Cruise vs Cruise

My wife is out of town for the week. So that means that I'm bored. Instead of watching the shows stacking up on my DVR (all of which my wife wants to see), I am hitting up the Red Box and catching up on some movies that I have not been able to see yet. To make this even more fun, I will be blogging my reviews and thoughts about the films. Today's Installment: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.


Last night I bypassed the Red Box and grabbed a BluRay that had been sitting on the shelf since I got it for my birthday - Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, aka Mission: Impossible 4.  I have, for the most part, enjoyed the Mission: Impossible series.  It is kind of a hard series to adequately assess.  When Tom Cruise decided to adapt the series, he for some reason came up with a plan to have a different director in charge of each series.  Usually in a franchise there is some kind of continuity - at least that is the goal.  You want to keep the same director, producer, screenwriter, and stars, if at all possible.  Otherwise you have a very uneven series.

I know that Batman is pretty high in the public awareness right now.  Part of the problem with the original series from the 90s was that there was so much changeover.  You had the Burton/Keaton movies, which were very good.  Then you had the Schumaker/Kilmer/Clooney films, which were disasters.  One very large reason that the current trilogy has been so good is that there has been very little change in leadership, acting, or anything.  (Well, except for switching Katie Holmes for Maggie Gyllenhaal, which really didn't matter at all.) You can also see this in the Star Trek movies.  They were extremely uneven, largely due to the fact that each movie had its own director with his own vision.  Harry Potter had several directors, but there was a common screenwriter, common producer, and the stabilizing influence of JK Rowling.  Plus they had the same director for the last four movies.

Tom Cruise actually wanted the change of vision.  The first movie, which was amazing, was directed by Brian DePalma and was more full of intrigue and mystery.  It was an older spy flick, where the main character had to unravel the story right along with the audience.  There still were some great action sequences (especially on the high speed train).  But the movie itself centered on solving the puzzle.  The second movie was helmed by John Woo.  As is his style, the movie was like a Hong Kong action movie.  There was a lot of stylized action and slow motion sequences.  It also served as a celebration of all things Tom Cruise.  The camera lovingly portrayed him as a model who could do anything.  I didn't care for the movie very much.  One of the best things about it was that it was filmed in Australia and I had just gotten back from there.  It was fun to see the various places I had been.  But I also annoyed my wife by pointing out where they had messed up the geography of the area.  [The funniest one to me was where Cruise and the bad guy battle at one place and then had a massive motorcycle race to another location for a second fight.  The two battle places were actually about a half mile away from each other and the road they raced on was what you take from Sydney to get to the beach.]  The third movie was directed by JJ Abrams.  It was typical Abrams with great action scenes, lots of character development, and brainy elements galore.  It was a bit of a mix of the first two films.


The style and pacing of each movie were completely different.  But there still were some common elements in all of the movies.  There are always surprises.  One way is in having characters pretend to be other people with hi-tech masks.  How many times in the four films has that technique been used - often to a shocking end (especially in MI3).  Another shocker is when there is a big time actor cast and then killed off early on in their appearance.  I still remember the absolute shock in the first M:I when Emilio Estevez got offed.  I don't think anyone suffered this fate in the second one.  But it happened in the third and TWICE in the fourth.  I like movies and shows that aren't afraid to kill off apparently major characters because it amplifies the stakes.  There is also always a lot of technology on display, fast cars, great action scenes.  And we almost always see Tom Cruise doing some kind of insane stunt that proves he is still a stud.  The first movie had the drop from the ceiling and the train chase.  The second movie had the free climbing scene at the outset.  The third movie had the bridge explosion.  And the fourth movie had the free climb up the tallest building in the world.

As far as Ghost Protocol itself goes, it was a very good action film.  I would say it was the second best film of the series.  Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles, took over this film - with Cruise and Abrams serving as Producers.  Simon Pegg returned from MI3, but the rest of the team was completely new.  We didn't even have Ving Rhames playing a major role as Luther for the first time in the series.  The team was completely isolated.  Somehow they still were able to get all kind of neat toys to use, anyway.  The other big change was the introduction of Jeremy Renner as another big time character.  (You can tell that his inclusion was intentional as a way to either spin-off or hand over the series at some point.)

For the most part, the movie took place overseas: Moscow, India, Dubai.  Even though it was set in exotic locales, it seemed like a tighter film.  A lot of the action took place in just a few places within those foreign cities.  They didn't roam all over Dubai - mostly they stayed in the hotel with just a few excursions elsewhere.  This actually helped the movie by allowed to build tension without being too frantic.  I thought this encouraged more character growth.  It also highlighted the isolation of the team - they had to make do with what they had and with each other.  The plot seemed far-fetched and familiar - someone wants a nuke, but for very different reasons than in many movies.  It wasn't the standard Arab terrorists either.  Personally, it was a nice touch for me to see the movie address some of the developing economies worldwide.  So many times when we see India or Arab countries portrayed, we see the dust and the poverty and the overcrowding.  This time, though, we saw that there are some very wealthy people in those countries.  The movie had elements in the slums and markets, but most of it stayed in the other areas.  That brought a unique feel to the movie.

