Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning

More Implausible Than Impossible

or

Deciding Not To Accept It

Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning may well be the last of the "Mission: Impossible" movies, the series based on the espionage TV show that featured a crack-team of specialists engaged in "heist-movie" scenarios for the government.* The films had some of the tropes, the "fuse" logo, the late Lalo Schifrin's pulsating, propulsive theme, the clandestine mission briefing (that then self-destructed leaving no trace). But, in the movies it spawned,  the "team aspect" always played second-fiddle to its star and champion, Tom Cruise, who increasingly dominated the films, while his character, Ethan Hunt, still remained a bit of a cypher as a character. Other than doing the hardest stuff, of course.

 

But this latest, maybe last, entry, given the evidence on display, indicates the series is past its self-destruct status. At nearly 3 hours in length, what could have been a lean and mean entry feels bloated with a first act crammed with flash-backs (ill-advised as they'd never connected story-lines before and even dropped connections with past movies at the drop of an un-negotiated contract) and a star who, at 62, is looking a little too doughy—in a Brad Pitt/Jerry O'Connell kind of way—to be romping around doing his own crazy stunts and skittering the world in his signature tin-soldier full-tilt run. 

All the worse, because this one really leans (and leans hard) in to Ethan Hunt being the end-all, be-all "only one" whose destiny it is to save the human race from Mutually Assured Destruction at the hands of an AI "anti-god" called The Entity...which featured in the last one and, it turns out, was the undefinable McGuffin dubbed the "Rabbit's Foot" from Mission: Impossible 3.** As The Church Lady would say "Isn't that convenient"***

At the time it came out, I thought it was a nice joke that the "secret thing that everybody wants" (and spends so much time obsessing over) in M:I 3 was so much vapor-ware in the story-line. Nobody knew what it was or what it could do, but it was important enough that everybody wanted it, whatever it was. Turns out, in reality (or film-reality, anyway), it was merely the plot-line of Colossus:The Forbin Project.

"Oh, yeah, there are other people in the movie..."

And Ethan Hunt turns out to be as mythic a lynch-pin to world affairs as Luke Skywalker or Paul Atreides.

 

It appears original, but it's merely a re-gift, just put in a new wrapper.

They also serve—briefly—watching Tom do the hard stuff...

So, anyway, the mission should you decide to accept (and I didn't) is that after the events of Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part 1, Ethan Hunt was in possession of The Cruciform Key, which would allow him to somehow destroy The Entity which is embedded in the Interwebs and is slowly but surely filling it with misinformation, turning the World Wide Web into a cesspool that has man turning against himself (as if it needed any help!) with the eventual end of taking over the nuclear capabilities of all the world's powers. What it would do then is anybody's guess, but even a digital anti-god would know that anything actually using those weapons would create a nuclear pulse and wouldn't do it any good at all, disabling any electronics throughout the world. If it's aim is murder-suicide then you need some other term than "artificial intelligence". Artificial psychosis", maybe? The Entity sounds like it's related to Monty Python's "Black Knight" ("You're a loony!")

They also serve who sit in boardrooms and clutch pearls...

Anyway, getting the thing to destroy The Entity involves two impossible missions: get to the Russian submarine Sebastopol (scuttled in arctic waters in the last movie) to use his Cruciform Key to obtain the Entity's "Podkova module" (containg its source code); then, using a "Poison Pill" developed by IMF whiz Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), get that module to the world's "Doomsday Vault" located in South Africa—a huge mainframe designed to withstand said nuclear pulse even in a planet-wide armageddon—and plug the "Pill" into the "Podkova" thus isolating the Entity and somehow managing to contain the thing.

But, there are complications—there always are—such as the sub Sebastopol starting to roll down a continental shelf when Hunt is inside it (evidently it doesn't have a conning tower or fins or sail planes or...ya know...rudders that might impede the progress), or Hunt having to discard his hi-tech diving suit to get out of a jam and swim...in just trunks...in arctic waters...with no oxygen...and no decompression gear (except on the surface), or—a major one—the bad guy Gabriel (Esai Morales) manages to steal said "Poison Pill" making his escape on a bi-plane (...a bi-plane!), thus forcing Ethan to hijack another one and do a godawful amount of gyrating on wings and struts to get on the bad-guy's plane to get said "Poison Pill."

