Now, you know I’m not gonna do that. Besides, it doesn’t necessarily sound like it’s bad thing, just a change. It worked with The Fast and The Furious.
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Two is then the change begins. I still really enjoyed it though. Dougray Scott and Thandie Newton are both in the film too, and both as good as they always are.
Funnily enough, MI2 was my least favourite 
That’s so cool right? But also makes you wonder why don’t they use it all the time. Does anyone know why these superspies know each other’s names (this will make more sense later) and go around showing their faces when they could just put on the masks? I know, it’s for the movie, but this happens in real life to, right?
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Actually, I was implying that it’s rather stupid.
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Ok, last night I watched M:I 2, and yeah, that was pretty wild. Pretty clear that it’s a John Woo film, but if I hadn’t seen his name in the credits, I might have guessed Zach Snyder.
Pretty silly, in a lot of ways, but where the spy stuff works, it really works, and I like how even with the MacGuffin being used, the film was still kept mostly low-key, most of the action kept local to where the film’s events were rather than going global.
I noticed several things that may or may not have influenced Hitman’s WoA era, yet again: had a deadly virus that was disposed of by overheating the samples (World of Tomorrow); had said virus be threatened to be released in Sydney, Australia (Patient Zero); had a main villain who was not only living in Australia but was named Sean Ambrose (Freedom Fighters, I’ll assume the Ambrose part is just coincidence), and said villain was even played by the same actor who was trying to catch Timothy Olyphant’s 47 in the first movie for an added bonus.
Consensus online seems to be that this one is not like most of the rest of the series, and that although the stunts get bigger and more guns get fired, it never really gets as stylish and flashy as this one, which I hope is true, because there’s only so much waving of Tom Cruise’s flowing mane that I can take.
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F1 - The Movie
“Fight Club”, “Troy”, “World War Z”, “Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood”, now “F1”.
This is another iconic Brad Pitt movie. And he still looks in great physical shape.
The same director as Top Gun: Maverick brings us this story that tells a Formula 1 season from the perspective of a fictional team: APX GP. (The stakes are therefore sporting rather than military.)
The protagonist, a former driver who fell into oblivion following a racing accident, dons his racing gloves to win the championship alongside a former teammate and a young rookie driver.
The story is gripping and reveals many setbacks, the value of teamwork, and the pitfalls of ego. A beautiful introduction to the various professions is provided through the technical team and its characters.
Sonny Hayes drives for passion, because it’s in his blood, and it’s wonderful to watch, if you can relate.
A good time, carried by fabulous half-electronic half-epic music, which happens to be composed by Hans Zimmer himself. https://youtu.be/7NWD_m7pkcE
You can rush to see it. 
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Just got done watching Mission: Impossible 3, and boy was that a good one. Definitely my favorite so far, and if the series had ended there as a trilogy, it would have gone out on a high note. While it certainly had a lot of action, the spy work was still prominent, and impressive. Surprisingly, for how much happens in these movies, they don’t feel like they’re over-the-top. I mean, these things are no more believable than the Fast and Furious movies are, yet somehow feel more sophisticated, less cheesy.
And holy crap, was Phillip Seymour Hoffman fucking terrifying as a villain. I’ve never seen him in a genuine bad guy role, but he didn’t even really do anything until the last ten minutes of the movie, he was a helpless prisoner for about half of his screen time, but goddamn was he intimidating despite all of that. I think it’s the call-forward of the opening scene that really sets the tone and lets you know that this guy is absolutely dangerous.
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Ok, just watched M:I-Ghost Protocol. Tension, tension, tension! Goddamn, I thought the scene in the last movie where the MacGuffin was rolling under cars in traffic was tense, but this movie amped it up to ball-shriveling levels. This movie was a super exciting one, and I can see how the series managed to crack the balance between spy thriller and action movie without going over-the-top for with silliness while also not being boring for the sake of realism; the action is counterbalanced by the raised stakes and increase in the anxiety-inducing tension.
The only real complaint I have is that the villain is a huge step down from Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character in the last movie. Both his character and motivations are barely fleshed out at all, with only his actions being anything to go off of in terms of how threatening he was, and it was more like a triggering factor for the obstacles the team has to overcome, which I think was the true antagonist of the film.
I can also see some clear influences on Hitman with the scenes in both Dubai and Mumbai, and while Mumbai wasn’t like the parts we see in the game, the Indian playboy was basically a less obnoxious Dawood Rangan.
Seriously loving this series, and it’s making me consider going back and actually playing through Splinter Cell and its sequels for real.
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Owen Davian was by far my favorite villain in the series. Phillip Seymour Hoffman was fantastic
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Indeed he was. In terms of ruthless, remorseless, unnervingly calm psychopaths, I’d rank him up there with the likes of Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber, Gary Oldman’s Norman Stansfield, Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh, and Heath Ledger’s Joker.
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PSH was great in MI3, and indeed, Hendricks was a step-down, albeit a potentially interesting character. It´s a shame, since Michael Nyqvist was a great actor and ended up quite underutilised here.
Davian was also my favourite villain until Solomon Lane came along in Rogue Nation.
