The 25 Best Movies of the Century: No. 21 - ‘Mission: Impossible - Fallout’

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0:49I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is 25 for 25, a big picture special conversation show about... Fate whispers to the warrior. And the warrior whispers back. The storm is coming. I am the storm. Our pick today is Mission Impossible Fallout, the sixth installment in the franchise and a sacred totem of this podcast. Let's talk about Mission Impossible. It's Mission Impossible month just about here on The Big Picture. I don't know that I strategized for this choice specifically, but I like where it landed in our mix. We massaged a tiny little bit. We did. Accidentally, it slid down a little bit.

1:25And this is a marvelous movie that is written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. It, of course, stars Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, Michelle Monaghan, and Alec Baldwin. It was released on July 27, 2018. It was a birthday movie for me, which was absolutely wonderful. It was, but we went together. Do you remember this? Remind me. I think I do, but remind me. It's so cruel. Once again, here we are. You can remember every single Criterion Closet pick from, like, you know, someone I've never heard of. But you don't remember our show.

1:59Yeah, so we went for your birthday. I'm trying to remember. I guess it would have been Arclight Dome. And we had center seats, which was like a little bit stressful. And at like 2.15 in the movie because we also got beers. But I made it through. And then we went out to sushi dinner. But it was you, me, our spouses, Chris. Juliet was there. I can't remember if Phoebe was in town. I remember the dinner very well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we ate at Matsuhisa, which was extremely nice. That was a very nice birthday dinner. It was a fancy birthday dinner that we had. And of course, this is a shared passion of ours.

2:34And this was, it fell right in between our birthdays, really. Because this was your birthday weekend too, essentially. And this franchise was getting long in the tooth, though it also felt like it was in its prime at this time. This is the sixth movie that they've made out of this franchise. And why did we choose it? And why is it on this list is an interesting conversation to have. We could have chosen from all but, I believe, one of the Mission films. I'm not sure. When is Mission Impossible 2? It might be just before 2000. So we had a bunch to choose from. 2000. 2000, okay. So we had five potential choices here.

3:08No, six potential choices, including Dead Reckoning. Why did we choose Fallout when you think about this movie? What is it that resonates for you for the century? I mean, it wasn't a question, right? This is when the Mission Impossible project and really like the late stage Mission Impossible project really comes together. It's the signature movie of the franchise, I would say. It is when late period Tom Cruise really reinvents himself and you kind of you see all the pieces come together and you're like, oh, I see what you're doing here. And it's not what you were doing in the 90s. and it's pretty weird and we've come to a different place from the movie star that we know and love, but like jump out of planes, got it.

3:54And in that halo jump, which, you know, there are a lot of signature stunts and like we can argue about it, but this has become the shorthand for what Tom Cruise is doing now, what late stage movie stardom is like, what practical action can be even now in the age of CGI. and the good parts of franchise entertainment, right? Like the best version of this serialized installment. We've been doing this for 30 years now. We're selling you on some big like corporate enterprise, but also it's well-made. It's well acted. It is really like overcommitted, but you're along for the ride and we all love it.

4:41Yeah, I think another reason why I really love this movie in particular and feel like it sets that new course for Cruise that you're talking about is because it's probably the funniest of all the Mission Impossible movies. It is the one that introduces the idea of Ethan Hunt as like a real slapstick physical comedian. He has moments where he is in peril that are funny in a couple of the previous films, but this one really leans into that. But then secondarily, I feel like it is actually legitimately the first psychologically probing Mission movie since the first movie. The first movie is a movie where a guy thinks he has everything under control.

5:13he has his team and then his team is murdered in the first 20 minutes of the movie and you find him going through this really like this trauma search to figure out what happened to all these people that he cares about and then comes to find out that his mentor has betrayed him deeply. Deep spoilers for Brian De Palma's Mission Impossible 1996. It's a 29-year-old movie. If you're listening to this episode definitely check out the original Mission Impossible. It's an excellent film. That is my second favorite Mission movie. This is my favorite. Same. And I think not just that slapstick and that psychology but a portal into maybe how Cruise thinks about his movie star persona while being trapped in this era where he knows that this is maybe the only real place where he can stay on top of the heat.