Now, look...the plot-line is insanely complicated and stupid...way too much so...as well as being openly subject to criticism by what Hitchcock called "The Implausibles" (I can't wait to see the "Goofs" tab on its IMDB page). Such things as Hunt being able to take out two competent goons moments after biting down on a cyanide capsule, or being able to survive "the bends" or the crushing water pressure of a deep-dive while only in his swim-trunks, then being able to do all that dangerous wing-walking the very next day boggles everything that I have left of a mind. The onslaught of implausibles tend to overwhelm such trivial matters as grabbing the barrel of a recently-fired automatic weapon without scorching your hands in the process.

Still, I can appreciate the length and breadths—in IMAX, even!—to which the cast and crew have gone to present such shenanigans. The rolling submarine set that they present is a wonderful little concept design for all sorts of mayhem, and the whole bi-plane sequence is an amazing showcase for what can be done with remote cameras and a star with a death-wish (but one with a goofy absurdist sensibility). As an actor, Tom traditionally dials it to 11, it's in these insane stunts where these proclivities really pay off.

However, the movie is a logical and editorial mess, with sporadic flashbacks that don't quite connect dots or light emotional fuses. It does provide considerable down-time between action set-pieces to make an assault on a snack-bar or sabotage a theater restroom.  

 

If that's your aim I will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck.

*Poof!* hsssssss

Ethan cares, man. He really cares. 

* I'm throwing a lot of stick here, but the TV series, as great as it could be, had elements rolled eyes. For instance: why did every potential, autocratic, generalissimo, and revolutionary look like Martin Landau?

** That was, what, 4 movies ago, the one with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, which, when you see him in the flashbacks, causes actual grief.

 

*** Yeah, okay, M:I fans, I know that the James Bond series just wrapped up an uncharacteristically continuity-obsessive five-film arc, where everything tied together to the point where Bond super-baddie Ernst Stavro Blofeld turned out to be the step-foster-brother (or something) of Bond—in a plot-twist borrowed from (of all things) the "Austin Powers" series. Connecting the dots has a way of diluting the power of a story. In the Craig years, Blofeld wasn't so much an international criminal as a red-headed step-child. Just like in the first Michael Keaton Batman, the criminal who became The Joker was the one to kill Bruce Wayne's parents, rather than just some rando gunman. It waters things down, sometimes to an unpotable degree.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Third World War

or

"A Colonialist in Chains...Now I Have Seen Everything"

 

When last we left (and, I'm sure, regretfully) Wakanda, they were ending their fearful (if understandable) isolation and establishing an outreach program into the wider world, no longer hiding in plain sight, sharing their culture, their knowledge, but not their wonder-mineral vibranium. The world is not ready for that (although they continue to try to possess "by any means necessary").

 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever begins with the acknowledgment that its MVP, Chadwick Boseman, who has played "The Black Panther" in all the previous Marvel movies, is dead. Much tribute is made, deservedly, but the most important thing the movie does right off the bat is to say that the actor (and the character) are irreplaceable, too irreplaceable to even try. In a movie industry where actors are replaced with the drop of a salary demand or a controversial tweet (and a genre that is still trying to come to grips with multiple actors playing a single character), this is refreshingly noble. And rare. Already, the movie re-establishes that air the original had of being a labor of love rather than a labor of commerce. 

King T'Challa, the former Black Panther, protector of Wakanda, has died of an unspecified disease. The country mourns the loss, but none more than T'Challa's sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), princess and technological whiz-kid, who only knows that for all her brilliance and skills, she could not save her beloved brother. Now the kingdom is ruled by Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) with no protector, no Black Panther, but the more-than-capable army of the Dora Milaje, led by General Okoye (Danai Gurira). She's going to need them. At a United Nations meeting, she is pressed by the U.S. (Hey, Richard Schiff's in the Marvel Universe!) and France to share Wakanda's resource of vibranium, which she steadfastly refuses.

She gives them something else, instead. A big lesson in "Don't Mess With Me." The entrance opens and Okoye and her troop bring in some French soldiers who had tried (unsuccessfully, of course) to steal some vibranium. Ramonda lays down the law. Nobody is going to get the stuff for its potential for weaponry. If anybody tries it...well, they better not. Wakanda's memory is also forever.

