene to this moment. The bad guys are coming to get Davian out of. He’s been captured. And he’s like, in a in a van, and there’s a convoy. And then all of a sudden, a drone is attacking the convoy with missiles, and things are blowing up.
Greg: Yeah. And then a helicopter just literally out of nowhere that you have never seen before. Pops up right behind Tom cruise on the bridge.
Joe: Slowly, slowly.
Greg: So amazing.
Joe: It’s so great.
Greg: And I texted you immediately. Silent helicopter. And this is amazing or something like that. And then two seconds later, I felt. Like a clip of that scene was in my phone and is still there. So and it is.
Joe: What happens at the end of that clip, I don’t remember. Oh, right. When you see the people, it’s it freeze frames and says take a drink. Oh, and that is because this is a lifelong drinking game of mine. And so it’s not that you were watching it, it’s that when I watch something like that and I realize, oh my gosh, it’s a silent helicopter out of nowhere, I start sending that to all my friends.
Joe: It’s not for you. I’m letting you know what’s happened to me, okay? And it’s time to take a drink. So we’ll post this to our Instagram. We’ll post this moment to our Instagram. And we did the same thing for The Long Kiss Goodnight. We posted that to our Instagram and we’ll just post it every time it happens. Honestly.
Greg: It’s so great.
Joe: Yeah, they spray some foam on the side of the truck that Damian’s on and eventually it freezes and they just hit it and it breaks like a mirror.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: I love J.J. Abrams. That’s J.J. Abrams. Yeah, it’s like, I don’t know what if you just sprayed, like, a foam on it, but the one moment that does ring a little bit false is at the end. He has this massive gun and he has to, like, jump over a chunk of the freeway to get to the other side.
Joe: And I have always wondered, I’ve watched this movie eight times. Nine times. I’ve always wondered why he had to do that. And I rewatched it today. And it’s because apparently there’s a car on fire and he can’t see through the car that’s on fire to the helicopter. The car is like standing up and he can’t see around it.
Joe: And it’s either like, okay, run by the car on fire or jump over that thing. So he jumps over that thing so he can get a shot. But of course, if a helicopter is flying, yeah. It’s it’s not going to be behind that car for very long. So really they’re just shoehorning in. Yeah. You know Tom cruise needs to jump over a thing.
Greg: And almost miss and have to pull himself up totally and get to the gun. And yeah, I did add a new because of that, a new trope of a gun and a foam case. So you know, you’re welcome everyone for that because he has to put the gun together. Yes. That’s part of what the raising the tension in that scene.
Greg: He’s like pulling the gun out of the SUV that’s on fire and is about to explode. And then there’s, you know, missiles coming in again. It’s a great scene, start to finish.
Joe: We should say that in the second movie, he was, well, the first one, he was doing a lot of his own stunts and the second one he was doing even more. And this is the one where he is officially just doing crazy stuff all the time now. Yeah, yeah, not necessarily like breaking Guinness World Records or anything the way he doesn’t future movies, but he is doing a bunch of crazy stuff.
Joe: And where J.J. Abrams sort of doesn’t succeed is he doesn’t stay tight on Tom Cruise’s face as much as he should while these stunts are happening, like when he’s laying in the in the street at the end and that truck.
Joe: Is like skidding sideways and goes over him inexplicably. I mean, that really was Tom cruise underneath that truck as it went over. And I think Christopher McQuarrie would have figured out a way for a camera to be attached to that truck, where you can see that it’s on the truck, and it actually is going over real Tom cruise.
Joe: They kind of figure that out a little bit more in the future, but that happened and we didn’t need it and it was amazing. Yeah.
Greg: Chris Macquarie like raised it to an art form of this is really Tom cruise doing this stunt. Isn’t it crazy that Tom cruise is doing this stunt?
Joe: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally.
Greg: This is yeah, definitely the beginning of that where they could raise it up a little bit more, but still, it’s super fun. They’re super fun scenes in it.
Joe: Totally. The look of this movie is really unique when it comes to the Mission Impossible films. The color palette sometimes kind of reminds me of the Minority Report and War of the worlds kind of era. And, you know, J.J. Abrams has always been inspired by Steven Spielberg. It’s kind of his main inspiration. Steven Spielberg, by the way, is the person who said the IMF briefing should happen in a disposable camera in this movie.
Joe: It was going to be in a camera, and he said, oh, you should make it one of those disposable ones, like at a 711. That’s awesome. Yeah, but the cinematographer of this movie, his name is Dan Mindel, and he had worked with our guy Tony Scott quite a few times. He had just finished Domino before he made this movie, but he had also made Spy Game.
Joe: And most importantly for this film, he had made enemy of the state with Will Smith and Tony Scott and Lisa Bonet and just like a bunch of amazing people. And J.J. Abrams said, I need you to explain to me how you made enemy of the state look that way, because I think that’s what I’d like. Mission impossible three to look at look like.
