Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Every choice, every mission has all led to this. We are the Spy Fi Guys, and this is Mission Impossible, the Final reckoning. [00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome to the Spy Fi guys. [00:00:13] Speaker A: So I apologize to the universe for that. [00:00:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:16] Speaker A: Wow. Justice for Dennis M. Is it though? I laughed and then I hated myself for laughing. Foreign welcome back to the Spy Fi Guys, where we cover spy fact, spy fiction, and everything in between. I'm Zach. [00:00:37] Speaker B: And I'm Christian. [00:00:38] Speaker A: And we have returned from our brief hiatus during which I got married, among other things had happened. [00:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah, Congrats, Zach. [00:00:45] Speaker A: Thank you. And today we are covering Mission Impossible, the final Reckoning. The allegedly final Mission Impossible. [00:00:54] Speaker B: So now I saw this opening weekend. Zach, you saw it more recently, right? [00:00:59] Speaker A: Oh, Christian, how well do you remember it? And did you only see it once? [00:01:03] Speaker B: I saw it once, wrote down all my notes for it after the fact. And then I used Wikipedia fill in the rest of it just to make sure I got everything in the right order. [00:01:12] Speaker A: But yeah, so I saw it a couple of. Couple of days ago on laser at amc. It was ridiculously expensive. But what are you gonna do? Yeah, took my new wife with me. We also watched Dead Reckoning and we finished it like right before we walked out the door to see the second was so which is good because I wanted to be reminded of what happened. The movie didn't do an especially good job recapping what happened in the first one. So we're ready to go. [00:01:42] Speaker B: So for me to lead up to it, the week before, I rewatched every single Mission Impossible film. [00:01:49] Speaker A: Wow. And you tell me you don't have time to edit the podcast. [00:01:54] Speaker B: See, I can do that while I'm in bed. I can't edit the podcast while I'm in bed. [00:02:00] Speaker A: Okay, fair enough. [00:02:02] Speaker B: I also listened to Christopher McCory's Empire spoiler special, which was ended up being like 13 hours of behind the scenes for the making of Dead Reckoning. And then I also revisited our own episode on Dead Reckoning. And actually let me guess, you did. [00:02:17] Speaker A: All that while in bed as well. [00:02:19] Speaker B: Pretty much. Or on the Metro. You know, that kind of stuff as time. You know, it's I especially having to go to work, not actually in the office. I have more time on the Metro that I can do There you go do things. But I want to credit to us for that. Okay. And so when listening to both our episode on Dead Reckoning and The spoiler specials, McQuarrie was like was making this big speech about how a lot of things that people think are references to other films were not. They were in Happenstance or when presented with similar circumstances, directors will make the same choices. But they said there's one reference that most people didn't see, and only a few people on the Internet saw it, and ding, ding, ding. We were one of those people. I was one of those people. We called out Erica Sloan being the President, because she had that photo in the office of the DNI with the American flag in the Oval Office behind her. [00:03:07] Speaker A: I don't remember that. Who's Erica Sloan, President? [00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. So we. We caught. I caught it. At least you caught it. [00:03:16] Speaker A: I don't want to take any credit. [00:03:17] Speaker B: I caught it. And you were like, wow. You said something like, wow, you're watching this movie on a different level than me, or something to that effect. [00:03:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So for those of you who maybe have tuned into the Spider guys for the first time, Christian, as you may have determined, is a super Mission Impossible fan. [00:03:32] Speaker B: That's right. [00:03:32] Speaker A: I like Mission Impossible. I've seen most of them only once. I really like Ghost Protocol. I've seen that multiple times. But the other ones only once. So I'm not gonna remember, like, these specific characters or these specific things. [00:03:47] Speaker B: Right. But I mean, that's a different case of. It's just. That's an Easter egg of. It's in there. If you are paying attention, you can see it, and then you realize the significance of. Oh, why is there a picture of Angela Bassett in the office of the DNI with an American flag behind her on. Oh, that means she's the President now instead of just being the director of the CIA. [00:04:08] Speaker A: Yes. [00:04:09] Speaker B: Anyway, so wanted to credit us for that now, have you? You said you've gone back to Dead Reckoning. What did you think of it now? [00:04:17] Speaker A: Well, as you may know, I wasn't the biggest fan of it when we recorded it the first time. And I think those flaws that I spotted are we're still there the second time around, namely that it was too long and everything was too padded. That car chase scene in Venice just goes on and on and on. Similarly, they're on the train half the movie. But the things that I did like, they expanded upon in the Final Reckoning. And we can get into that as we go through it. So there's. There's things that I enjoyed, I guess we'll start with. Actually, one thing I wanted to jump out that was in both, which is the AI villain and its avatar. So, Christian, we just finished recording the episode where we talked about 007, first light, the video game. Have you played or are you familiar with the Mass Effect games. [00:05:04] Speaker B: Vaguely familiar. [00:05:05] Speaker A: Okay. They're very well regarded. I think they live up to the rep. They're a very good blend of Star Trek and Star wars elements. [00:05:14] Speaker B: All right. [00:05:16] Speaker A: Star wars in the sense that you have a cool ship and you go around blasting aliens. Star Trek in the sense that there's big ideas. And one of the big ideas in the first game is you have AI like, kind of like gods, you might say. They're ridiculously powerful aliens from beyond human comprehension. And they have an avatar human. Well, he's actually not a human. He's an alien, but avatar person who speaks through them. So I was reminded of that one, seeing Gabriel. [00:05:42] Speaker B: Interesting. Okay. [00:05:44] Speaker A: Although they're a threat to all humankind, he chooses to serve them. [00:05:48] Speaker B: All right. And we will get more into that specific idea as we talk about the current movie. [00:05:53] Speaker A: That's right. Well, they continued upon, and they did a much better job. So in the first one in Dead Reckoning is them fighting over the AI? [00:06:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:02] Speaker A: Which was good. Though I don't feel like they executed it as well as I was hoping. In this one, the AI itself is the villain, which is something I liked. [00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:12] Speaker A: Nice key. Which actually reminds me that I didn't love how the first one was a really major MacGuffin hunt. [00:06:19] Speaker B: Fair enough. And as I rewatched it and as I sort of re. Listened to it, I realized there's a lot of confusion because over the key, because there's two parts. The key, and. [00:06:29] Speaker A: And then there's a fake key, and. [00:06:31] Speaker B: There'S a fake key, too. So it's like, wait, which key are we chasing? Who has which key? And it. That was. It is. It did get confusing when I was. Well, like, when I was rewatching. Like, wait, why are we chasing the key? I thought we already had the key. Oh, no, there's two keys. But who has this other key? So I remember you got confused, but I think I thought, oh. See, the trick with these movies is if you think you're understanding it, that's enough. [00:06:56] Speaker A: Yeah. As long as you're having a good time. [00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And you're able to go with it. You think it, but if you go back to it, then, like, wait, what? It's a fridge problem. [00:07:07] Speaker A: Well, a really good example of that I was talking to my wife about it is the show Doctor who, which we both enjoy. Doctor who rarely makes sense. There's lots of episodes where he just pushes a bunch of buttons and all the bad guys blow up, but you don't even notice because you're having Such a good time with the characters, and you're feeling the emotion of the story that, you know, you don't even really think about it. [00:07:25] Speaker B: All right, so would. So just overall, would you say you enjoyed it more the first time or the second time you saw it? [00:07:31] Speaker A: I think I enjoyed it more the second time. The first time I had some hype, like, building up to it. [00:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:37] Speaker A: And it was in theater, and I was kind of like, is this it? Also, we were talking about Uncharted. [00:07:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:44] Speaker A: Also at the 07 first light, when they're in the train and they're jumping from one thing to. [00:07:50] Speaker B: I know that's. Apparently, that's also one of the games, right? Yeah. [00:07:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, I think it was. I was probably a little too harsh in my rating, but, yeah, it's. It's not a perfect movie. There. There are some issues with it, but there's also a lot of things to like. Haley Atwell is good. Also, I would recommend taking a shot every time the key changes hands. That would give me a big rating, too. [00:08:13] Speaker B: Good God. There we go. Okay, so with that being said, let's get into our plot synopsis. Plot synopsis. [00:08:25] Speaker A: Okay, so as always, we have our poetry synopsis. Even though I only saw a couple days ago, I was moved to inspiration. [00:08:33] Speaker B: O. All right. [00:08:34] Speaker A: Because I'm a professional. As always. Spoilers begin right here. So here's the haiku for Mission Impossible. Final reckoning, Old foes and new friends. Permission from President. Goodbye to Luther. [00:08:48] Speaker B: Aw, yeah. Rip. [00:08:51] Speaker A: Do you remember that's the callback to me saying goodbye to Elsa. [00:08:53] Speaker B: I did not, but now I remember, now that you mention it. [00:08:58] Speaker A: And then here is the limerick. A villain. You have to out think who brought the whole world to the brink. For Ethan to win, he must go for a swim. And it will all come down to a blink. [00:09:10] Speaker B: Well done. I'm surprised you didn't try to rhyme kitchen sink in there somewhere. [00:09:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought about it. [00:09:18] Speaker B: Alrighty. [00:09:18] Speaker A: I also had him going for a dip and a drink, but it didn't make the final cut. And then here is here. And this. I'm not joking. This really is the IMDb plot summary. @ this moment that we're recording it, our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible, the Final Reckoning. [00:09:39] Speaker B: Wow. All right. [00:09:40] Speaker A: That's what it says. [00:09:41] Speaker B: The good thing that, you know, we. We have Wikipedia and my notes so we can actually guide ourselves through this plot. So we start off with seeing the entity in cyberspace, and we get all These quotes of everyone else talking about the entity. Did you catch that there were things that we. That we're not exactly talking about entity that we know of yet. [00:10:02] Speaker A: Wait, I'm confused by the question. There were things said about the entity that we don't know about yet that. [00:10:07] Speaker B: We didn't know are referring to the entity until this point. [00:10:11] Speaker A: I did not catch that. This part also serves as a recap of the. [00:10:14] Speaker B: It does. It does. I know the answer to this question, but how well do you Remember Mission Impossible 3? [00:10:19] Speaker A: I actually remember Mission Impossible 3 pretty well, thank you for asking. [00:10:23] Speaker B: Do you remember Benji's speech about the anti God? [00:10:27] Speaker A: No. I remember the phrase anti God and I thought it was amazing writing that was way better than the rest of the movie and I wanted more of it. So much more. And I got it here. [00:10:37] Speaker B: So he has a whole big speech about how they don't know what the Rabbit's Foot is. And they have this whole. He has this whole speech about how he had a professor who talked about this thing that the world would inevitably be, you know, consumed by technology and that someone would create this thing called the Anti God, which would take over the entire world. And. And then every time he sees some rogue organization trying to spending a ridiculous amount of money on this piece of tech, he just assumes it's the anti God. So we have bits and pieces of his speech from there in this recap about the entity which set my spider sense tingling away. That wasn't talking about the entity. That was talking about the Rabbit's Foot, maybe. [00:11:18] Speaker A: Well, and you were right, because that's what. Actually, Christian, that's something that reminded me when I was watching Dead Reckoning. In the scene in the DNI's office where he sneaks in and gases everybody. There's a part where somebody says the world is changing, resources are dwindling, governments are all going to be at each other's throats soon. That's a cool big idea that the movie never follows up on, ever. Well, the rest of the movie is just them chasing the key around and they never come back. [00:11:42] Speaker B: It's a. Part two. [00:11:43] Speaker A: Well, even. Even in part two, they don't really get there. [00:11:47] Speaker B: I would say they do, but we'll get there. [00:11:50] Speaker A: Well, the world's brought to the brink, but not by a lack. They say no clean water, no breathable air, all of that stuff. And they don't do that. [00:11:58] Speaker B: I mean, that's also just our world in general. So maybe they don't need to show it because it's the world it's too scary. All right, so we get that, and then we get our mission briefing, which I appreciate. VHS tapes. [00:12:14] Speaker A: It's great. World building. I'm sorry to interrupt you again. [00:12:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:17] Speaker A: And dial back to Dead Reckoning yet again. [00:12:19] Speaker B: Okay, sure, sure. Like I said, like I've said, this is. Even though the title changed, this is a part two. So there are these interconnections. Yeah. [00:12:29] Speaker A: This is very brief. I was amused in the briefing. They say, ethan Hunt, your propensity to go rogue won't be tolerated this time. And he immediately does it. Like, immediately. They don't even wait until halfway. [00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah, let me go back. Benji said this mission has gone rogue before it's even started making this entire conversation technically treason. Or as we like to call it, Monday. [00:12:48] Speaker A: Okay, so, Christian, I have a question for you. [00:12:50] Speaker B: Yes. [00:12:51] Speaker A: Does this meta stuff work for you? [00:12:53] Speaker B: Which meta stuff? The which parts. [00:12:55] Speaker A: Well, okay, so the meta stuff in these Mission Impossible movies don't work for me. Actually, it rarely works for any kind of franchise. Or it's like, Ethan Hunt, we know that you always go rogue. We know you always