They're not alone in that. The U.S. is trying to get their own vibranium deposited deep in the Atlantic Ocean, with a new device that detects the stuff. But, before any extraction can be done, there's an attack on the ship where the crew inexplicably jump like lemmings into the sea, impelled by a strange sonic attack of an unknown origin, and a helicopter attempting to escape is grabbed and thrown to a catastrophic end into the sea. Was it Wakanda? How? Even Wakanda doesn't know.

The answer comes from the sea. While Ramonda and Shuri are holding a private ritual ending their mourning by burning their ceremonial white robes, they are approached by a human rising from the water with wings on his feels and fire in his eyes. He is K'uk'ulkan or Prince Namor (Tenoch Huerta) of the undersea kingdom of Talokan and he loves what they've done with the place (the water is so clean! And the air is so fresh!), but not so much in his neck of the ocean, so he warns them. His people have stopped another attempt to take vibranium—this time from the ocean floor with a device that is specifically designed to detect it. As it is Wakanda's responsibility to police the mining of the stuff, they'd better get a handle on it, especially in his territory of the sea. If they can't, he'll see to it personally and with less restraint. His first aim is to find the person who created that vibranium detector and if Wakanda doesn't hand them over to him, he's not willing to wait and he'll take action against the people responsible and Wakanda, as well.

Okoye and Shuri contact their "favorite colonialist" Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), who knows who made that vibranium detector. She is MIT student Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), who apparently has the "McGyver"-like ability to make a flux capacitor out of scraps taken from your recycle bin. Not only did she make that detector, but she's working on her own "Iron Man" suit because...well, MIT must have a liberal extracurricular activity program. But lousy security. When the two Wakandans contact Riri, they must first get by a raid by the FBI and then the Talokans, who take Shuri and Riri captive.

Queen Ramonda is furious with this. She demotes Okoye of her rank and then sends for Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), former Dora Milaje and War Dog spy to infiltrate Talokan and rescue the two scientific geniuses who can't seem to rescue themselves.

Well, it just gets more complicated from there. Ultimately it turns into a war between third world countries, tribe against tribe, while both should be looking at the real threat, which is the supposedly industrialized nations (although they pale when compared to Wakanda) trying to get their empirical mitts on the resource the two warring factions share. It seems to be a case of not keeping your eye on the vibranium ball, but that's what happens when things get personal. You lose the big picture when you're the target of the attack.

But, as frustrating as that is—and aren't all wars fundamentally frustrating?—one must acknowledge the complications. Coogler displayed in the first Black Panther a penchant for world-building that went beyond decor and here, he does the same sort of thing for the Talokans (in a way that seemed to escape the DC Aquaman movie), creating a murkier version with more natural materials, and enough back-story to create the grudges necessary to sell the thing.

But, more than that, this movie is a bit of a miracle in that, even if it isn't as artistically successful as the first Black Panther movie, it is successful enough without its lynch-pin title character present (and its charismatic lead actor irretrievably absent) and, instead, depends on the superb supporting cast that enriched its predecessor. Imagine a Batman movie without Batman. Nope. Not gonna happen. But, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is engaging even without a Black Panther character for the majority of its running time (consider that a SPOILER alert). I can't imagine another film franchise that would be able to pull that off and get away with it, let alone excel in its own way. 

As these super-hero movies start to merge together and become indistinguishable from one another, that is a remarkable accomplishment.

Wakanda forever!

 

 Prince Namor ("The Sub-mariner") has been around since 1939

 

Soul

Pixar When It's Jazzing

or

"I am the coming together of all quantized fields of the universe. Appearing in a form your feeble human brain can comprehend. You can call me Jerry."

I freely admit that I should have seen Soul in a theater—I've seen every other Pixar movie on the big screen and I freely admit that the presentation-medium usually informs the reviews of those films. There's something about the detail work of Pixar's movies that pop more on a big screen. I had to watch this at home, though. Disney took the choice away from me, and I will admit it made me a little bitter. I say this because not seeing it all big-and-large, a couple millimeters to a pixel, might prejudice my review a bit.

But just a bit.

Soul did not move me to tears as other Pixar films have in the past. Its suppositions on the inner life of humans skews a bit in the same territory as Inside Out. Its designs seem to spend a great deal of time in the easily-rendered nebulous, and its points of view on "purpose" and "spark" may be too subtle for some who have not reached a certain age—you know, actually lived a life of varying degrees of success and/or satisfaction. All of this is in comparison of Soul to the rich history of Pixar and its output, which is without a doubt the most artistically and financially successful production studio out there. Most souls would shrivel up and die held against such a standard.

