Impodkova Missions Force
Wot is happening
We must maintain hope. It’s easy, in this life, to become jaded. It’s easy to position yourself in a superior position that expects nothing good from anyone or anything. It’s easy to say that the moneymaking forces of this world have already run roughshod over all that’s beautiful, that their project is entirely cynical and to think otherwise is to place yourself squarely in the zone of the Fool. But I always maintain hope that A Large Tentpole Studio Action Franchise Release can just… be good. That it can be a good, well constructed movie with lots of thought, time, focus, care in it. That it can recognize emotional realities, avoid cliches, be inventive and a bit ingenious, push the boundaries. I always go into a big blockbuster type movie with this hope, because the promise of a really good high budget movie is so tantalizing. Something good with money behind it? That can shoot all over the world, choreograph and build huge set pieces? Something that can create movie magic by organizing thousands of people into an efficient machine driven towards one goal? If it works, it’s gotta be good!!!
Very often, I am let down. But normally not by my favorite action franchise: Mission Impossible.
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning was a bad movie. It pains me to say it. I watched in all the right ways—opening weekend, Lincoln Square IMAX, with my dad—and the more I sit with it, the more I’m convinced that it’s the worst movie of the series. It’s full of boring ass exposition dialogue where they repeat the same ten details over and over, there are no particularly good big character moments, and for some reason the big line of the movie that gets repeated a few times is “What separates a good pickpocket from a great one? Timing.”
There are two great set pieces, to its credit, and maybe four or five big gasp Power Of The Movies type moments.
Normally, a mediocre blockbuster movie like this would leave my mind pretty quickly. It’s been a while since I’ve really dwelled on these kinds of details. But for some reason, I feel haunted by the internal logic of MI8 in a way I find hard to describe. It could be that the constant and droning repetition of jargon in the movie hacked its way into the Spaced Repetition based learning center of my brain. Therefore, I’ve decided to expunge it by externalizing my thoughts here.
Doohickeys of MI8, Ranked
1. The Cruciform Key
Cruciform key goes so hard. This is the one doodad / gizmo I want to actually own. True prop-making genius here. Just a really awesome looking little thing. Just a classic thing, an object, that looks cool.
When we went and saw the movie, my friend posed with the poster and made it look like she had the cruciform key.
We all laughed when we saw the photo, but I mostly felt jealous. I want the cruciform key.
2. The Entity USB
Sure, I’m fine with a glowing cube. Glowing cube is part and parcel of what I signed up for here. The thing of it lighting up and then needing to snatch it away? Good, visually.
My question here is this: why is it that the whole team is in South Africa, with all of the doodads, all of them together, and then it just cuts to all of them meeting silently in Trafalgar Square to do the handoff? I don’t mind the whole “smiling and tearing up in the crowd while the music swells” thing, but Cape Town has crowds! Pretoria has crowds! And the third capital of South Africa, its judicial capital, Blomfontein, probably also has crowds, though maybe not as many, due to its relatively lower global stature and the need to maintain “order in the court” 😂
3. The Podkova
Damn, you’re telling me the Podkova’s in the Sevastopol? And that it contains the Entity’s source code??? Could have said this every single one of the 40 times that this information was repeated in this movie.
Looks like a 3TB drive lowk. Not that interesting visually.
4. The fourth — the little dongle thing.
Fine, it’s called the “Poison Pill.” Hate to have another named device in this film. Couldn’t find it in me to care about this one. Logic around this was so confusing. Okay, so it messes with the Entity’s sense of reality. But how is anyone actually dictating what that reality is? And they say it’s part of Gabriel’s plan to connect the Poison Pill to the Podkova, but then Gabriel seems to basically not care about it when he’s flying away in his biplane, which probably wouldn’t survive global nuclear armageddon, which is what the Podkova and Poison Pill are meant to protect against.
This is what I’m saying. My brain keeps going in loops around this stuff. For some reason I’ve found it in my black heart to care deeply about this movie, even though it’s bad. I think I just wanted it to be good so badly that this is my process of mourning. After all you know what they say:
5. Midea U Air Conditioner
Just heard these are getting recalled. I walked past maybe 20 Midea U boxes on the sidewalk this week. Put mine in for the summer yesterday. Wirecutter core.
Nabeel’s Footnote
So I chose to write nothing at all. The end.