I’m not the biggest mission impossible fan in the world, but I enjoyed a few of the older films and thought 4&5 weren’t too bad as far as movies which base their success on fast pacing and high quality fight sequences go. I’d heard this one was fun and that it added Hayley Atwell to the cast so I was down to check it out. In all honesty I can say it wasn’t bad, but it didn’t wow me. Here’s why.

Lack of continuity leads to an absence of personal investment:

I don’t expect them to be writing Lord of the Rings here, but if you make seven films and have nearly no continuity or character development there’s little reason for me to spend roughly fifteen hours watching this film series. The first Mission Impossible in 1996 had a budget of 80 million dollars and grossed over 400 million–a massive success for being one of the first in its time to pull off the deadly intense spy mission in a slow burn but fun way. So they kept making them. Some like the second film should be erased from history or only exist as a cautionary tale as to how not to make a movie. Mission Impossible 7 had a budget of 291 million dollars and I was disappointed that this was the best they could come up with. 

• The movie was the 7th in the series and you’d think some development remained or happened in this film–not really. Ethan Hunt had a wife for two or three films somewhere in the middle of the series, then she disappears so he can keep her safe. And in the next film they divorce–for no reason. Then another lady character, Ilsa, is chasing him around and madly in love with him but he feels zero affection for her in the last 2 films and refuses to run away with her. In this movie he’s acting like she’s his love interest. Everyone, including him, is acting like she means so much to him. This feels forced and kind of dumb like the writers have to make this random lady into someone he’s crazy about when before he wasn’t interested.

• There’s been virtually no character development over the course of the series. I don’t really know anymore about Ethan Hunt than I did at the beginning except that he’s this super efficient spy and that every woman interested in him ends up in danger or dead. 

• There’s no emotional investment in the film from the beginning, except that a hit has been put on the woman who’s the random new love interest. We don’t care about their romance so why would we be all that invested in the movie? There has to be some character driven reasons I’m watching it.

• The absence of continuity or character arcs means all the tension was low. If I don’t know anything about these people or what they hope to gain by taking the actions they are, why am I supposed to care? I don’t know what Ethan Hunt wants, I don’t know what Grace (Hayley Atwell) wants, or Ilsa–I just have to watch them in elaborate chase scenes going after their goals. I have no reason to care whether they get it or not.

• We didn’t know anything about Grace or why she was a thief, what she wanted aside from getting away, or why she would help Ethan Hunt and why she kept betraying him. We got no backstory to anyone and no reason to care about the journey. 

The villain and the plot was weak:

Literally what fills up over 2 hours of movie is chasing the key. That’s it. There’s a key that unlocks a thing, which is dangerous and if the bad people get it then its the end of the world. We have no idea what it does, except that its some all knowing computer program which predicts our every move–this has been done in many shapes and forms in lots of movies. It’s not really scary anymore unless you have a unique take on it. 

• The villain was a random old guy who wasn’t intimidating in the least, and for some reason he wants “The entity” to win and kill everybody. I don’t know why and I wasn’t invested enough to figure it out. 

• The whole movie was basically people chasing a key with elaborate fight scenes that tried to top each other in ridiculous ways. Even this is a criticism I had. There’s nothing wrong with elaborate fight scenes, but they need to be slightly grounded otherwise they lose all tension. If every scene just tries to be bigger than the next, it ends up feeling silly because you know the characters have to get out of it and you know no one dies. 

• Characters actions didn’t make sense. Why would Ethan Hunt want to help Grace when he doesn’t know her, and she’s the reason Ilsa (who I’m supposed to believe he loved) died?

• How did Ilsa lose a fight to an old man with a two inch blade when she had a sword and was doing martial arts like some super assassin?

• How did the bad lady lose a fight to the old man if she was a super killer? He wasn’t that skilled and he wasn’t intimidating. 

• Why did Ethan Hunt fight the old man hand to hand on a train when he could have just shot him? No one carries guns in this movie even though they’re spies and it would be perfectly normal. If they did the movie would have been over 30 minutes in.    

The Acting and the stone faced plot exposition:

I had to make a small section for this just because. I know some of these people can act, however, what they were either told to do or work with in this movie wasn’t great. From the opening scenes I couldn’t tell if I was in a comedy or an action spy drama. When all the characters are in the private room talking about Ethan Hunts mission and the hit on Ilsa they’re all staring dead pan serious ahead of themselves, and none of them are looking at each other. And then for five minutes they dump plot exposition. The acting in that scene was trying so hard to be grave and serious it was silly. And several other scenes in the movie were like that. If this was meant for humor, okay, but it wasn’t. 

I’m sorry, maybe I have higher standards for what a scene is supposed to do. But if you have several characters on screen talking, and the primary purpose is plot exposition–you better have something else going on there, otherwise, I’ll lose interest. 

• Subtext: the beneath the surface meaning of what’s really being said as it relates to the characters, the plot and their purpose in it.

• Character development: How is what’s being done or said in the scene affect characters and their development or role in the story? What does this scene tell me about the people involved? 

• Tension: You’re supposed to be building stakes around your characters which we’ll eventually see consequences for. What is going on in the literal scene or in what they’re discussing that has me invested and on the edge of my seat wondering what the outcome will be? 

The answer to this is nothing. I don’t even remember the names of anyone from that five minute scene of exposition, or any of the other expository scenes about the “Entity” and all the random characters chasing it. I don’t recall the names of the two men chasing Hunt the whole movie because they didn’t do or say anything significant to make me remember them. I know I’m shooting at a high bar here but when you want a better example of all these things done in film you have to aim higher. So for example, in the Matrix–there’s a scene where Neo is being taken to the oracle because they think he’s the one. At this point we know very little about the Oracle but the tension is there because he’s now awake to the fact that the world is run by machines and everything he’s been living is a lie. In the car ride he tries to ask Trinity if she’s talked to the oracle and she answers yes. When he asks what she told her, Trinity doesn’t answer. In this scene very little is actually said and its only a small transitional scene but subtext and the tension that’s building by the stakes and situation surrounding the scene is key. 

• The stakes and tension are high because machines have taken over the world and Neo is one of the only handful of people unplugged, and now he might be the chosen one to save the world but the characters think the Oracle can confirm or deny it. 

• This affects everyone because Trinity believes he’s the one but she needs it confirmed because the oracle gave her a vague prophecy that she would fall in love with the one but also a dead man. She’s only known Neo a short time and is still trying to decide for herself what’s going on with the prophecy and her feelings. Hence why she says nothing when he asks her. 

• It’s a moment of development for Neo because he acts as if he’s a nobody but closely he wants to believe he could be the one to save everyone, even though he isn’t exactly rising to the challenge yet. 

The outcome of the scene affects all the characters involved and has internal and external consequences for them. Scenes need to do something other than drop plot exposition and even if its a scene where all characters in it will die and never be shown again there are movies that still make that impactful. Too much in the movie was just characters either sitting around talking about the ambiguous entity, which we didn’t care about–or fighting over it. 

In Conclusion:

Basically I need more of a reason to watch a movie then crazy action sequences. There were no really interesting characters, the plot was weak and stereotypical, and it was way too long with too little going on. It’s not like it was smut filled garbage as many other films are, but it just wasn’t anything exceptional. And now we’re supposed to buckle up for a Part 2…not likely.