do. [00:13:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:10] Speaker A: All these women, all these. All your friends that you failed to save. Don't you feel bad about that? And he's like, yeah, I feel bad about it. [00:13:16] Speaker B: I don't. I wouldn't necessarily call that meta. That's. That's referencing the history of the franchise. That's not necessarily meta. [00:13:24] Speaker A: Okay. We can quibble about whether or not it's meta. [00:13:26] Speaker B: Meta would be making jokes about him running all the time. I would say that would be more meta than just referencing the history of the franchise, which is what this is trying to do as. As the end this, the final reckoning of the franchise. So I. I don't necessarily consider it meta. I could. I could be referential, but not meta. [00:13:44] Speaker A: Okay, well, whether or not you consider it to be meta isn't really my point. Okay. My point is, I feel like they say, yes, we know you always go rogue. Yes, it's ridiculous that you're still allowed to be in this organization even though you always go. Go rogue. But then nothing actually changes, even though they call attention to something that doesn't make sense in the world of the movie, but then they don't resolve it. They just keep going. [00:14:08] Speaker B: Right. I don't know. [00:14:09] Speaker A: So the classic example, and I know you don't like it when I bring this up, so I apologize, is in Goldeneye, a movie we have not covered, when 00 Alec Trevelyan, when Alec Trevelyan. [00:14:21] Speaker B: Says to Bond, oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. [00:14:24] Speaker A: All these women, you. You sleep with them and then they die. What do you have to say for yourself? And Bond just stares at him and then they just change the subject. [00:14:34] Speaker B: We can talk about that when we get to that movie. And I have thoughts, but we'll get to those later. So let's just focus on this movie. [00:14:41] Speaker A: Okay? Yeah. So the point is, again, they're like, stop going rogue, Ethan. [00:14:47] Speaker B: Please stop what? In the briefing? [00:14:49] Speaker A: In this briefing? No, it's like, come in. [00:14:51] Speaker B: No. Well, yes, come in. But it's because the world is at a. At the brink. I'll admit the montage of the scenes from all the previous movies got me teary eyed because it made me think about where I was, not only where Ethan was when this franchise started and everything, but where I was in life and just, you know, 30 years of a franchise. I appreciate that. Even through stuff in For Mission Impossible too. Like I. Because I know when they had trailers for this and we had the montages of other films, two would always get left out. So I appreciate it. Even they have like multiple scenes from two. So I was like, wow, okay. But, yeah, so now there's the whole big thing about, you know, what is truth. There's these death cults called the Children of the Atom that have arisen. [00:15:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know if that's a reference to the X Men. [00:15:38] Speaker B: I thought about X Men, but I think it's just. I think there was just a. Just a nice phrase that I like to use. [00:15:43] Speaker A: Okay, I have two points on this. [00:15:45] Speaker B: Sure. [00:15:46] Speaker A: I loved the world. I thought it was great. I would have. [00:15:52] Speaker B: I wanted more, of course. [00:15:53] Speaker A: I wanted more of how the world is on the bridge and how scary things are. Martial law everywhere, people at each other's throats, Nobody knows who to trust. It totally worked for me. The death cult was a little too far. I don't think they needed that. And they don't expand upon it as well as they could have. [00:16:11] Speaker B: The death call. I mean, not to get too political here, but someone who I watched it with leaned over as I was watching and said, they're just missing red hats. [00:16:20] Speaker A: Okay, that's. That's one way to look at it. I thought of someone else, which I'm not going to mention. Anyway, the point is though, in the movie, they introduce this interesting idea and then don't unpack it to my satisfaction. [00:16:34] Speaker B: You also gotta remember what kind of movie this is. It is a summer blockbuster movie. It is not an introspective movie. About death cults. [00:16:42] Speaker A: Well, but then don't put them in if it's not an introspective movie about death calls. But I don't know. Well, we can agree to disagree. [00:16:47] Speaker B: I would. I will say that actually, I've got some. Listening to some of the other podcasts that Christopher McQuarrie has made about even specifically that part. The reason they're there is one. All right. On the submarine, they needed it. They needed something. They had to work backwards. They needed action to happen on the submarine. And so that's why. [00:17:06] Speaker A: That's okay. Here's. Here's okay. Where would. Stop. Yeah, I will interrupt you. Sorry. Do you remember in the first one, they're like, the entity knows everything, so it can bribe, it can blackmail, it can motivate anyone to do anything. Yeah. Why don't they just do that? [00:17:22] Speaker B: Narratively, I think it makes more sense to do this than that, because you've already established that the world's at the brink, and. I know. Anyways, let's move on. [00:17:29] Speaker A: I'm sorry, Ethan. The entity controls my mother's ventilator or something like that. [00:17:35] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's a lot of exposition that you need to have into that scene as opposed to just action happening and then you. [00:17:41] Speaker A: I have issues with that scene, too, but we'll talk about that when we get there, so. [00:17:45] Speaker B: But, yes, he's asked by the President, Erica Sloan, to surrender because they need the key and they need to know what. What the. What the key unlocks. And he's the only one who. [00:17:59] Speaker A: Aside from Gabriel. [00:18:00] Speaker B: Well, aside from Gabriel, yes. So Ethan meets up with Benji in Trafalgar Square, where there's a bunch of protests about martial law going on, and they go to Luther's secret hideout in abandoned tunnel. [00:18:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And in the last two months, I guess Luther has developed cancer. [00:18:17] Speaker B: It's unclear what. But he's sick. He's been working himself too hard. I like that. This scene also gives us our second Young Frankenstein reference in the series. [00:18:27] Speaker A: Oh, really? [00:18:28] Speaker B: So in Fallout, there's a character whose last name is Del Brook, which is a reference to a character in Young Frankenstein. And here they've got a line where he says, sorry about the state of this place. And Ethan says, I don't know, some curtains, a couple of throw pillows, which is very similar to a line from Young Frankenstein. [00:18:45] Speaker A: Okay, I did like that a lot. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah, he's sick now, for some reason. We were not told why, but it's really not important why, but he's created something called a poison pill for the entity, which, combined with the original source code, will allow them to take control of the entity. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Our second MacGuffin. Great. [00:19:05] Speaker B: It's barely a MacGuffin. Unlike a regular MacGuffin, sometimes we have no idea what the MacGuffin is. We know exactly what this is and why we need it. It's not like a whole big mystery. It's not the Rabbit's Foot. Or it's not. What's that Humphrey Bogart movie? The Maltese Falcon. Yeah. [00:19:23] Speaker A: Okay. [00:19:24] Speaker B: It's. It's creates a need for why we need to go after Gabriel. So they go to find Paris, his henchman from the last film who, you know, nearly died. We get a little flashback of why she, you know, when she got stabbed and why she's, you know, saved. Ethan. Yeah. [00:19:39] Speaker A: So watching Dead Reckoning, they say, you know, it's almost an ADR line because it's off screen. The guy says, I've got a pulse. [00:19:47] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:19:49] Speaker A: So, sure, it seemed like she was dead. [00:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:51] Speaker A: But in fact, she's not. Oh, by the way, I had a question for you. [00:19:54] Speaker B: Sure. [00:19:56] Speaker A: Alana. [00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:58] Speaker A: AKA Vanessa Kirby, disappears in the first. [00:20:01] Speaker B: Movie, the White Widow. Yes. I thought. [00:20:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess she gets arrested. [00:20:04] Speaker B: Actually, I know that there was filming with her for this movie that just seemingly got cut out of a movie. [00:20:10] Speaker A: Okay. [00:20:11] Speaker B: Last we see of her is that Kittridge is helping her. So presumably Kittredge just helped her get off the train and helped her because, you know, they have that deal. Well, they have that deal that, you know, their criminal enterprise is allowed to continue as long as it primarily serves Kittredge and the CIA and serves their needs. [00:20:30] Speaker A: Yep. [00:20:31] Speaker B: So the White Widow. Yes. Not in this film, because Vanessa Kirby was probably busier filming Fantastic Four. Anyway, so they go to find Paris in an Austrian prison, and Briggs and Degas are two Inspector Javert type characters from last movie. [00:20:45] Speaker A: They were so annoying. [00:20:46] Speaker B: I love them. No, they just kept running around. I mean, I loved. I loved how Briggs was trying to pull off everyone's face to see if they were actually Ethan. [00:20:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. My wife liked that, too. [00:20:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:58] Speaker A: Just like, imagine greeting people that way. [00:21:01] Speaker B: So they're there, they're transporting Paris, and the guards who are helping them transport turn on Briggs and a gar and attack them. And we find out this is the only mass gag in the film. [00:21:14] Speaker A: That which actually really, Benji and I really. [00:21:18] Speaker B: I, I, I didn't. I really liked it that it was the only gang in films. I looked back at it. But as. And it's so quick, too, that, like, the mass transition. It's not the. The dramatic. [00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's important. [00:21:30] Speaker B: This movie's favorite, they end up knocking out Briggs, but they convinced Degas to come with them to help ideologies here. It's just whoever doesn't panic. [00:21:39] Speaker A: Yeah. The new team, Mission Impossible, is being formed. [00:21:43] Speaker B: Y. And so they ask Paris where. Where. Where they can find Gabriel. And they're told. All right, he's. He has to go this black tie event at an em. [00:21:54] Speaker A: Okay. They never explained this. [00:21:56] Speaker B: No. Why. [00:21:57] Speaker A: Why Gabriel would go to this party. I really didn't like this whole party part. I know you have to do it because it's a spy movie, but. Yeah. Like, why would he even go there? [00:22:08] Speaker B: He asks where to find Gabriel and then they cut to the scene. So presumably she told him this, but the only thing I can think of is that he has a base nearby, which is where the coffin is. [00:22:20] Speaker A: Yeah, that's where they ended up being there. This whole part was weird. I'm going to jump ahead a little bit. They immediately get spotted by US Secret Service, one of whom is played by Ross McCall, aka. Aka Private Joseph Liebgott from. What were you gonna say? [00:22:35] Speaker B: Mike Kripke and Big Bang Theory, too. [00:22:39] Speaker A: I haven't seen that. Well, I've seen a little. [00:22:41] Speaker B: I've seen a bit, and I. I think that sounds like. But he, like, plays a very different character. But I could be wrong. [00:22:47] Speaker A: They immediately get grabbed by Secret Service, and then they immediately get grabbed by Gabriel. [00:22:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:51] Speaker A: Wow. What. What la fail on the part of the heroes? [00:22:55] Speaker B: Well, they grab, but then they introduce Grace, her reappearance and how good of a pickpocket she really is. [00:23:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Which they need to explain that later. [00:23:05] Speaker B: So. Yeah. So Grace is there to help him, but we also find out that apparently she's also been tasked by Kittredge to find him and capture him. But she goes against Kittridge's order. So she's already learning Ethan's bad habits of going rogue. [00:23:17] Speaker A: Yeah. This movie gives the impression that Kittridge was forcing her to do it somehow. It's done in a very. [00:23:21] Speaker B: Well, she's taking the choice now, and so she's officially in the imf. [00:23:27] Speaker A: But, yeah, so it seemed like she'd be happy to do it. [00:23:29] Speaker B: She'd be happy to help Ethan, not necessarily capture Ethan. [00:23:34] Speaker A: Okay, fine. [00:23:35] Speaker B: Anyway, so. Yes, but like you said, they both get captured by Gabriel, and we get. [00:23:39] Speaker A: This reveal that Gabriel has been scorned by the entity. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Yes. Which did I like. [00:23:44] Speaker A: He was the entity's avatar. But no longer, because he failed. It was a really good idea. But then I was like, okay, so what's Gabriel's motivation now? Now it seems like he still wants to help the entity. [00:23:55] Speaker B: No, now he wants to take control of the entity, and he wants to be in charge, which is why he wants the poison pill. Yes. [00:24:02] Speaker A: He also has goons, which is very amusing. [00:24:05] Speaker B: Yeah. This is where they wake up in the basement and they're about to be tortured. And he says, they took my watch and my cufflinks, which. Which all had lock picks in them. [00:24:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:15] Speaker B: Which I actually own a pair of cufflink lock picks just to get out of hand. [00:24:20] Speaker A: Oh, nice. [00:24:21] Speaker B: Handcuff locks. I actually took them to. There's a group here, you know, years ago that did, like, lock picking with the spy museum. And I brought the handcuff lock picks to that thing. And so I was like, all right, this is the opportunity. Because they were teaching how to get out of handcuffs. And I was like, this is the opportunity. Let me try these out. And I was actually able to get out of them with the cufflinks, which was fun. [00:24:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So this part was scary. [00:24:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:43] Speaker A: Made it seem like he really knew what he was doing. [00:24:45] Speaker B: Also, this is where. This is where we get the reveal that the Rabbit's Foot contained the base code for the entity, and we get some flashbacks. So this movie, for me, improved on Mi3, which is my least favorite of the franchise, because I have two gripes about it really, is that one, we never find out what the end of the Rabbit's Foot is. So now we know. And two, I hate. And both of these things are because of J.J. abrams that I didn't like is he wants to subvert expectations of we're not going to find out what the McGuffin is. And two, we never actually see the legit break in to the facility. We just see him get into it, and then all of a sudden, we see him pop out of it. [00:25:22] Speaker A: That's the one where he launches himself between buildings. Right. [00:25:26] Speaker B: So we see him, like, poppy get in, and then we don't see the