Joe: So he explained how like anamorphic lenses work, blah, blah, blah. And he has been the cinematographer for J.J. Abrams since then, and I think this movie looks pretty good a lot of the time. There’s they’re making big swings with colors in this movie. Yeah, there’s like five different color palettes happening depending on what town you’re in. In this movie.
Joe: There is one thing that is consistent throughout the entire movie, though. The colors might change. But I’ll tell you what doesn’t the shaking of the camera, the camera shakes in this movie. So so so much to like a Michael Bay in the Rock while they’re sitting in a parked car in a parking lot. It is nuts how much the camera is shaking in this movie, and most of the time I think it’s pretty effective.
Joe: Yeah, but I really wonder if, you know, J.J. Abrams was the credited writer on Armageddon. I kind of wonder if he got some of that from Michael Bay.
Greg: Could be. It feels also like of the time of like that’s what you did in action sequences was just like, shake it. And this is again pre John Wick. So we’re kind of in that moment where there’s just like camera shaking and like people are shooting and you’re not quite sure who they’re shooting at. But then they see the like the bad guy dies and the good guys you know.
Greg: So there’s there wasn’t a lot of like clear line of sight on like what’s happening in the scene. It just felt like we’re going to shake the camera, we’re going to shoot, and then someone’s going to fall over in the next shot, and then we’re going to move on. So it feels like of its time in a lot of ways for that too.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, I’ll give him some credit though. He does set the scene pretty well before the camera starts kind of moving in to what what is happening. He I think he establishes the action pretty well. He can kind of decipher what’s going on.
Greg: I mean, this is it’s well done. But I think it’s definitely of its time for some of the action tropes that we get in it.
Joe: Definitely some of the really kind of like blurry effects. That was kind of the thing in the mid aughts. Yeah, very highly stylized CGI. Yeah, yeah.
Greg: This is like early days of like, oh, that’s we can look at what we can do and sometimes it works. And sometimes I feel like on balance it works more than a dozen in this movie.
Joe: And I mean, there are so many times where you don’t even know that it’s happening. You know, that bridge that they filmed on was actually just a bridge built in, like Calabasas off field. There were snake wranglers on the set. So anytime you see water in that scene, except in the establishing shot in the beginning, it’s fake. That’s CGI.
Greg: Awesome.
Joe: When he’s sliding down that roof in Shanghai. Yeah, that was like 25ft long. And he just kept sliding down and down and down, shot after shot after shot. Right. And then they extended it with CGI. There is so much CGI in this movie. Yeah.
Greg: Interesting.
Joe: All right. Well, Joe, I’ve watched this movie recently. You’ve watched this movie recently, but I have a very important subject to bring up here. And that is I think it’s time for us to find out. When was the last time David Hallgren watched this movie?
Greg: All right. What’s the over under that you’re going to give me on this?
Joe: Okay, I think that because I know the answer, I think I shouldn’t even do that. Okay? I feel like I sort of tipped my hand a little bit last time, and I didn’t feel great about it. Okay.
Greg: As you know, dear listeners, David Hallgren has famously watched any of the movies we’ve done, usually within like 3 to 4 months of when we have recorded an episode.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I’m not quite sure how he does it. It’s probably magic. So I would say, let me ask this question does he love the Mission Impossible universe as much as you do.
Joe: Without saying too much? I will say he does not love it like I do. Okay.
Greg: So I’m going to say that he has seen this movie within the last nine months.
Joe: So I get the over. If it has been longer than nine months, I get $2. Okay, let’s listen to his answer here.
David: Hey, Greg and Joe, this is David just calling to check in about Mission Impossible three. I had a really hard time with Mission Impossible movies watching over again. I kind of just watched them and let them sit. I did see Mission Impossible three in the theater, and then I watched it in 2011 and didn’t even make it all the way through.
David: And that’s the last time that I’ve seen it. Even though MI three came out in the height of Tom cruise jumping on the couch, I went and saw it and I loved it. I thought the story was so good. Philip Seymour Hoffman was amazing. So anyways, I have not seen it recently. All right, I hope you guys are doing well.
David: Talk to you soon.
Joe: That hurts.
Greg: That does. That is what, 15 years? Okay, David, this is I’m going to speak just to you, David.
Joe: No one else. Listen, everyone.
Greg: Careers. I was like you around the Mission Impossible universe until I started this podcast and started to appreciate them with Greg and his love for them. And they have only now grown in my eyes. So please come back to the Mission Impossible universe. I would start with six just. It’s the greatest action movie that’s ever been made.
Greg: Trust me when I say you will not be disappointed. Just take the Mission Impossible out of it and just watch it. As a straight action movie. You will not be disappointed. But also I get it if you if that’s too much of an ask, but the series is worth a second look, we’ll definitely have you on. I feel like a further conversation is needed now.
Greg: This has just raised more questions than answers.
Joe: In my mind.
Greg: Anyway. Listeners, you can listen now again.
Joe: All right. Well, Joe, as you were saying that, I was just thinking, oh my gosh, what if there are people who have never seen this movie? Yeah. So I, I think it’s time for us to help out those people and pretend like we’re walking through the hallways of the last blockbuster Video in Bend, Oregon. Yeah, we’re trying to figure out what physical media we are going to rent this evening and put into whatever physical media player we have.
