Never say goodbye

If you are a person of a particular age, right now you are hearing one of Bon Jovi's lesser ballads playing in your head. Or maybe it's one of their greater ballads. I can't remember how many ballads Bon Jovi had. 

Today, though, I'm using it in reference to film franchises, even ones that say they are ending. 

My first movie on my final of three flights back to Australia -- the first of those less than an hour from the island of Crete to the Greek mainland -- was the final movie in the Mission: Impossible series, so final it actually has the word "final" in the title: Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. In the end, I do agree that's better than Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 2. 

And I suppose I am going to have to SPOIL this movie in order to talk about it today, so this is your fair warning of that.

I guess all we really know is that Tom Cruise does not intend to make any more Mission: Impossible movies. Or do we even know that? I think we know that. There could still be Mission: Impossible movies that don't involve Ethan Hunt, or involve a young, rebooted version of him. In fact, there will almost surely be that, eventually. 

The reason we might not know whether it's Cruise's final M:I is that this movie leaves him, and essentially all of his team, very much intact to just make another movie in another two years. 

I say "essentially" all of his team because there is, indeed, one "important" casualty from within that team. And I put that "important" in quotation marks because I would argue that Ving Rhames' Luther has been essentially an extra character for a couple movies now, showing up because Rhames is still alive (he's only 66, which puts him just three years older than Cruise) and because he is a likable screen presence, not because he is a crucial ingredient to Hunt's team. (And I'm not here to argue how crucial the tech whiz is, because I'm sure he's been a key component each time they've saved the world. I'm speaking narratively. To be honest, I can't properly remember/defend the narrative choices from what I'm calling the "Rebecca Ferguson years," which are also the years when Christopher McQuarrie made himself the final definitive auteur on a series whose first four entries were never directed by the same person twice.) 

This movie easily could have involved more of a dismantling of Ethan's team, as it seems at the very least that Ethan's own body parts should have been dismantled in a fall from a plane that involved the clear burning up of one parachute and the unclear existence of a backup parachute. But it does not.

Instead, the final scene shows Ethan in the busy Trafalgar Square, where he's flanked by team members, each symbolically appearing at some reasonable distance from him, where he can see them but they aren't right next to him, like secret service agents. It is a symbolic display rather than a moment of any narrative realism, meant to indicate that they still have Ethan's back. Having clocked their presence and shown his appreciation with a slight nod of his head, Ethan then disappears into the crowd, the final indication that he's back in the wind, as he has been for almost 30 years now. (You get the feeling this movie wishes it had come out a year later and just made it an even 30.) 

Essentially, then, not really any difference from the ending of any other M:I movie, unless that movie was clearly designed as a cliffhanger. (Which I think Dead Reckoning was? I don't remember.)

It's quite different, you will agree, from how they "ended" (again, only temporary) cinema's most enduring spy franchise, the James Bond franchise, a few years ago. 

When I saw this ending, I thought of how we as human beings -- and me specifically as one specific human being -- don't like to depart from a friend or family member without establishing, even vaguely, the next time we will see each other. 

When that exact moment of parting arrives, you become acutely acquainted with life's finalities. Some people you part from, you will never see again -- you just don't know who, or when. Surely, you expect to see all your close friends, and all your young enough family members, again, many times more depending on geographical proximity. But take my uncle, married to my dad's sister, who we saw this (American) summer at our family reunion in Georgia. I had not seen him since our wedding in 2008, and he had a stroke a couple years ago. There's a good chance I won't see him again, but of course I could not say or even suggest that when we parted. In fact, I think I said that now that we know a reunion like this is possible, we should do it again sooner rather than later. Always a prudent gesture, especially under these particular circumstances. 

To get out of the personal and go back to this movie, Tom Cruise can't seem to accept the symbolic death of Ethan Hunt as he completes what we understand to be the final of eight Mission: Impossible movies, so he just bows out with a "see you later," an indication this really could just land anywhere within the total continuity of the series. 

And that's fairly smart from the perspective of making movies. It's a good bet hedge. 

What if Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is like the highest grossing movie of all time? It wasn't, for the record. In fact, it failed to even crack $200 million domestically, which is likely not how they'd hoped to go out at all. Maybe audiences finally said "Enough, already."