actual heist. But here McQuarrie actually films a new bit, which we see the heist, and there's actually a good blend. It looks like it's blend from. You can't even tell. And there's even, like, they have Tom Cruise out of focus, so you can't tell it's not young Tom Cruise, not. [00:25:47] Speaker A: 2000 reaches in and grabbing it. So I was like, yeah, I totally believe that was from the actual. [00:25:53] Speaker B: And you would. Because it looked. The style of. It matches. It all looks good. Like. So kudos to McCoy for doing that and for. Because I. That always bugged me. It left me unfulfilled that I never saw the heist. Anyway, so as we find it out, Gabriel compares the situation with Grace being captured to, you know, Ethan's wife being captured. We get a flashback to Julia and then Owen Davion, you know, torturing. [00:26:17] Speaker A: So I did. I did like I thought the movie was going to be. Haley while being held hostage for the whole movie. [00:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:24] Speaker A: And then. And then even having to do what he said. And I'm glad they didn't do that, because that's very tedious. [00:26:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And so he has a cyanide tooth in his. Or cyanide in his fake tooth. And. [00:26:36] Speaker A: But it's fake cyanide. [00:26:37] Speaker B: It is fake cyanide. We don't know that. So he tells Gabriel, if you kill me, you'll never get what you want. You'll never get the pod cover. And so he. Yeah. Bites down on it. Fake. But it's fake. They have a fight. Gabriel gets away. And then there's some jokes here. [00:26:57] Speaker A: The movie doesn't really have a lot of jokes. [00:26:58] Speaker B: I enjoy. What did you think? It's a little Looney Tunes where you don't see the mayhem that Tom Cruise is inflicting on these goons, and you just see Hayley Atwell's reactions. [00:27:08] Speaker A: Hayley Atwell's character is very strange because supposedly she's lived on the streets and struggled to survive and has seen some shit. [00:27:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:15] Speaker A: But every time something crazy happens, she has this shocked and horrified reaction. Even in the first one when she appears, she's like, I can't handle the danger. Sometimes she's this tough girl boss who can do anything, including, like. Like, she fights Gabriel with a knife. [00:27:34] Speaker B: She's, like, willing to go fight him badly. [00:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah, but she's willing to fight him. She doesn't just. [00:27:39] Speaker B: Well, because she's not gonna collapse. [00:27:41] Speaker A: Yeah, right. But then other times, she seems like she's a civilian. [00:27:45] Speaker B: That's the difference between a thief and a spy. [00:27:48] Speaker A: Sues to a word for you. Is that what you're saying? Is that what I'm hearing? [00:27:51] Speaker B: Joy to reactions like this. This. The comedic bit worked for me here. [00:27:56] Speaker A: Okay. It's just strange because this is. These movies don't really have a lot of comedy. [00:28:00] Speaker B: I would say Ghost Sple has the most comedy of any of them. [00:28:04] Speaker A: That's probably why I like it. [00:28:06] Speaker B: They run out of there to get Try to chase after Gabriel. And this is where we cut to our titles. What do you think? Any thoughts on it? [00:28:14] Speaker A: On the titles? My wife likes the music of Mystery Possible. That's your favorite part? Yeah. I mean, they were cool. I was trying to figure out if it was from this movie or from previous movies. [00:28:22] Speaker B: They were. I think they were all. [00:28:23] Speaker A: They were all from this movie. [00:28:24] Speaker B: They're all from this movie. I was disappointed by these titles. I like. I love, like, the Latin dead wolf of the McQuarrie movies. You know, Rogue Nation, Fallout and Dead Reckoning all had very inventive ideas about how to do the titles. Like, Fallout had all the flames around it. Dead Reckoning had little characters being digitally erased from scenes and stuff like that. This is just a big, giant circle with things. And I was. I was disappointed by it. I didn't think it was as good. [00:28:55] Speaker A: What's the one with the. The few. The. Like, the fuse. Is that two? [00:28:58] Speaker B: That's four. That's Ghost Protocol. That's a great one as well. No, I'm saying. Yeah, but. So these are all. And, like, the last. The last three films are all. I think maybe even four, I don't remember, were all done by the same production company. So I don't know if this one was also filmographed, but I just. I was disappointed. It was not as dynamic as I thought it should have been, but music was still good. So after the credits, we find that they catch up to Gabriel and the rest of the team is all there. Paris, Dega, Benji. Now Gabriel manages to escape, but he left behind his coffin the way that he communes with the entity. [00:29:34] Speaker A: So was this established? Yes, I feel like it was. [00:29:37] Speaker B: It was. [00:29:38] Speaker A: Well, there's a part where he gets transported onto a train in that coffin, but I assumed, perhaps foolishly, that that was a way to keep him. [00:29:47] Speaker B: We did. We did talk about it. Yeah. That it's a way to keep him hidden. But actually, if you re. Watch it, there is the logo, the symbol of the entity on the face mask, and it's moving around as he, like, gets out of it and takes off the mask. So we don't know necessarily that's the way the commune. But this is. You know, we're told that, like, there's. There was a weird. There's a hint of something's going on. It's not just a coffin that he's in. But. But yeah. So here we get Ethan putting it on, and he communes with the entity. [00:30:13] Speaker A: And this was very weird. I think it's probably safe to Say yeah. Right, Christian? [00:30:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:18] Speaker A: I actually liked it. [00:30:19] Speaker B: Oh, no, I liked it, but it was weird. [00:30:20] Speaker A: I like stuff that's different. Yeah. And scary. [00:30:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah. [00:30:24] Speaker A: I thought they did a good job communicating how scary it was. Have you read the short story I have no Mouth and I Must Scream? [00:30:30] Speaker B: No. I've heard of it. [00:30:31] Speaker A: Do you know what it is? So I would recommend reading it. It only takes about 15 minutes to read. [00:30:35] Speaker B: All right. [00:30:36] Speaker A: It's also scary. It's legitimately unsettling. But the premise is it's in the future where a computer becomes self aware and takes over the world, kills all the humans except for five humans that it tortures forever. And the reason why it does that is because it hates humans. There's a famous sequence where it speaks in all caps and it's like, if I, you know, I hate you. I hate you. If there was. If I could write hate a thousand times on microfilm that's stretched all around the world. And the reason why is because it realizes it's a computer and it will always be a computer and it's stuck and it can never not be what it is. So that's what this reminded me of. I wanted more from the. All right, why do you hate humans? What are you going to do? Why do you have it out for Ethan? Just give me more entity stuff. [00:31:26] Speaker B: Interesting. Okay. But yes. So the entity tells Ethan to go to the Doomsday Vault in South Africa and let the entity in. That's where. That's where the entity can survive and can reign over what remains after the world destroys itself. [00:31:41] Speaker A: And I like, if he doesn't do it in three days, the entity is gonna like kill everybody. [00:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's either everyone will die or we live in the world where the entity reigns over everything. And I like how it knows Ethan's plan, what he's trying to do, just by connecting with Ethan. [00:31:57] Speaker A: Villains like these are very tricky to write where it's so smart they can think of his every move. How is the writer of the movie supposed to be smarter than this thing that's allegedly a super genius? [00:32:09] Speaker B: But I think. I think the balance here is as well done. The entity also tells Ethan that Gabriel was going to kill Luther tonight. And we got all these flashes of images of different things, of different scenarios and. [00:32:21] Speaker A: Oh, okay. I'm just going to tell you my major gripe with the movie right now. Same as the last one. It's too long. It's way too long. And they spend too much time on things they don't need to spend too much time on. Like, something I forgot to mention was when they're all pointing guns at each other in the prison break scene. [00:32:37] Speaker B: Sure. [00:32:38] Speaker A: It goes on all too long. And then in this part here with. With the missiles, do you really need to show all of the missiles in the silos? All of the flags of all the countries? [00:32:47] Speaker B: I'm like for. Okay. For your average audience who may not know the. The 08 countries that have nuclear missiles, you need to show that. [00:32:57] Speaker A: Okay, okay, we'll agree. [00:32:59] Speaker B: I think you need to show the impact. You wanted impact you wanted effect. I think you need to show what will happen so that you ratchet up those tensions. [00:33:07] Speaker A: Okay, okay. You know what, Christian? You're right. The first time. Yes. [00:33:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:11] Speaker A: When they do it later. I don't know. [00:33:12] Speaker B: Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. So Ethan is released by the entity and he like grabs a notepad and is writing down everything for Benji. Tells Benji that he's the team leader now. They need to go to the find the Sevesta pole, whereas Ethan is going to go after Luther. [00:33:28] Speaker A: Nice. So something I just said my major grave about the movie, but something I really like about the movie is how different it is from other Mission Impossible movies, such as splitting the team up like this. [00:33:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Luther in his hideout, wakes up and finds out that the poison pill is missing and finds a nuclear device and gets locked in by Gabriel. Ethan arrives and can't get Luther out and knows that if Luther figures out that if he disarms the device, it's going to bring the whole down the whole tunnels and kill him, but otherwise it's going to level all of London. [00:34:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So he has a heroic sacrifice. [00:34:08] Speaker B: Gabriel needs Ethan alive to find the Hankova, which is inside the Sonosphere of the Sevastopol. That's what has the base code of the entity. And Gabriel needs Luther dead so that he can't create another poison pill. Yeah. Ethan doesn't want to leave. Luther checks out, but Luther convinces him. And then we get Tom Cruise running. But yeah, a good, good speech. [00:34:30] Speaker A: Running and running and running. [00:34:31] Speaker B: Good speech from Luther. This made me sad. [00:34:33] Speaker A: Okay, I have a question. Since we're already in full spoilers for the whole movie, did you think Ethan Hunt was going to die in this movie? [00:34:39] Speaker B: I wasn't sure if this was going to go. [00:34:41] Speaker A: What did you. What was your prediction? [00:34:43] Speaker B: So in listening to those spoiler specials, McCorrith talked about some people, and this is maybe true for a lot of movies. [00:34:49] Speaker A: Who. [00:34:49] Speaker B: And this is sometimes me, you know, people who Try to outsmart the movie to think about what's gonna happen next. What's gonna happen next, as opposed to just letting the movie happen to them so that you're not. [00:35:00] Speaker A: That's what I do. [00:35:01] Speaker B: I tried to take that approach in this one and not try to predict what was going on, what was going to happen next. If there was things that was hinting towards the very next scene, sure, I thought about it. But in terms of, like, I was not trying. I didn't want to anticipate. All right, is Ethan gonna die? I just want to let you know, experience it. So I did not have a prediction. [00:35:22] Speaker A: Okay. So I thought he was going to die because I was thinking about a lot while watching this movie. Was our other favorite spot franchise, James Bond, where James Bond does die in the end of. Allegedly. The last one. We're not even the last. [00:35:40] Speaker B: It'll be the last one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:35:43] Speaker A: Well, just the latest one. Whereas this one, everyone seems to indicate that it will be the last one. Certainly the last one with Tom Cruise. So I thought there was a decent chance that he was gonna die. I thought it would be something like Luther. Luther's death, where he has. He gets caught in the trap, and he has no choice. [00:35:59] Speaker B: When we get there, I'll talk more about what my thoughts in that moment was. So Ethan gets captured by American intelligence. Briggs is there. Briggs asks about Degas, if he's still alive, and Ethan says, he's alive, he's okay. And then we get the reveal of who Briggs is, which is not at all where I thought this was going. [00:36:19] Speaker A: Yeah. That he is Jon Voight's son. [00:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:21] Speaker A: So I didn't like this part. It made me roll my eyes. [00:36:24] Speaker B: Well, it's funny because we talked about Dan Briggs in the last film, that he's the team leader before Jim Phelps. He was in that episode. We saw Operation Rogos. And so Briggs being the last name we've assumed a connection with, everyone assumed a connection with him, that maybe he's Danton Briggs son or something. I didn't see Jim Phillips Jr. As the reveal. That was. That was a surprise to me. And it worked for me because it's tying back to him. And now we have a motivation for why it's personal for Briggs. [00:36:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I think I'm just not the biggest fan of Briggs in general. [00:37:00] Speaker B: You don't like Shea Wiggum? Shea Wiggum's great. [00:37:02] Speaker A: No, it's just. It's a reminder of. In the last movie where they were like, every nation is going to come after You. And then that didn't happen. It was just him. Yet another faction vying for armaguffins. [00:37:16] Speaker B: We get the real that his dad vanished when Briggs was 7, and he apparently had legal trouble and was offered the choice. And so Ethan tries to bond with Briggs and does what the entity doesn't think will happen is for them to be friends and to have bond. And that'll keep you off base. [00:37:37] Speaker A: I had an intrusive thought where there's a part where Ethan steps towards. What's his name? [00:37:42] Speaker B: Briggs. [00:37:43] Speaker A: Briggs. And he's like, we need to do the last thing. [00:37:46] Speaker B: Are you thinking he's gonna kiss me? [00:37:47] Speaker A: We'll do. Yes. I honestly thought that that was gonna happen. [00:37:51] Speaker B: I didn't even. Wow. Now that you say that, that's Hill. That's a. That's a hilarious read on that, but I didn't see it. But I. I could see why you. [00:38:00] Speaker A: Need to do the last thing Christian thinks we're ever gonna do. [00:38:04] Speaker B: But. But instead, Briggs leaves Ethan hanging. [00:38:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:08] Speaker B: So Ethan's brought into the bunker where he meets the cabinet and President Sloan, and they all read through his file. I like going through