I just came back from Rogue Nation and it was aight. Spoiler alert: the plane stunt is literally the fukking opening scene.
shyt caught me off guard and honestly it's a surprise I dug the
actual movie that came after it because nothing in the movie comes close. Which brings me to spoiler alert 2:
Dude gives 150% and says fukk a green screen
tom
97%
There's green screen shyt in here during the trademark MI infiltration scene later in the movie (I figured this is why they added the not-related-to-the-plot-at-all plane stunt so they had a
real stunt to promote). The suspense in said infiltration scene does work but it's just not on par with the classics from the series, most obviously last entry's Dubai skyscraper stunt.
What works out for the movie though is that Christopher McQuarrie has a voice of his own. It's certainly more subdued than DePalma or Woo but the movie has a lot more atmosphere and personality than the dry 3rd and 4th entry of the series. The action is a bit more rough and the bad guys feel genuinely ruthless (something that McQuarrie always pulls off). The main bad guy is yet again not looking to be a physical threat to Tom Cruise ever but the way he's written and played just makes him stand out. It kinda reminded me of how McQuarrie used Werner Herzog in Jack Reacher. No, he's not fukking with Tom Cruise ever, but he's the mastermind, if there comes a moment when he has to fukk with Tom Cruise directly it means he's already lost.
The plot otherwise doesn't make much sense (the chick keeps betraying the main bad guy and he just keeps giving her additional chances to betray him more because he believes he can convince her not to betray him or something) but it's nicely paced and outside of some shoddy action editing to hide the fact that the chick can't really fight at all the action looks good.
Basically it's just a good way to kill time and nothing more. That makes it superior to the last two entries (which I like to say again were dry as fukk) but I doubt the series will ever be as good as the original movie again, or approach the pure fukkery-induced entertainment of the second.
Random side-note, for some reason a Chinese production company is very prominently presented in the opening credits, followed by some very prominently presented Arab production company. Since they never visit China it felt kinda odd (they do visit Morocco), also because the opening credits have a Chinese actress listed alongside the main actors and I'm pretty sure she was supposed to be that one chick the movie only showed for like ten seconds during a two minute scene mostly consisting of Alec Baldwin talking to Simon Pegg. It felt like a combination of Hollywood's continued attempts to cash in on China's growing box office and the attempts of Chinese investment companies to get a foothold in Hollywood leading to a whole bunch of nothing.
just saw this tonight...IMAX....best one yet...IMO
in this one tho.
