Mission: Impossible - Fallout Review

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take a pre-existing, popular television series and adapt it to a film franchise. But that is not all. You must successfully please all fans of the original series you are adapting, while gaining many new ones, which will culminate in the general consensus that your film franchise is what people think of when this property is brought up. An added bonus will be awarded if there comes a point when some people don't realize an original television series exists. But this is also not all. Your film franchise must continue for 20+ years with no reboots, remakes or recasting the main star. Side characters may be shifted in and out as you see fit, but your lead character must be present in every movie and must be played by the same actor throughout the entire 20 years. It is also preferred that the actor you cast in your lead role be a popular actor in the prime of his career. Finally, your series needs to get better with time. You're not allowed to have an excellent start and fizzle out while only concluding when people get sick of mediocre sequels. Fans need to be excited for each and every sequel. In 20 years from now, you need to have the ability to put out your best film yet. This message will now self-destruct in five seconds.

Given the franchise we're discussing, I thought that would be a fun way to start this review. Said task on paper seems like an impossible mission, yet this is exactly what this franchise has accomplished. "Mission: Impossible" began in 1966 with the classic television series that was well liked. That means it celebrated its 50th anniversary back in 2016. After the initial series ended, there were several attempts to bring it back via film or a reboot series, but none were successful until the film adaptation, "Mission: Impossible," in 1996, which made $180 million that year domestically. That translates to $379 million with 2018 ticket prices and was the third highest grossing movie that year, behind "Independence Day" and "Twister." Fast forward 22 years, and yeah it's true we had a slip-up with "Mission: Impossible II," but outside that I personally think that every movie has only gotten better. "Mission: Impossible III" is better than "Mission: Impossible." "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" is better than "Mission: Impossible III." "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" is better than "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol." And now "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" tops them all. The entire ride the movie is led by the man, the myth, the legend. Mr. Tom Cruise.

The unique history of this franchise is a major portion of the reason why I love "Fallout" so much. It feels like they hit the pinnacle of cinematic success. The scope and the grandeur of this accomplishment is just so phenomenal that I feel like I'm witnessing something truly special. We live in a day where every successful movie gets a sequel. Every studio is attempting to set up a franchise with the goal to keep making money while continuing to make movies that their fan base enjoys. But how many of them succeed? But not just that, how many of them actually get better over time? It seems like what the "Mission: Impossible" franchise has now achieved is the ultimate goal. Tom Cruise and company are now standing on the Mt. Everest of the cinematic world watching as everyone tries to do what they have now done, but few have been able to accomplish this feat. In my brain right now I'm going through a lot of franchises and even among the great ones I'm able to find flaws where they don't quite match up to Mission: Impossible. Among the classic spy franchises, Bond has been going on forever, but they have been horribly inconsistent when it comes to quality. Bourne had three excellent movies to start off with, but more or less failed with the most recent two.

There's a lot of other franchises that have done well, but out of those franchises, how many of them have gone on for 20 years or more and maintained a high level of quality? And how many of them can say the later movies are the best ones? In regards to every franchise I think of, I can at least come with with an argument where Mission: Impossible is better. No, I'm not going to be so bold as to say this is the greatest franchise ever. But it may be the best spy franchise ever and, with what it has achieved, it should at least be in conversations when we discuss the all-time great franchises. To be able to witness this firsthand feels surreal to me. I honestly left the theater after seeing "Fallout" with a similar feeling as when  I saw "The Avengers" for the time. Not only was the individual movie fantastic, but the overall achievement here was incredible. This being the experience with both "Fallout" and "The Avengers." The second I walked out of the theater for "Fallout," I wanted to walk right back in and purchase a ticket to the very next showing. I felt the desire to go back and watch it every day for the next week, then buy it on DVD and watch it every night before I go to bed. Surprisingly, this feeling of adrenaline hasn't died down.

In regards to specifics with this individual movie, we begin with the plot, which we will quickly move past because, in typical Mission: Impossible fashion, this is a layered plot that is better when you go in knowing as little as possible. I'll just say it involves Ethan Hunt needing to intercept some plutonium from a group of individuals who call themselves The Apostles. They are the remnants of The Syndacite from the previous movie and they're trying to get said plutonium to a man by the name of John Lark for certain reasons. John Lark is a mystery because that is an alias. So we don't know who the real villain is or what he's really up to and why. That's all discovered as we go. Typical spy stuff, I suppose. On that note, I will admit that the movie is also full of typical spy movie tropes and cliches, but this is an instance where the movie fully embraces all of them, thus maintaining the element of fun throughout. In past movies with this franchise, I've sometimes had a hard time following the plot. It gets so twisty and turny that I blink for a second or two and suddenly I've missed a twist that effects the whole movie, which in turns causes me to get lost. "Fallout" was equally as twisty with its plot, but this time I was able to remain attentive the whole time.

