Mission: Impossible - Fallout - Part 2

[Hunter Rider]

Why do you keep going back to the idea that he needed to invent things for him to be the big, obvious influence on the direction a lot of Hollywood blockbusters have gone? Who is talking about Greengrass' next film? What movies did Greengrass create that had the effect that Begins, TDK or Inception have had? I say this, rather loving Greengrass' films.

It's like saying, there was sci-fi before Star Wars. Well of course there was. But that didn't mean Star Wars didn't influence all of cinema when it came out. There were movies like Pulp Fiction before Pulp Fiction. But that does not change the impact it had. Nolan is the guy who can make movies like Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk and end up on the right side of 500m at the box office.

Also I wouldn't boil it down to the films being darker and realistic. But he definitely grew up the material, though not in the ugh way someone like Snyder would say. He made looking at material like Planet of the Apes or Mission: Impossible as being able to be more a thing.

The reason I bring up inventing things is because all he did was recycle stuff done years ago, he didn't invent darker, more mature tones for genre movies, he didn't create big, in camera action sequences, if you look at any of his movies you can see the people he's lifitng from very clearly, other than the use of IMAX cameras I think his influence is being overblown to ludicrous levels. Star Wars and Tarantino took the genres they were delving into, to another level, Nolan didn't do that, he simply brought back using more practical action and a less bombastic approach, and where genre films were leaning into the absurdity, he looked for ways to justify them.

As far as why people aren't looking for the next Greengrass movie, does that make his Bourne movies less influential, because they made less money and he's less into genre fare than Nolan? and this coming from someone that was not a huge fanboy of the Bourne films. I mean if we are measuring wallets then lets get Michael Bay in this conversation, a man Nolan has openly admitted admiring and copying when it comes to his action sequences.

 

[DACrowe]

Moviefan1 “did you see Mission Impossible:Fallout”?
Moviefan 2
“Sure did, Nolans a GENIUS!”

Touché.

 

[DACrowe]

Ethan drives the BMW under a bridge structure very similar to the elevated train platform, while Ilsa is on the bike above him rather than in a train, but the framing of the sequence couldn't be a much clearer homage.


He pioneered the use of IMAX without doubt, but that was just a tool, more than an actual influence, he showed it can work and others started to use it. As far as his influence on Skyfall, again are we just talking technically with the beginning and end sequences? If so and Mendes took that from Nolan then ok, but he could have looked further back and saw it. It's been a while since I watched TDK but I don't remember the armored truck ending up in the water, I really didn't see much of a similarity with the sequences, both brilliant, but TDK's chase had a lot more gags where as Fallout's was pretty much about the raw speed driving of Ethan and putting the audience right in there with that camera mount rig McQ uses due to Cruise doing all his own riding/driving/flying.


True, and I would agree that the success of Nolan's Batman movies and then Inception has put the in camera big scale spectacle back in the game and other directors are now following suit, however this discussion is kind of different to the initial point I thought was being made, we are talking the technical side of movie making now, where as I originally thought we were talking about the tonal approach to genre movies, which was why I mentioned the Bourne Identity.


Lol. I wonder if it was just the batsuit hindering Nolan, I know he did a bit better with the fight scene in Inception even though it was a gimmick fight.

I think we're talking around some of the same stuff. But yes, Nolan didn't invent most of this stuff, he just re-popularized it in this century while the rest of the industry was going a different way. And I think the way he did it (emphasis on tension, visual starkness in the case of Skyfall, IMAX photography for the stunts, a definite focus on drawing parallels between our popcorn and our reality, with Silva clearly being Mendes' version of Nolan's Joker, the manifestation of terrorism's "chaos" anxiety, etc.) has inspired how other filmmakers approach it.

Skyfall is more blatant and Mendes has talked openly about it, so I won't belabor that point. But yes, there are things in Fallout that are familiar. The armored car goes in the river in both, or for example the music going out during the fist fight in the bathroom, which makes the brutality of it seem more visceral and real, is a trick Nolan did in The Dark Knight (no music during the car chase with the truck flip) and The Dark Knight Rises (no music again during the fight scene where Bane breaks the Bat).

I won't keep underlying it, because he also ain't the first guy to not use music during an action scene... but let's just say the influences are there to me, the same way that in Rogue Nation McQ was clearly borrowing from the climax to Hitch's The Man Who Knew Too Much where there is an assassination attempt at an opera that will occur on a specific high note that the heroes have to stop. And it was glorious.