5:54You know, that there is this slight sense of sweaty desperation on his movie star persona where a lot of the things that he was doing in the past have not been working in the recent past. And if you look at the movies that are around this time, you know, Oblivion, Lions for Lambs, American Made, a lot of night and day a lot of those films night and day wow on the surface look like they should be classic Tom Cruise vehicles and none of them really quite get there some of them are out and out bad and you know that he is clinging to Ethan Hunt for dear life the same way he clings to you know the edges of a helicopter to survive and that gives the movie like an added weight I think totally you and I I think differ a little bit on how much authorship we attribute and self-awareness to Tom Cruise himself versus Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote and directed this film and has become like Tom Cruise's like Sherpa.

6:51His creative partner. Exactly, for lack of a better word, through this. And they worked together on a few projects before this. And I would say the Tom Cruise films of the era that we actually like, at least. But this is like where he really takes the wheel. Yes. And I do think also, you know, obviously knows how to write a movie, but has an understanding of both what like Cruise can do and also that movie star persona and how to make it work and how to bring out the best in the new Tom Cruise. I totally agree with you. I think this is the apotheosis of the franchise in this period of time of franchise filmmaking.

7:33and I think that point about Macquarie is interesting because if you talk to Macquarie, I talk to him on this show for Fallout which I guess is seven years ago now and if you read interviews with him or you listen to him talk about movies and movie craft and storytelling and he started as a screenwriter, not as a director won an Academy Award in his 20s for The Usual Suspects he's really interested in mechanics and he's really interested in tone and the tone that he favors is adventure movies and I think we think of Mission Impossible when we think of the stunts that we see with Tom Cruise and we think of action and action franchises.

8:06And this is a movie that lives alongside The Fast and the Furious and Jurassic World. And those are sort of its contemporaries. Spoiler alert, Jurassic World and Fast and the Furious. F5 did not make our list. Not on the list, I can assure you. Those movies are not on the list. But this movie, I really see more in a lineage of the adventure movies that Macquarie likes to talk about. So the movies that you hear him cite all the time are like The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Three Musketeers, Raiders of the Lost Ark. I think these are movies that he's framing them on, but it goes all the way back to like, you know, The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Great Escape.

8:38He sees, I think, Cruz in the mold of a Steve McQueen kind of figure. And you can make the case that these are the best movies. Like these are the best kinds of movies when executed well, you know, like there are obviously going to be The Wizard of Oz and Casablanca have something to say about what is the best kind of movie, whether it be fantasy or romance. But in terms of crowd-pleasing mainstream film, when you get one of these right, there is nothing better. Yeah. You go to see someone you're rooting for do impossible things and win the day. Yes. And do it sincerely. Sincerely, but with a sense of humor, which is the centerpiece of the target.

9:17These are really, these are like earnest and like I said, like overcommitted movies. Like Tom Cruise is just, is like doing these stunts all of the time and landing in old ladies like backyards in London, right? He has given his life over to this, but they're never winking, right? They don't take on this like glib tone that so many action movies of the last 20 to 25 years, they are like, they mean it, but they're also having fun. 100%. So this film comes three years after Rogue Nation, which is the first Macquarie film. And the film that precedes that film is Ghost Protocol, which is Brad Bird's entry in the franchise, which I think is an important movie, somewhat flawed movie.

9:59Some people that are listening to this episode right now might say, actually, Ghost Protocol is my favorite or actually Rogue Nation is my favorite. I think that these three are kind of in a battle. There's a lesser group of people who love three. You and I are a little bit more down on three than the consensus. Shout out, Bobby. Especially at The Ringer. Bobby loves three. CR loves three. I think Bill Simmons loves three. Three is a little bit too JJ TV show for me personally. But it's interesting because three is very, very important to this movie. Because three introduces the Michelle Monaghan character and the idea of Ethan Hunt as a regular person.

10:33And if we didn't have that movie, we would not have the depth of this movie. People might be laughing listening to me say that I think that this movie has a lot of depth, but I do think it has a lot of depth because it is the first movie in the franchise that spends a lot of time kind of obsessing over Ethan's mortality and what he's done to other people. Right. Which I think is like now Macquarie's critical obsession with the story. Now we see we have not yet seen The Final Reckoning. We're recording this just a week before we get a chance to see it. We do know that the entire campaign is centered around that.

