Mission: Letterboxd submission gag

This post could have also been titled "I finally saw: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning: Part 1," because indeed, I'd been one of the last holdouts. 

I wasn't opposed to seeing it in 2023, even though the entries in this series since my favorite, Ghost Protocol, have underwhelmed me. It seemed especially likely that I'd see it since I saw the mini featurette about the making of Tom Cruise's motorcycle cliff jump about six times before other movies. But I just never worked it out, and the lengthy two hour and 43-minute running time certainly didn't help, though that is of course a standard running time for a blockbuster these days.

If you read the post I wrote yesterday, you wouldn't think it was particularly likely I'd be seeing a 163-minute movie now either -- but then my son was invited over to his auntie's for a sleepover last night, meaning his usual informal claim to the living room was non-existent. So I started watching it at just after 7, and still didn't finish until after midnight -- though that was also because I stopped for dinner and to watch a show with my wife, as well as, yes, have a short nap.

There are any number of things about the movie itself I could write a whole post about, given my low bar for writing a post, but I'll just touch on a few quick ones before getting to what I'm actually writing about today. 

One thing I wanted to know is, why doesn't Ethan Hunt ever think about his wife anymore? You know, the one played Michelle Monaghan? I'm not sure if she left the franchise on bad terms, but any time Ethan has to think about his past, he thinks about another woman who died (did we see her in other movies?) as well as Ilse Faust. What happened to poor Michelle? Maybe she didn't die (I don't think she did) which is why he doesn't need to think about her.

Also, I found some of the execution in this movie really hammy. I was really distracted by a scene near the beginning when a bunch of government bigwigs are telling the CIA director about this new "entity" that's the MacGuffin for this movie and for the one coming out next week, and there's one full line of exposition about it that goes on for about two or three minutes, with cutaway images showing the "entity" in the background -- efficient screenwriting you will agree. The thing I thought was hammy was that the characters continue one long thought about it, but they trade off who's speaking at intervals of about every sentence. And there are like five characters participating in this exposition. I know that's supposed to be more interesting than if just a single person were doing the exposing, but it's artificial as hell.

The thing I'm writing about is what happens when you add Dead Reckoning on Letterboxd.

I went to add it this morning, and as soon as I clicked the submit button, the whole screen was taken over by a black computer screen with green writing on it, coming in little bursts, as green writing on computer screens does. For half a second I was like "Oh shit, what just happened," which was probably the point. I quickly realized it was a movie tie-in as it started talking about my review self-destructing in five seconds, and then a notification that Ethan Hunt had short-circuited the self-destruction sequence.

Cute. But since it went on for about 15 seconds, eventually, kind of annoying.

It made me wonder if there has been any other movie that has partnered with Letterboxd for this sort of promotional tie-in, which, when you think about it, is kind of unnecessary. I mean, I'm adding it because I've already seen the movie. I resented it a little bit, because I was able to conflate the promo with Tom Cruise's ego, and I imagined that Letterboxd isn't getting anything out it. In reality, they probably are, but maybe I'm still a little bit annoyed.

Anyway, if you haven't added Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning: Part One to your Letterboxd yet, you might do it just to see this little bit -- which I am now myself promoting, I guess. 

The Mission: Impossible release weirdness continues

As I patiently await my two critics to submit their joint Mission: Impossible review -- patiently, I swear -- I couldn't help but notice this yesterday.

What you are looking at is the marquee from Cinema Kino, downstairs from my office, which I attend on Wednesdays and (most) Thursdays.

This was a Thursday, which means it was the weekly new release day -- and also the day that was originally advertised as the release date for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, before it mysteriously came out last Saturday, as discussed here. (I still haven't figured out how to handle all the punctuation in that title, and I'm not going to look back to see if I've been consistent with previous instances.) In fact, as you could see if you blew this picture up, that date is also advertised on a poster for the movie right out front.

As you can also see, the movie is not currently playing at this cinema.

I guess I wouldn't say that it's a guarantee that a cinema will actually show a movie they've advertised in their lobby, especially if they advertise it months earlier before any of these things are settled. 

But when the movie is already released, and it's not playing despite the fact that you're still advertising it in the cinema's most prominent external location, right next to the entrance, facing the food court where everybody eats their lunch?

Yeah it's a bit weird.

If you look deeper into this photo, dear reader, you will see the posters for Insidious: The Red Door and Carmen -- two titles you will see on the marquee above.

Which means the lack of showing Mission: Impossible sticks out like a sore thumb even more.

And since I am, at least theoretically, having two other guys review this for ReelGood, I have no idea when I'll see it either.

Something weird going on with the Mission: Impossible release date

Something I have never seen before is happening with the Australian release of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, and the damned internet refuses to explain it to me.

When I was wrapping up my ski holiday, I remembered that two of my writers were supposed to attend an advanced screening of the seventh Mission: Impossible movie on Monday night and write me a review. I try to remind them they've agreed to these things, since they're younger than I am and in my experience, millennials don't have the same notion of remembering things and remaining committed to things that we sturdy Gen Xers have. I reminded them about a week beforehand but forgot to remind them a day beforehand, so I thought the next best thing was to check in with them after the fact. I didn't figure they could turn back time, but at least I'd know sooner rather than later whether I was expecting a review from them.