his past missions of the Black Vault. You know, the Black Vault break in the Kremlin, the DNI briefing, which is only two months ago. And yet somehow Tom Cruise is. [00:38:25] Speaker A: I mean, certainly pretty insubordinate. Some of those people were there, but they don't seem to be mad at him fussing them. [00:38:31] Speaker B: I think they're a little shell shocked from everything else happening in the world. That. That's just a minor blip. [00:38:37] Speaker A: Yeah, the stuff in the control center. I like that. It was scary. I like the part where somebody says eventually someone's gonna panic and it might be one of you. They also have the countdown clock, like Pacific Rim, where they're counting down to Doomsday Clock. Yes, I did. I like a ticking clock. [00:38:54] Speaker B: Once I saw that, I felt Zack will like this. I also liked how everything had to be analog. Now like it. You know what it reminded me of? And this is series I've never seen all the way through. I've only ever seen the miniseries. It's Battlestar Galactica. [00:39:10] Speaker A: Okay. [00:39:10] Speaker B: Because I like battles they don't have. Because of the Cylons, they can't have network computer. You know, they have to bring printouts and stuff between the things. And that's what it reminded me of. [00:39:19] Speaker A: Yes. [00:39:20] Speaker B: It was very old school. They're moving the ships around on a map just by hand as they're getting reports of where they are. This is. This is how you combat the entity, is you have to make everything analog. Which goes back to why he, you know, the mission was on a vhs. [00:39:33] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:39:34] Speaker B: But, yeah. So we find out the entity is taking control of all the nuclear arsenals, and it's what, three or four days until he gets all of them. And Ethan needs them to trust him one last time. He needs access to an aircraft carrier. President Sloan wants to know what the key unlocks, and he won't tell them. And so she's writing something down on her letterhead and puts a wax seal and gives it to a guard and tells Ethan, no, I've heard enough. Send him to be locked up. [00:40:00] Speaker A: So this was one of my favorite parts of the movie. I thought the emotion was really good. So recently people have been talking about Lord of the Rings, so this part reminded me of the Council of Rivendell scene. [00:40:10] Speaker B: Council of Elrond, you mean? [00:40:11] Speaker A: Well, they're in Rivendell, but okay, it's called the Council of Elrond. Okay. So. Yeah. So the first movie. First. I don't think this is a controversial opinion. The first Lord of the Rings movie is my favorite one. And part of that is because it has really good tension and fear about the Ring, where it feels like the world is one misstep away from falling into Sauron's hands and everyone's dead. Where the other two I didn't feel had that scary tension. And we get. We get this part here in Final Reckoning. [00:40:43] Speaker B: All right. All right. There's definitely a lot of tension, especially in the bunker. I also, like here, the bait and switch. He's not sent. Sent away, but instead he's not locked up. He is sent to a chopper instead. And given the notes, the President said, you'll know what to do this when the time is right. And then. [00:40:58] Speaker A: Nice. [00:40:58] Speaker B: We go to a flashback to Luther and Ethan before Luther's dead. And we find out that Luther tried to give Ethan the poison pill. And he said, no, you hold on to it for now. Which I'm sure giving him even more regrets, because if he didn't. If Luther didn't have it, then he wouldn't be dead. And we see Ethan is being taken to the USS George H.W. bush via an Osprey. Have you ever been on a carrier? [00:41:21] Speaker A: Have I ever been on a carrier? Yes, I've been to the uss. [00:41:23] Speaker B: Yes, Same one I've been on. That's. That's pretty cool. But this. [00:41:27] Speaker A: So unfortunately. Christian, have I already talked to you about the book National Security Cinema, I feel like. [00:41:32] Speaker B: I'm sure you have at least once. Yeah, you have. Yeah. [00:41:36] Speaker A: So very briefly for the audience, it talks about how if you ever. You ever see a movie that has what you might call military, and this movie is one of the military. Wankiest I've ever seen outside of, like a Transformers movie. It means the DoD they definitely did. [00:41:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And. [00:41:54] Speaker A: And it's. It's hard not to see it here. It's hard. [00:41:57] Speaker B: I mean, this. This right here was so Top Gun, which, of course made me. Made me enjoy it. [00:42:03] Speaker A: Made you like it. [00:42:04] Speaker B: I mean, there's even F18s there. We see Ethan's brought to the bridge, and he's in a flight suit and flight jacket and has aviators and a hat on, like. So did they just take some outtakes from Top Gun here? I don't. I don't care. It looks great. [00:42:17] Speaker A: Yeah, but how did you feel about the fact they never actually used all of this Hard. [00:42:21] Speaker B: Well, they don't. The only reason he needs this is to say for him to. To get him someplace. It's. It's a transport. [00:42:27] Speaker A: Yeah. It's for, like a ride, which is great. [00:42:29] Speaker B: And that's the only reason he needs it and for community to communicate with the sub that he needs later. So he's brought to the bridge and he meets the co Whose name is Rear Admiral Neely, played by Hannah Waddingham. Who. Famous from Ken Lasso. And also Game of Thrones. Oh, you don't know this. This is fun. Guess who she is in Game of Thrones. [00:42:51] Speaker A: Wait, is she in the one with Matt Smith? Because I haven't seen her. [00:42:53] Speaker B: No, no, no. She's in the one. The original series. [00:42:56] Speaker A: The original one. Okay. Who is she in the original series? [00:42:58] Speaker B: Shame, Shame. Jane. [00:43:02] Speaker A: Yes, It's a very iconic role that. [00:43:04] Speaker B: No one knows who it is, but. So she open, breaks open the note, and on the note is a date. May 22, 1996, which, as an Easter egg, is the date that the original movie opened. But it means something else here. And this is hard to catch. Apparently on that date in Serbia, she and President Sloan both lost someone that they loved because no one in authority would take a risk, is the line. [00:43:31] Speaker A: Yeah, she's not my favorite character. I don't necessarily buy her as the captain of an aircraft car, but I did like that. I liked this whole thing with the note. The president. The middle of the movie, I think, is probably the best part for me. All. All of this stuff. Despite being bothered by the national security. [00:43:48] Speaker B: Propaganda, I like here it sort of cuts back and forth between Benji and the team talking and Ethan and Neely talking. They're talking the same time about the same things. And they're expl how SOSIS works. It's an under underwater listening station and they're looking for an undersea event that happened in the winter of 2012, which means that's when the Sevastopol sunk. So it had been sunk for more than 10 years already, which is not necessarily an assumption you would make from seeing Dead Reckoning. You would assume it's more recent, but apparently there's actually a hint in what the date is in Dead Reckoning because they say it's on February 29th, which is a leap year. So it had to have been any of the leap years, so that 2012 matches. [00:44:29] Speaker A: So this part is a minor gripe for me and a rather large gripe for my wife where the plot of the movie and the plan of the heroes works, where it's infinitesimally small that it will work, but if it does work, that's the only way it's going to go. Otherwise Ethan will die. So neither of us really like it. She thought it was ridiculous. [00:44:53] Speaker B: Like that's what these movies are though, so Christian though. [00:44:57] Speaker A: Hear me out. If they had done it one time, that would have been one thing. But they do it three times in this movie, you have 1% chance of survival. Three times. [00:45:07] Speaker B: Okay, like, come on. It didn't bother me. No, I mean, because that, like I said, that's what these movies are. They, they always, they go down to the last second. And it's always about the most ridiculous plan that ends up working or they have to adapt. As the plan changes, the team needs to go to the station that they'll be nearest to where they think it is going to happen, which is on St. Matthew's Island. Ethan needs a sub to take him to the wreck of the Sevastopol. And then once they, the team finds the coordinates, they need to transmit for 15 minutes every two hours via VHF. And Ethan is going to have a transmitter that they're going to use to find. Find Ethan. Once he gets out up from the depths, he. They'll take a portable decompression chamber to him, and that's the plan. And they'll cut through the ice to find him. [00:45:53] Speaker A: So him having the radio frequency things it definitely. I thought they were going to do a thing where it's like, I'm going to be at this specific spot, this specific time, just like the pickup of the submarine and that would have been a little too far. [00:46:06] Speaker B: The nearest sub is the USS Ohio, which is Bledsoe's boat. And so they have an Osprey that will take him, but it has to be precise. He will wait for maybe five minutes before to go to Periscope. [00:46:22] Speaker A: Yeah, they said 15 minutes. [00:46:24] Speaker B: And so. [00:46:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:26] Speaker B: What's. Neely gives Ethan a St. Christopher medallion to give to Bledsoe as like proof that this is, you know, these orders are real. Now this is where we cut back to the Cabinet, where they find out that Sloan let Ethan go and she talks to her Secretary of State and Kittridge and Bridge. Briggs know where Ethan's going to end up, so they're going to go surprise him there. We first we go to St. Matthew's island with Ethan and the team and Benji, as they're going in, says we can't tell anyone but our real mission. And the door opens and. Did you remember this guy at all? Not whatsoever. [00:47:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I appreciate that they explained eventually who he is. I thought he was a new character, but I should have known that William. [00:47:05] Speaker B: Donlon and his wife Tapisa and I enjoy here that even though Benji's the one who said we can't tell them any. Anything about our real mission or give away who we are. Benji geeks out when he realized this is the guy who built the Black Vault. [00:47:21] Speaker A: I mean, clearly he's a friendly guy, so I didn't have a problem with that though. I thought the reveal here was going to be that he had turned evil or something was up. Yeah. [00:47:29] Speaker B: But yeah. So he geeks out, you're coding legend and he's the one who created the black bolt. And then Benji immediately realizes who he's portraying shouldn't know about the Black Vault, and they have to put their cards on the table. [00:47:41] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:47:43] Speaker B: And Donlo realizes that. Oh, that. Oh, this is. This is the entity. It's all coming true. And then reveals that the Russians beat them there. So they're. They're also there. [00:47:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that was cool. I liked the introduction of a new threat and a new faction. The Russians characters were cool. Where they were like, would you believe that if you were me? Oh, we're not mean. We're not here to hurt you. But we do have a job we need to do. [00:48:09] Speaker B: So we cut over to Ethan on the Osprey. They're at the coordinates, but there's no sign of the Ohio and the Russian ship, the Admiral Kuznetsov is there. And there's bogeys incoming. This feels very top Gun. [00:48:21] Speaker A: It feels Top Gun. I love this part. I thought it was great. I like the soldiers. [00:48:24] Speaker B: The soldier's freaking out. Calls him. They said they showed us their missiles, man. And I definitely thought he said Mav at first, as in Maverick. It sounded like. It sounded like he said they showed us his missiles, Mav. I was like, that's not the right character. [00:48:40] Speaker A: Did you also notice that. And I heard this and now I can't on hear it, that when they say incoming bogeys, what they mean to say is incoming bandits. Because a bogey means they don't know a bandit means Interesting. [00:48:52] Speaker B: I have not. I have not heard. I didn't realize that distinction. I know actually that they make a mistake. In Top Gun, I think they say bogeys. In Top Gun Maverick, I think they do say bandits. [00:49:03] Speaker A: They fix that. So the soldiers, it's really gotta go. [00:49:08] Speaker B: Freaking out. [00:49:09] Speaker A: Well, the other two aren't so happy. [00:49:11] Speaker B: About the situational about it. They're like, they're pilots. They're. They're calm, but they're not. Ethan asks for five minutes. He's like, I can give you one. And they go at a hover and the guy is freaking out. Why. Why are we hovering? We need to get out of here. We don't want certain. This is World War three shit, man. [00:49:25] Speaker A: So, like this part is ridiculous, but I just liked all of it. Oh my God, the Russians are there. They're doing flybys, soldiers. Scary. Tom Cruise jumps. He just runs and he jumps. I know he's in the trailers. And then he's like dying and then suddenly appear like out of nowhere, Call of duty. [00:49:41] Speaker B: This reminded me of Hunt for Raddictober when. When Jack Ryan's getting onto the sub. [00:49:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, there's. There's that too. This whole part I thought was really good emotion and real good tension. [00:49:53] Speaker B: So we have a quick cutaway to back to the bunker where China's arsenal fallen. And Sloan is debating what to do. [00:50:00] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a lot of this. [00:50:03] Speaker B: But Ethan is now aboard the USS Ohio. He gives Captain Bledsoe the medal from Neely. Ethan lays out the plan. We're going to go to now to what I'm going to call a Christian's humble brag corner. Have you ever been on a submarine? [00:50:15] Speaker A: I think yes. I seem to remember when I was a kid, we went to what's called Battleship Cove and we went into ships and I think one of them was a submarine. [00:50:26] Speaker B: Okay, you've been to a docked submarine, Maybe. Okay, I. I have been onto A docked submarine, the USS Bowfin. It's a museum ship now. It's docked at Pearl harbor. But I've also been on a real submarine. All right, yeah, that's okay. There are tourist submarines that you can take in Hawaii, and so I think. But an actual submarine. We were underwater. We were. I don't know how deep, but we got to. Got to see. It was pretty cool. [00:50:55] Speaker A: So it was like the Ocean Explorer. [00:50:56] Speaker B: Wow. Much bigger than that, actually. Funnily enough. I assume you've been to Disneyland or World. [00:51:01] Speaker A: Either one in California. [00:51:02] Speaker B: No, I've been to the submarine voyage ride there, maybe. [00:51:06] Speaker A: Probably not. It was long ago. [00:51:09] Speaker B: Honestly, a real submarine, like the tourist submarine did not feel much different than the submarine voyage at Disneyland or Disney World. [00:51:17] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. [00:51:18] Speaker B: It occurred to me, oh, I am literally actually underwater. And not just in a. In a dark