11:03I'm asking you to trust me. One last time quote, which brought both of us to tears in the theater. It truly did. And so I think it is all of the movies matter to the story in a way that I never would have expected, even when I was watching Rogue Nation, which I thought was a super cool movie. Introduced us to Rebecca Ferguson's character, Ilsa, who I think kind of supercharged the franchise in a few ways. That's the one where he's hanging off the plane at the beginning? Correct. Yeah. I mean, good one. I think a lot of these movies are best remembered for those stunt sequences that you're talking about.

11:35Mm-hmm. I've got six all-world sequences from this film. One, two, three, four. Yeah. Well, I added one of them. You had five. I had five, and you've added one of them. Yeah. You mentioned the halo jump. Yeah. Which is not the first action sequence of the film, I suppose, because there is a kind of shootout in a tunnel for three nuclear warheads. Plutonium. Yes. But I don't view that as a set piece. it is action that is also putting together exposition and setting up the story but i like i agree the halo jump after we are introduced to henry cavill's character walker in which they both leap onto what is the building that they're leaping onto in paris it's the palais royale okay right uh that sounds right and you wrote it down in the document but it is it's the palais royale which i think was built at some point is like it's paris's version of like convention center you know oh that's significantly nicer than the Javits Center I mean I think it's like you know like 250 years old and others like I could be wrong also Palais means palace so I assume at some point someone fancy was living in there but now interesting like exhibitions and things are there that sequence in particular is great because we watch Ethan get bullied by Walker and we see that the dynamic between these two guys is going to be a pretty fascinating cruise that eventually of course saves Walker yeah but Walker doesn't realize that he's been saved by or does he realize that he's been saved by Ethan Hunt.

12:58At this point of the film, if you've never seen it, I don't know what the fuck you're doing.

13:05Do you, when you relook at this movie and you know that the role that Walker eventually plays, which is that he is ultimately the heavy of the film. He is the John Lark character who was identified as the target in that early mission delivery. Do any of the decisions as to how the missions are executed leave you scratching your head at all? I don't want to pick too many nits on Fallout, but Walker is going to some great lengths to get closer to what? I would say that the Walker-Angela Bassett plot lines, which in some ways are like a classic double cross, and other ways are like, what the hell is going on?

13:43You know, I would say that logic is not the primary goal of that particular setup. So let's talk about suspension of disbelief. Yeah. Because a lot of times we'll record an episode of the show, about a new big budget movie. And I, at least I can say, will be like, what the fuck was this? Like, how could this happen? And maybe it's because I can't get emotionally invested in what's happening in the story. So logic takes over. Yeah. And I start thinking through the problem of the plotting. Yeah. I very rarely have that issue in this franchise. Now, obviously, I have a big Tom Cruise blind spot. I have a mission blind spot.

14:19But what do you think it is about the movies that allows us to just say, yeah, John Larky's going to jump out of a plane now just because he's got to get into the Palais Royale and fight a guy in a bathroom. They do a good job of setting the stakes or even the suspension of disbelief and the theatricality of everything that's going on like very early on. I mean, there is the classic setup in each of these movies where your mission, should you choose to accept it. And I just want to note, if you don't remember, that Ethan's mission in this film is delivered in literally a copy of Homer's Odyssey, which is just really funny and also like, hello, Christopher Nolan.

15:01We've talked before about the relationship between Nolan and the mission movies and that they are trying to one-up each other every time. This was a big leveling up and I don't think we get Tenet if not for this movie. Totally. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, and then there is just a huge dialogue or exposition dump that is always like a little bit ridiculous and a little bit, it's usually made up. I mean, sometimes it's like Russian mob or something. They're not afraid of certain geopolitical hotspots. This one is particularly high level because it is about anarchy, essentially, about disassembling the world order.

15:40But there is something, like, they're real but not real. It's not particularly grounded. And then within 20 minutes, like, a mask shows up. And you're like, oh, okay, so the rules of this world and of this franchise are larger than life, right? There is something where you're either like, you know, masks can't be put on and revealed. Like we don't have this technology yet, you know? The Wolf Blitzer reveal fairly early in the film, which is such a magnificent scene. It's so wonderful. So fun when Niels Delbruck, the scientist who they capture to then try to get closer to John Lark right before this Halo jump sequence.

