I'm a longstanding Tom Cruise fan. I've mostly been tweeting about my interest in pop singers, recently, but he's been there all along -- in my fantasies.
I actually went to see this movie on opening night -- very unusual for me, but I went to the 10:55 pm show, so there were only 5 of us in the theater. Wednesday is senior day at my theater, so I got in for half price. It occurs to me that this wasn't a great day to open a show. In some areas, it was too hot to go outdoors. In some areas there was flooding. We had an air quality alert -- recommending that we not go out -- tho I'm not sure that it's possible to keep ozone out of your house.
Actually, being in the movie theater was fabulous. They upgraded their filtration during the pandemic. The air was great. I found that my balance and focus, which had been affected by the ozone, were much better once I got into the theatre. Everyone should go to the movies during Air Quality Alerts.
I know Tom has said that he likes to go on opening night so that he can enjoy the crowds. I'm still sort of quarantining.
I noticed that the previews were much louder than the movie. I wore ear plugs during the previews. Also, I didn't feel attracted to any of those movies. Somehow they seem to have not gotten my genre. Except maybe the one about Bob Marley would be interesting.
Anyway, one of the things about action movies with Tom has been that I know he's having fun when filming. He just loves this process, passionately. Even tho some of these movies are very suspenseful and violent, somehow the fact that he's having fun comes through and makes the movie seem lighter.
I really noticed that during his mummy movie. I wouldn't normally go see a horror movie about mummies, but I went because of him and wasn't disappointed. That underlying feeling that it was a fun experience came through.
I haven't seen all his mission impossible movies. I did see IV and loved it.
This one was different from what I expected, though. Tom's character had become much more conflicted. He really looked miserable a lot of the time. Probably he was miserable. He has talked about how hard the shut down was for him and he was filming during the shut down.
Maybe he's getting into more nuanced acting. A lot of people have said that they think he can't really act. Maybe he was trying to prove them wrong.
I really like what Katherine Hepburn said about acting -- that her fans wanted to see her, her on screen persona, in different roles. They didn't want her to be completely method. They wanted her familiar personality to come through. She had a certain amusing spunk. It was fun to watch.
Tom has been like that too. He loves the stunts. His love of those stunts comes through -- subtly, without destroying the suspense. I remember after one of the Mission Impossible movies (maybe IV) it was said that he wanted to do the bungie jumping stunt over and over, far beyond the number of takes required for the movie, just because he loved the bungie jumping.
In the pre-movie publicity, they got into that as well -- talking about all the prep he did for the scene where he rides a motorcycle off a cliff. He spent months breaking down the parts of the stunts, so that he could put them together without dying.
The fact that he was portraying fear, sadness, hatred, even depression much more effectively than ever before, in my opinion, took away from the enjoyableness of the movie. I don't want him to be a method actor. I want him, like Katherine Hepburn being Katherine Hepburn, to be Tom Cruise -- cool, collected -- cruising above the hoy polloi.
I also want to address the women. The mission impossible team has the classic sexist composition of three men and one women -- the classic composition that has shut so many females out of acting, while providing more opportunities for men -- even though the pool of aspiring actors is more heavily female than male. However, here they did add some prominent women -- so there were 4 of them -- tho many more men than women in under five roles.
YET... I can't help but notice that Tom is in there -- heavily made up to look younger -- at 60, while the prominent women are all *much* younger. There aren't any older women.
Hellooo, Tom! I know you want to be inclusive. Where are the older women?
I found parts of the movie fairly confusing. There were multiple teams of people going after the MacGuffin. I found it hard to keep track of who was who. Who was behind which team? Who was supposed to be in the US government team? Who was in the main antagonist's team? Too many faces. More diversity might have helped. They did have a prominent black and a prominent Asian who were easier to spot and keep track of. However, there weren't so many diverse people in the under five roles in the teams. Part of this was intentional, with the masks and all, but part of it was just too many people on screen.
They did say that they were making a lot of things go on at once so that people would have to have a big screen to see it. But I would have to see it multiple times to see all that stuff. That might benefit them, but not me so much.
There was no obvious LGBTQ representative. My son noticed in the latest SpiderMan movie there everyone was hetero normative. Here there wasn't a whole lot of sex/romance -- a bit of cuddling -- but no one had time for sex. Some people were probably just single, which is good, as most people in the USA are now single. However, my son is sensitive to this because his sister and other parent are trans -- so he wants to see more diversity in the the LGBTQ area as well.
OTOH, when most people's love lives are not examined, I guess it doesn't matter. This is more about people's professional/financial lives and less about their romances. The typical Bond movie will always have a gratuitous sexual scene. Why? It's good to avoid that. Let's focus on the action. I'm glad that they did.
I was really happy to see that the Russian submarine and its crew were not antagonists. That was a disturbing part of Top Gun Maverick -- escalating the cold war mentality. Here they avoided that, which is a good thing.
Hayley Atwell is a great magician, btw.
Anyway, like Top Gun Maverick, I'm going to say this is a good movie, but not a great movie. I enjoyed it. It hung together. The camera work was generally good -- except for the confusing part with so many people on screen. The scenery was gorgeous in many places. The plot hung together. The suspense was good.
I'll go to see the sequel -- but, Tom, please try to be a bit less depressing, ok?
#TomCruise #AirQualityAlert #movies #MIVII #MissionImpossibleSeven #MissionImpossibleDeadReckoning #stunts #russians #RussianTropes
As usual, I reserve the right to edit this later.
No comments:
Post a Comment