Why Mission Impossible 8 is the Most Disappointing Movie Since 2017 | Filmento Rants

First I want to thank you for a lifetime of devoted and unrelenting service. Because he spared your life. You had one job. Get on the train, get the key. He gassed a security briefing at the national... I prefer really not to not to speak. If I speak I am in in big trouble. In big trouble. In Mission Impossible Final Reckoning Tom Cruise goes on one final mission against the Armageddon AI to save the world and conclude the franchise, which he plans to do in the one way he knows best, risking his life for our entertainment. And to get right to it, yes, I thought Final Reckoning was terrible. My biggest movie disappointment since the double whammy in 2017 that launched this channel. And sure, I seem to be in the minority. People everywhere seem to love this movie. On Twitter my own fan said it's crazy not to. I mean, I tried to give the movie 2.5 stars on Letterboxd and the website threatened to blow me up. It's as if everyone else is crazy except me. And I'm self-aware enough to know that when the whole world seems crazy, most likely the truth is the opposite. Which is why I didn't want to say anything when the That said, will I now take the easy way and just focus on the good stuff, pretend not to be bothered by the bad? Well, you know me. What we're gonna do today is another filmento rant where we speed through all the terrible problems pulling this movie down. Because there's quite a few of them. I thought there were some issues last time, but oh boy, that innocent version of me had no idea what was coming next. The first hour of Final Reckoning especially is one of the most excruciating movie experiences of my life. Seeing it for the first time, I thought I was going insane and that I was stuck in purgatory. In a nutshell, this movie is like a shiny Ferrari that struggles to start. But inside, there's a screen that shows you the history of Ferrari and also some preview clips of what the car will soon maybe do. So today, let's get into that and much more. Instead of focusing on a few larger points about Final Reckoning's shortcomings, let's fly through tons of them. And today, please tell me honestly what you think. Am I making sense or am I just a crazy guy with too high expectations from Fallout? Let me know. The most obvious issue here is how the movie keeps pausing the present to show previously on clips about the past. Ethan listens to opening exposition, there's clips about the past. It's been 35 years. Ethan gets captured by Gabriel, more clips about the past. It tricked the crew into sinking themselves. Ethan gets taken in by the government, same same. The bomb was actually meant to kill him. And to some extent, I get it. If you bring back the MacGuffin from Mission 3, it makes sense to refresh the viewers on that. But goddamn, this ---- just doesn't stop. Every time we come across something or someone, the movie pauses to explain it with a separate clip, even when it's stuff from the last movie. Pause. It gets to the point where it happens with stuff from a couple minutes ago. When the AI talks about Gabriel, there's a visual showing who he is, even though we were just with This whole clip thing may have started with good intentions to bookend the franchise, but it devolved into a narrative crutch giving major whiplash. Go and stop, go and stop, go and stop. I mean, the last movie was called Part 1, it's not unreasonable to rely on its existence. And even if not, in-game didn't need to resort to constant momentum breaking clips to Here, the filmmakers just seem to get lazy using the same cheat code again and again. Another issue of mine is how the first hour especially doesn't consist of proper scenes, but rather fleeting moments of verbal and visual information. One side of this is the way the movie keeps jumping around like an overcharged Duracell bunny. We're in some bunker somewhere to talk about the AI, then we're in some prison somewhere to break out the French assassin, and now we're in some party that Gabriel apparently is in for some reason. You know, Gabriel, the villain. The transitions are so fast and hard that there's no time to process where we are or how we got there or what exactly we're meant to do there. There's no time to feel tension or the sensation of overcoming an obstacle. It's not a proper scene, it's just, okay, okay, we're in this random party now, and look, there's Grace, she took care of these random suited guys, and now Gabriel's suited guys capture us to take us into the next scene. Oh no. It's like this movie is in a rush to fly by a thousand scenes as fast as possible. It doesn't live in the present as much as it dips in and out of the past and future. A great example is Luthor's death. The moment Ethan realizes that Gabriel is headed to kill Luthor, we already caught to Gabriel being there able to kill Luthor. If he wants Luthor dead, nothing's stopping him. There's no fight for