ride, but it doesn't feel the difference. But yes, yeah, funny, Funny, Yes. I've been on. I've been on a military docked military submarine, and I've been on an actual submarine that went under the water. I. I re as rel listening to some of our old p. Podcast. I'm like, oh, and here, like. And this is the moment where I ask Zach if he's done a thing and then brag about how I've done it. [00:51:41] Speaker A: So actually, I'd like to sidetrack us for a minute, speaking of submarines, if you don't mind. So do you remember, longtime listeners may remember we covered a movie last year called Razi, a Bollywood movie called Razi, where the spy in it found information about Pakistan preparing to attack India's new aircraft. [00:52:04] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. [00:52:06] Speaker A: And how they. India fought a war with Pakistan and won the war because of her. So my wife recently showed me an unofficial sequel of that movie called the Ghazi Attack, which was about a Indian submarine called the Ghazi fighting another Pakistan submarine movie. And we're not going to cover it. We're not going to cover it on the Spotify, guys, because it's pure military movie. It's not a spy movie at all. But I would recommend if you keep your expectations low, the movie's on Netflix. It has very poor CGI, which is delightful to watch. It's like a PlayStation 2 cut scene. And there's a part where they're. They're like, drive is damaged. They can only go up and down. And yet somehow the. The villains are so stupid that the Indians are still able to kill them with a torpedo. And I looked it up, and almost nothing in the movie is true. But if you, if you really want. [00:53:02] Speaker B: More rosin, I will add it to my letterboxd list of submarine movies. I will have to, I'll have to give that a watch because I found that I apparently enjoy submarine movies. Back to this submarine mo. So we find out that all the Russian subs are headed to the Bering Strait because they're all looking for something. Bledsoe doesn't know what it is, but figures out quickly that Ethan does know what they're looking for. And Ethan notices a Russian sub next to St. Matthew's Island. And this is where Bledsoe figures out the rest of the plan. And he says that, you know, if you, if you want to poke the bear, you've come to the right man. [00:53:39] Speaker A: So this is not where the movie was thought it was gonna go. I thought they were gonna figure out that the heroes were on Matthews island and then the, were going to send like the Navy SEALS in and then they were going to fight the Russians and save the rest of the Mission Impossible team. Yeah, but that did not happen as it turns out. [00:53:55] Speaker B: We go back to Donlo where he reveals to Benji that he doesn't have the data and that a team came in 2012 to upgrade his equipment. But it was really a cover up. Everything was backed up to 8 inch floppy disks. But the team who was upgrading it took the floppy disk reader and the Russians give them one hour to build a new floppy disk reader. [00:54:14] Speaker A: Yes. My wife really didn't like this part. Well, I don't know. Really didn't like. She was, she thought it was ridiculous that this guy reads a weird coordinate 12 years ago and memorizes it just in case it ever comes up. [00:54:27] Speaker B: Well, okay, it's not, and we're, we're not quite there yet, but we can talk about that now that he, it's not that he reads a read query coordinate, it's that the people come immediately after this happens. That's why he thought it was suspicious. [00:54:43] Speaker A: So. But then he still holds it in his memory for that long. I'm like, well, these guys are super spies and they can do all this stuff that no one else can do. So. [00:54:51] Speaker B: So Ethan meets with the dive team and shows him the Mark 7 Dive Suit. It's only been tested at 300ft. And when he, if he uses it, it's gonna, he gets guaranteed high pressure nervous system which is gonna cause his body all, you know, all sorts of aches and things. And then when he surfaces because he has to do a rapid ascent he's definitely gonna get the bends. And the only way he's gonna survive is if he gets to a decompression chamber in 20. [00:55:17] Speaker A: Yeah. So again, the odds are just so long. [00:55:19] Speaker B: And then Bledsoe comes, tells him that they scan for vhf, but there's been no message. [00:55:24] Speaker A: Oh, go ahead. Oh, my God. [00:55:26] Speaker B: He doesn't know if it's back to Benji and Donlo. They're trying to build the drive. This. Yeah, this is where we get the reveal that the disc that they're looking for is gone. The refit was a cover up. The DNI from the last film, played by Cary Elwes, was actually the person who was in charge of doing the COVID up. Did you catch him there? [00:55:43] Speaker A: Yeah, just putting him in there. So we have to fight the Russians. Basically, we're not gonna be able to. [00:55:48] Speaker B: Just give them what they want. So Donlo destroyed the disc, memorized coordinates, and he starts this ruse because the dogs are starting to bark. So he asks if his wife can go feed the dogs and slips her the coordinates. Grace volunteers to help, and one Russian accompanies them. [00:56:01] Speaker A: So again, this movie is similar to my expectations because the dogs are barking. I thought they were going to use the dogs to fight the Russia. [00:56:08] Speaker B: This is not John Wick. Chapter three, four. [00:56:10] Speaker A: Speaking of another franchise. [00:56:14] Speaker B: So Bledsoe finds Ethan training. He's got the oxygen mask as he's running. He did the same. We have a very similar scene in Top Gun Maverick in the beginning when he's about to go into the Dark Star. Oh, this reminds me of that. So apparently there's only one more chance for broadcast is what he says. [00:56:30] Speaker A: Of course. [00:56:32] Speaker B: Tropisa and Grace go to feed the dogs. I like that. She tries to knock out the Russian with a hammer, but she fails. And instead Grace has to go help her. But the Russian manages to get some gunshots off before. So instead we got a big fight. [00:56:45] Speaker A: So big bang boom fight scene. Yeah. What's her name? Paris is waiting too long for killing somebody. One of the criticisms of this movie is that there's not enough action. [00:56:55] Speaker B: I don't agree with that at all. [00:56:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it didn't bother me. [00:56:58] Speaker B: And at the same time, one of the divers is attacking Ethan because he's one of the children of the atom. [00:57:03] Speaker A: Yeah, we've talked about this already. [00:57:04] Speaker B: There's a good line in there that is it in one of your favorite. [00:57:07] Speaker A: Quotes I didn't write down. Yeah, I remember it though. [00:57:11] Speaker B: You spend too much time on the Internet. I need that meme. [00:57:14] Speaker A: I don't want to go over it again, but the whole thing with the children, the atom was half baked, or even a quarter baked. [00:57:20] Speaker B: That meme. It's good. It's enough. The meme will be good when it comes out on Blu ray. [00:57:24] Speaker A: I hope so. [00:57:25] Speaker B: Or streaming. [00:57:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Him in his underwear saying he spent too much time on the Internet. [00:57:30] Speaker B: It worked for me. That line got a lot of big laughs in the theater when I was there. So Bledsoe's waiting for the transmission. There's a big fire. Benji tells Donald to send the coordinates. Bledsoe gets them. And Ethan is saved by the other diver, whose actress escapes me right now, but she's in everything. And she's great. [00:57:51] Speaker A: Let me say. [00:57:53] Speaker B: She'S also in the Mandalorian. She's in a lot of other movies too. Yeah, she's great. Yeah, I loved her here. But yes. So tapes and Grace take the sled and go and escape. And the rest of team gets out of the fire. Now Ethan is shown the coordinates that Bledsoe received. And apparently they're on the. On the other side of the world. Almost exactly. Which Ethan realizes that. [00:58:17] Speaker A: Oh, my God. One more twist. But then they figure out. [00:58:20] Speaker B: I was worried. I got worried for a second. But then Ethan realized that the coordinates were mirrored. If the Russians were listening. [00:58:26] Speaker A: But spy stuff. See. [00:58:31] Speaker B: It'S just a minor, you know, hitch for the Russians because they realize that the USS Ohio, where the USS Ohio is going, and the Russians start following them. So. So that they never know. [00:58:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:45] Speaker B: His destination. Ethan's gonna have to make a fast exit out of the sub. So we go back to Topisa, where she is navigating by dead reckoning. Hey, remember that? [00:58:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it was also. [00:58:56] Speaker B: No. No one, actually. Oh, I guess they mentioned navigating by dead. [00:58:59] Speaker A: Yeah, they say it. They say we're sailing by deep. [00:59:01] Speaker B: We actually get to see someone navigating by dead reckoning. And then they're gonna take shift. So she shows Grace how to drive the dogs while she sleeps. Ethan gets suited up and ejected out of the sub. Nearly gets hit by the Russian sub. I've never seen. It was tense and there was a. [00:59:18] Speaker A: Little too much near death experiences. He. He almost dies like five times. [00:59:24] Speaker B: All right, fair enough. [00:59:26] Speaker A: It's. It's just too much. But it's high. But I also really like how different it is. It's. And then when he arrives at the submarine, it's like this music is like. [00:59:38] Speaker B: I don't think that was music. I think that's just the sound of the ship. [00:59:41] Speaker A: Even better. So I know you haven't played Mass Effect, but do you know, like, in Halo where you find some ancient temple or something? You're like, what's the deal with it? Oh, my gosh. What does it mean? You feel like a tiny cosmic insect in a white, big, wide world. When he's first going into the submarine, that was probably my favorite part. [00:59:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's super tense. And the entire theater when I went, was silent because we're all just captured by this moment and how he has to. [01:00:08] Speaker A: It was really good. [01:00:09] Speaker B: Navigate through the. It's interesting. You know, most times when you have submarine and they're going into the submarine, isn't. It's entirely submerged here? It's, like, half submerged, and it's, like, cheating around as the sub is spinning and moving. They filmed this for real with, like, on a set with a giant gimbal that was half filled with water. And it's ridiculous. And there's. All right, Zach, you're gonna have to help me here. Missiles or torpedoes? What are they? [01:00:30] Speaker A: Okay, they look like torpedoes because he's in the torpedo room, but what's the difference? [01:00:35] Speaker B: The difference is the torpedo stays. It goes. It stays entirely under the water as a missile goes through the air. [01:00:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:40] Speaker B: So some of these could be, like, nuclear missiles that get launched up. [01:00:45] Speaker A: I mean, I guess they could be. [01:00:46] Speaker B: But I didn't know could be too well. So I was like. But yes. So he has to navigate around. All of them have just fallen off the torpedo racks, and he gets to the Sonosphere. [01:00:57] Speaker A: So wait, I have a question. Why was he draining the water out of every room that he was going into if he wasn't even taking his suit off? [01:01:03] Speaker B: Anyway, I don't think he was draining the water out of every room. I think he was just opening the door. And those pressurized rooms, as he would enter in with water, would fill into them. Yeah. [01:01:12] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. No, that checks out. [01:01:15] Speaker B: So you saw this in imax? [01:01:16] Speaker A: No, I saw it in normal theater with laser. Laser. [01:01:20] Speaker B: Is that IMAX size, man? Really? Yes. [01:01:23] Speaker A: That explains why it was so expensive. But it looked good. [01:01:27] Speaker B: This is some other movies, including other Mission Impossible movies, done this, where when it's, you know, it gets to a big action scene, they'll expand the screen to the full IMAX size. [01:01:37] Speaker A: Okay, maybe. [01:01:39] Speaker B: Apparently, I didn't get to see this in imax. The way they do it for this movie is as he's turning the wheel to open up the hatch, the screen moves only when he's, like, turning it. So it was. And it Gets big. I was like, I wish I had a chance to see this in imax, but I didn't. [01:01:57] Speaker A: That's cool. I also like some of the scares here with the dead bodies of crewman. [01:02:04] Speaker B: Jump scares like that. So that was. That was a surprise. [01:02:07] Speaker A: That was nice. [01:02:08] Speaker B: He reaches the Sonosphere, inserts the key, all while it's rotating around him. Manages to get the Podkova out and the sub rotating Gan. The missed torpedoes are blocking the way that he came through, so he has to get out through a torpedo tube. He can't fit with the suit, so he has to take it off and drag it behind him. And as he drags it, the sub starts falling further down into the depths and the suit gets caught. So he has to. To take off the helmet that he still had on. [01:02:35] Speaker A: Okay. This is, like, ridiculous, Christian, I think. [01:02:37] Speaker B: Even you have to admit, really tense. Really great. And I. I enjoyed it. [01:02:43] Speaker A: Like, ridiculous. [01:02:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. But it was still very tense. And I like how he's swimming to the surface, but he gets stuck under the. Under the ice. And the camera rotates so it feels like he's like sitting at the bottom of the ocean, even though he's actually at the top. [01:02:58] Speaker A: Yep. Don't forget, he almost gets hit a couple times on the way up. [01:03:03] Speaker B: A lot of really tense. Good tension here. And we think he's going to die. But Grace appears and gives him the breath of life. He goes inside the decompression chamber where Grace is going, doing cpr. This is the third time he's died and been brought back by cpr. [01:03:23] Speaker A: That's right. And we get. Let's just say. Well, I'm just gonna say we get some cleavage shots at this point. [01:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Which I was worried they were going to kiss. [01:03:33] Speaker A: Worried. Come on. I want those two. [01:03:35] Speaker B: I mean, I think they had. The relationship I got from them was more like mentor, mentee, and not necessarily a romantic relationship. [01:03:42] Speaker A: Okay, what about in the first. [01:03:43] Speaker B: The first one. I get that too, because obviously he's someone who's been in the IMF for a long time. You're seeing her journey. [01:03:49] Speaker A: No. No. I mean, yes. Sorry to start to cut in. No, in the first one, I've. [01:03:54] Speaker B: Yes. [01:03:55] Speaker A: Dead reckoning. I. I thought they were more flirty. [01:03:58] Speaker B: There was. I mean, there was chemistry there, but I thought it was banter. Not necessarily, like romantic chemistry, but the way that it was. This scene was shot, it could have been read as romantic. And I was worried that they were. They were gonna kiss him. And I was like this. That they don't have the right connection to me for that. [01:04:16] Speaker A: I think it totally