Other Media Review

Movie Review: Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

We were asked if we would review MI:RN (I can’t do the MI5 thing, y’all, that’s the American name for the British show Spooks and that just makes me sad that there’s no Matthew MacFadyen or Richard Armitage or Hermione Norris or Rupert Perry Jones). Carrie and I looked at each other (online, not literally) shrugged, and said “sure” and then we had two VERY different experiences.

Rogue Nation takes up sometime after the events of Ghost Protocol and there’s a Rogue Nation and Tom Cruise and his Merry Men (Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, and Ving Rhames) hopscotching from London to Vienna to Casablanca to DC and stuff blows up and the word “impossible” is scoffed at a lot.

CarrieS: Every time Ilsa takes off her high heels, an angel gets her wings.

RHG: I’m so annoyed at the two hours I spent on this movie. That was a fucking incoherent hot ass mess and a prime example of why the Smurfette Principle is BULLSHIT.

CarrieS: Wow, you do have thoughts! See I thought Ilsa was great, only for God’s sake can we keep the camera on her face and off her butt? Also I really wish male directors would understand that women wear bras for support, not just vanity. When she changes her clothes and she’s shot from the back, all I could think was that the character would have had a sports bra on at that moment in time.

OK, so – rant. Do you want to start with plot stuff or Smurfette?

RHG: Let’s get the plot (such as it is) out of the way. It shouldn’t take long, since this has the same flaw as most of the Mission: Impossible movies: The plot is “how can we move from one huge set piece to the next? It doesn’t need to make any fucking sense, we just need to top the last movie.” The three act structure works for a REASON, and this had about 8 half acts.

CarrieS: I rather liked the plot and here’s why – it was character-based. Everything that the bad guy does is based around what he knows of Ethan’s character. He fridges the agent because he knows that will drive Ethan loony (which – Jesus, I’m sick of fridging, but from a bad guy perspective it was also very astute in terms of making Ethan completely obsessive). He damsels Benji because he knows Ethan will do anything to save a friend. Ilsa is Ethan without a team – she’s clearly as capable as Ethan but we can see that not having a team makes one not only physically vulnerable but mentally vulnerable. We really don’t know what direction she’ll move in. We also can see that without his team to anchor him, Ethan would be a total loony by now.

There were logistical things in the plot that didn’t make any sense. How would they possibly be able to guarantee that they could get Person A to Exact Spot B so they could do Thing C? Where do they get all their supplies from? Aren’t they cut off from a budget?  Above all, why the hell can’t poor Luther have something, anything, to do other than stand around looking huge? But the political/spy/conspiracy plot was IMHO a ton of fun.

Imma do a parody someday where the team goes to places like Paris – but Paris, Texas, and Cairo, Illinois, and London, Ohio. And they get their supplies from Walmart.

RHG: I’d watch that.

Like, one time of “okay in order to get in to this room/hack this computer file we need to get these items three” is fine, but they did it twice in back to back things. There were multiple chases and lots of things blew up, but Jesus, I’m tired. I’m tired of, “I have this idea for a scene; how can we shoehorn it in to a plot” without thinking about it too much.

Does Ving Rhames have other things to do? Is that why he wasn’t around a lot? Come on, movie, you’re not even trying.

The Vienna Opera scenes were pretty cool.

CarrieS: I know exactly the kind of thing you mean about shoehorning in scenes, but for the most part, the movie flowed a little more smoothly for me than it did for you. And the car chases and “we have to get into this place and get this thing” didn’t bother me, because that’s what we go see MI movies FOR. I mean, we almost need two grades, and one is “As a movie in general” and one is “If you like this kind of thing.” I can’t get enough of “let’s go the the place and get the thing” and I liked the political overlay, so for me it was the best Mission Impossible so far (disclosure – I never did see MI3 so I keep forgetting that Ethan is  – is he still married? Does anyone know? Do the filmmakers know?) I thought MI2 was almost totally unwatchable but I loved MI4 (Ghost Protocol). So that’s the curve I’m grading on.

RHG: I haven’t seen 3, I know I have seen 2 but have no memory of it whatsoever, and I kind of loved Ghost Protocol. But is he still married? I don’t know. What happened to Paula Patton’s character? I don’t know. I don’t think the filmmakers were counting on anyone remembering any of those things.

I mean, yes, one goes to MI movies for these things, but MORE is not BETTER. That isn’t going to automatically make a movie any good. You have to use your tools, not just get the most expensive ones at Home Depot and call yourself a carpenter.

Simon Pegg was great. See, I said a nice thing.

CarrieS: Wow, coming up with a grade agreement is going to be hard on this one!