Joe: What is it? Is a Blu ray player. Is it a DVD player? So we’re picking up boxes off the shelves. We’re reading the back, the synopsis on the back, trying to figure out what we’re going to rent. That’s right. It’s time for the back of the box.
Greg:1 It’s the back of the box.
Joe: Ethan Hunt.
Greg: Tom Cruise is pulled back into the field when one of his trainees is captured by an international arms dealer. As the conspiracy deepens, it becomes clear that even within the walls, the impossible mission force, something is not right. Who can you trust when the fate of the world is on the line? Who can you trust with a gun to your head?
Joe: Well, who can you trust with a gun against your head?
Greg: That’s right. Are you renting that movie?
Joe: I think I am, yeah, I think I feel like this is a darker movie after reading that than it really is. It’s delightfully lighter than what? The back of the box. Yeah. Said, but, you know, that’s just like the marketing back in the box. Come on, let’s be honest here. It’s time for us to go on down to Honest Town and read the actual true, real Joe Sky Tucker back in the box.
Joe: All right.
Greg: This is my second favorite Mission Impossible movie. The more Tom cruise leans into the mania and impossible and shows what is at stake, the more I love these movies. The story is a bit of a mess. The leaps and logic and travel times and basic premises of the movie are easily forgotten with every kinetic and beautifully shot action scene.
Greg: This movie is the equivalent of Fast and Furious resetting the franchise without Mission Impossible three. We don’t get MI6 the greatest action movie ever.
Joe: So true. Joe, is it time for us to get to the box office and critical response for this movie? Absolutely. Let’s start out with the box office of this movie. So the budget of this movie was $150 million domestically. It made $130 million internationally, 265 for a worldwide box office of just shy of $400 million. I think this is the least profitable Mission Impossible movie.
Joe: That’s pretty crazy. The DVD sales and Blu ray sales estimated add up to another $51.7 million.
Greg: So still made a good chunk of money for the for everyone.
Joe: Good chunk of money, but not what they were expecting. And there was a pretty legit media backlash against Tom cruise at the time. All right. Well, let’s get into what the critics thought. What do you think the critics score on Rotten Tomatoes is for this movie?
Greg: Per David Hallgren feels like a 70.
Joe: No, but actually, like, it really does feel like a 70, doesn’t it? Yeah, yeah, it really does.
Greg: I’m going to go 58.
Joe: 73.
Greg: 73. Oh, okay. I was way off.
Joe: And this is one of those movies where we have like over 250,000 audience scores or audience ratings. So out of that, what do you think the popcorn meter is? The audience score is for this movie on Rotten Tomatoes.
Greg: I’m going to keep it right around. I’m going to go 75, 70.
Joe: I mean, just a solid rock solid movie. Yeah.
Greg: As our movie through and through.
Joe: Absolutely. It’s a 70. No matter how you look at it. All right. Let’s get into what some of the critics said about this movie. Let’s start with friend of the show, Moira MacDonald from The Seattle Times, who wrote about this movie in 2006. She says this is the franchise’s third film, each with a different director, and it may well be the most successful of the bunch.
Joe: Three out of four stars.
Greg: I like it. Thank you Moira.
Joe: I think the best Moira review we’ve had Star Wars on our show. This movie is a little bit better than her typical great bad movie. Two and a half stars out of four. Yeah. Variety says the high octane juice audiences crave and big budget action films surges propulsive through Mission Impossible three in large measure due to Tom cruise, who seems determined to give a persuasive human impersonation of a Ferrari.
Joe: Which might just be the truest sentence that’s ever been written.
Greg: I think it might.
Joe: Be in 2006, in variety. Todd McCarthy Keith Phipps in The A.V. club says, yes, it’s fundamentally business as usual, but it’s the best kind of business as usual.
Greg: I think that could be a title for this show, The Best Kind of Business.
Greg:2 As usual.
Joe: We found one. Awesome. Newsweek says this snappy installment is a marked improvement over John Woo surprisingly dull sequel. The set pieces lack the elegance and visual coherence of the Brian De Palma original.
Greg: That’s trying to be a little too clever for its own good.
Joe: I really like in the reviews that I read for this movie, they are really trying to wrestle with this unique scenario that Tom cruise has come up with, where at this point it’s a very different kind of auteur voice making a mission impossible movie. Yeah, the times UK says indistinguishable, but for one vital element. Philip Seymour Hoffman I don’t know if I agree with that, but I like that they’re calling him out.
Joe: Yeah. Joe Morgenstern from The Wall Street Journal says the summer’s first action epic does exactly what it’s supposed to do more clearly than Mission Impossible one and more lively than Mission Impossible 2.
Greg: I agree with that.
Joe: I really like Morgenstern these days. Mike LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle says Cruz does a remarkable number of his own stunts. And even if we only register that fact unconsciously, it makes for a different action experience. Three out of four stars.
Greg: I grew with that.