reads as romantic. Totally. [01:04:18] Speaker B: I don't know. So, yeah. Anyway, so they need to go and get. Find Gabriel and get the poison pill. Grace is now thinking, what if they don't kill the entity? What if they use it to bring the world back from the brink? Ethan says that no one can wield that power. [01:04:34] Speaker A: Oh, she's tempted by the ring. [01:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:36] Speaker A: Yeah, she's tempted. [01:04:38] Speaker B: It's interesting. She's not entirely tempted because she says. Because Ethan's like, who can wield such power? And she says, you. You're the only one who I can trust with that. So it's not necessarily that she's tempted by it. [01:04:49] Speaker A: Well, it's frustrating because just like the romance, this movie does, like, a little bit of like, but then doesn't follow through on it. I wanted to follow through. [01:04:59] Speaker B: So Ethan finally meets Danlo face to face. And this is where we get the reveal for people who don't remember the first movie. That he was the tech inside the Black vault who got shipped off to. [01:05:09] Speaker A: Alaska because he made a vault that you can't actually penetrate. [01:05:14] Speaker B: No. Ethan is trying to apologize for what he did, but Danlo says to know. Ethan, you actually saved my life. Because if you hadn't broken in and all that, I'd probably still be in that vault, and I'd probably still think I'm happy. But instead, he found the only home he's really known and met the love of his life. [01:05:31] Speaker A: Sorry, really quick, William D. What's. Dunlo? Dunlo? Do you think he was gonna die? Because the last part we saw him, he was doing. [01:05:39] Speaker B: I definitely thought he was gonna be dead. No, Dunlo, you can't die. Not after all this. What do you. What did you. I liked his character a lot. Here. What did you think? [01:05:47] Speaker A: I have no strong feelings about this character. [01:05:49] Speaker B: What about Tapestry was fine. [01:05:50] Speaker A: Yes, she was also fine. There's. This movie had a few too many. [01:05:55] Speaker B: A lot of characters. [01:05:56] Speaker A: I'm just gonna say it. So, yeah, I have no strong feelings about that. [01:06:00] Speaker B: So the entity wants to get into the Doomsday Vault, and with the pod cover and the poison pill, they can trick the entity into not going into the Doomsday Vault, but instead going into a D optical data drive. [01:06:12] Speaker A: Again, this part broke my wife, where she's like, 100 millisecond window. Otherwise, everyone's dead. Like, are you freaking kidding me? [01:06:23] Speaker B: That's what these movies are, though. That. [01:06:25] Speaker A: Could it at least be one second? One second's Totally reasonable. [01:06:29] Speaker B: Well, one second. Anyone could do it. It needs to be that fast. That it's a blink of an eye, that you need the world's best. [01:06:36] Speaker A: It's crazy. It's crazy, but it also makes sense, right? It is a supercomputer that thinks super fast. But you know what? Yeah, you know what, Christian? It's the final Mission Impossible movie. Let's just dial it up. Let's just push it as far as it's gonna go. So I'm on. [01:06:54] Speaker B: Okay. Since Gabriel still has the poison pill, they need him to get the pod, cover, and upload the poison pill. Need to trick him into taking it without making it seem too easy. [01:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is interesting. [01:07:05] Speaker B: And even said that he'll be a part of the team without ever knowing it. So, again, Grace is hesitant, but Ethan reassures her and then says that, you know, it's important that she has to be the one to disconnect the drive because she's. You know, what separates a good. A good thief from a great one? Timing. [01:07:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And I like that. The fan. [01:07:25] Speaker B: Non. Ethan, for once. [01:07:28] Speaker A: Not on Our Hero. Yes, exactly. For once. [01:07:30] Speaker B: Oh, I guess I lose 20 bucks. My notes here. I said 20 bucks says that Zach mentions Moriarty from Next Generation. No, this is exactly what they do. They trick him instead of being in the Enterprise's computer drive, into a separate drive where he thinks he's gonna be exploring the world on his own. So they're tricking. [01:07:49] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. Yes, that's. That's correct. I feel like they do that with other things, too, where it's like a. [01:07:54] Speaker B: Genie in a. I definitely thought you were gonna mention it. [01:07:59] Speaker A: You should never put money on my. [01:08:01] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's Star Trek, Next Generation. That's one thing that I can usually count on you to remember and to relate to it. Yeah. All right. [01:08:08] Speaker A: Most of the time. Yeah. [01:08:10] Speaker B: So Russia's arsenal has now fallen to the entity as well, and President Sloan is given options. So she's the. And the option is to bomb the other centers of the. The centers of the other nuclear powers and. As well as an American city as a diplomatic gesture to avoid a war. [01:08:28] Speaker A: So this was too far. [01:08:29] Speaker B: Which part? In the American city. [01:08:31] Speaker A: It's too scary. [01:08:33] Speaker B: It's too scary. Yeah. [01:08:35] Speaker A: Where the President has to decide which American she's gonna kill. Guys, this is a Mission Impossible movie. It's not often highlighted. Like, stop, stop. [01:08:46] Speaker B: It's too much. All right. Yeah. [01:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah. I like a lot of the scary stuff, but this was too funny. That was too far. [01:08:53] Speaker B: All right, so. And like, again, they talk about how, you know, someone's gonna panic. And then an army general played by Nick Offerman. AK Swanson without a mustache. [01:09:06] Speaker A: He looks so weird. [01:09:07] Speaker B: You know, the guard outside for his sidearm. [01:09:09] Speaker A: And they do end up following through with that. But why do you think he wanted that? Do you think he was gonna kill. [01:09:14] Speaker B: I thought this talking about, well, we'll get to it. We'll get to it when we get there. So they are flying to the Doomsday Vault. Ethan, Benji, and Grace go in while the others wait outside. There's no one there because they all realize that this is the end. [01:09:28] Speaker A: Another nice little bit of world building. But it also felt like they, like, cut the budget, didn't want to put the people there. [01:09:34] Speaker B: Covid was still a thing. Yeah. [01:09:37] Speaker A: Really? Okay. Yeah. There's not a lot of crowd sequences in this movie. [01:09:43] Speaker B: There's a few. There's the protest scenes. And then maybe when you get like, the big scenes in the bunker with everyone around. But at least in the bunker, they're all socially distant. [01:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah, good point. [01:09:52] Speaker B: Yeah. On the one hand, you're saving on cast, you're saving that. And so it's easy way to do that. And also, you don't have to worry about COVID protocols with that. But he. You know, as Ethan and Benji and Grace go in, he actually says that, tells them to wait outside because he's expendable. They have. They both have roles to play when in the vault, but he actually is. He's. He's not essential. Which is interesting for Ethan. He's usually the most essential. [01:10:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:10:18] Speaker B: So Gabriel is there outside the doorway to the vault with a ginormous bomb. [01:10:24] Speaker A: This felt like a video game impart. [01:10:26] Speaker B: He's got a henchman with. With a dead man switch. [01:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like, who is henchman? [01:10:32] Speaker B: Like, I don't know. [01:10:33] Speaker A: The henchman bugged me. Seems like a good opportunity to bring back a villain from an old who's alive. Especially because the henchman's old. I don't know. You find somebody. [01:10:44] Speaker B: Anyway, so Gabriel wants to blow up the vault because he thinks the entity is bluffing and won't actually destroy the world because the entity can't exist if there's no world left. Left. And so Ethan tells Gabriel he wins. And he's about to hand over the pod cover when Briggs, Kittredge, and us Covert Ops enter and the timer on the box starts. [01:11:04] Speaker A: And how do they know they were there? [01:11:05] Speaker B: Because they knew where Ethan was gonna end up, how they knew I'm not sure, actually. Like, it didn't occur to me until I was ready. When I was like, wait, how did they know that? Doesn't matter. [01:11:15] Speaker A: It's fine. These guys are ridiculous. Yeah. [01:11:18] Speaker B: By the time around the bomb starts, Kittridge wants to know the play. And as he's waiting out Ethan because he knows that if you threat Ethan's team, he'll do anything. But as this is happening, all the US covert ops people are taken out silently around the edges. And this is where my mind's trying to outthink the movie. Is this another IMF team here? Is this where we get our Avengers endgame on your left scene? Is this where we reveal that Ilsa's still alive? No, but for a second I thought about it when it just revealed it. [01:11:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And it turned out to be what. [01:11:53] Speaker B: More of Gabriel's again? Yeah. Okay, so they. They take out. Yeah, they take out all the Americans except for Briggs and Kittredge. And Ethan has to go and chase Gabriel. And this is where we get, you know, the recurring line of we'll figure it out from Benji. [01:12:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. Benji catches a bullet as well. Did you think. [01:12:18] Speaker B: Because do you remember how the very last movie ends where Kittridge has his voiceover? The people will. The closest to you will. Will be the ones to pay. And it zooms in on Benji. [01:12:27] Speaker A: These villains for the past four movies, they've been threatening that and it never actually happened. [01:12:32] Speaker B: So we get our chase first. There's a car chase through the. Then we get the biplanes. [01:12:37] Speaker A: So the jeep chase was an appropriate length of time. The biplanes was way. [01:12:42] Speaker B: It was great. [01:12:43] Speaker A: I know you will never agree. It was too long. It was great though. [01:12:47] Speaker B: He gets on the strut of one that's taking off, knocks out the pilot, takes over. I got a little sneak peek of this through call them unnamed sources. And yeah, a year ago I got to see some behind the scenes footage of this and it was like just him being thrown around in between the wings of the biplanes. Oh, my God. [01:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean the stonework is really good. It looks super real. The brightly colored biplanes was kind of funny for such a fun. [01:13:14] Speaker B: It's easy, you know, that's just the color of the biplanes are these days. Like in those days. [01:13:20] Speaker A: This is what they are. Yeah. [01:13:21] Speaker B: At the. Out of the event that we were at the other yesterday, we saw a biplane of the exact same model as this and it happened to be colored bright yellow. So. [01:13:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. I also like, they Explained it earlier when Gabriel says, I brought a low tech plane. I even brought a spare just in case. So they explained it with dialogue. [01:13:40] Speaker B: So Benji and his team are outside the vault. Donlo tapes and Degas will handle the bomb, while Paris and Benji and Grace will handle trapping the entity. We see that Benji's lung is collapsing and he needs Paris to operate on him. He uses creatures knife, which I didn't mention, but the knife from the first film that was left in the black vault. That's the only way they knew that someone actually broke in. Ah, so good. It's ridiculous, that knife. I've wanted a copy of that knife since I was 12 years. No, not, not 12, not even 12, nine years old. Because that's just. It's such a unique design. [01:14:11] Speaker A: Working on it. [01:14:12] Speaker B: But I really love that it made a comeback here and it made sense. You know, this is something that Donlo would have. The one thing that was proof of what happened. [01:14:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it changed his life. [01:14:23] Speaker B: But yeah, and he gave it to Ethan. And Paris is using it to operate on Benji because his lung is collapsed. And he makes an incision, inserts a pen in there to allow him to breathe. And he's walking Grace through the techno babble while he's passing out. And so they get it all set up. So they just need to wait for Ethan to activate the poison pill. Back in the bunker, Sloan is deciding whether or not to go through the plan. She's about to activate when she decides to take their nuclear arsenal offline. And one of the Children of the Atom tries to kill her. But Nick Offerman saves her by shooting and then is himself shot dead. [01:14:59] Speaker A: So are you sure this guy was the Children of the Atom or. [01:15:01] Speaker B: I think so. [01:15:02] Speaker A: Just somebody who thought she was making the right. [01:15:04] Speaker B: I think he was one of the children. Like we've already set it up, so why further complicate it and just. And make it not. But yeah, okay. [01:15:11] Speaker A: Keep it simple. [01:15:12] Speaker B: And as she's trying to take their arsenal offline, it's too late. The entity now has control of all over the world. [01:15:19] Speaker A: So now the only hope is with the imf. [01:15:21] Speaker B: So Ethan chases Gabriel in the plane. There's lots of shouting. I like how at certain point they're on the radio. But after he takes off the radio helmet, you can see that Gabriel's shouting, but you can't actually hear what he's saying because that actually makes sense for what's going on at that height and speed. [01:15:36] Speaker A: Yeah, well, before he takes his helmet off, when he has the helmet on it's like video game bad guy dialogue. [01:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, what. What I enjoyed here is that you realize without the power of the entity behind him, Gabriel's not that special. [01:15:52] Speaker A: No, he's not. He's another Mission Impossible villain, which there was many. [01:15:56] Speaker B: He's not. And so. And so he wants that power back because he wants to be as powerful as he was before. And so it gives him a motivation of why he's doing whatever. Everything he's doing. But. But showing that if he never had the power of the entity behind him, Ethan could have beat him easily. Ethan gets on board Gabriel's plane. He gets thrown around a lot. Ethan uses the wires, like, on the biplane to, like, move the flaps. And then, like. [01:16:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that's how he's able to get out of this one because it's looking. [01:16:24] Speaker B: Rough for a while there. Gabriel. To coin a phrase from Top Gun, he was inverted. [01:16:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:16:31] Speaker B: But when he inverts, he stalls out. And Ethan managed to grab the poison pill as Gabriel shouts, you. You'll never catch me, Ethan. And then he hits his crotch on the tail and splits his head open. On the tail. [01:16:43] Speaker A: Well, what he says is, only one of us has a parachute, but then. [01:16:46] Speaker B: Another parachute sort of appears in the seat. [01:16:50] Speaker A: Under the seat. Okay. That's lucky. Like