It's there if you want to see it.

P.S. Yes I do think it was the Batsuit, at least in part, because that hallway fight in Inception is super-dope.

 

[Kane52630]

 

[titansupes]

^ Don't forget the denouement of the movie, which is trademark Nolan (ending with a character voice over summing things up over cutaways of people wrapping up loose ends).

"He's the hero we deserve..."
"Brand. She's out there..."
"We shall fight them on the beaches..."

"The world needs the IMF..."

As it was leading up to that I could sense it coming and willing it not to happen, because it would have been as obvious as the music. Heck, Cavill even got a bit of a [BLACKOUT]Two-Face look[/BLACKOUT] at the end.

 

[Hunter Rider]

I think we're talking around some of the same stuff. But yes, Nolan didn't invent most of this stuff, he just re-popularized it in this century while the rest of the industry was going a different way. And I think the way he did it (emphasis on tension, visual starkness in the case of Skyfall, IMAX photography for the stunts, a definite focus on drawing parallels between our popcorn and our reality, with Silva clearly being Mendes' version of Nolan's Joker, the manifestation of terrorism's "chaos" anxiety, etc.) has inspired how other filmmakers approach it.

Skyfall is more blatant and Mendes has talked openly about it, so I won't belabor that point. But yes, there are things in Fallout that are familiar. The armored car goes in the river in both, or for example the music going out during the fist fight in the bathroom, which makes the brutality of it seem more visceral and real, is a trick Nolan did in The Dark Knight (no music during the car chase with the truck flip) and The Dark Knight Rises (no music again during the fight scene where Bane breaks the Bat).

I won't keep underlying it, because he also ain't the first guy to not use music during an action scene... but let's just say the influences are there to me, the same way that in Rogue Nation McQ was clearly borrowing from the climax to Hitch's The Man Who Knew Too Much where there is an assassination attempt at an opera that will occur on a specific high note that the heroes have to stop. And it was glorious.

It's there if you want to see it.

P.S. Yes I do think it was the Batsuit, at least in part, because that hallway fight in Inception is super-dope.

Re-popularized old techniques? Sure, I could go with that, I mean the lack of music aspect always takes me back to Bullit, where the engine was the soundtrack. I honestly can't recall the Armored truck going into the river in TDK, but in Fallout there was a reason for that so I still don't know about that one being anything more than a coincidence. Skyfall's whole Silva plot was a straight lift of Nolan's Joker, I agree there, except Silva then had to throw a train at Bond after the purposely getting captured twist, that was so out of sync with the rest of the movie.

A lot of it seems to come back to TDK which saw him switch from the Blade Runner aesthetic to a one more in-line with Heat, and that influenced Skyfall and I guess SPECTRE, but I don't think it was as big of an influence on Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace as Bourne was, I mean taking a character back to his roots and doing an origin movie is not down to just BB, and the grittier approach to Bond owed more to Bourne and indeed the Felmming novels IMO. Having said that Nolan's BB approach and subsequent TDK masterpiece certainly influenced the comic book genre for better and worse as everyone tried to copy the approach bar the MCU.

I saw McQ talking about the Opera sequence paying homage to Hitchcock the other day, I think with a lot of the best filmmakers of the last 40 years you can trace their influence back to him at their core.

On the subject of Nolan and action sequences, I hope his next project is more in the mold of TDK, Insomnia and Inception than his last couple of efforts, and this discussion has got me wanting to rewatch the Dark Knight trilogy and Inception.

 

[DACrowe]

Heh, I think we're at a good place, I'll just say, yes, you can track a movie's influence to its core, and even if Nolan is not an "inventor" the way he re-contextualized certain things in the last 10 years can be traced to the core of other movies, including one in theaters at the moment.

And as someone who really liked Dunkirk and Interstellar, I am fine with him changing things up in his career. Dunkirk actually was a bit of a gear-shift and response to critics who say he likes to hold audiences' hands too much and is overly reliant on exposition, hopefully it will allow him to now embrace his style more.


