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.

Over-praised action movies

I like John Wick. John Wick is fine.

BUT MY GOD, IT IS NOT THE SECOND COMING, PEOPLE!

There is a second coming of John Wick, though. John Wick: Chapter Two is scheduled for release next February 10th, and people in my Flickcharters Facebook group can't stop jerking themselves off about it.

There are at least three or four people in the group who seem to define themselves cinematically by their love for John Wick. One guy who never shuts up about it listed movies he'd watch during a recent marathon weekend. John Wick made the list, and afterwards in parentheses he included the clarification "(Because of course I did.)"

Why of course? What's so great about this film?

Oh, it's definitely good. I'll give it that. But I think that's why people think it's great -- because it's good. Good action films are harder to come by these days than they once were, so people are eager to rally around any good action film and call it great.

I think this also explains the love for Jack Reacher, another favorite in that group that is getting a sequel, though that one's ready to hit theaters this month. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (terrible title) is coming out in the U.S. on October 21st, and in Australia a day before that, on my birthday.

Jack Reacher is not good. At least, I don't think it is. I was singularly disappointed by that film, especially since I usually like Tom Cruise movies. The best thing about it was an entertaining villain turn by Werner Herzog. Everything else was pretty much tied for the second best thing about it, which was also the worst thing about it. There might have been a clever set piece or two in there, I don't remember. Jack Reacher was not worth remembering.

Yet it comes up regularly in my Facebook group, and that must be a fairly mainstream opinion, else they wouldn't have consider the movie sequel worthy. "JACK REACHER YEAH!!!" Really? "YEAH"?!?

The consequence of Jack Reacher being considered a hit by individuals who are not very discerning is that its director, Christopher McQuarrie, was borrowed to make another over-praised action movie starring Tom Cruise: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. In this case I was more conscious of tight set pieces and polished filmmaking. But I thought the movie overall was just lackluster. Maybe I've finally had enough of Ethan Hunt.

I wonder if this whole thing first started when other people saw a brilliant series of action movies in the Jason Bourne movies and I just didn't. I found them diverting, but nothing more. There have now been three in a row that I haven't seen, as discussed here.

There are two things I can conclude about being out of synch with the level of enthusiasm other people have about these movies:

1) I am just not as young as they are, or as in touch with my inner testosterone-infused teenager as they are;

2) I'm an old grump, which may be the same thing.

But I don't think I'm an old grump. One of Tom Cruise's other most recent action movies, Edge of Tomorrow, was in my top ten for the year it came out, and I gave it five stars. And I've got an action movie in this year's top ten as well: Captain America: Civil War. I don't expect it will finish the year in my top ten, but it's there now, and I've ranked more than 80 movies so far this year.

I think the real difference is that my need for action movies to be good differs from theirs, and differs from that of the average movie fan. The average movie fan earns the adjective "average" before his title (an "average movie fan" also seems to be a he) because action movies are part of his DNA. When all else is equal, he'd rather watch an action movie by a margin of two to one over any other type of movie. That's because even though he says he is, he is not really a cinephile. He is a fan of being entertained, and even though I'm making it sound like that's a bad thing, it's a totally fine reason to watch movies. One of the primary reasons, to be certain.

Well, that's not me, at least not anymore. That might have been me when I was an actual teenager, and not just channeling teenage desires as many of these people with whom I differ on John Wick, Jack Reacher and the latest Mission: Impossible movie seem to be doing. But the reason I know I'm really a cinephile is that I want any type of movie to be good, be it an action movie, a costume drama, a hard-hitting documentary or an abstract art film. The people who think John Wick is the best movie of the past five years are not even seeing those last three types of film.

Which is okay. I'm not here today to tell you how much better I am than they are, even though I know it sounds like I'm doing that.

Really, I'm here today to try to stop scratching my head about why these people love the movies they love, and I don't.

And through the writing of this, I've decided it's the opposite of someone who tries to break up with you gently:

It's not me, it's them.

Mission: Possible - Mistaken: Identity

When I was on IMDB a couple days ago, I thought, "What, have the guys at Asylum finally gotten a film to the front page of IMDB?" Asylum being that company that makes cheap knockoffs of popular movies, like Transmorphers and Snakes on a Train.

Nope, MI-5 is just a regular movie. In fact, it's based on a British TV show of the same name. And it's not even called MI-5 in all the countries where it's being released.

But the timing of the release of this movie certainly seems to be curious, in a year that already featured (just a few months ago) the release of the fifth movie in the Mission: Impossible series, which could be referred to as M:I 5 if you want to get cutesy with the nicknames and drop that whole part about rogue nations.

Do I actually think the producers of this film are trying to piggyback on the success of Tom Cruise et al and their long-running franchise? Not really, and not only because the movie is being released as Spooks: The Greater Good in some parts of the world. However, that's also an unfortunate title, given what the word "spook" has meant in the history of racial relationships, especially in the U.S. It appears it's being released as MI-5 in the U.S., in fact, specifically to distance itself from the problematic word "spooks," and not to create a conscious comparison in the viewer's mind between this movie and Mission: Impossible. And besides, the TV show it's based on is actually called MI-5, so one can hardly accuse them of conjuring some neutral title that was chosen specifically for its tendency to make people think of that long-running series based on another TV show.

Still, you can't deny that an unconscious comparison certainly benefits the film, as does the similarity of the subject matter, both movies being about spies (and featuring explosions at famous world landmarks, even if the one in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol was at the Kremlin, rather than Westminster Palace in London).

In either case, I probably won't be someone who seeks this movie out. The spy movie is already one of my least favorite genres, and I have yet to be convinced that Kit Harrington can be an effective leading man at the movies. Then again, as I am judging him only on Pompeii, which I actually didn't mind, I suppose the jury is still out.