Joe: I don’t think they were really, like, marketing it. Yeah, the way they do now, it was more just kind of like a maybe they’ll notice. And I think he is kind of calling that out. Decent film says competent, disposable entertainment in the post zero seven world of Jason Bourne. That may not be enough. C plus.
Greg: I mean, the first of that could be a title for this show.
Greg:2 Absolutely.
Joe: Manohla Dargis, one of my favorites from The New York Times, says although he slams into stationary objects with with his customary zeal.
Joe: Tom Cruise is off his game here, sabotaged by a misguided attempt to shade his character with gray.
Greg: At the great line. I disagree with it, but that’s a great line.
Joe: Rex Reed says as idiot movies go. Ring that bell. This one is as sub mental as you might expect. He didn’t like this movie. Yeah, I really like Andrew Sarris in The Observer. He says my final reaction to Mission Impossible three is one of bemused tolerance and even mild absorption into all its silliness.
Greg: Yeah, I get it.
Joe: It won them over. Yeah. The Arizona Republic says director Abrams seems to have attended the Tony Scott Extreme Close Up Academy.
Greg: Awesome.
Joe: He didn’t like the movie, but I did think that he called that out pretty well.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: A lot of criticism for a TV director becoming a movie director and being too close. The editors also, you know, came from TV. They were editing alias. It didn’t bother me as much this time as it has in the past, to be honest, but I haven’t watched the other movies in a while.
Greg: Yeah, I understand where they’re coming from on that, and I think it works in this movie, I think. I mean, that opening scene so tight you don’t even really see much else that’s happening. So everything is so tight into the face of the characters. The three characters are in that scene and it’s perfect, I don’t know. I think it works for me.
Joe: Yep. Dallas Morning News says Mission Impossible three will make you jump up and down with exuberance, just like its star a minus. Globe and mail says what summer movies aspire to a slick demonstration of hot, buttered entertainment that will probably slide you right out of the theater before you even stop to ask a logical question or two.
Greg: Hot Buttered Entertainment definitely a name for this show. So nailed it.
Joe: Independent UK says a step forward for the franchise. Indeed a step forward for the big budget Hollywood action spectacular. Generally four out of five stars. Wow.
Greg: Just lean it all the way in on that one.
Joe: All the way in. And this is my favorite review. I don’t know why, but Richard Roeper just says the best of the three.
Greg: No, I agree with that.
Joe: Yep, yep. All right, Joe. Is it time for us to get to some drinking games?
Greg: Yes. Let’s do it. You know you’re watching. Now, this is the beauty of the Mission Impossible movies. Famously, Mission Impossible seven hits all of our stock drinking games within the first hour. So, you know, you’re in for a good time with with the drinking games on this. And, again, doesn’t have to be alcohol. Could be water, coffee, juice, whatever else can be pureed these days.
Greg: So, you know, go for it. Live it up is what I say so silent helicopter. Oh classic. Beautiful. Perfect. Silent helicopter out of nowhere. There was also a few other low flying helicopters as a helicopter chase early in the movie, so there is almost a Tony Scott of helicopters in this pushing and enhance opening action scene has pushed in enhance all over the place in it.
Greg: As they’re setting it up, two people sharing a slow motion look in the middle of chaos during the helicopter scene. They actually slow it down and like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tom cruise, although they’re like a hundred yards apart. Share a look. It’s awesome. Explosion. Silent, suffering. Ringing in the ears. I gave this one because of the bomb that’s implanted in the head.
Greg: They kind of give you a little bit of, you know, and Keri Russell, and then when Tom cruise has it implanted, they also kind of have a little bit of that. So opening credit theme title locks it in place for the sound. This is a it’s not quite die harder level, but obviously we have the Mission Impossible theme going through.
Greg: Does it flashback to dialog two minutes ago? Oh, I mean, it opens with the scene and then it’s a flashback. That’s all the way through.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: While I do feel like the CGI and this movie is pretty good for the times, there are moments, as you mentioned, that kind of pull me out of it. Great bad shots are everywhere. Every time at the night. The streets are wet for some reason, but no rain has been in sight. Love it. We do not have give us the room, but we do have a mention of Interpol.
Greg: I was very excited when that happens.
Joe: That’s true, that’s true.
Greg: And no cell phone smash. So those are our stock drinking games. Basically. All but two is what I’m saying of those.
Joe: And how on earth was there not to give us the room? Yeah, in IMF headquarters. Ridiculous.
Greg: And there may have been I may have missed it. Yeah, we can used to watch it again if I missed that.
Joe: I think we need.
Greg: To, but I toss it to you. Greg Swinehart, what is your first drinking game?
Joe: Anytime someone throws a gun to someone else in slow motion, take two drinks, okay?
Greg: It happens once, maybe twice in this, but for great effect in the opening scene with Keri Russell.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: It’s so good.
Joe: Really good.
Greg: My first one is Tom cruise. Tears welling in the eyes but no tears down the cheek.
Joe: What happens if a tear does go down the cheek? Is that trouble? What do.
Greg: You do there? I think that’s I think you might have to finish your drink then.