OK, I don’t know what happened to Paula Patton’s character, but I do know what happened to Paula Patton. Filmmakers said on Twitter that they approached Patton and Maggie/Q and asked them to come back but neither were available. No idea if that’s actually true, but that’s what they say. Of course, I STRONGLY suspect that if we got to keep Jane (Paula Patton’s character) we’d lose Ilsa – which leads us to: SMURFETTE!

RHG: Okay, so here’s another movie where Mad Max completely ruined it for everyone, but I’d still be pissed if we hadn’t had Mad Max.  I kept count. There are FIVE women with speaking roles in this movie.  FIVE.

One is Rebecca Ferguson, who is a lead. One is the girl who get’s fridged, but she gets a whole scene, and the others have one or two lines each (and none of them are named in the movie). Rebecca never talks to another woman. She gets to be the whole of the female gender all by herself, while there are four other dudes on the IMF team, the lead bad guy, and Alec Baldwin representing for the dudes.

YOU (general) SEE WHY THIS IS A FUCKING PROBLEM, RIGHT? THIS IS BULLSHIT. There was NO reason for Alec Baldwin’s character to be Alec Baldwin. Why couldn’t the Big Bad be a woman? You’re not doing anything with Ving Rhames, so swap him out two movies ago for a woman. A woman of color, even!

We go ON AND ON AND ON about female representation in media, and believe me, I am TIRED of having to sing this song, but I’ll probably be singing it until the DAY I DIE but WOMEN ARE 50% OF THE POPULATION AND GIVING WOMEN 20% OF THE SPEAKING ROLES IN A MOVIE IS NOT OK AND YOU NEED TO STOP FUCKING DOING THAT.

I guess they decided “since people complained that Paula only got to fight another woman in Ghost Protocol, we’ll let Rebecca fight dudes and that way we don’t need another woman!”

End of song.

CarrieS: Well, yeah, this is pretty much the same song for almost every movie. Marvel does a tiny bit better. This another thing where there are two me’s grading.

Post MMFR me is saying: OK, at this point there is no fucking excuse for this. We can have more women. We don’t need gratuitous shots of Rebecca’s ass in her motorcycle leathers and her bikini and her naked back (she’s an intelligent woman, she would have had a sports bra on, does no one in Hollywood know how boobs work???) Post MMFR me is disgusted because I used to settle and now I can’t, because I’ve seen women treated like actual people instead of party favors and there’s no going back.

The me that is comparing this movie to Ghost Protocol is fucking THRILLED. Ilsa saves Ethan at least twice. She fights dudes – which is IMPORTANT. She wins fights without being rescued, including in situations of hand to hand combat. While she seems a tad interested in Ethan, there’s no romance – she’s not a sex toy (compare this to the other films, in which women were almost completely reduced to being sexual prizes or predators, with the possible exception of MI:III which I haven’t seen yet). She drives (arguably better than Tom although he had just temporarily died), she uses guns and other weapons, she does hand to hand, and watching her talk her way out of trouble is an absolute joy. She’s great – we just need more of her, and while the script seems to regard her as a person, the camera is just insulting. EYES UP HERE, PAL.

Actress – great. Role – great. Camera – terrible. Lack of any other women of significance, and lack of a single role for a person of color in which this person gets to do anything at all – terrible.

RHG: I did appreciate that she was removing her heels for things like “I’mma have to kick this dude’s ass and a five inch stiletto is not the way” or “rooftop escape.” She was wearing flats for the final battle. Hell, I even appreciated that they threw in a couple women of color into the CIA! Two of them even got a line!

But, movie, you don’t get a cookie for “being slightly less awful than other movies of this type.” Not when you could have gotten someone like Viola Davis or Lucy Liu or Salma Hayek for the Alec Baldwin role.

I’m just pissed and tired of movies treating us this way.

CarrieS: See, I am also sick and tired but I think they do get a cookie.  A tiny, tiny cookie. Because they got shit-tons of money from Ghost Protocol, a film in which Patton’s character’s major contribution to the team was to seduce a guy to get intel, fight another woman, and kill her accidentally in a fight scene that was pure fetish and which totally screwed up the mission.

Previous movies were even worse. Remember Thandie Newton’s thief in Mission Impossible II, who, thanks to John Woo’s direction, spent the entire film walking towards salivating men in slow motion? Or, oh God, Emmanuelle Beart’s role in the first movie? The studio did great financially with those movies. Every single other movie (with the possible exception of MI:III which, again, I never saw) has had only one significant female character and her superpower was always sex. They didn’t have to do better in terms of presenting a female character. They did much, much better in this one. Frankly they did a LOT better than a lot of other action movies have been doing. So they don’t get a full-size cookie, because Jesus they have SO FAR TO GO to achieve BASIC DECENCY, which I am also really fucking sick of. I share your rage, here. But they get one of those little mini-Oreos, because while Ilsa is gorgeous, her superpower is not sex – she is sexy and smart and good at thinking on her feet and great at lying when she needs to, and she’s super kick butt and good at driving and planning and shooting people.