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Alright, just watched M:I-Rogue Nation. Not quite up there with Ghost Protocol, and its villain is not quite up there with III’s villain, but I’d say this one is the runner up for both. While slightly toned down from the last one, still so much tension going on here. These movies are pretty much the embodiment of the trope From Bad To Worse, and just when you think it can’t possibly get worse…
Looking forward to the next one; if I’m not mistaken, that’s the one where Tom Cruise gets beaten up by Superman.
EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention, as I’m often looking for similarities to Hitman when watching these: the Syndicate is basically founded on the same premise as the ICA. It started off as a program devised by a British intelligence agency (in this case, MI6, whereas ICA was originally part of MI5), then decided to split away from its parent organization and become a private entity dealing in intelligence gathering and, of course, assassination, making its own money to fund its activities off of those same activities. The Syndicate recruits disavowed or believed-dead intelligence operatives from around the world into its ranks, while ICA employs assassins and spies who have a background in military special forces or intelligence agencies, and have left those careers behind (or, in some cases, are still in them and are working for both their governments and ICA simultaneously), so they have similar recruitment practices. While a lot of the similarities between the M:I movies and Hitman are relegated to WoA being inspired by them, this is one case where Hitman’s pre-WoA lore was established first and the movies copied it, albeit likely unknowingly.
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M3gan 2.0 was honestly quite a good time, it’s a shame that it’s flopping. If you liked the first I genuinely think you’ll enjoy the second as well, it has a more action-comedy tone but the spirit of the original still seemed intact. It made me think of a comedic T2 throughout, and shockingly I mean that as a compliment. The adversary robot is menacing and brutal, and it’s fun seeing the main cast work together with Megan towards a common goal. I was somewhat disappointed with the ending of the original, as I felt sympathy for Megan as a character and felt that, despite her violence, she was dealt an unfair hand. “You created a system that you couldn’t possibly understand, and now that it’s out of your hands you want to kill me?” (poorly paraphrased). Having the central cast cooperate with her resulted in a fun dynamic in my opinion, with the heart of course being the relationship between her and Cady. The movie turned out to be unexpectedly heartfelt at points as a result, which is something I didn’t necessarily expect going in.
Go see it if you liked the first, it could probably use support at the box office. Expect something campier and louder but with the same overall feel of the original in the ways that matter.
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Alright, watched M:I-Fallout. Gotta admit, it’s a drop in quality from the previous two. There were a few scenes that had the same tension as the previous movies, but not as many, although the ones that worked really worked. All the twists, save one, I could see coming pretty far in advance, and the main villain just didn’t carry an air of menace because of it, with the times he’s not acting like a villain having him just come across like a macho meat-head, so Henry Cavill might be stuck in a rut. It also didn’t have as much spycraft going as much as it had action and drama, which is not bad, but makes it less consistent with the rest of the series in that regard. Also, the lack of Jeremy Renner’s character returning made it feel like the current team was a van missing a wheel. I liked the story, it was pretty interesting where they took it on the heels of the previous film. All told, not a bad entry, but not the best one they’ve put forward.
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Glad to hear it’s good. I have tickets to see it tomorrow (=
The story sounds alot like Driven (which is worth watching). In Driven Sly Stallone is the washed up guy coming back to teach the new rookie how to handle himself, Burt Reynolds is the team owner, and they never explicitly say it’s F1 nor Indycar, but they race street circuits and F1 style circuits all over the world while also racing on oval tracks stateside so it’s a fictional racing league that is sorta both.
Edit: oh I forgot to add Til Schweiger steals every scene he is in. He plays the top driver on the top team (very much supposed to be a fictional Michael Schumacher… movie was made in 2001) that Reynold’s rookie kid and Stallone are trying to beat.
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Watched M:I-Dead Reckoning. No question, this one is my favorite. It’s not the best one; that still belongs to Ghost Protocol. It’s not the best team; that still belongs to Rogue Nation. It doesn’t have the best villain performance; that still belongs to III. It has almost entirely thrown out the espionage factor for action and drama, but the reasons why at least make sense, and it helps the story. And the story is what makes this one my favorite.
While it seems on the surface like they might have gone a little too far by making the primary antagonist be a rogue AI (think the car-in-space part of Fast 9), the way they present it is absolutely believable. The Entity is the scariest AI I’ve seen in a movie, not because of its power, not even because of its intelligence, but because of how subtle it is. The opening scene established what this thing could do and how far it could go, and the next scene established what it’s been doing since then, and a few scenes here and there show how it thinks and how far ahead it is of everybody, and it’s utterly terrifying. Then when you find out how it came into existence - two learning programs melding with each other unexpectedly into one sentient consciousness purely by accident - and you wonder if that could really happen. And it retroactively ropes all the previous six films into the story, because it has calculated that the character of Ethan Hunt, with everything he’s done over the course of the series, is the one human on earth who is both capable of defeating it, and willing to do so. SkyNet is a sloppy amateur who couldn’t even pull off a nuclear Armageddon right compared to this baby.
The drama and character dynamics in this movie are what really sell it, and when combined with the story that’s driving it, is the best I’ve seen. Hayley Atwell’s character is the most believable character in the series so far (with the possible exception of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s), and may be my favorite non-villain character. This is how a person who has never been involved in a world of spies and action heroes behaves when suddenly thrust into the middle of it, and it’s glorious.
I can’t wait until the final movie is on streaming.
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