Tiresome tropes: The jabbering coward

I finally caught Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation this week after it had been theaters for nearly a month, and was disappointed by how rote it was. The plot was rote, the dialogue was rote, the characters were rote, even the action set pieces had a certain roteness within their predominating spectacularness. That is to say, they were sort of spectacular, but they were also sort of rote. However, I suppose they were also enough for me to give the movie a marginally positive review.

One of its easiest disappointing aspects to point out was one it shares with most movies of its kind, and even many that are not of its kind. Namely, there has to be some jabbering, blubbering, more cowardly side character alongside the hero, disgorging improbable amounts of nervous, very specific dialogue, even during scenes where the sheer physical circumstances of their predicament would make such verbose nattering highly unlikely.

I'm calling this guy "the jabbering coward," and in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, that thankless role was played by Simon Pegg.

Pegg's Benji probably did the same in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, but since I liked that movie much better than this one, I didn't notice it (or don't remember, if I did). After all, he's the comic relief. After all, this is what he does.

The problem with this trope, which appears in almost every movie where there is some kind of buddy dynamic (though the traits can definitely be underplayed, which is a relief), is that the character is not really a coward. In fact, more often than not, this character is about 90% as courageous as the hero, which is a bravery ratio that holds up for Benji and Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt as well.

But strap that guy into a car being driven maniacally through the streets, and all the sudden he'll piss his pants over things that aren't a tenth as threatening as much of what he's just been through.

Perfect case in point, and there are some mild Rogue Nation spoilers to follow if you want to look away.

The notable thing about the scene screen-captured above is that it's one big set piece immediately coming on the heels of another, bigger set piece. For the sake of shorthand, we'll call them "underwater computer" and "car chase turns into motorcycle chase," because really, aren't the set pieces, and their very ability to be distilled down to these short descriptions, the reason for even making this movie in the first place? (And the fact that Cruise is going to do all his own stunts in these set pieces?) Anyway, in "underwater computer," Benji is placing himself in harm's way based on the extremely unlikely prospect that Ethan will disarm some extremely intricate and improbable security system. If Ethan fails -- and there is about a 99.6% chance that he actually will fail -- then Benji will be killed at worst, or never again see the light of day while being tortured round the clock at best. With these kind of odds, this is where Benji should be a sniffling, sniveling mess.

Yet Benji walks through that scenario coolly and collectedly, as he needs to do in order to emerge from it unsuspected. Good on ya, Benji. We wouldn't have expected anything less of you.

Until the movie tells us five minutes later to expect far, far less.

No sooner have all involved emerged (improbably) alive from "underwater computer" than they are thrust into "car chase turns into motorcycle chase." The joke is that Hunt has nearly drowned, so his ability to drive a car should be limited at best -- after all, he's responding erratically to tests of his mental acuity, and he can barely even stand. Yet The Indestructible Ethan Hunt does jump into the driver's seat, perhaps because driving is his forte and it is, um, decidedly not Benji's. That leaves Benji flailing about in the passenger seat, unleashing a stream of steady cautions and expulsions of sheer terror.

Which is really funny, because you figure Benji had probably already been through "car chase turns into motorcycle chase" at least four or five times before, but had likely never experienced an "underwater computer."

If you want to drill down deep and try to discover an actual explanation for this, you might say it's the looming threat of actual physical harm that really scares Benji. In "underwater computer," the threat is far more abstract, so there's no physical stimulus to cause him to shit his pants. Or maybe you could say that he's all the more eager to brown those boxers precisely because he's been holding in his fear for so long during "underwater computer." "Car chase turns into motorcycle chase" is, therefore, a release for him -- a release of tension, a release of bodily fluids, what have you.

But I'm not looking for a logical explanation, because neither is the script. The script is just looking for someone to provide a motormouth running commentary as a car in which he's riding is careening out of control. The script is just looking, for some reason, for someone to provide additional contrast with Cruise, to again show us just how badass Cruise is. It's not enough that he's doing his own stunts, and that "car chase turns into motorcycle chase" is only about the fourth most potentially fatal thing his character (or the actor) has done in this movie. The script has to eradicate that tiny remaining kernel of uncertainty of just how brave Ethan Hunt is by having someone sitting next to him turn into a blubbering mess, just to underscore how grave their situation is.

I say Benji deserves better, but so too does Pegg. Hasn't Pegg come far enough along in his career where he doesn't need to scream "Watch out!" every time Cruise drives through a piazza and is about to kill everyone in it, including the two of them?

I suppose in a way, it's a bit like a laugh track on a TV show. The laugh track is there to tell you when something's funny, and it doesn't have to be a bad thing. I mean, try imagining the classic Seinfeld without a laugh track. Sometimes, you just need it. If there wasn't some fool advertising his horror over what was going on, would we even know it was a dangerous situation? Well, we'd know -- but would we feel like something was missing?

If there's any positive news to the sad inescapability of this trend, it's that at least they're no longer casting actors of color to play this role. Or not as much, anyway. Used to be, the character prognosticating doom and gloom was the black character, and Hollywood thought it was balancing everything out by having this character behave heroically when really put to the test. Not realizing, of course, that it was a pernicious stereotype about black people who talk a lot that caused them to envision this actor in that role in the first place.

To all the Benjis out there, I say: Rise up! Free yourself from the shackles of the role you are required to play. Next time you're in a car and the driver seems a bit unstable, just realize you're in a movie and that you have been through far worse scrapes with this guy before. If you survived those, what makes you think your luck is about to run out now?

Or if you are scared -- as, let's face it, all of us would be -- my God, just keep it to yourself. Your unbecoming shrieking is only going to ruin the driver's concentration anyway, and then you really will crash.