Joe: Oh, okay.
Greg: It’s up the ante to me.
Joe: So some reason I thought they were going to have to, like, throw their drink against the wall.
Greg: Or that I’m good. I’m game with that, too.
Joe: Either one. Your choice. Your choice? Yeah. My next one is. Take a small sip. I think this is my first small step drinking game in history. Okay, take a small sip. Any time they call someone by a code name like Raider one or Observer or Alpha Team over the intercom, or there. Oh, I love.
Greg: The comms. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I love that. Anytime there’s a real explosion, take a drink.
Joe: Oh, nice. That’s great. Anytime they talk about or show a microdot drink.
Greg: Awesome. Anytime someone is shooting out of a moving car or on a car, or out of a window, or opening the door and leaning down low anyway, anytime.
Joe: Shooting a gun, you’re saying not themselves shooting out of it? Yes. Okay. Anytime they say the name Lindsay, take a drink.
Greg: Awesome. I have anytime they say. Tom cruise specifically says instead of Julia. Jules.
Joe: Oh that’s great. That’s a good one. Anytime they say something is difficult, take a drink.
Greg: Anytime they say rabbit’s foot, they could drink.
Joe: Oh that’s incredible.
Greg: You might need to split that one up. Yeah.
Joe: You might need to like each person in the room at your Mission Impossible three party needs to. It’s like a volleyball team. You’re rotating throughout on that one. Exactly. Anytime J.J. Abrams is obviously shaking the camera, take a drink.
Greg: Awesome. I have anytime J.J. Abrams. Like, there’s a cameo from his anybody that’s been in the show of his before.
Joe: So there’s actually a J.J. Abrams cameo in this movie. Did you know that?
Greg: Oh, no, I didn’t. Where is it?
Joe: When he gets the call that it’s time for him to go to 7-Eleven?
Greg: Oh, and he throws the ice out and has to go.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he leaves the party, right?
Clip: Hello, Mr. Ethan Hunt. Yes. Is this is ready? Travel resort services. We’d like to offer you a chance to win an all expense paid trip to Mexico.
Greg: That’s awesome.
Joe: Yep. The time that he gets the phone call from, like, the post office, that Lindsay has sent a postcard for him. That’s actually the editor of the movie saying, like, I think we need we need something here. And they’re like, I don’t know, you want to do it? This is classic Bad robot, by the way. There’s tons of the movies after this.
Joe: Once the Bad Robot office was put together, they did all kinds of quick inserts into the movies. Like there’s a scene in Star Wars Episode seven. I think it is where Rey is pressing on cardboard that has like little light bulbs in it, pretending like she’s in the Millennium Falcon and saying some lines, and she’s actually just in there like corporate office.
Greg: That’s amazing.
Joe: That’s awesome. This is my very last one. So you’re going to have a strong finish here okay. Anytime someone says 48 hours.
Greg: Oh I love that one.
Joe: Which is also a time frame in alias season one by the way.
Greg: Awesome. I have my last one that isn’t specific to the am I averse or Mission Impossible versus anytime a truck drives over Tom cruise take a drink. So these are either Tom cruise tropes, fast drinking games, or Mission Impossible one. So anytime Tom cruise rides a motorcycle without a helmet, take a drink. Finish your drink. Yep. Anytime he’s running, take a drink.
Greg: And then this leads into that. We have the first time Benji is directing him on where to run to. Yeah, through a city. So this is the first one we get of that anytime Tom cruise parachutes out of a building.
Joe: Oh, wow. That’s really good.
Greg: Anytime Ethan Hunt is resuscitated with a defibrillator that is in multiple movies. Anytime the gang shows up at the same time, somehow he gets to the building, the room in Singapore where Billy Crudup has, like, had him lip read where to go. Totally. And then they, like, show up and he gets there and like, shows up magically. They all show up at the same time.
Greg: And then the last one, which happens in so many of these movies, a random vehicle is just in the right place at the right time. That just happens to have the gang ready to pick up Tom cruise after some sort of chase scene that has happened. So yeah, those are either tropes or drinking games specific to the Mission Impossible universe.
Joe: Amazing, amazing. All right, Joe, it’s time for us to find out what it was that actually made this a great, bad movie. That’s right. It’s time for Joe’s Trope Lightning Round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Greg: Awesome. So I have three new tropes starting leading us off. So what I’m calling security camera shenanigans, where they either loop the security camera or he put like a picture in front of it to to stop it a new one. Maggie Q does this one where it’s basically a beautiful woman can get into any party anywhere just because she gets out of a car and she’s beautiful in a perfect dress and makeup and all of that, and nobody questions her.
Greg: Yeah, happens in this one, in the fourth one. And at least in those two, anytime there’s a gun in a foam case.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: Sound effects on things that don’t make that sound. We had a little bit of that in this body cam sensors. When we’re watching some of the bad guys in early in the movie, car chases in other countries as they go through the street markets. So when they’re in Singapore shooting each other and they both run out of bullets, this is the last that you you played this earlier, but he has one bullet left and he has that great line color filters.
