Mission Impossible: Fallout

**There are spoilers ahead in this post for the movie Mission Impossible: Fallout.**

In this movie, John Lark and a group of terrorists known as “The Apostles” plan to use three nuclear weapons to bring destruction around the world.  After letting the weapons get away from them, Ethan Hunt and the IMF team up with the CIA and agent August Walker to stop them from creating a disaster of epic proportions.

If you skipped past my spoiler warning, then at least take this warning into consideration.  The film does pick up where the last movie Mission Impossible: Rouge Nation left off, two years later though. So, if you didn’t see that movie or don’t remember much of it like I did, I’d watch it again for a refresher.  It can help remind you of some of the characters and the plot of that movie.

With that, I did like that the story continued where Rouge Nation left off.  The prior Mission Impossible movies only did a one-off story.  (A story that was just covered within one movie).  So I do appreciate when a story arc is able to keep going.  I just wondered why not just keep the Syndicate enemy name going?  By calling the group the Apostles, you traded one generic named group for another.  You still had the leader as well from Rogue Nation back in this movie.  The Apostle’s did feel like a threat in the movie, they just needed a better name.

Most of the characters from past Mission Impossible movies and Rogue Nation came back.  There are some new characters that made a debut in this movie.  Erica Sloane, the new director of the CIA after Alan Hunley becomes the secretary of IMF. And the White Widow, a new character meeting with John Lark to broker the deal for the weapons. I did like both of them but they felt somewhat necessary.  They did have a few points in the movie the story that seemed to need them, but may have been better off left out and rewritten.  I will give credit that the white widow is the daughter of the arms dealer MAX from the first Mission Impossible movie.  An interesting reference and callback to give a connection to all of the Mission Impossible movies.   August Walker is the only new character in the movie with one appearance.  Playing the CIA agent helping and shadowing Hunt and reporting to Sloane throughout the mission.  I did enjoy this character.  Henry Cavill was a good choice and fit the role for me.  This character had a secret reveal later on in the movie, but I’ll get to that later.

The rest of the cast is back.  Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt.  A role that got better as the movies went on.  In the beginning, Ethan Hunt came off as a character that was like a “stand back, I got this” to a character who would still say this, but a least have a reliable team to help him out.  He felt so overpowered with his presence, but became more vulnerable as each movie passed.  I’d like to think that it’s part of Tom Cruise getting older and JJ Abrams Bad Robot production company taking charge.  Luther felt like the same character that he has been in the past Mission Impossible movies.  A background badass character.  Benji was great, but I can’t help but feel his role was downplayed in this movie.  He had a bigger part in Rogue Nation and was the hero at some points of that movie I thought.  He seems to be pushed to the background with Luther, but had a good part and was needed at the end of the movie.  Ilsa returns as well, to help the team and has a motive of her own in taking down Solomon Lane.  Even Julia, Ethan’s ex wife from Mission Impossible 3 returns.  It’s a shame that Jeremy Renner didn’t return.  If there is a Mission Impossible 7, then I hope he does return.  They didn’t kill him off or even write him out.

There was a lot of good action in this movie.  The HALO jump at the beginning of the was awesome to watch, but I really don’t know that it was necessary to do to infiltrate the Grand Palais.  The fight scene that had Hunt and Walker in the bathroom fighting Lark.  Complete with the whole “biceps pumping of walker” from the trailer.  The chase through Paris while Hunt is acquiring Solomon Lane avoiding the White Widow’s Forces, the police, and now Ilsa, who reveals that MI6, the agency that she works for, wants him dead.  All of the action was done well.  The best and somehow over drawn out scene was at the end when they had to stop Walker and the Apostles from detonating the nuclear weapons.  The scene went on too long for me, yet I liked it and understood why they had done this. I think it’s was due to giving a standard 15 minutes countdown, but I believe it was at least a 30 minute sequence.  It made me off on the time the bombs had to go off versus the time that was passing in real life.  At least it felt like the rest of Ethan’s IMF team was needed and they all had to play a part in defusing the bomb.  Despite a crazy helicopter chase that made me feel no one should have survived as well as the detonator just being flung from the helicopter, that entire sequence was one of the best movie moment for me in 2018.  The do succeed but with the clichéd one second left on the clock.

I thought the story was fine for what is was being an action movie.  I did have a bit of confusion since I thought that Walker was the villain from the start.  At least, that is how the trailer made it look to me.  The attempt to fake me out in the movie, they try to talk and show how Ethan might be the bad guy with some not really needed exposition.  I do give credit to the movie, is it did me a sort of misdirect, and reveal that Walker was the villain when they we at the safe house in London.  Only because the whole time up to this point in the movie, I thought he was one of the heroes and I misunderstood the trailers that I saw.  The movie also had some unnecessary long exposition at points of the movie, the one that stood out to me was when Luther was explaining Ilsa who Julia was to Ethan.  That could have been cut down to simply, “that Ethan’s ex-wife, he had to leave her to save the world”.  But for the most part, the story isn’t top-notch, but when I watch these movies, I’m there to see the action.

My favorite part of the movie, was the chase between Agent Walker and Ethan Hunt.  You had a tracking Device placed in Walker as well as Cruise, but when Luther implanted the chip into Tom Cruise, I’d like to believe that it wasn’t a chip but “Tom’s Cruise’s running energy”.  Was he going at full sprint on this chase and with Tom Cruise in full arm swing and leg running motion.  All with Benji trying to help guide Hunt to Walker, and messing up at it quite hilariously at times.  It was a great and amusing scene.

I give credit for the Mission Impossible movie franchise, it seems to get better with every movie that passes.  It seemed to start with Mission Impossible 3 on from most people who I talked to. I think it started with Ghost Protocol.  Rarely is a sequel better than original movie that it preceeds, but Mission Impossible does this.  I’m not sure how much longer that they can keep it up, it it’s been a hell of a ride so far.

What is your favorite Mission Impossible movie? Is it the TV show? Let me know in the comments and thank you for reading.