Well, I shouldn't besmirch their names because my fears were unfounded. They did indeed go. They didn't need some person who is (almost) old enough to be their father to provide them a paternalistic reminder.

They wouldn't, however, be ready with a review before the week was out, which I expected. They lead busy lives, or at least they perceive them to be busy, which amounts to the same thing. 

This didn't matter, though, because I knew the movie was not coming out until next Thursday, and indeed reviews were actually embargoed up until today. 

That's when one of the guys told me they'd said at the premiere that the movie was opening on Saturday.

If we had been in the same room they would have heard me scoff. Instead I wrote in our Facebook chat, hoping the scoffing tone was only in my head and not my words, "I don't think it would come out on a Saturday but I also don't think the release date is until next Thursday."

I mean, of course a movie would not come out on a Saturday. When have you ever heard of a movie coming out on a Saturday? Unless of course that Saturday falls on Christmas. 

The response came "Yeah I agree but that's what they said at the premiere and that's what flicks.com.au is reporting."

Lo and behold, it was true.

I didn't go to that website, but I did go to Hoyts. No shows Thursday, no shows Friday, but then lo and behold, shows Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and I pretty much stopped at that point.

What?

Just to establish our default terms here, movies release on Thursdays in Australia. Full stop. The only exception I can think of is Boxing Day, which is, for some odd reason, the biggest release date on the whole calendar. If Boxing Day is a Sunday, then one time a year movies come out on a Sunday.

They don't even especially seem to come out early, like you sometimes see in America when a movie jumps the standard Friday release date and comes out on a Wednesday or Thursday. See, Australian Thursday is already early. It's how I got to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny before anyone else, as well as every one of the new Star Wars movies. And since Australian Thursday night is actually only Thursday morning in the U.S., I might be seeing these movies 36 to 48 hours before my American counterparts. Not only is the release day a day earlier, but the day of the week arrives a day earlier because of the time zones. 

A Saturday? A Saturday is unheard of. It's two days late for the Thursday release date and five days early for the next Thursday.

The first thing I could think of was that Tom Cruise had mandated that this movie must screen in the United States of America before it screens anywhere else. That was the only thing I could think of to explain the odd release day. By our Saturday, the U.S. Friday would have passed and now the movie would be safe for pirates the world over.

But as far as I can tell, the movie doesn't actually release in the U.S. until next Wednesday, the 12th. So yes, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is going early for the Friday release date in the U.S., opening on a Wednesday, but it'll be four days later than Australia.

And Hong Kong, it would seem. On IMDB, Australia and Hong Kong are the two countries that have a July 8th release date. Perhaps even stranger, though since it's not in a Christian part of the world it may not matter, the movie opens on Sunday the 9th in the United Arab Emirates.

But if Tom Cruise's paranoia over piracy is not a factor in any of this, what explains it?

Dunno. The internet won't tell me.

Either I'm not googling the right search words or no one thinks it's nearly as interesting as I do.

There is one more release date for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One that we have to discuss, and that's the actual release date on this poster: July 14th. That's the Friday and that would be when you'd see this movie if all else were equal and nobody were jumping any guns to try to boost the hype. And this is the release date for countries ranging from Bangladesh to Ireland to Taiwan.

Did I say one more? Thursday the 13th -- the day that it says it's releasing in Australia from a May 25th blurb that google picks up -- has countries like Argentina, Hungary and the Netherlands.

A wide array of slightly disparate release dates is nothing new, and I only mention it because it's something we're already discussing.

The weird thing -- in this particular case, and at least from an Australian movie industry perspective -- is definitely the Saturday. You're missing anyone who might want to go to the movies on Friday night, hamstringing the opening weekend box office by excising one of the two biggest time windows for making money on that weekend.

But maybe this is just a sign of how much things have changed within the industry, and how big of a hit they know this movie is going to be. If this movie does anything like the box office for Top Gun: Maverick, they could limit the movie to weekdays before noon and it would probably still make a billion worldwide.

RSVP'ing for an advanced screening you are not attending

This week I RSVP'd for two of my writers on ReelGood to attend a July 3rd advanced screening of (inhale) Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - Part 1. 

I noticed there were two options for the sort of RSVP you could give:

1) I would like to attend

2) I cannot attend

Who bothers to click on an RSVP button in an email to open up a new responding mechanism with several screens to click through just to tell the PR department for a studio that you won't be there?

Then I wondered:

Shit, should I be politely declining all the invitations I get, just to stay in their good graces?

Seems unnecessary and certainly unlikely. However, the PR industry operates on unofficial rules of protocol, unwritten traditions that allow everyone's ego to be properly finessed and palm to be properly greased. For example, you can't attend a screening and then not write a review. Or rather, you can, but expect those invitations to dry up pretty quickly, as well as possibly a nastygram from the publicist.

I don't think I'm receiving fewer invites than I normally would just because I haven't been saying "thanks but no thanks," but you never know.

Anyway, I'm not going to start now.