Greg: So basically there’s a color story for every country they’re in.
Joe: Amazing.
Greg: He’s the best at something. Revenge is the driver of the protagonist coming out of retirement. It’s awesome. Friend or colleague who dies early in the film we have Keri Russell dying early in the film, we have an amazingly charismatic bad guy. We have the henchmen who are allowed to hurt Ethan Hunt or Tom cruise, and how much we kind of have the trope of what I call putting a gun to the head of the hostage.
Greg: So we have a hostage situation and they’re tied up. And so we have him and Jules tied up in the opening scene. We have conversations over comms in the middle of a car chase or in the middle of chaos or praying, and then she teaches you, teaches them amazing recovery time, medical care from a loved one or partner where she resuscitate him after he has been killed.
Greg: Clothes that fit perfectly. Downloading a file under pressure. Checking if a gun is loaded and the protagonist is captured but not killed right away, and then is saved by his wiles. That actually happens twice in this movie where he is captured and escapes. Yep, and that is our not so lightning trope.
Joe: Lightning round. All right, Joe, I’m so glad we’re done with that because it’s time for us to get to talk about the elephant in the room. I’ve had it. We got to talk about this stuff. It’s time for important questions. Awesome. All right, Joe, very important question. Did Mission Impossible three hold up 20 years ago this month in 2006?
Greg: Not as well as I think it should have as the way that I would put that. I think, you know, as you read through the, the the reviews, it was kind of mixed, honestly. So I saw it kind of later. So within probably 5 or 6 years after it came out, was the first time I saw it. So I don’t necessarily know.
Greg: I would maybe flip that to you. How did how did you receive this movie when it came out?
Joe: It’s kind of yes, with the question mark. Yeah. The downside to what the different director coming in for each movie is you just kind of didn’t know what to make of it. And this one was definitely a first movie by director. Yeah, he had done lots of other stuff in the past, but it felt not entirely baked to me.
Joe: So yes, with a question mark. So we’re not sure. Super held up then, but does it hold up now?
Greg: I think that holds up better now.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Me too. I love this movie.
Joe: So yep, yep. How hard do they sell the good guy in this movie?
Greg: Not in the classic John Wick sense.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: No, we kind of know who this character is. It’s kind of a little bit put out to pasture. Yeah, but they don’t do the classic selling of the good guy in this.
Joe: So I wonder if there’s a deleted scene where Laurence Fishburne is holding up Ethan Hunt’s file and, like, reading it.
Greg: Oh, totally.
Joe: To Billy Crudup, how hard they sell the bad guy.
Greg: Oh, we got a great who Philip Seymour Hoffman character is or Owen Davian. Perfect spot on exactly what you want.
Joe: Yeah, let’s listen to it.
Greg:3 This is intelligence. So far, I haven’t seen any. You think this op was worth the risk? Mr. hunt. What do you know about Owen Davy? He was the one who brought gas centrifuge technology to Korea from Pakistan. He was also the man who sold toxin five to the Ahmad Republic. Jihad. He is a man who provides, provides, provides, and he remains invisible.
Greg:3 He’s a goddamn invisible man, Wells. Not Ellison, in case you want to be cute again. We can’t find him. He knows it. It’s emboldened him. I been trying to bring Davian down.
Clip: Since the day that I got here. Do you know what I’ve got for it? It’s never been confirmed that toxin five theft was there. Musgrave, please don’t interrupt me when I’m asking rhetorical questions. Your operation has achieved one thing. You have reminded Davian that he is winning.
Joe: Perfect. It’s a pretty good writing. Yeah, and just obviously selling the crap out of those lines, Laurence Fishburne. All right, Joe, I, I don’t even know if I want to bring this one up, but it has to be asked why is there romance in this movie?
Greg: I think.
Joe: It’s.
Greg: To show that he has he’s living a life now. Yeah. He can relax and have a wife and be home for dinner and have, you know, engagement parties and I’ll allow it, but just barely.
Joe: But rare moment. A rare moment for this show. Yes. Yeah. Are we bad people for loving this movie?
Greg: Of the movies we watch, this doesn’t feel like the worst. So I know I think we’re good people at this moment. Or at least neutral. Yeah, we’re on the right side of the guillotine. There in the streets is what I’m saying.
Joe: It’s net neutral.
Greg: Yeah, it’s not neutral.
Joe: Okay, okay. I agree with that. By the way, does this movie deserve a sequel?
Greg: Oh yeah. Absolutely.
Joe: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Does it deserve a prequel?
Greg: The prequel that I would allow would be Keri Russell’s character.
Joe: Oh, that’s a great plan.
Greg: So, like, what does she do to get to the point where she’s captured? Maybe there’s some cool missions that she has. You know, there’s probably a training montage. And, you know, at first she and Tom cruise are at odds because they’re fighting each other. And then she has to learn to respect him. And she he has to learn to respect the new ways of the recruits coming through.
Greg: Yeah, I can totally see the arc of this movie. So that’s the movie I want.
Joe: I think it’s a show.