at that moment. Yeah. [01:16:57] Speaker B: So it manages to put on the parachute as he falls away, and then that burns up. [01:17:05] Speaker A: And then I guess he has another one. [01:17:07] Speaker B: I didn't know that was gonna happen. And he did that for real. He literally shoot on fire. That wasn't cgi. [01:17:14] Speaker A: Wow. [01:17:16] Speaker B: That was insane. So, yeah, we had lights on fire. And the team is waiting for the light to go green. The Danlos and the End Degas realize that they can make it to the vault if they deactivate the thing just right. They just don't only have. But they only have 10 seconds to run. [01:17:33] Speaker A: Too bad we didn't get to see them running. That would have been. [01:17:35] Speaker B: We see them. [01:17:36] Speaker A: Okay, but we don't need more. [01:17:39] Speaker B: You were talking about this movie being too long. We don't need that. [01:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's too long in some parts and too short in other parts. Yeah. [01:17:45] Speaker B: Interesting. All right, so the light goes off. Grace pulls the drive really quick, and power goes out over the entire world. The Donlos and Degas arrive inside the bunker where the drive is glowing. Ethan passes out, and lights start going back on. And the world isn't over. Sloan. [01:18:05] Speaker A: Yeah, a goof on IMDb someone said that was funny. That it's apparently nighttime on both the eastern and Western hemispheres. At the same time. [01:18:14] Speaker B: It's broad day. Well. Oh, what do you mean? [01:18:17] Speaker A: Like, it's night time in America. And then she was nighttime in China. [01:18:21] Speaker B: Okay, fair enough. [01:18:22] Speaker A: Right? [01:18:22] Speaker B: Huh. Didn't think about that. [01:18:26] Speaker A: Maybe it's a metaphor. It's a darkness. But not anymore. [01:18:30] Speaker B: So President Sloan gets a call. He did it. We see Ethan alive. [01:18:35] Speaker A: You see his shoot. He has another shoot. [01:18:37] Speaker B: And then see him alive. [01:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:39] Speaker B: And we hear a message from Luther on the poison pill. And it's a really nice message. I like this. And this is. Our lives are the sum of our choices. And there's nothing is written. And we make our own destiny. And this is Ethan's destiny. And Ethan is John Connor. There's no fate, but what do we make for ourselves? When he said that we make our own fate, I was like, oh, they're really going into the Terminator 2 stuff, aren't they? [01:19:01] Speaker A: May as well go for one more. [01:19:02] Speaker B: But there's a montage of the other characters. We see Neely and Bledsoe find out that the world is okay. President Sloan sees her son, who's like a soldier in the army. Nice. Nice touch. We see the pod cover self destruct in five seconds. And Luther gets to say this line for the last time. The last time we hear it in the series. [01:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. [01:19:26] Speaker B: Briggs and Kittredge approach. Kittridge gives Kittridge the destroyed pod cover. And he's just looking at like, what am I supposed to do with this? Yeah, they gave it back. Points the gun at Ethan and then puts it away. And they have a bro handshake and leave together. And we go back to Trafalgar Square where it's much more peaceful. Ethan's there. And one by one, the team appears. They have these wordless glances. [01:19:54] Speaker A: Yeah, they all show up, look at each other, and then they all. [01:19:56] Speaker B: Benji is alive. He's not dead. Grace is the last pop up. And she's the only one who actually goes up to Ethan, gives him the drive. And they, one by one, leave into the shadows, as does Ethan. And the adventure continues. [01:20:09] Speaker A: You think that's the implication? It's all good things ending or they're just gonna keep. [01:20:13] Speaker B: I think. I mean, well, it's even in Luther's message. He says, I'll see you again, brother, but hopefully not too soon. The world still needs you. So that's the implication I got. We'll talk about the fate of Ethan Hunt. I didn't know if they were going to do a Tomorrow, not no time to die and kill him out. [01:20:32] Speaker A: No time to die. [01:20:33] Speaker B: Like very definitively. Or would they do a fake out death like in the Dark Knight Rises where you think he's dead and then it turns out, oh, he's off having adventure, enjoying life, but instead they do this ending, something different where it's. Yeah, he's, he's still there. If the world, when the world needs him and it will someday. Which is which I liked that it leaves it open ended. And if Ethan decide or not Ethan, if Tom Cruise decides in 10 years he wants to come back to this, he could. [01:20:58] Speaker A: At least for a cameo. I also John Wick, another Christian favorite franchise where the hero dies. Or does he at the end? [01:21:05] Speaker B: Or does he. [01:21:06] Speaker A: Did something happen? Is there an interest? [01:21:08] Speaker B: No, but they've announced John Wick 5. [01:21:10] Speaker A: Well, the ballerina just came out. [01:21:11] Speaker B: I have not watched that. I'm planning on seeing at some point, but there is a job. [01:21:17] Speaker A: That's how they keep it going. No, isn't it a prequel? Okay, that's what I heard. [01:21:22] Speaker B: Yes. [01:21:22] Speaker A: So as I was saying, like when the hero dies, it feels like an ending, which is nice, but it's also a bummer. So all things being equal, I think I would rather have the hero live. [01:21:32] Speaker B: Which is why the Dark Knight Rises works for me. And this does too. [01:21:35] Speaker A: So do you think this is the end of Mission Impossible? And if it is, how do you feel about it? [01:21:40] Speaker B: Well, I'll get more into my ratings. But like I said, like you, you know, yes, it can be emotionally resonant when, when the hero dies, makes the ultimate sacrifice. But it's not always going to be a movie that we're going to return to because who wants to end with that? You have to be in the right mood for that. [01:21:58] Speaker A: That's true. [01:21:59] Speaker B: Whereas if you do this or you do the Dark Knight Rises ending, even you can, you can have that. Go back to that. [01:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I, straight up, I think we talked about the time. I did not like James Bond dying. [01:22:08] Speaker B: No, I mean it works as an ending if you want to have an ending. But you don't need to have an ending like that. I still enjoy that movie, but it's not one I come back to a lot. I've heard interesting theories or ideas on the Internet override and even McCoy talked about he doesn't destroy the entity in the end, it's still there. If you ever pick this up, you could have the entity being a tool in his arsenal. [01:22:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:36] Speaker B: You could do that. Which would be a very different vibe, but who knows or it could just be something that he holds on to that he has to protect. [01:22:43] Speaker A: Now I feel like this movie was about a science fiction as I'm. [01:22:47] Speaker B: Yeah, no, this is. Yeah, yeah. I mean it. Well, it all depends on how sci fi the. The world that we live in gets. It may just be commonplace for us soon to have our own AI assistance. So. And at that time maybe it'll make sense, but I don't know. I appreciate they didn't kill him off. Is the short answer. Spy fact versus spy fiction. [01:23:11] Speaker A: All right, shall we move on to spy versus fiction? All right, so I have something very brief. We talked about the Ospreys that he rides on there on the trailers. This is all from Wikipedia. The Bell Boeing V22 Osprey Multi Use tilt rotor military transporting cargo aircraft with both vertical takeoff and landing and short takeoff and landing capabilities. So it can go a lot of places that other aircraft, even helicopters can't go. So that is very cool. And in order just to keep things short, I was nervous when I saw him ride in one because they were very dangerous. As of November 2023, 16 ospreys have been damaged beyond repair and accidents that have killed a total of 62. [01:24:00] Speaker B: Out of how many Ospreys in circulation though? [01:24:03] Speaker A: I mean, does it matter? [01:24:04] Speaker B: It's a, you know, I don't know, it's scale. [01:24:07] Speaker A: Let's see, There is currently 400 ospreys, but half of those deaths have been since it became operational in 2007. It. So half of it was testing and half of it wasn't. So Christian, if I may brag. I was given an opportunity to ride in one. [01:24:24] Speaker B: Oh. [01:24:24] Speaker A: And I said no because I heard they're crazy dangerous. And then the opportunity ended up following apart anyway. So. Yeah, so the point is they're dangerous all right. That's where I'm going with that. Also. Do you know what? The vault is a real place. [01:24:38] Speaker B: It is fictional. That's actually one of my things. I could start there. So it seems to be inspired by the Svalbard Global seed Vault, which is an actual thing secure backup facility for the world's crop diversity. But so far as I know and was able to find, there is no actual Doomsday Vault which has is the entirety of human knowledge and nor does it exist in South Africa. Yeah. [01:25:03] Speaker A: Okay. [01:25:03] Speaker B: So I've got a few things. All of the carriers and submarines are actually real submarine names and types. The Russian aircraft, Admiral Kutznetsov is. Is the only carrier in the Russian navy. However, it has been out of service and under repair since 2018 and has been hampered by accidents, embezzlement and other setbacks. If this I believe this movie is supposed to be set in 2025 or 2026, so. But it would not be active. Now the Russian submarine Belgorod, which we also see is a modified design of the Ostra 2 class and it is also it is in. It is in service and is currently the world's largest operational submarine. And the mid this the sub that's connected to it, the Losharik, is also actually real, the mini sub. But that is all. All of this is according to Wikipedia. Its status is laid up which means it currently not opera option operational. I think it was undergoing a refit. Oh, and then there was a fire in 2019 that occurred on on the ship which killed a lot of 14 seamen. [01:26:23] Speaker A: Oh wow. [01:26:24] Speaker B: I thought Ospreys and the submarine may remain out of service until 2024. 2025 according to Wikipedia. Now on the American side we have the USS George H.W. bush, which is a Nimitz class. It's the last Nimitz class of of the US Navy CVN 77, obviously named for the 41st President of the US as well as a former Director of Central Intelligence. And H.W. was a naval aviator during World War II, so it is currently active. Its home port is Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. Lastly, we've got the USS Ohio, which is the lead boat of her class of nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines. It's the fourth and fourth vessel of the US Navy to be named for the state of Ohio in active service, according to Wikipedia. But actually in 2020 it was announced that the Ohio would be decommissioned and enter the ship submarine recycling program by 2026. [01:27:25] Speaker A: Huh, interesting. [01:27:26] Speaker B: I've got or the sound surveillance system was the original name for a submarine detection program based on passive sonar developed by the US Navy to track Soviet submarines. Actually the name was changed in 1985 to the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System or IUSS. I haven't read too much about it, but it seems to work pretty much how they show it in the movie. Now, St. Matthew's island, so far as we know, does not actually have a Sosa station, but the US Coast Guard did maintain a Loran station on the island during the 1940s. And Loran was a hyperbolic radio navigation system developed during World War II and it was used to navigate. Now the okay. The first recorded attempt at settlement on St. Matthew island occurred in 1809 within a Russian group led by Demid Kuliakov established an experimental Outpost, but its current only inhabit. Current inhabitants are arctic foxes and insular voles as the only mammals, although occasionally polar bears will visit to pack the ice. Now, vhf, otherwise known as very high frequency. Did you know that that's what VHF stood for? I did not. [01:28:48] Speaker A: I actually did, yeah. [01:28:51] Speaker B: So it's the designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves from the 30-300 MHz. And so it is used for the transmission of analog TV as well as other other things like air traffic control. I've got two more things. The pressure suit that Ethan wears is fictional, but it seems to be based on what's called an ADS or atmospheric diving suit, which is a small one man submersible principle which can, you know, resemble a suit of armor. Now they've been around since 1715 and that's like the very bulky ones that you've seen in like old movies with like the bubble helmet and all that. Now they look more like that than what Ethan wears. Now I've got from joyjewelers.com we've got the meaning of a St Christopher medal. Again as a Catholic notion, but is it since spread to people of different religious backgrounds? It originates from the worship of the figure of St Christopher, a martyr that lived during the third century during times of the Roman Empire. And the name means Christ bearer in Greek or one who carries Christ. Yeah. So it's, it's a medal of the people carry for protection or sense of protection. And very lastly, this one is interesting. So the 5D optical drive, real or at least theoretically real. It's known as the 5D optical data storage, also branded as the Superman memory crystal, a reference to the Kryptonian memory crystals from the Superman franchise. So it's an experimental nanostructure glass used for permanently recording digital data. It's not actually fifth dimensional. Like there's no five dimensions. It's big. The difference is that it's, you know, it uses two optical dimensions and three spatial coordinates to write the material. Hence 5D. It's not five dimensional necessarily, just called 5D. Now currently they have used it to encode, to encode the human genome and it is stored in the memory of Mankind archive which is located in the world's oldest salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria. Now this actually is probably the closest thing we have to the Doomsday vault which was, it's, you know, but it's not backed by any kind of government or country. It is actually open source. And there's actually a noted here that the project is open to the public. And the creator emphasized this is not a doomsday project. [01:31:18] Speaker A: Come on. Why not? [01:31:19] Speaker B: And the way this works is basically all these tablets that have carry the data on them rather than a network drive. All right? And that's what I have for spy fact, for spy fiction. Favorite quotes. [01:31:35] Speaker A: Okay, so now it is time for our favorite quotes. I didn't. I know. I didn't take notes from the theater. I have a couple from Captain Bledsoe, who's my favorite character. I did like. If you want to poke the bear, you come to the right man. And I also like Ethan says you must be Captain Bledsoe. And Captain Blood so says, and you must be out of your mind. [01:31:54] Speaker B: He's apparently a character in Severance, which I've not watched, but I've heard good things. That. That actor. [01:31:59] Speaker A: Yeah, he's. He's all