Luthor's life, no tension over whether or not we can save him. Ethan shows up and the movie has already accepted that Luthor's gonna die. As much as I disliked Ilsa's death last time, at least that was a proper sequence of obstacles and efforts to overcome them. We're fighting for Ilsa's life, we're trying to get there, there's tension over whether or not we can save her. Here, the movie just decides Luthor is already dead, and Ethan leaves him to die to save the city, even though that goes fully against his core being. Oh and by the way, is Luthor sick or something? What happened there? No idea, cause we were too busy jumping through a thousand different scenes and locations which really are not necessary for the story. A thing on the opposite side I find annoying is how with certain subplots, the audience is way ahead of the story, just waiting for it to catch up. As the previous movie set up, we already know there's this sunken submarine holding the AI source code and we know we need to get there. Dead Reckoning literally began with that. And so by now I'm like, okay, it's about time to get to that submarine. It's been coming for so long, so let's get to it, right? And this movie just will not get to it. For another 90 f***ing minutes, we have to wait and wait and wait for Ethan to finally dive down to do the thing we've known all along he'll do, the central thing set up in the beginning of the previous movie. It's like you're the rabbit already at the checkpoint, forced to wait for the turtle to arrive. And to be fair, the submarine sequence is incredible and once we get to it, the movie improves a lot, because now you can follow the story instead of waiting around for it. And it is that waiting and being ahead that makes the first half feel so damn excruciating. This point makes it very clear to me that the movie was in desperate need of streamlining. Cut out all this unnecessary Duracell fat about reintroducing the story from the last movie and just progress the story. Open the movie with Ethan's team setting up a trap for Gabriel to find a clue to the sub's location and then get to the sub. This should happen way earlier. The audience wants to follow the story, not be ahead to wait around for it. Another issue I noticed is that the movie abandons stuff we spent time on before. Remember that woman Ethan lost at the hands of Gabriel in a flashback in Dead Reckoning? Well, Final Reckoning clearly doesn't, cause she's gone now. We never delve into who she was or what she meant for Ethan and her death is in no way a central motivator in Ethan's hostile relationship with Gabriel. It's just gone. I'm kinda glad it's gone, because it was always pretty weird to use a bunch of dead and living brunette women to give Ethan motivation, but still, thanks for wasting my time on it, I guess. Another thing I don't like is how a lot of the sets and locations are very random, repetitive and without a larger purpose. This is more of an issue in the beginning, but I'll briefly touch on it anyway. We're in some random party somewhere. We're in these underground tunnels with a hospital room and also in these villain underground tunnels, which are totally different apparently. Oh, and all of this takes place in London. Why? I don't know, doesn't matter. We may as well be in an abandoned hospital in Whatever. Most locations aren't bad, but some can be half-assed and random, or in other cases quite visually repetitive, or in the worst case, this f***ing meeting room from Dead Reckoning. Another thing I didn't like is how in this one scene, the movie suddenly turns into Spanish. That's what the characters speak now and there's no subtitles and now I have no clue what's going on, and so I had to pause the movie, go learn Spanish and then come back. I mean, it wasn't too terrible because I got this app that you use for just 12 minutes per day to do fun interactive lessons to learn, but still, would've been great to- oh wait, I sat on the remote and put it in Sorry, that one's on me. Well, at least I developed my Spanish skills, which I need over at my Spanish channel. And if you wanna learn a language too, the best way to do it is with Babbel. It's one of the top language apps in the world, super easy to use, it fits your daily life and teaches you with fun interactive methods designed by real language teachers. You use it for just 12 minutes per day and in 3 weeks you'll be able to start speaking. Babbel is sponsoring a 55% discount that you can check out with the link below or the QR code on screen, so what language would you like to learn? What I also dislike is the lack of character motives to push the story. Most of the characters feel fake because they don't have their own realistic motivations to follow. Why does Gabriel want the AI for himself? What's he gonna do with I don't know, he wants it cuz he's the bad guy. What does the AI wanna destroy the world? Do we dive into its reasoning like with Ultron? Hell nah, he