RHG: Yeah, okay, if you compare it to previous MI movies, I guess I can see where you’re coming from, but on its own merits, now, in 2015 when we’ve had a summer of decent movies about women and with women? Fuck them. No cookie. You don’t get a cookie for doing crap.

CarrieS: OK, but you gave a great grade to Ant-Man, which had the same problems (one major female character, a few lines from a couple other characters and girl plot moppet).

RHG: Ant-Man didn’t piss me off on plot merits. Ant-Man made me happy. MI made me tired.

Hey, I’m human and get to be unpredictable.

CarrieS: I feel like after MMFR I need to grade all movies twice, because after MMFR I’m not willing to settle. But compared to the MI of Ghost Protocol, I’m happy dancing.

To sum up:

Plot: you hated, I liked, but I think we both agree that it didn’t make much sense.

Representation: We both thought it was, overall, both racially and gender-wise an epic fail, but I was willing to grade on a curve because I saw huge improvement within the franchise where you are taking the “Enough already” stand (a stand I respect!).

Overall? I had a lot of fun. I would, on my own, give it an A-

RHG: I honestly don’t see how you can even call this a huge improvement. But I would give this a D-. It doesn’t straight up fail because Simon Pegg is entertaining and Rebecca took off her heels.

CarrieS: Whatever else we may disagree on, I LOVE her shoes and lack thereof, and God knows Simon Pegg is a Gift.

Cut it down the middle and give it a C?

RHG: Sure. The guy sitting next to me was gasping at all the big stunts and set bits, and that was the best part of the whole experience for me.

OH WAIT. I have a very important question. WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH TOM’S SNAKE-SKIN-PRINT SHIRT?

CarrieS: I didn’t pay any attention to the shirt. I was distracted by how he could fall off a motorcycle and not break every single bone in his body and be covered with blood.

I was willing to suspend a lot of disbelief for this film but that lost me – so did the conveniently empty streets in Casablanca (THAT’S NOT WHAT THE STREETS LOOK LIKE Y’ALL) and Rebecca changing her clothes and clearly not wearing a bra even though it wasn’t just gratuitous – it was out of character. This is a woman who wears flats when she can and removes her heels when she can’t: if she’s going into a potential action situation she’s going to have a sports bra on. I know I’ve mentioned this bra thing many times and we are all sick of it but that kind of misogyny makes me almost as angry as the Smurfette Problem, which admittedly is huge, and has been in most of the franchise.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is in theaters now and you can find tickets (US) at Moviefone and Fandango.

Add Your Comment →

  1. Kate says:

    Aw. I really enjoyed this movie, both the action scenes and Ilsa’s character (and I do still enjoy 53-year-old Tom Cruise maybe a little too much). Cruise does almost all his own stunts, and it really shows – the action scenes are noticeably real and focus much more on his reactions than your typical green screen or facial close-up/cut to rear view of stunt double method.

    However, I would STRONGLY encourage you to watch MI3. (Can’t do MI:III.) It has THREE MAJOR female characters: two badass female agents and Ethan’s love interest, who is a badass herself. The team includes, in addition to Ethan, Ving Rhames, Maggie Q, and an Irish guy, and Maggie Q and the love interest even get to meet (no audible dialogue, unfortunately). It’s by far the most balanced movie in the franchise, and also has the highest emotional stakes. It might improve RHG’s view of the series as a whole.

  2. Saw it last night, thought it was waaaay too long, and agree with everything you’ve said. Women of action in stilettos & braless to please the male gaze is becoming my new poison ivy. When I see it, it makes me break out in hives.

  3. Ruth says:

    I’m sorry. I just can’t get over Tom’s fake hair and fake face.

  4. CarrieS says:

    @Darlene, a small detail caveat – the cool thing about Illsa (one of many) is that she wear stilettos when it’s appropriate for her undercover work (attending the opera etc) but she removes them as soon as she needs to run, climb, kicks, etc. The braless thing as poison ivy definitely applies but the show thing was deliberately subverted.

  5. EC Spurlock says:

    This franchise lost me with the first movie, when they had the hero of the original series, Jim Phelps, after six (?) seasons of being the all-American stand up good guy, kill off the team that had been virtually his family for so many years, go rogue and turn into the villain. That just left a bad taste in my mouth that I could not get over.

  6. Jane Drew says:

    In terms of whether Ethan Hunt is or isn’t still married, there’s a moment in “Ghost Protocol” where he’s watching his wife (happily working at some hospital) from a distance, so I think he’s technically still married, but can’t be with her because of danger and so on.
    One of the things that I really liked about “Rogue Nation” was that Ilsa never becomes a romantic interest- I was braced for it, and was ridiculously happy when it didn’t happen.