But let's say it had performed how they hoped. Wouldn't there be a part of Cruise -- who at 63 can still clearly do all the stunts -- who would want to come back and make Mission: Impossible - The Really Final Reckoning - Really? And wouldn't it also make good sense to leave that one open-ended?

On the subject of whether you should ever really say goodbye or not, let's not forget that the Friday the 13th franchise made what it called The Final Chapter more than 40 years ago, in 1984. There have since been eight more films in the franchise. Like I've said on many occasions before, franchises never end -- they only hibernate until it is opportune to come back out into the sun.

And who, at the start, would have thought that Mission: Impossible would be such a franchise?

At the start, it seemed little different in aspired longevity than something like 1998's The Avengers, which I happened to watch on my last international trip back in July, the one referenced earlier in this piece -- though I'm sure they would have loved it if that one could have turned into a 30-year franchise as well. Both were big screen versions of TV shows that peaked in the 1960s, though M:I spilled into the 1970s while The Avengers was contained almost perfectly within that decade. The Avengers ran for one year longer, actually, 1961 to 1969 vs. 1966 to 1973. 

Yet on the strength of Cruise's movie stardom and one memorable scene of dropping from the ceiling into a highly secure facility, a franchise was born to rival the all-time greats in terms of its endurance ... one we are pretty sure is not actually over, only just going into a temporary state of hibernation. 

And so it is that I'll not say goodbye, only "see you later," to Mission: Impossible, and honestly, not very wistfully. The McQuarrie films have not really done it for me -- and by that I don't mean they are not useful pieces of entertainment. They just never fully grabbed me, such that I can say this last one might actually be my favorite, even though I slapped it with the indignity of a plane watch when I was already delirious from lack of sleep. (The first one without Rebecca Ferguson? Funny, I do think of myself as liking her, but maybe her function specifically within this franchise never worked for me.)

No, I'm a Ghost Protocol guy. I think that had something to do with the mythology I built up over the Burj Khalifa, which finally got its proper outlet when I visited and went to the top of that building on this past trip. I also do like J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible III and have a limited fondness for the first, though John Woo's was pretty terrible.

Anyway, I think it's fair to say we have, indeed, seen the last of Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. Ethan Hunt himself? Well, he'll probably outlive me. 

Tom Cruise is doing things I like

It doesn't feel like that long ago that we all wanted to write off Tom Cruise for his couch jumping and his Scientology and his other personality deficits that made him a creepy weirdo.

Since then, his PR team has been working subtly, quietly, to restore his good name as a fine and upstanding celebrity.

First they re-introduced Cruise's cool factor, reminding us that he does all his own stunts, and reminding us exactly how ridiculous those stunts are in a succession of Mission: Impossible movies. Impossible mission indeed. "Did you hear Tom Cruise held his breath underwater for 13 minutes for the latest Mission: Impossible?" I believe it.

But lately, improbably, Cruise has impressed for something that I never considered much of his makeup as a public figure: his conscience. 

First there was the tirade that was captured on audio against his crew for Mission: Impossible 9, or whatever number we're up to, who were shirking their COVID responsibilities and endangering the production. It was like Christian Bale but for altruistic reasons. 

And yeah, if you want to be cynical, you'd say he didn't care about the health of the people involved, only about the health of the production and how it contributed to his bottom line or his star wattage. (Because he can't make these movies forever, even if the evidence suggests that he might.) But I didn't hear a lot of people saying that. I heard a lot of people saying "Good for him."

But I don't think you can be cynical about the news this week, where Cruise put the physical symbols of his accomplishments as a Real Actor on the line for something he believed in. Unless you just want to be cynical about everything any celebrity does, which I think is a fruitless and unfair exercise. 

That's right, if you haven't read about it yet, Cruise returned the three Golden Globes he's won as a means of protesting the lack of diversity in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

That's not nothing. Not for Cruise. We may turn our nose up at the Globes for being so much less prestigious than the Oscars, but for a guy who is probably never going to win an Oscar, this may be as good as it gets.

And he threw it back in their faces.

Celebrities often don't have to put their money where their mouth is, but Tom Cruise just did. 