wants to do it cuz it's an AI and humanity bad. Why is this navy guy fighting Ethan? Well, he's probably forced by the AI or something. Whatever. Why does Ethan's team do what they do? I get that the assassin wants to kill Gabriel as payback and I still like her cuz she was awesome last time, but what about the rest? Grace for example used to play only for herself, so why is she now suddenly 100% all in on playing to save the world only? She doesn't seem like a real person anymore, just another member of the team now doing what the team always does. And to be fair, this is nothing new. Ethan most often is saving the world just cuz that's who he is. And it works because it's Tom Cruise. Usually this strong enough to offset that lack of individual motivation by paving his own way. Except not this time. This time, Ethan seems weak as hell. He's not pushing the story, the story is pushing him. He gets captured by the bad guy and taken to him. He fails to save Luthor and then he gets captured by the government and taken to them. This time, Ethan most often relies on others to take him forward. Give me an aircraft carrier, take me to it, get this message to a US submarine, take me to the US submarine, get me close to the sunken submarine. He lives off of other people's allowance. His strength and courage comes from throwing his life in random people's hands. Once again, I think Ethan gets a lot better once he gets to the sunken sub. But before that, damn. Even his main plan is fed to him by the AI. Very sad to see. Another thing I really don't like is how clunky and spelled out the dialogue is. Exposition has always been a big part of this franchise, but this time almost everything feels like exposition. Characters can't have a single discussion without verbalizing each other's intentions. Oh Gabriel, this is why you are here. Oh Ethan, this is where you are headed. It never ends. Characters keep on announcing what they've done and prophesizing what they're gonna do and why. And it is written so pretentiously. Wherever I go, you will follow. And the pod cover will come to me. That is written. The filmmakers seem so paranoid about the audience getting lost that they keep gripping them by the hand the entire way, no matter how clunky it gets. And it'll all be his fault. He knows it. And it does get to a point where the villain feels the need to announce that he brought two planes, as if that's somehow necessary to know. Reliable, analog, under the radar. And it's like, you don't need this. We can just chase the villain to the airfield and see there's a second plane when his henchman flies out of there, like last time. We already know he wants Ethan to chase him, so it already adds up. Not every f***ing thing about the story and character intentions has to be spelled out, as if everybody's a goddamn narrator. Cut out all the extra pretentious verbalizing and the movie is 20 minutes shorter. If you're this worried about the audience getting lost, then how about, instead of holding their hand through the story, you simplify the story. Because this is overwritten. This leads to another issue I have, which is that everything is so needlessly complicated. Although overcomplication also isn't new to the franchise, it's gone off the rails now, with the submarine mission for example. Oh, we need to go to this arctic monitoring place to get the coordinates to where the submarine exploded, and we have to blindly transmit those coordinates to Ethan, which he hopefully gets, we don't know. And at the same time, Ethan has to blindly transmit other pickup coordinates to a US submarine, which they hopefully get, we don't know. And finally, Grace has to go to the ice and locate Ethan via his VHF transmitter that shows his approximate location, as if that's enough for it to make sense that she locates him, digs a hole, dives down and gets him out, all before he drowns. All despite the fact that the sunken sub moved way out of place, and that the deep water distorts or even blocks the VHF transmitter's signal. And it's like Henry Cavill once said. Why not simplify it? Hey, you guys go to the monitoring place and send me the submarine's sinking coordinates. Meanwhile, I'll go get a ride in a US submarine. And after diving to the sunken sub, I'll swim up to the exact sinking coordinates you sent, where Grace has already prepared a hole lit with flares so that I can come straight up. Way more simple, logical and believable. To be clear, complications are good, like when Ethan's dive keeps going wrong, forcing him to do even crazier stuff. That's great, that keeps the tension and challenge growing and the audience hooked. But what's not so great is to needlessly overcomplicate the story. When you have two sets of submarine coordinates that mean two different things, you're increasing confusion for no real gain. Overcomplex obstacles does not automatically equal good obstacles. Same with the plot device MacGuffins. This time the key is less