16:20it's a defining silliness that I think aids my comfort with some of the strange plotting. It's silliness, but also like a little clever and you're just, and it gets you on their side. Like you don't believe it, but you're a long, you buy in. And if you don't buy in, then this is like just not the movie for you and you should get up right now. I fully agree. The bathroom fight. Sure. Yeah, very famous. Which comes after they have landed post-Halo Jump and to me that is cinema. It's cinema. Yeah, I know. To me that fight is as excited as I get at the movies. And really good screwball moments from Cruise within it where he's kind of roaming around in between like whacking people with stuff.

17:07And playing the older and weaker guy. I mean, he takes some real blows and he kind of like starts developing I think this particular Tick and Edge of Tomorrow where he gets killed over and over and over again and he very smartly realizes that to win he doesn't have to be the strongest and coolest guy all the time he takes some absolute shots from the supposed john lark stand in this figure who's an amazing stunt performer who's been appeared in a number of movies but that battle between him and walker and ethan hunt is exquisite choreography yeah all practical all shot against the glimmering white bathroom the set design is a plus phenomenal and it is and and moments of humor too like the the french guys drunk guys just singing la vie on rose for whatever reason which is the funniest like we're in france guys and then also um you know when walker is like hope isn't a strategy and rebecca ferguson's character is like you must be new yeah exactly um it's a franchise that like knows who it is knows what it is and even when you you know there i think there's a little bit of john wick inspo going on in this sequence too where this is probably maybe short of some of the John Woo stuff, the best pure fight scene in all of these movies.

18:22And that eventually leads very quickly. I mean, this all happens in a very tight succession in these three sequences, but very quickly to this kind of gala shootout stabbing fight when we're introduced to the White Widow, the Vanessa Kirby character. And I brought up the first film and the emotionality and the connectivity because of course this character, Alana Mitsopoulos, is the daughter of Max who is portrayed by, is it Vanessa Redgrave? Vanessa Redgrave in the first film. And she also is a kind of connective tissue in the criminal underworld. Someone who is constantly seeking and redistributing awful information to bad people.

18:59Vanessa Kirby. Lights out performance. Yeah, definitely. I'm trying to not say something inappropriate. No, but it's really, really powerful. And she's playing into it and they just let her have fun. It's really the Tom Cruise playing opposite her is great because he doesn't always respond to the person opposite him. Yes. And he is definitely seeing what's going on and is like kind of amused by it and is also just hanging in. There's something I assume this was written into the script. Maybe it was a choice that Kirby made. but every time Tom Cruise posing as John Lark does something incredibly devious and violent Alana gets really turned on and you can see it in Vanessa's face she's like so twitchy and like oh wow I didn't know you'd go to that terrible place that is just a great choice and I think that kind of elevates some of that weird muted sexuality that Cruise like he's kind of lost the ability to be like we're gonna fuck now like he just can't do it anymore he's just been in too many movies and is too strange a person but when you get the right performer Hayley Atwell I think does this very well with him as well and they're very good in these movies that locating who can give him that energy she's fabulous and she also fits very well I think with some of the physicality of this part of the moment when she you know removes the knife from her leg holster her thigh holster and they're stabbing people together and that this is really the sex scene of this movie I don't know anything else but the gala shootout she's just she's very funny in it too you know like there is And even the next scene when they're doing the plans for the Solomon Lane extraction, you don't really know where she's going to go.

20:42And she's playing off of the dumb brother and Walker and something. She's pretty extraordinary. She's wonderful in this movie. They eventually do plan an extraction of Solomon Lane, who was the villain from the previous film portrayed by Sean Harris. We first see him at the top of the movie in a dream that Ethan has, in which he is the wedding efficient for his marriage before a nuclear disaster to Michelle Monaghan's character, Julia, in a dream. Solomon Lane. Is Solomon Lane the best villain in these movies? Yeah. Is Cavill a better villain? Well, Cavill's better at what he's doing. Which is being along for the ride until he's not.