As for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, I hope that McQ stays right where he's at. He didn't need to come back, but now that he has and there are two very dangling threads (Ilsa and Lane), he needs to do a third movie and have a little trilogy. And if his newest movie had, ahem, more modern influences, I hope and suspect his next one will have to be wildly different again from Fallout and start looking for different inspirations to keep things fresh for himself and the audience.

 

[Mysteryman]

M I III is on TNT at 1pm Eastern 10am pacific today.
Ghost Protocol is on FXX at 2pm followed by Rogue Nation at 5 pm.
So, it is a full Mission Impossible day, if you want it to be.

 

[Mysteryman]

Fallout made an estimated 35 million dollars this weekend.
Thats better than both the second and third weekend of Ghost Protocol.

 

[TheVileOne]

The drop estimate is under 43 percent, which is good for a blockbuster type of film. Fallout really picked a good time of year to come out after all the other big summer releases.

 

[Mysteryman]

Unfortunately, MI:III is on at 1pm both eastern and pacific.
Since Ghost Protocol is on FXX at 2 pm, for that is a bit of bummer.
I think that I will stick with III and alternate with Ghost Protocol during commercial breaks until III is over.
How about you?
If you could watch only one of these 2 Mission films, which would you choose?

 

[flickchick85]

Oh wow, with legs like this it might have a shot at topping MI2 as the highest domestic grosser of the series.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Word of mouth is kicking in. I was surprised this beat Christopher Robin.

 

[Jekecy]

Oh wow, with legs like this it might have a shot at topping MI2 as the highest domestic grosser of the series.

It's amazing to me after the several good runs in this series, it's that film which is still the most successful (even unadjusted).

 

[TheVileOne]

The domestic ceiling for this franchise still isn't that high, but what are the chances it could surpass The Meg next weekend?

 

[FunkMiller]

Why do you keep going back to the idea that he needed to invent things for him to be the big, obvious influence on the direction a lot of Hollywood blockbusters have gone? Who is talking about Greengrass' next film? What movies did Greengrass create that had the effect that Begins, TDK or Inception have had? I say this, rather loving Greengrass' films.

It's like saying, there was sci-fi before Star Wars. Well of course there was. But that didn't mean Star Wars didn't influence all of cinema when it came out. There were movies like Pulp Fiction before Pulp Fiction. But that does not change the impact it had. Nolan is the guy who can make movies like Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk and end up on the right side of 500m at the box office.

Also I wouldn't boil it down to the films being darker and realistic. But he definitely grew up the material, though not in the ugh way someone like Snyder would say. He made looking at material like Planet of the Apes or Mission: Impossible as being able to be more a thing.

There isn’t a film maker more influential than Nolan, and there isn’t a movie more influential than The Dark Knight, in modern popular cinema. Aesthetics, tone, story beats, camera work... the list goes on and on.

 

[TheVileOne]

Why do you keep going back to the idea that he needed to invent things for him to be the big, obvious influence on the direction a lot of Hollywood blockbusters have gone? Who is talking about Greengrass' next film? What movies did Greengrass create that had the effect that Begins, TDK or Inception have had? I say this, rather loving Greengrass' films.

It's like saying, there was sci-fi before Star Wars. Well of course there was. But that didn't mean Star Wars didn't influence all of cinema when it came out. There were movies like Pulp Fiction before Pulp Fiction. But that does not change the impact it had. Nolan is the guy who can make movies like Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk and end up on the right side of 500m at the box office.

Also I wouldn't boil it down to the films being darker and realistic. But he definitely grew up the material, though not in the ugh way someone like Snyder would say. He made looking at material like Planet of the Apes or Mission: Impossible as being able to be more a thing.

The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Supremacy.

 

[TheVileOne]

Word of mouth is kicking in. I was surprised this beat Christopher Robin.

Good. That was a mediocre movie Disney shouldn't have made.

 

[Mysteryman]

Just curious guys,
Have you ever watched a Mission Impossible film on TV and notice something that you didn't realize when you first saw it?

 

[Mysteryman]

The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Supremacy.

Absolutely.
And that influence is still felt to this day.
Even in Fallout.
I got a definite Bourne vibe watching the bathroom fight.