    Totally agree that they should have had at least one other woman on the team, maybe even (gasp!) some women on the Congressional committee, or a woman in the Alec Baldwin role or SOMETHING.

  7. Coffeefaery says:

    For purposes of your MI parody, there’s a Cairo and a Milan in the Hudson Valley of New York, and:
    – they’re both tiny;
    – Cairo is pronounced KARE-oh;
    – Milan is pronounced MEYE-lan.

    But wherever you set it, I’m looking forward to the parody. 🙂

  8. chacha1 says:

    Cairo, Georgia is pronounced KAY-ro
    Vienna, Georgia is pronounced VI-enna
    Athens and Rome, Georgia are pronounced Athens and Rome but one has UGA and the other’s in the Appalachians
    There is a lot of potential there.

    I did not like MI-1 except for the one famous setpiece with dangling Tom.
    MI-2 I liked except for the very squicky use of Thandie.
    MI-3 I liked except for the SPOILER ALERT highly ridiculous “kill me so you can save me” denouement.
    MI-4 I liked almost without reservations.
    Haven’t seen this new one but I expect to like it.

    I do wish everybody on planet Hollywood would do more with Ving Rhames.

  9. Joanna says:

    Enjoyed this a lot despite all the problems you noted and despite the fact I really don’t like Tom Cruise (my favorite review of this compared him to Dorian Gray). Really enjoyed the Ilsa character and yes wish there were more women in the film. It was a slick, pretty action flick with some humor and Simon Pegg!

  10. Lora says:

    Oh, I live in southern IL and our Cairo is pronounced KAY-roh. Just for the hick factor. 🙂

    I haven’t seen an MI since 2 which I admit to liking in the mind candy action sense but I can’t watch these any more because I have a daughter and I start to shriek at the TV about institutionalized sexism (I lunged for the remote the one and only time my kid watched part of a Barbie Life In the Dream House because aw fuck no)

  11. ClaireC says:

    There’s also a Milan, MI pronounced MY-lan, and a Moscow, MI that’s pronounced as usual. Plus you can visit both Hell AND Climax!

  12. Tabs says:

    Um, I can’t believe neither of you have seen MI3. It’s the only one I like! (He’s engaged in that one. She’s a civvie but she kicks ass when she needs to). It’s also the only one directed by JJ Abrams… so it’s got a total Alias feel… Which is probably why I love it so.

  13. Oh, you guys. I feel like I need to go to bat for Paula Patton’s character in MI4.

    Because didn’t it strike you as at least a little refreshing to see a woman whose motivation was avenging her fridged love interest? Her fridged love interest whose death she felt responsible for, because she was his team leader and she’d sent him into danger? I dunno; I don’t watch all that many action movies, and maybe that’s not such an unusual setup for a female character – I just know I hadn’t seen it before, and I appreciated it.

    Also appreciated that moment in the scaling-the-building setpiece when Cruise was falling out the window, Renner was hanging onto him and being dragged after, and Patton dove unhesitatingly to the floor and grabbed Renner’s ankle. She just came off as such a competent, committed member of the team, and I’m really disappointed she’s not in MI5 🙁

    Do see MI3! Super-enjoyable performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain! There’s a sequence early on where Cruise is doing his thing while disguised as Hoffman, right down to a high-tech super-realistic mask, but of course it actually was Hoffman in those scenes, shimmying up scaffolding & crawling through grates & so on. It made me realize how much I’d like to see an action movie with an ultra-competent spy hero who looked like Philip Seymour Hoffman instead of Tom Cruise.

  14. Tara Simone says:

    I saw it this week, gave it two thumbs up. An entertaining summer flick. Good action, kept me on edge, funny dialogue. Plot was enough for me to find believable for this type of flick. I don’t over analyze my summer films. I just want my $!4 worth and this delivered it. If I want something meaty I’ll read a book.

  15. chacha1 says:

    Just to be fair … Tom is only 53 and his whole job = staying fit and keeping his looks. I don’t think he looks treated. I think he looks well-maintained. His bone structure is the type that ages well, like Paul Newman’s. The stunt where he’s climbing the pole was pretty awesome.

    Saw this last night and while I did enjoy it, I was (thanks to SBTB) more conscious of representation than I have been in the past and it was really kind of SRSLY?! that a) there were only four women, that I noticed, with speaking characters and b) three out of four died.

  16. PamG says:

    May I suggest Versailles (Vur-sales) Connecticut. Exploding cows!

  17. Steve says:

    Well. I thought it was a decent film. Usual Americans saving the British but they do need to have some aspirations I suppose. Cruise is wearing well and always puts on a big guy performance for someone that is so small.
    Simon Pegg gives some character and personality to the film which he would do of course cos he’s English.

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