Greg: Oh, yeah, I would totally, I’d allow that.
Joe: I think he trains her in the pilot and then occasionally pops in on like a phone call. Right. But it’s mostly just her. Do you watch The Diplomat, a Netflix?
Greg: I have not seen that. Is it good? Is it.
Joe: Worth it? Yeah, I really like it. Okay. Should it have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars in 2007? Now, before you answer this question, we need to revisit previous answers to this question for this year. Awesome. The nominees that year are The Departed, Babel, letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, and the Queen. Now, we have previously decided we are going to rescind.
Joe: Little Miss Sunshine. Yeah, and that spot is going to go to deja vu, obviously. And deja vu wins that year. We have decided. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah, as it should.
Joe: Okay. So in today’s world, the nominees now are the departed Babel letters from Ueshiba, deja vu, which won.
Joe: For people who didn’t listen to that episode. It’s Denzel Washington in an amazing Tony Scott movie from 2006. And the Queen.
Greg: I’m getting rid of the departed, and I am putting Mission Impossible three squarely in that place. Shots fired at The Departed. That movie is highly overrated. I dare you to watch it again. There’s no character development. The characters are one note and stupid, and Leonardo DiCaprio is giving a masterclass in how to act and showing you that he’s acting.
Greg: It is not a good movie at all, and I hated every second I had to watch that movie.
Joe: I completely disagree, but you are so animated about this that I am not going to stand in your way. If you were like, I feel like I could, there’s room to move, but I don’t. Ever since we discovered this about you and then parted, I don’t think there’s room for any sort of movement here.
Greg: It’s the most cliched gangster like, let’s get Martin Scorsese to do a gangster movie and you’re like, oh, this will be great. And it’s not. It’s not at all. It is not. His last great movie was casino.
Joe: Martin Scorsese’s last good movie was The Casino. Okay, we will revisit that one. Okay, so it’s in. Am I three is in. Its in.
Greg: It doesn’t win.
Joe: No, it’s just an honor to be nominated. Honestly.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. But that’s a that’s a big move for them. Yeah. JJ Abrams is going to be so stoked. All right next question. How can this movie be fixed aka who should be in the remake?
Greg: I only have one note for this film. And I want more Philip Seymour Hoffman. That’s all I want.
Joe: Interesting. You know, I’m with you there. Except I would also add more Maggie, Q and Declan. Yeah, I don’t know how we get more Simon Pegg in. I think we have one more scene where he’s a little frustrated that he’s like, stuck in the office because he becomes an agent in the next one. Right? So a little bit more Simon Pegg as well.
Joe: All right, Joe, next important question. What album is this movie?
Greg: So I spent a lot of time, I base my album mainly on the title of the album. It’s one of my favorite albums by a band called Morcheeba, and it’s called Who Can You Trust? Oh, and to me it’s like the perfect spy intrigue. Who can you trust in this movie? There’s a little twist in there, so that’s a great album.
Greg: That’s kind of the one of the trip hop albums from what was happening, kind of like Tricky and Portishead and bands like that, and this was another band, one of my favorite band from the from the late 90s. So this is Who Can You Trust by Morcheeba. What about you? What album is this for? You.
Joe: All right, so I don’t want to take anything away from Mission Impossible one and Mission Impossible to, but Mission Impossible three is the movie where these this franchise kind of found something new and, well, like movie reviewers and audiences liked those movies. This one laid the stage for them to love more after this movie. I think this was the most well reviewed Mission Impossible movie so far, and then they just go nuts after this one.
Joe: And so I think this is a little bit like Fast and Furious for like you were saying earlier, a movie that, you know, reviewers didn’t really like, and then they loved five. I think that’s the kind of the jump from 3 to 4 is kind of bonkers. Yeah. All right. So I was looking for a band that was incredible in its own right, and I don’t want to take anything away from their first couple albums, but at some point somebody new came on board and they hit a new stride and became like international superstars.
Joe: And so I’m going to say that when AC, DC got a new singer and released Back in Black, that’s this movie. This movie is AC DC’s Back in Black.
Greg: Oh, I love that. I, full disclosure, was very close to having the same album, really. I had a similar like what is an album that was kind of like a comeback album or, you know, a change. And when I was doing my research back, that was one when the album was like at the top of the list.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: And the again, the only reason I went with more Chiba was really like the title Who Can You Trust? Felt like a spy thriller.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: You know, I love and I also love that album. I love this movie, so. Sure. But yeah, Back in Black is probably the best album for this, so.
Joe: I completely understand why people love Bon Scott, their first singer. But when Brian Johnson joined kind of last minute, honestly, for Back in Black, the world changed. Yeah. And that’s exactly what happened in Mission Impossible. Once JJ Abrams had kind of become a producer for the franchise, I think he stopped at some point. I don’t know if he did seven, but he definitely didn’t do eight.
Joe: On the producer side, Mission Impossible started selling out stadiums. Yeah. All right, Joe, next important question. And this one’s a big one. It’s time for us to rate this movie. How do you rate this movie? Great bad movie. Good bad movie. Okay. Bad movie, bad bad movie, awful bad movie.