He's probably still a creepy weirdo, but he makes damn entertaining movies, and we now know -- almost for sure -- he really cares about people other than himself. 

That's good enough for me.

Bullshit scenes that were actually real

Most people were fans of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, but not me. I mean, I thought it was fine. I didn't get what all the fuss was about.

If you asked me to think of one thing to exemplify the problems I had with it, it was that scene where Ethan Hunt has to stick some doohickey in some slot while submerged underwater for what seemed like ten minutes. The scene went on for so long, with so few breaths taken by Hunt (i.e. none), that I remember myself thinking "Oh come on. It's a movie so you can strain credibility, but why would you strain it so far that you leave me no choice but to call bullshit?"

But here's the thing. It wasn't bullshit.

I read today that in the filming of that scene, Tom Cruise actually held his breath for six minutes.

My estimation of this guy's physical capabilities is already sky high after seeing all the stunts he's done in these movies. Now I learn he can also hold his breath for an ungodly amount of time?

(You probably knew this already, but what can I say. People learn things at different times. If I haven't learned it, it's new to me.)

Have you ever submerged yourself in a pool and tried holding your breath? I max out at about 90 seconds. And that's with turning purple in the face and forcing myself to the brink of unconsciousness. Granted, I think part of that is not knowing how long it's been, and maybe thinking you've been down there longer than you actually have. But I'm saying it takes superhuman abilities even to get to two minutes ... or maybe I just have weak lungs.

Cruise can hold his breath for three times that long.

I've read up online and and it is possible. It has something to do with a couple big inhales and a couple big exhales, and ultimately putting yourself into some kind of meditative state.

That's all well and good. But when I think "meditative state," I think of a person sitting in a yoga position, you know, with their palms facing the sky and their thumb touching their fingers. I don't think of a man thrashing around and trying to stick a doohickey into a slot.

The thing is, I don't really know why he had to hold his breath for six minutes. Unless I'm remembering it incorrectly, the action in that scene was way too complex to be captured in a single take. In fact, I'd guess there isn't a single take that lasts longer than 30 seconds. It wasn't Cruise I believed couldn't do it, because I understand how making movies works and I know he didn't need to. It was the character.

I might be able to read up more and find my answer, but I'm guessing it was the positioning necessary to do the 30-second take that required the held breath. He probably had to get down to his mark, do the shot, then swim back up for breath, all without passing out. And presumably with a flotilla of the world's best divers and medics standing by.

And though I probably should read more before posting a post like this, the point is not what the logistics were. The point is that he could actually do the thing I thought was such bullshit that it took me out of the movie.

Anyway, the legend of Tom Cruise grows.

People used to get older younger

I’m turning 45 years old this year.

It’s not until October, but it’s hanging out there with an air of inevitability. It will no longer be possible to finesse the semantics in my favor and say that I’m in my “early 40s.” “Mid-40s” will now be the only accurate term for me, and soon enough, the semantics will easily be finessed in the opposite direction to characterize me as “in my late 40s.”

While this is dispiriting in some respects, watching Road House makes it feel a little less so.

There are two actors in Road House, which I saw for the first time last night, who also turned 45 in the year the movie was released, 1989. In fact, Sam Elliott is only four days older than Kevin Tighe, born on August 9^th and August 13^th, respectively, in 1944. They are both still going strong today at age 73. They were 44 at the time the movie was released on May 19, 1989, but they officially hit their mid-40s three months later.

And my God do I look younger than they do.

These guys were old versions of 45. Actually, they were old versions of 44 at the time the film was made, or maybe even 43, but probably not. Just check out the pictures below:

Those guys do not look the same age as I do.

I’m not going to share a picture of me so you can judge for yourself. Switching from an anonymous blogger handle to my own name a few years back was a big enough deal for me, and I still don’t mention the names of my wife or my kids on this blog. Some things need to remain private.

But trust me, I look a lot younger than these guys. Granted, people do say I have a baby face. But these guys look like they could be at least ten years older than I am, maybe more.

And there’s no judgment in that. I would switch faces with Sam Elliott any day of the week. (Kevin Tighe, maybe not so much.) It’s not that I think they look decrepit, because Elliott is downright hunky in this movie. Just look at the way he runs his hands through that mane of salt and pepper hair. But it’s the sexiness of an older man, not a spring chicken like myself.

