Mission Impossible: Fallout

Mission Impossible: Fallout, let's see how many cool stunts Tom cruise can do and call it a movie.

Unpopular opinion alert, I did not like the new mission Impossible. How can everyone be taken by a series do extreme stunts that are tied together I a loose plot that tried to be clever but is constantly falling all over itself. While it is impressive the amount and type of stunts that Tom cruise performs, a good movie they do not make. Seeing cruise jump out of a plane and high pressure skydive is cool, but it would absolutely not happen when they are jumping into a thunderstorm, no matter how important the objective is. It actually shows how dumb the government is if they are not keeping track of the weather and are suddenly surprised by incliment weather. And another cool stunt is when he so climbing a rope to get to a flying helicopter. When he reaches the copter, just to ad tension, he falls all the way back down to the bottom of the rope so he can climb up again. This is all despite there being a timeline on how saving the world. There seems to be a running theme with this set of films where the directors simply ignore basic passage of time and how long it takes for people to do things. It is also impossible to maintain the suspension of disbelief when the overall theme of this movie is that Ethan Hawke is THE ONLY person who can ever save the world. If he is not around, bad things happen. But the true question is, how many times can the government disavow a man and then take him back after he goes against their orders. I am sorry but that is not how government works. Maybe they do it once or even twice but eventually he would be viewed as expendable and let go. You can't just be Tom Cruise and constantly be given the benefit of the doubt. While this would be a fine action film if you looked at it as a stand alone film with no past or future, one cannot discount all of the baggage the previous films bring into the film. Sadly can only give Mission Impossible a C and hopefully it will be the last of the series.

Man of Steel

3 pipes out of 4

Superman returns to prime form in his triumphant return to the big screen. With the reinvigoration of the storyline from previous films Zach Snyder explains many of the details that had fallen by the wayside such as why kryptonite is so toxic to Superman. Henry Calvill does a surprisingly good job as Cal-El aka Clark Kent considering his previously biggest role was in the lackluster Immortals. The younger versions of Kent struggle with their powerful abilities and what they are supposed to do with them. Kevin Costner plays Superman’s adopted father Jonathan Kent putting a much darker town to the character, questioning whether Clark should use his abilities to help others and risking his identity. Russell Crowe performs at the opposite of the spectrum as Jor-El, Clark’s biological father who sends his son to earth where he will be viewed as “a god”. Cal-El is sent away from his home planet in order to escape the destruction of the over harvested core and a military coup-de-ta by the head of the military, General Zod. Snyder puts an interesting and more realistic take on the Superman character with Superman wanting to help the humans but having them not immediately accept him as a savior. Instead he is greeted with hostility and suspicion with not all of it dissipating by the end of the film. In the previous set of films General Zod was introduced in the first but then delegated to the second. While being a villain in the second he was one of three villains, not being the top dog. Snyder wisely added Michael Shannon as Zod who finally appears to be getting the recognition he deserves for a wonderfully underappreciated career. Shannon gives Zod a deep mental anguish and desire for the greeter good which iterates the resounding question of the film; do the ends justify the means? Another bright spot is the acceleration of Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Superman’s courtship giving us a new take on the relationship that never has appeared on the big screen before. A minor gripe is that Laurence Fishburne play Perry white, Lois’ boss at the daily planet, and while Fishburne is a wonderful actor this is obviously an attempt to make one of the characters black so as not to appear racist or discriminatory. Overall Man of Steel is leaps and bounds above Superman Returns and is a firm stepping stone towards the eventual Justice League.