 

[Yellow Cyclone]

greengrass really did let the hubris get to him by letting go of gilroy, jason bourne was cliche ridden and mediocre at best. bourne legacy was better than it in pretty much every way

 

[flickchick85]

greengrass really did let the hubris get to him by letting go of gilroy, jason bourne was cliche ridden and mediocre at best. bourne legacy was better than it in pretty much every way

Nah, Legacy was just as bad, imo. Gilroy desperately needs a director to edit him, and he can't direct action worth a damn. They both let their hubris get to them, as both are essential factors to what made that franchise so good, and it's just not nearly as good when one tries to go it alone.

 

[Yellow Cyclone]

legacy felt like it fit perfectly in the bourne universe, and not just b/c of the cameos. everything with edward norton's character, the cleanup team at rachel weisz's house, the lab flipout, final bike chase, etc. it all felt grounded enough and had that "badass" bourne factor, realistic enough but still the holy crap moments

jason bourne felt like it was doing its own cover band. the plot was really really bad and felt like a tv show inspired by bourne, then you get bourne driving down the vegas strip flipping cars like they're hot wheels in a michael bayhem joint.

i can't believe that's what they went with. the NOT-julian assange "hacktivist," the NOT-mark zuckerberg who doesn't care about your private data and sharing it with big brother. especially since the plot was done several times in other movies, most notably the dark knight with his real-time phone surveillance in the climax.

the twist with cross' origins compared to bourne was refreshing too, it set them apart and didn't make him a 1:1 clone of bourne at all

 

[Hunter Rider]

Heh, I think we're at a good place, I'll just say, yes, you can track a movie's influence to its core, and even if Nolan is not an "inventor" the way he re-contextualized certain things in the last 10 years can be traced to the core of other movies, including one in theaters at the moment.

And as someone who really liked Dunkirk and Interstellar, I am fine with him changing things up in his career. Dunkirk actually was a bit of a gear-shift and response to critics who say he likes to hold audiences' hands too much and is overly reliant on exposition, hopefully it will allow him to now embrace his style more.


As for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, I hope that McQ stays right where he's at. He didn't need to come back, but now that he has and there are two very dangling threads (Ilsa and Lane), he needs to do a third movie and have a little trilogy. And if his newest movie had, ahem, more modern influences, I hope and suspect his next one will have to be wildly different again from Fallout and start looking for different inspirations to keep things fresh for himself and the audience.

.........Sneaky!


Fair enough, I found Interstellar fairly boring in truth and Dunkirk took me multiple breaks to get through it, it just did nothing for me at all, but if it got some critical monkey off his back and he returns to the type of films he was making prior, then that's fine.


McQ switched it up neatly between Rogue Nation and Fallout, quite uniquely actually as most directors can't shake their aesthetic, so I am sure he'll roll out something fresh with Mission 7, and I certainly hope he does come back as I want that trilogy within the larger franchise.

Nah, Legacy was just as bad, imo. Gilroy desperately needs a director to edit him, and he can't direct action worth a damn. They both let their hubris get to them, as both are essential factors to what made that franchise so good, and it's just not nearly as good when one tries to go it alone.

To be honest I liked Legacy the best of the Bourne movies since Identity, but then I never got into the Greengrass stuff, I found his movies cold and the action practically impossible to make out, I actually thought the opening section of Legacy was really good, I haven't seen the bike chase since the first watch.

 

[flickchick85]

To be honest I liked Legacy the best of the Bourne movies since Identity, but then I never got into the Greengrass stuff, I found his movies cold and the action practically impossible to make out, I actually thought the opening section of Legacy was really good, I haven't seen the bike chase since the first watch.

See, I found the action MUCH harder to make out in Legacy. It's like Gilroy was imitating Greengrass poorly, so it was all just a cobbled mess. That last chase is one of the worst chases I've seen in a modern blockbuster. *shrug* Plus I just hated how wordy all the dialogue became. It made me really appreciate how much Greengrass and Liman clearly edited Gilroy down. The characters were suddenly much more long-winded, to the point of being dull. It also had no structure. First time I saw it, I went to the bathroom after that chase ended, assuming we were just entering the 3rd act, and when I came back, the credits were rolling. I was like, "wait, seriously? That's IT?" Renner and Weisz's characters were pretty terrible too, imo. Wow...I'm realizing as I type this that I actually hate that movie even more than I thought, lol.

Greengrass' action always works for me. He's pretty much the only person I trust with the shaky cam approach. I never lose my sense of spatial geography in his action scenes, which is key to a good action sequence for me.