Where this movie really excels is not necessarily in matters of specific plot details, but the execution of the whole film. This is where I confidently point to "Mad Max: Fury Road" as a comparison. What's the plot of that film? Well, the bad guys chase the good guys to a certain place. Good guys realize that said place is not what they thought, so they go back to the original place and get chased back. That's really it. But the action sequences themselves were so excellently crafted, the characters were so likable and the pacing was absolutely perfect that it made for a grand experience. "Fallout" mirrors this perfectly. Director Christopher McQuarrie has proven with this movie, "Jack Reacher" and "Rogue Nation" that he knows how to properly construct a masterpiece when it comes to action films. Mission: Impossible is a franchise that has become known for its excellent action sequences and crazy stunts and in no film is that presented more beautifully than in "Fallout." The movie goes from action sequence to action sequence to action sequence, yet the focus isn't lost with the bigger picture as each individual scene is handled with great care as to make sure no shortcuts are taken, thus each scene manages to take your breath away with the style, the craft and the intensity.

Implemented with all of the action sequences are endless amounts of crazy stunts that have you feeling uneasy in your chair. The thing that differentiates these stunts from other actions sequences is how real they feel. Yeah, I can have a lot of fun with a Fast and Furious movie as they also get crazier and crazier with the stunts, but when they have cars parachuting out of the skies and cars jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper, the element of realism is lost a bit because you know that it's all done with special effects and computers because the laws of physics get thrown out the window. Granted, if you're thinking about realism in those movies, you're missing the point, but with Tom Cruise and his crazy, daredevil personality, he makes the stunts feel real because many of them are. When you learn that he spent months learning how to fly a helicopter just so he could pull off the finale in the movie, your jaw drops. But you're not surprised because every movie is like that. In "Rogue Nation" he actually held onto that plane as it took flight. It wasn't fake or computer generated. Knowing this makes you nervous in every scene because you feel like Tom Cruise is actually going to die. He doesn't, but the movie squeezes every last bit of intensity possible, causing the audience to nearly pass out before recovering.

We've now discussed the endless string of perfectly constructed action sequences topped off with Tom Cruise's daredevil personality, making for some of the best overall action in any movie ever. What more do we need? Oh, how about characters and emotion with great arcs? Yeah, this movie also has those. Tom Cruise himself is much more than a crazy daredevil. He's also a dang good actor who is extremely likable. He has made his character of Ethan Hunt legendary. Returning with Ethan Hunt are his close nit group of friends in Ving Rhames' Luther Stickell and Simon Pegg's Benji Dunn. The three of them are essentially family at this point on the same level as the Fast and Furious gang. Alec Baldwin is also excellent as the boss character who is also essentially part of the team. The rest of the cast are very mysterious as you don't know what to think of Henry Cavill's August Walker or Rebecca Ferguson's Isla Faust. We also have Sean Harris' Solomon Lane lurking around and all the mystery surrounding The Apostles. I want to take about each one of them in more detail, but I'm not going to. Let's just say I loved them all. Their acting is fantastic and the level of complexity is fascinating. Henry Cavill's mustache heard round the world? Totally worth it. The man is a total boss.

Even if you were being introduced to this franchise for the first time with "Fallout," I think the level of craft with the action sequences, the crazy intense stunt work from Tom Cruise, the top-notch acting across the board and the beautifully complex characters with well-written arcs would be enough for you to be completely sold on this movie. But having a knowledge of the previous films makes the resolution of "Fallout" extremely satisfying, especially when it comes to "Rogue Nation." Given that Christopher McQuarrie directed both of them, he does a great job of interweaving both movies into one grand spectacle, meaning you should probably at least look up plot summaries of that film or watch Screen Junkies' Mission: Impossible cram it video on YouTube. I can't tell you why, but there was emotion in this film, both of extreme joy and moments of near tears. This feels like the grand finale to an epic franchise where every loose end from all the previous films are perfectly tied together. Yes, I expect there to be an M:I 7, but if "Fallout" was it, I'd be satisfied. Speaking of which, Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make M:I 7 even better. Personally I don't think that's possible as I gladly reward "Fallout" with a 10/10.

P.S. - I kinda feel bad for Jeremy Renner. He could've been in both this and "Avengers: Infinity War" this year as he had a side character who played a significant role in previous movies of both franchises. Yet he ended up in neither movie. I wonder what the cause of this was? Bad luck, possibly? All he did in 2018 was the movie "Tag." I hope he had fun with that one.