I might not have noticed it as much if the movie didn’t go on and on about how old Elliott is supposed to be. He’s the mentor to Patrick Swayze’s character, Dalton, the guy with the first name that’s begging for a great last name but never gets one. Swayze himself is no baby in this movie at age 36 going on 37, but you don’t get the sense he’s only eight years younger than Elliott. That’s just crazy.

Anyway, there are a number of lines of dialogue about how Elliott’s character, Wade Garrett (who does get a last name), is getting to be past his prime in the “cooler” business. (A “cooler,” I guess, is like the supervisor of the bouncers, the guy who is in charge of cooling heads and escorting people off the premises with a minimum of ego and violence.) THE FOLLOWING SENTENCE CONTAINS SPOILERS. Later on, the character played by Ben Gazzarra, after dispatching Wade Garrett through one of his minions, talks about “putting an old man out of his misery.” (And Gazzarra was one to talk, pushing 60 in this movie – though to be fair, he does not look significantly older than either Elliott or Tighe.)

It makes me think about that thing where Tom Cruise was the same age in one of his recent Mission: Impossible movies as Wilford Brimley was at the time he appeared as a grandfather in Cocoon, and how there was a world of physical difference between the athletic, health-conscious Cruise and the more normal, portly gentleman with the walrus moustache. Now I’m not saying I’m Cruise to Sam Elliott’s Wilford Brimley – I’d not only take his face, but also his physique and that hair, to say nothing of his voice. But I do think I look like a boy in comparison to him.

Good, I guess? Yay, I’m not the oldest looking nearly 45-year-old out there. And despite my baby face, I’m doing the best to make myself look grizzled, as my sideburns are almost completely white, yet I keep them around.

I guess I’m probably somewhere between Tom Cruise and Wilford Brimley, which is probably the best I can hope for.

Tom Cruise can run

You know what a lot of actors can't do very well?

Run.

Lately I've been noticing it a lot. Scenes in movies or TV shows that are supposed to be tense, that feature the main characters running. Except most of the time, they look like they're more worried about tripping on a loose object and stumbling face first -- the kind of fall that would risk scratching up their money-makers. I can't believe the number of directors who let actors get away with these slack-faced, controlled trots, which are all the more ridiculous because you can't look intense while running cautiously.

But not Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise can run.

In fact, Tom Cruise running is one of the main reasons I look forward to a Tom Cruise movie. That guy runs like a bat out of hell. He runs like he's being chased by a pack of wolves that haven't eaten in two weeks. He runs like there's a finish line and he needs to blow past a hundred other runners before he can get there. He runs like he's running away from a bomb. (Which in movies, he usually is.)

If you don't believe me, just check it out. I'd hoped to find a single still that perfectly encapsulated the Tom Cruise Run. Fortunately, Youtube has got me covered. (Which also means that "Tom Cruise can run" is not a particularly original observation).

Here:



Even still this does not capture the quintessential Tom Cruise Run in my mind's eye.

Where other actors hesitate, Cruise commits. Where other actors demonstrate a me-first attitude, he puts the drama first. And you know it's not a double, because they usually shoot him head on. How else to capture that slightly crazed, slightly desperate, slightly shocked look in his eyes?

Anyway, it's one of the reasons I'm now looking forward to Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. (Damn, that's too much punctuation for one title). Which opens wide today after raking in the dough while opening on just a couple hundred screens last Friday.

I mean, I knew Cruise could run and I knew he would run in Ghost Protocol. The difference is that I have seen a lot of bad running recently in movies and TV, so it has whetted my appetite for an actor who can actually do it effectively.

I'm also looking forward to it because the critical raves are in. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, one of the critics I read most, even put it in his top ten of the year. (At #10, but still.) And unlike such series as The Fast and the Furious, where Fast Five has gotten a lot of positive word of mouth, I'm actually caught up with the M:Is. So I can watch this one without wondering if I'm missing some of the story (he says while stifling a bit of laughter at his own ridiculous rules).