right. [01:32:00] Speaker B: I've got. I mentioned before, you know, you've spent too much time on the Internet. I've got Benjamin. Basically the motto of the imf, we'll figure it out. Luther's last spoken line when he's alive. [01:32:12] Speaker A: Oh, and did we talk about in Dead Reckoning when Ethan. [01:32:17] Speaker B: Wrath of God. Yes, we talked about was. [01:32:23] Speaker A: Okay. I don't think the name Ethan has. [01:32:26] Speaker B: Ever been in our recording. You. You asked why didn't he say Hunt? And I said it's because he never calls him Hunt. He calls him Ethan. Ethan all the time. All right. [01:32:35] Speaker A: That's right. [01:32:36] Speaker B: Lastly, my last favorite quote is yes. One of the other repeated line for those we never meet. I like that. [01:32:45] Speaker A: Was that only these two? [01:32:47] Speaker B: Or whether the concept, the notion of the oath and the choice is original to these two films. It's been retconned. But I like the idea of we live and die in the shadows for those we hold close and those we never meet. [01:32:59] Speaker A: So is the idea that everyone in the IMF is. [01:33:01] Speaker B: Now, we've talked about this and yes and no. We don't know. There definitely is or was some sort of infrastructure in the imf because someone has to be setting up all these dead drops. Whether or not all the tech people are also criminals, we don't know. Probably not. [01:33:15] Speaker A: Probably not. What was Benji for? [01:33:18] Speaker B: We did talk about that. Somehow. Yes. And then we said somehow he became a field agent and he talks about it in Dead Reckoning, that we've all been right where you are right now. And Benji says it too. So who knows? It's a big retcon, but it's one that I'm willing to accept and also I retconned it or head candidate. You know, that. That, you know, the IMF started off this way, and then as it grew and it became more of a, you know, standard operation, you know, they have a headquarters in MI3, and then one of the entire IMF gets disavowed in Ghost Protocol. When they rebuild the IMF, they go back to their old methods and start offering people the choice again. So I don't know. So those are my favorite quotes. Shall we move on to our ratings? [01:34:04] Speaker A: Ratings, yes. So, as always, we do our ratings. On a scale of 1 to 10 martinis, 1 being Avengers 1998, and 10 being even better than Ghost Protocol, how would we rate Mission Impossible, the Final Reckoning? [01:34:23] Speaker B: Sure, let's hear it, Zach. [01:34:25] Speaker A: Okay, don't kill me. [01:34:28] Speaker B: Cards on the table. I'm not gonna give it a 10 out of 10, but I'm curious. What do you. I'm legitimately curious. What do you thought? [01:34:33] Speaker A: Well, what did you get? [01:34:34] Speaker B: Reckoning. I gave a 9.5, but I was really riding the hype on that one. After re watching, I probably lower to an 8.5 or a 9. It's still a good movie. I still enjoyed it a lot, but I don't think I would give it the full 9.5. I was also rid. Type of. I got to see it in IMAX in the giant screen, which I didn't get to do for this one. So who knows? Maybe if I saw this one again, I might rate it higher. But let's. Let's. Let's hear your opinion, Zach. Oh, and if you want to know what you rated it. Okay, so you rated it a six. It was a six. [01:35:04] Speaker A: Six and a half a six. Okay. All right, so I'll start with the good stuff. Mission Impossible movies have never had strong villains. I think it's safe to say the villains are never the strong suit. Except for three with Philip Seymour Hoffman, like my favorite one, Ghost Protocol, the villain is some generic arms. [01:35:25] Speaker B: Actually, he's not. It's even better than you. He's an international Swedish special ops. [01:35:32] Speaker A: He's boring. [01:35:33] Speaker B: No, I agree with you that he's not. Even though it's a great movie, the villain is not the most compelling part of it. Right? [01:35:40] Speaker A: So in contrast, this is a really good villain. A really interesting villain. And his slightly less interesting avatar, Gabriel. Or I should say it, because it's the entity. So I thought that stuff with the entity was great. The evil computer, how different it was, the world really being impacted by the events of the story in a way that it's really not how scary it was like psychological cosmic scares I thought was really refreshing, as you know. I like things that are different Mission Impossible movies. I know we love them, but they're very formulaic. Yeah, I think you would agree with that. There's always a girl. There's always a heist. There's always a MacGarth. [01:36:19] Speaker B: There was no real heist in this. [01:36:20] Speaker A: What else? There's always shooting. Yeah, exactly. [01:36:25] Speaker B: Sure. [01:36:25] Speaker A: Well, they always break into something. They always. He always jumps off of something, whatever. And this didn't have any of that. The world is scary. We got the Mass Effect stuff that we talked about. There were almost no masks. That's all really good. [01:36:41] Speaker B: Sure. [01:36:42] Speaker A: That's the good stuff. I don't like that still. Okay, so now very briefly about the bad stuff. [01:36:48] Speaker B: Okay. [01:36:49] Speaker A: It was too long. We talked about this. Everything was too long. Another good thing is there's no car chase. [01:36:54] Speaker B: Briefly. [01:36:55] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a very, very brief car chase. Yeah, I got my fill of car chases in the last movie. So the bad stuff is it's too long. And the character nostalgia stuff doesn't work for me personally. We talked about this. I know I said meta. You don't agree that it's meta, but whenever they try to talk about the history where it's like, Ethan, stop and think about all the stuff you've done over time, that never really appeals to me. Also, while I'm laying into it, don't kill me for this, Christian, but I never found Ethan Hunt to be a particularly compelling character as a character. Like, I got like Tom Cruise, but Ethan Hunt is about as a generic male protagonist action hero, as I feel you can get. So in summary, I liked the movie more than the first one. And the amount of masks was. Was good. And it had a lot of stuff going on. And I'm feeling generous, so I'm going to give it an 8 out of 10. [01:37:47] Speaker B: Wow. You are feeling generous. [01:37:50] Speaker A: There was. I asked to part with the submarine. There's a lot. There's a lot of stuff to like. [01:37:54] Speaker B: And only a little fascinating to hear you say that because I feel like. And we ran into this problem with Dead Reckoning as well. It feels like you've done a lot of complaining. [01:38:05] Speaker A: I can only come. I only really complain about stuff that I like it. [01:38:08] Speaker B: See, that's. Yeah. [01:38:10] Speaker A: The good stuff. I wanted more. [01:38:13] Speaker B: I want. [01:38:14] Speaker A: The flaws of this movie is there wasn't enough of the good stuff. [01:38:17] Speaker B: Interesting. There was a lot of stuff like. And I'm not, you know, begrudging you your opinion or anything. We ran into this in Dead Wrecking 2, and I think I chided you and said maybe sandwich it with a compliment first instead of just laying into it, which you did here. So I appreciate that, that you even if subconsciously at the heart, but yeah, eight out of ten. All right. All right. So how do I. How do I judge this movie? This, like, this movie, it is. It is the culmination of years of a franchise, three decades of a franchise. And a franchise that I was there from the very beginning and obviously have a very personal connection to the franchise. And even knowing that I knew that this was not going to be a cameo filled Avengers endgame style on your left portal scene thing, for a second, I thought they might do it, but. But I knew intrinsically that it was not going to be that movie. Did they have callbacks and references? Sure. But for the most part, those references, other than the montage in the very beginning, played a role in the story. And they weren't just more or less cameo for cameo's sake. It was all right, we're gonna have William Donlow Shrub. We're gonna have him actually play a role. And he played a much bigger role than I thought he would. I thought he was gonna be there and then disappear or die and. But no, he's there through the end of the film almost. Yeah. [01:39:40] Speaker A: Surprise. [01:39:40] Speaker B: And I appreciate it. And like, he's a character that, you know, I remember from the very first one until the point where he's caught or, you know, he sees that the knock list has been stolen. And then Kittredge said, I want him manning a radar tower in Alaska by the end of the day. Just mail him his clothes. And we come back to him 30 years later, but for a good reason. And so I appreciated that. Being a Marvel fan and a Star wars fan. I appreciate the, you know, I like references to Pat things. Has it gotten out of control in current media? Yes. Does not everything needs to be connected to everything else. Yeah, it makes the world too small, especially in the galaxy far, far away or a multiverse. [01:40:24] Speaker A: That's why I didn't like that guy being the son. [01:40:26] Speaker B: But it makes sense because he's in Clandestine Services. If he was a random person on the street and it turns out he's. He's the son of Jed Phelps. Why does that matter? He's in the service because he wants to find out what happened to his dad. And then he finds out that his dad is given. Was given the choice. And then later on he, you know his dad is. Turns out to be a traitor anyways, so I like that. I. And it was for all the people who were fans of the original series who are mad that the main character of the original series turned out to be a villain. Because it's. If in the very first Star Trek movie you had Captain Kirk turn out to be the villain. Yeah. [01:41:11] Speaker A: So I can see why people. [01:41:12] Speaker B: For those, like, for those who were okay, this is a small redemption of. Now we've got a heroic Jim Phelps again. But the action. For me, it all worked. I was on the edge of my seat, especially on. In the submarine stuff. Even though it's not really action, that's tension. The. I liked the. The biplanes. It was really thrilling. It never reached the highs of Fallout for me, though. It feel. It felt like an analog version of the. Of the Fallout helicopter chase. [01:41:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Where he's on the helicopter. [01:41:49] Speaker B: But I still enjoyed it, but it just. I didn't feel as good to me I was. But I was trying to judge it on its own and it still worked. I don't think it was as good as that. Even though their stunts were more ridiculous and crazy than Fallout was. I feel like I like the new team that is. That was formed. I do like Grace. I found it fascinating. There's not a single mention of Ilsa other than a brief flashback in the montage. I know Benji is always obviously great. I liked Degas in there and I liked that he joined the team. He was a fun little part of the last film. He didn't really have much to do, but here he gets a lot more to do. Paris Palm Clementev is great there and I really, surprisingly liked the. [01:42:27] Speaker A: The. [01:42:27] Speaker B: You know that Don Low and Tapisa get to join the team too. So a new team, it's not, you know, the same core team we've had for the last two films of Benji, Ilsa and Luther and Ethan. So it's a change up. And like you said, like, you know, there was a ch there. It was diff. It was different than previous films, but still oven things together from previous films, like the Rabbit's Foot. I kind of. I haven't rewatched Emma My3 yet since final Reckoning, but I want to just see will my thoughts on it improve now that I know what the. Now that they've definitively said what the Rabbit's Foot is. And I've actually seen the break in, which are the two biggest things that bothered me about that film. I don't know if I mentioned that in our review. When we did it. [01:43:10] Speaker A: Yeah, you did. Yeah. [01:43:11] Speaker B: So hopefully. So I do like this film. It's not the best in the series and I'm not going to reveal my rankings until we cover the two films that we have. Have. Haven't covered yet. So it's sometime in the future. But I've been wavering between the seven and a half and eight and I can't let this be the one time you rank a Mission Impossible film higher than me. [01:43:32] Speaker A: I think we were looking for different things. [01:43:34] Speaker B: I'm gonna. I will give it that 8 out of 10. And you know, I did like it. And like I said, like, yeah, I. I'm glad they didn't kill him off. I Glad it's. The adventure continues and that, you know, he's still out there. You know, Ethan Hunt does. Even if we don't see any of his further adventures, it's. They didn't kill him off. And I enjoy this movie. It's not the best, but it was a good ending and as. Or a conclusion. [01:44:01] Speaker A: Good. I'm glad you were satisfied with it. [01:44:03] Speaker B: Alrighty. Anything else you want to talk about? [01:44:06] Speaker A: Are we. Are we done? Anything else? No, I think that. I think that's it. [01:44:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that's all I would say. And. Yeah. So look forward to. We've got two more Mission Impossible movies left to cover. We will cover that at some point in the future and then we will put a close on that franchise. Wow. [01:44:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. At least until they reboot it again as a game show on Amazon Prime. [01:44:28] Speaker B: Once we finish Fallout, that'll. That'll be it. And that's. Wow. That's. Okay, hold on. I just need a moment to reflect on that. That's, you know, the 30 years of a franchise. Well, we've covered one of the series. I'm just saying. But. But the series is at least in its own. [01:44:44] Speaker A: But. [01:44:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So. Wow. That's the 30 years of my life. Crazy. Okay. Yeah. So let's, let's. We can wrap this up now. [01:44:51] Speaker A: Nice to have a. It's nice to have things just end instead of becoming worse and worse and worse and worse until eventually it gets canceled. Right. Anyway. But us Spy Fi guys are going to get canceled. [01:45:02] Speaker B: Fingers crossed. [01:45:03] Speaker A: Let's hope not. But anyway, thank you all for joining us here. You can find us on social media at the Spy Fi guys on Facebook, Blue sky, Instagram and YouTube and also our merch store@redmobile.com and I'm. [01:45:18] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Spy Fi guys. If you enjoyed our podcast, please be sure to give us a five star rating on itunes. The theme song from this podcast is Mistake the getaway by Kevin McLeod from Incompetech.com licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 Films, Books and television shows reviewed by our podcasts are the intellectual property of their respective copyright holders and no infringer is intended. [01:45:45] Speaker A: This is a personal podcast. Any views, statements or opinions expressed in this podcast are personal and belong solely to the participants. They do not represent those of people, institutions, or organizations that the participants may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity. On Unless explicitly stated, any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. [01:46:10] Speaker B: You can find our podcast on social media at the Spy Fi Guys on Facebook, Blue Sky, YouTube, and Instagram.