21:30Yeah. But he doesn't spend a lot of time in villain mode. It's true. And like what he's actually, the parts when he's in villain mode, he's just like throwing helicopters around. So, I mean, which he's very good at. I find, I think the best performance pretty clearly is Philip Seymour Hoffman in three. Right. But I don't have some questions about that character, about the rabbit's foot, about all the kind of chicanery in that movie. Owen Davian is that character's name. The Extraction is a very cool sequence because it is an expectation subverter. You know, it does feel like a sequence out of The Great Escape where you think things are going to go one way and they go the complete opposite way.

22:06Everyone knows, no one knows what's going on except for the two leads of the movie, which then brings us to this moment of Ethan Hunt morality in which he saves the life of a French police officer and murders nine goons.

22:24I'm trying to figure out what this still means to Cruz. That Ethan, what his code is? Well, there's a whole theme in this movie about how he's the type of guy who will save one instead of the millions, and that's his flaw. but Alec Baldwin gives that whole speech about, but it's actually what makes you important to me. Incredible Alec Baldwin yelling in Airplane Hangers movie. Yeah. I would like to do a dramatic reading of that sequence if you don't mind. You had a terrible choice to make in Berlin. Recover the plutonium or save your team. You chose your team and now the world's at risk. Some flaw deep within your core being simply won't allow you to choose between one life and millions.

23:11You see that as a sign of weakness. To me, that's your greatest strength. that also like basically is the line delivery he's just like yelling rapidly like very angrily intensely but also like no breaks between sentences you know it explains he uses this as an explanation of why he basically took a demotion to work with ethan hunt yeah which is like that's every director tape making a choice to work with tom cruise like there's so much self-mythologizing going on in the ethan hunt character and that's why that like you choose um one over millions and you don't really know how to manage your emotional personal life.

23:45I, you know, I have some strong feelings about why this movie is the way that it is that you've been encouraging me to share. I'm trying to figure out what's the best way to share it on this podcast. You think that it reflects some like well publicized events in Tom Cruise's personal life. I do. I think it's an, I think it's an apology to someone in his life because especially as the film goes on and we see that Julia actually does enter this story and Ethan cannot stop apologizing to Julia. He just says, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And we know that he's apologizing for it. I mean, she is like in mortal danger.

24:20She's in mortal danger. And has like once again, she has been given like her own Doctors Without Borders camp just basically in order to set up world destruction. Not ideal. Not ideal. Not what you want. She got kind of duped pretty hard on that one. And that was obviously a honeypot for Ethan. It is like a little bit like someone calls up and is like, I just want to send you two to this particular place. Like, do ask some questions, you know? But if someone called you and was like, I want to send you to Movie Paradise in Europe for two weeks, you and Zach, wouldn't you be like, sounds good? I don't know.

24:55It's like we're in the era of like too many spam phone calls and scams, you know? Like anyone who's just coming to you with, you know, there's no free lunch. So a rando just being like, I mean, I'm sure that, you know, Lane built out this ask with a lot of shell companies and you could trace back the email addresses or whatever and had people on retainer. I suspect that's true. So, you know, if the Cannes Film Festival is calling me themselves, if it's Thierry and is like, hey, come on over. Sure. Then I guess I would do it. But I do think. I, you know, we got to ask questions. That would be another nitpick.

25:37It's not something that Ethan does very well. No. You know, he's a man of action. He likes to get down to it. He knows he's always going to have Luther and Simon Pegg's character at his side no matter what. I think this film also kind of concretizes that that is the core team. And Rebecca Ferguson eventually reintroduces herself into this story. And we see that, like, for this little stretch of the series, this is the defining unit. These are the people who execute on the missions. And they are the people who Ethan is ultimately most loyal to in addition to Julia. The final two action set pieces that we were talking through, you added the London chase sequence.

26:11Yeah. Which does feature the signature move, which is what? Right. Tom Cruise running. Just like running over many bridges throughout London at top speed. And you just get these like beautiful panoramic shots. That is also, it was that sequence where he injured himself and they had to pause for however many weeks because one of the jumps didn't really land the way it was supposed to. There's one extraordinary jump sequence where he lands and he is hanging right off the edge of the building that is one, I think in part because of the way that the camera zooms in as he lands and the sound design on that sequence.