The problem is, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Adventures of Tintin also release today, and the list of movies I'd like to see before January 24th, when I close my 2011 list, is currently 40 titles long. (Exactly 40 -- I just checked on my blackberry.)

If I want to see all these movies, I'd better run.

Hedging their bets on Cruise

Tom Cruise is in the midst of a comeback.

It's as close to indisputable fact as you can get. His last drama (Valkyrie) was a critical and commercial success. His last -- first? -- comedy (Tropic Thunder) was a critical and commercial success, demonstrating a shrewd knack for the kind of stunt casting that might jump-start his career. But the best indication of a return to business as usual is that Cruise has been inked to appear in Mission Impossible 4 -- which once itself seemed like an impossible mission, given that Paramount dumped him shortly after the release of Mission Impossible III in 2006.

And of course, Knight and Day, in which he co-stars with Cameron Diaz, hits theaters today. However, 20th Century Fox doesn't seem to have gotten the memo that it's okay to get behind Cruise again.

The PR campaign for Knight and Day is a study in half measures. There have been plenty of TV ads, and quite naturally, Cruise has been front and center in them. But one look at that poster above -- kind of a hybrid of a James Bond opening credits sequence, and the ipod campaign circa 2008 -- and you can tell something's amiss.

Where are the faces of the actors?

It's only natural, when you're promoting a movie with such big stars as Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, that you would want the public to see their faces on the poster. But not here. Their names are ginormous -- as big as the title, and the title is pretty big -- but their faces are conspicuously absent. The result is a bland poster that neither says anything specific about the movie, nor features the stars that are going to attract audiences. Because let's be honest -- there's nothing high-concept about Knight and Day. It's a star-driven movie, pure and simple.

It's as if Fox is saying, "We want to remind you that Cruise is in it -- but not too much." It's as if seeing his name will affect you only on an abstract, indirect level -- whereas seeing his face gives you too intimate a reminder why you stopped liking him.

In fact, with all the ways they've shot the advertising in the foot -- including a terrible title -- I'm surprised that I actually sort of want to see this movie. Why? Well, because of Tom Cruise.

Watching the trailers for Knight and Day -- which are certainly the best facet of its ad campaign -- I've realized that I welcome the return of Cruise in a cheeky action movie. There's been a void in my soul since the last one, four long years ago with Mission Impossible III. And that one wasn't even very cheeky. Maybe Cruise has never made an action movie this cheeky, and maybe that's why I'm sort of excited for it. He's charismatic, he's got a ready smile, and maybe the fact that he isn't taking himself too seriously looks good on him. That was one of the biggest benefits of the Cruise we saw in Tropic Thunder -- he was willing to tear down his own image (wearing a bald cap and an extra 70 pounds around the waistline) to build it back up. And though that could just be a hardcore strategic ploy, I'll be charitable to him and say that it was just a case of having fun with himself and hoping it reflected well on him. It did.

Whether 20th Century Fox was right to be skeptical about Cruise's influence on their movie will play itself out over the course of the five-day weekend, which they've given this movie by releasing it on a Wednesday. And you can read either positive or negative things into that as well. Usually, a studio releases a movie on Wednesday when it feels very confident in it, and wants to extend the opening weekend by a few days to make the Sunday night total look more impressive. However, that could also be viewed as a defense mechanism -- give it a few extra days so that the people who aren't analyzing things very closely will think it stacked up well against the movies that were released on Friday. But which careless box office analysts, who just fell off the turnip truck yesterday, would that be?

Like almost every other typical summer release that has come out so far this year, I probably won't catch it in the theater. That way, I'll have a bunch of stupid popcorn movies to watch this fall, when I have a crying baby and can't make it out to the theater anyway.

Spinoff city

There was a time when spinning off a character to his/her own unique entertainment property was considered a sign of desperation, or the worst kind of creative malaise. Can't quite let go of Friends? Move Joey to Los Angeles and give him his own show. Needless to say, it didn't work out in that case.

But sticking with television, there are also the examples where that kind of decision is genius, and creates television that rivaled the original program in terms of popularity and/or critical acclaim. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'd bet Fraser won more Emmys than Cheers.