But, seen on its own, without (or even because of) that rich legacy, Soul is still a remarkable film of humorous dexterity and sophisticated conceptualization. And humor...plenty of that. And their continuing forays into multi-culturalism (necessitated once they run out of subjects that hid the limitations of digital animation in its early days-and they decided to combat the "uncanny valley" by leaping over it in artistic bounds) has not only made their films richer—well, naturally—but also counter-intuitively more universal.

It's also left it open to sniping from critics of certain sensitivities (and prejudices) who can't see the forest for the trees—attacking some aspect while ignoring the bigger themes of the picture. It's a bit like attacking Finding Nemo because "fish don't act like that" when the story is about "letting go." How did they survive watching Ratatouille when rats were cooking in a restaurant? 

It is the best day in the life of Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a band-teacher suffering through a class with limitless room for advancement.* There's one promising saxophonist, but that's it. The next quarter is going to be an endless stream of clams and sharps and lagging. So, it seems like too much of a good thing when he's told he's been hired to teach band full-time, complete with insurance package. But, it's clear that his heart is in playing jazz professionally. That's why he jumps at the chance (provided by a former student) to audition for the Dorothea Williams Quartet (she's voiced by Angela Bassett). He sails through the audition and is told to get a "good" suit and be back at the club at 6:30.

Joe's heart is soaring. Which is probably why he falls through an open man-hole and dies. Well, not quite. But, when his awareness kicks in he's on the fabled staircase, if not to Heaven then to "The Light." This is one escalator he wants to jump off, and in so doing, finds himself somewhere not-so-fabled. It's not "the Great Beyond" he's informed, but "The Great Before," where souls go to be indoctrinated into their apparent personalities, and become mentored so they can achieve the little merit badges needed to go to Earth.

Joe, however, is not where he's supposed to be. He's not on his way to the After-life, he's in the Before-Life, which makes the After-Life hell for a counter named Terry (Rachel House, deliriously idiosyncratic, as always), who finds the count is off. Rather than write it off as "shrinkage" Terry begins an investigation, while "Before" counselors (all named "Jerry" and voiced by Alice Braga, Richard Ayoada, Fortune Feimster, Zenobia Shroff, and Wes Studi) cover his tracks by giving him a job as a "last-ditch" mentor to a troublesome soul.

How many souls have there been? Trillions? Well, this one's a problem and has been a long time. This soul's name is "22" (voiced by Tina Fey—"How come you sound like a middle-aged white lady?" Joe asks it. "I just use this voice because it annoys people," it replies) and she has had the Best and the Brightest of mentors throughout history.** All failed—even Mother Theresa ("I have compassion for every soul...Except you. I don't like you.") and 22 just does not want to take the next step to live, despite Joe's best efforts. That next step—it's more like a prat-fall—is when the two souls accidentally fall to Earth, while viewing Joe in the hospital, and get into the adventure trope of "switching psyche's"—walking in someone else's shoes.

If the "Great Before" were a TV show, we've already seen that...countless times. But, Soul makes it fresh, fast, funny, and the most entertaining part of the film. There is a lot of "concepting" going on, with talk of "The Great Before" and "The Zone" and "Lost Souls" and philosophical/psychological concepts dealt with in cartoon-graphic terms—"this whole place is a hypothetical..." 22 finally just admits—and sometimes, the grasping at ideas is a little thin. But, once it starts getting down to Earth, the film is much more on solid ground, comedically and spiritually.

And it's beautiful, especially when it's out of the pastel, cotton-candy landscapes of the "hypothetical," and back in Pixar's "Real World" (I've included a bunch of screen caps below ***) that take your breath away. Pixar's renderers always seem to advance the bar with every new film and here, the results are astounding; the film is full of pieces of art that you just want to frame, made even more incredible for the realism in their movement. 

One wants to say that it's a step-back. But it isn't. It's another well of imagination the overflows and inspires. 

Joe "in the zone"

* The very first joke of the movie is a terrible, amateurish version of "When You Wish Upon a Star" over the opening Disney logo. It's hilarious, off-putting (because you don't know what or why), and wonderfully tweaks their corporate overlords. I love Pixar...

** 

22's wall of past mentors--a couple of them are Pixar creators who have passed, and Jack Kirby's in there, too!

***