Greg: I can’t even come off of great by movie. It is a great bad movie.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: For me, the marker of a great bad movie is I’ve just watched it and you say you want to watch it again, and I’m like 100% yes. And that’s how I feel about this movie. If you said drive over right now, it’s 12 now, 43 at night, maybe like I’ll be there in 20 minutes and we’re gonna watch the we’re going to watch the hell out of this movie.
Joe: This is the series that we accidentally start and then watch half of together.
Greg: Yes.
Joe: It’s plan to.
Greg: Every second.
Joe: All right. Great. Bad movie. It’s.
Joe: All right. Well, Joe, we did it.
Greg: Yeah, we had it. This is a conversation that needed to be had about Mission Impossible three. David Hallgren. I’m calling you out. Watch this franchise again with With Different Eyes. Trust me, it’s worth it. It’s so much fun. And again, if you love this movie, find us, find us on Instagram at Great Bad Movie Show or Great Movies.
Greg: Send us an email at Great Bad Movies show at gmail. Tell us what you think. What are your thoughts on this amazing franchise? In fact, tell us the order of your favorite movies and spoiler alert there may be a special episode in your near future about how I rank these episodes, so who knows?
Joe: And you know, I feel like we should probably say, as always, spoilers for Mission Impossible three.
Greg: Oh yeah, yeah, we we we ruined this movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it.
Joe: But we oddly didn’t spoil one thing.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah, keeping one thing sacred in the last over two years on this show.
Greg: That’s right.
Joe: Listener, if you’ve enjoyed this show, would you please go into whatever app you’re listening to it on and give us a review? Five stars is what we’re going for. Give us some sort of review in the app. And if it’s funny, if it’s an inside joke, if it’s anything, we will read it on this show. Thank you so much for doing that.
Joe: That is like the main way to support this show. And if you didn’t like this episode, forget we ever said it. Yeah, but also another way you can support the show is just tell a friend about it. Or best case scenario, start having great bad movie parties.
Greg: Yeah, tell ten of your friends to listen to this.
Joe: Double digits are nothing is what we’re saying.
Greg: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Don’t don’t talk to us. If nine friends know it’s ten or more.
Joe: All right. Well. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh Joe I just noticed the time. And listen this has been great.
Greg: Yeah obviously.
Joe: Obviously. But I honestly just noticed the time and I realized that I forgot to do this entire episode with my Philip Seymour Hoffman mask on. Oh, I’m going to go put that on and we can rerecord this whole thing.
Greg: Okay. Perfect. Yeah. That’s good. I got to go to. I’m. I’m about to swing out of a building for some reason. Really? Yeah. It’s the newest form of transport. Like, public transportation is just swinging from building to building. All George of the jungle. So I’ll be right back.
Joe: Okay, that works for me, because I’m sure you knew this. Like we’re old friends. You probably knew this, but I’m head of security at the Vatican. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And apparently somebody just broke in, so I gotta go.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. That tracks. I’m late. I got to go to my lip reading lessons so that I can figure out what people are telling or talking about far away, so.
Joe: Okay, that makes sense. I should tell you that my back is still a little, little messed up from the last time I was building fulcrum, which is a which is a thing that I call building fulcrum.
Greg: Absolutely everyone is. That’s the biggest sector in the world right now.
Joe: I thought it’s going to be the greatest idea what I did last week, but I need to go do my stretches now.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, that tracks that tracks. Anyway, I’ve got to run to 711 and get some ice so that I can get a disposable camera. Sure. And see what my next mission is. So yeah, I’ll be right back.
Joe: I love it, I love it. Okay, this is a little bit weird, but when I played that batter up clip with the baseballs, somebody started, like, throwing baseballs onto the roof of my house.
Greg: Oh, that’s weird.
Joe: And I’m kind of freaking out. Yeah. So I’m gonna. I’m going to go see what that’s all about.
Greg: That tracks that. I would be worried about that too. I’ve got a I’ve got to go. I’ve got to run. Like literally run. Well, someone named Benji directs me to the right spot while I run through some foreign city, so I don’t know. Yeah, it’s weird, but.
Joe: I can make a left. You might go. Right. Yeah. Make over a bridge. Yeah, well, that works for me, because, you know, earlier tonight we were having a party at my house, and I was able to get out of there by lying to my wife and telling her we were out of ice.
Greg: Oh, yeah.
Joe: Yeah. And I’m just now realizing that it’s been more than two hours, so I should probably get back to the party.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah, probably. Yeah. I’ve got to run to. I’ve got to go practice my helicopter flying through a wind farm just in case.
Joe: So we’ll see. You never know there.
Greg: You never know.
Joe: That makes sense for me because I also have to go the bridge from True Lies just called and said it wants its absence seen back. So I got to go figure out how to do that.
Greg: Yeah, that that seems really important right now. So yeah, this episode, seven hours long. So I gotta go. So.
Joe: All right, well that works for me. So Joe, I will see you soon.
Greg: I’ll see you soon.