relevant, thank god, but there's a whole lot of new stuff in place of it. There's the AI source code, aka the rabbit's foot in the submarine, and there's Luthor's poison pill to kill the AI, and there's this 5D USB drive to lock the AI in. I thought these were just theoretical. And the plan to defeat the AI is to make it believe it's going into this nuclear bunker, when it's actually going into the USB, which has to be unplugged in a blink of an eye. MacGuffins can be effective to streamline the story like in Pirates, but when used within reason. To have multiple different arbitrary empty items, not a great idea. Like I'm watching the chase sequence at the end and I'm barely aware of what it is we're chasing or why. The Badolkin, you say? Which MacGuffin was that one again? Whatever, I'll just enjoy the chase. Another issue I have is with how some of the nostalgia aspects feel forced and distracting. With the CIA guy from the first movie for example, there is no issue at heart. He's the guy from the CIA heist vault, he's bookending the franchise, and he fits the group pretty well. I actually like that he's included. But oh my god, how much glazing about that can you do? I mean, the guy is introduced and reintroduced three f***ing times. First to Benji, then to Ethan, and then to the CIA boss. And it's like, okay, I get it, he's the guy from the first movie, this is his wife. That's so cool and crazy. Can we please move on with the story now? Another example is Agent Briggs, who turns out to be the son of the villain from the first movie. And again, while that can be very cool and crazy and all, it amounts to nothing. The fact that he's the son of the guy Ethan once killed doesn't change anything. It's not like he's full of rage looking for personal revenge. He's a cop going after Ethan and his heritage doesn't really alter the result in any significant way. So once again, could've spent this time a little better, like to establish how the hell Luthor is sick now. I'm running out of time and you're probably running out of patience with me whining and complaining, so very quickly, here's a couple more things I had issues with. The action is a bit of a letdown. The two main stunt sequences are astonishing, sure, but for a top-tier action movie, there's not a whole lot of memorable action in here like in Fallout. If it ain't some big stunt, then it's pretty basic punching and shooting or people standing around. The climax is very derivative of Fallout. Ethan goes on an aerial chase to get the MacGuffin so that the team can defuse a bomb in two spots with legacy characters. Yes, it's with planes and there's added stuff of Benji getting injured and the AI trap thing, but as a whole, I see through you. Even some of the specific moments are copy-pasted. There's too many subplots. The whole president's cabinet thing for example, I don't give a ----. I don't care that a screen on the wall shows graphics of the AI taking over nuclear arsenals. The reason I care is because the team is there. The whole world-ending thing is too half-assed to matter. Apparently, the AI has caused chaos everywhere and turned some ordinary people into its followers. But outside of one walking scene in the beginning, we don't really get into that because we're mostly in remote places with no character to represent ordinary people. The closest we get to that is at the end when we meet the president's son, who isn't a very good representation of the ordinary world either. There's a whole lot of noise, but no proper point of view to represent it or make it meaningful. The villains. They suck. There were promises that they're gonna improve from last time, but clearly not. The AI does nothing in the movie outside of giving exposition, which is crazy considering its potential, and it doesn't have a personality or even a voice actor. It's voiced by the movie's director to tell information at the start and then nothing more is needed. Ultron would be Same with Gabriel. He does pretty much nothing as per usual, except at the end when we finally get to see a glimpse of how formidable and crazy he can be. But then he immediately dies. So, nevermind. There's too many characters, to the point where some actors just kind of awkwardly stand in the background with nothing to do. Even though I still like the assassin, she has no narrative purpose outside of fighting a bit as well as giving French commentary. And then there's this cop guy who seems to be in the movie just because the actor worked with the filmmakers on Top Gun and really wanted to be here. I mean, at the end, he literally says he's got nothing to do, so he may as well stay put and watch. Are there more topics to talk about? Maybe, but I feel like I've already gone too long, much like this movie. Do you agree with any of this, or am I just crazy? Please let me know, cause I don't know. I still think these filmmakers are amazing and we all have a lot to learn from them, but I don't know, man.