Movies are similarly strewn with successes and failures. I probably don't need to list them here. You know your Beauty Shops from your Evan Almightys. (In case it's not obvious, Beauty Shop is good -- really! -- and Evan Almighty is bad.)

Today I'd like to talk about two other recent examples of the trend -- one of which is already available for your viewing pleasure, one of which has just been announced. Both are based on two of the funniest movies of 2008.

Needless to say from the poster art above, the first is Get Him to the Greek, which I saw on Saturday night. Get Him to the Greek follows the character of Aldous Snow, played by Russell Brand, from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, one of the funniest and best written comedies in years. Snow's the lanky and stylish British rocker who's sleeping with Sarah Marshall (Kristin Bell), recently broken up from our hero, Peter (Jason Segel). In a lesser film, Aldous would have been a nasty prat who didn't have an ounce of humanity. In this film, he's charming, funny, and basically a good guy, except that he likes to sleep with everything that moves and is a little full of himself. He was the film's breakout character, which is saying a lot, considering how good all four of the main characters are.

Why spinning off his character worked: In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, we only got to see Aldous Snow in the context of a brief Hawaiian resort vacation -- in other words, about the least likely place for an urban partier like him to be. (Okay, reformed partier -- he's sober.) Get Him to the Greek promised not only to show us the more usual environment for Aldous Snow, but also what he's like when he's off the wagon. That gave the spinoff a purely plot-driven reason for existing. But more importantly, Brand's portrayal of the character -- the rocker as a funny and complicated human being, not as merely a symbol of excess and entitlement -- gave the spinoff its potential emotional core. Because we like Aldous Snow, we want to see what makes him human outside of just being a good sport when his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend crashes his vacation. We want to see what he's like with his on-again off-again soulmate (played terrifically in Greek by Rose Byrne as a similarly soulful-vapid pop star) and his seven-year-old son.

The second spinoff I'd like to discuss is a breakout character of similar magnitude to Aldous Snow, and possibly more hilarious. But I don't really expect this one to work.

If you watched the MTV Movie Awards (I didn't), you were treated to the reappearance of Les Grossman, Tom Cruise's despicable studio exec from Tropic Thunder. The fact that Cruise was even in the movie was supposed to be a surprise, especially since he's nearly unrecognizable under all that makeup and wearing that bald cap. But now that it's been almost two years since the movie was released, I'll have to assume it doesn't qualify as a spoiler to talk about him here.

Simply put, Cruise was uproarious in Tropic Thunder. His Les Grossman was a profane, revolting, and possibly only slightly exaggerated example of the type of bottom-line studio exec you could imagine having a closet (or not so closet) affection for the bling-blingy stylings of hip hop. His scenes dancing to Ludacris (he danced to the same song on MTV, with an assist from J-Lo) were perhaps the funniest of the whole movie. Second may have been him screaming spittle and threatening to not only fire, but basically kill, anyone who gets in his way. A couple days after the MTV Movie Awards, Ben Stiller announced that Grossman would be getting his own movie.

However ...

Why spinning off his character probably won't work: It's hard to watch an entire movie where you're supposed to hate the main character, even if you love to hate him. Aldous Snow presented a problem for the protagonist in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but he was ultimately very likable on his own terms, complicated enough to be human. Grossman, on the other hand, is basically a caricature -- in fact, you could say that his defining characteristic is his inability to have anything resembling a human emotion. Not only that, but unlike with Snow, we've seen him in his primary arena of operation. What surprises could a Les Grossman feature yield, that we haven't already seen in Tropic Thunder? It could be argued that we've already seen exactly as much of Les Grossman as we were ever meant to see.

What could work: Spin off Robert Downey Jr.'s character, Kirk Lazarus, and have Grossman appear as a supporting character in the Lazarus film. That's Grossman's perfect role, as comic relief for a main character who can carry a film.

Not that any of the characters in Tropic Thunder were particularly three-dimensional. That's what separates it from a character-driven comedy like Forgetting Sarah Marshall -- it's more scenario-driven, an absurdist satire. It's really a matter of preference which one you like better, but the character-driven comedy may be a better launching point for a spinoff than the satire.

Or not. I guess we'll find out next year, or whenever Les Grossman: The Movie hits theaters.