The movie also did a great job with the character of Agent Carter, played by Paula Patton.  So many times in these movies women will only be included as victims or love interests.  Even Mission: Impossible has fallen into this trap.  The woman on the team is competent to a point.  The main character invariable falls for whatever woman lasts into the last half hour.  This time, though, she was a strong and competent agent throughout.  She had a history that motivated her and depth to her character.  She used her looks to accomplish tasks, but was not defined solely by them.  And there was no romantic connection with Tom Cruise - and not because she was a lesbian, which is one of the other cop-outs for action movies in their portrayal of women.

Tom Cruise himself is such a polarizing figure.  I am thoroughly convinced that in real life he is as wackadoo as they come.  Just by analyzing how he is marketed and portrayed, he is probably narcissistic.  His behavior dealing with Scientology and his marriages is beyond bizarre.  But, on screen he is still very popular - one of the last examples of an old-school movie star.  The Mission: Impossible movies have always been a great franchise for Cruise.  It reminds everyone of his drawing power and keeps him looking young and spry.  As long as it doesn't become a movie version of Glamour Shots, like MI2, the series is one of Cruise's strongest resources.  I have always liked Cruise on screen.  Personally, I think people are too harsh on him.  Most of the time, when he ventures outside of his typical wheelhouse of characters - the fast talking, smiling, likable, heroic characters - he gets slaughtered by fans.  I have never been bothered by those roles, though.  I thought he was pretty good in Interview with the Vampire and Valkyrie.  Actually, I was more ticked off by his going to the well too many times in movies like Knight and Day and Last Samurai.

Cruise's portrayal of Ethan Hunt has grown over the years.  In the first movie, he was the younger agent taking over the reins from the older generation.  In the second, he was the superstar.  (Unfortunately he was more like the whiny, self-obsessed Dwight Howard/LeBron James superstar.)  In the third movie he was getting older and realizing that there was more to life than just fighting and risking his life.  He wanted to settle down but was afraid of the risks involved.  In the fourth movie, he became the elder statesman.  He had a world weariness in his eyes that had come from too many losses, too many fights, too many double crosses.  He still is dedicated to his craft and understands its importance.  He has reached a place of expertise, where he knows what to do after so many years - no matter the situation.  However, you can still see that he is tiring of the battle.

I think this series still has legs.  They apparently have announced a fifth movie already, which I'm sure I will see.  If Cruise tires of the role, or if he just becomes too old to keep doing the field work, he could turn over the team to someone like Renner.  Or, if they want to continue to be daring by mixing things up, they could hand the reins to Patton and have a female lead the way. Based on precedent, there probably will be a new director for the fifth installment.  I would love to see Brad Bird get another shot since he did such a great job.  If not, I hope they find a good alternative that can add something and usher Ethan Hunt into the next stage of his career.

I hope you're enjoying these posts.  They have been fun for me and have given me something to do.  Tonight's feature will be something that I haven't looked at yet in this series - a bomb.  Not a real bomb.  Every movie I've watched had bombs in them.  But a movie bomb.  I'm going to be watching Cowboys and Aliens - something I really wanted to see, but didn't want to waste the money on.  Thank you, Red Box.

NetFlicked

The other day, I saw the awesome looking trailer for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.  (Here is a link so you too can be impressed.  And, yes, that brief flash you saw is Sawyer.)  I was thinking about the Mission Impossible movie franchise and thought that I would like to watch them again before the new film came out.  I thought the first film was amazing - a very rare action film that was brainy and brilliantly written. As good and smart as the first one way, the second one was stupid.  The best part about it was that I had just come back from Australia and was able to sit there and point out all the places I had been.  I didn't see the third one when it was in theaters because I had a strong aversion to violent movies at that point.  But I have caught most of it over the years and thought it wasn't bad.  I definitely wanted to give it another chance.

So I decided to go back and watch those movies again.  I own the first one on DVD.  So that's easy enough to watch.  But, how would I go about securing the second and third movies?  This used to be a pretty easy proposition.  Get in the car, drive to Blockbuster or Movie Gallery, get the movies, go home.  But now, that isn't so easy.  When we lived up in Tallahassee, I watched as all the video rental places disappeared.  Literally.  Every single Blockbuster and Movie Gallery closed.  The stores couldn't compete with the cheaper options: Netflix and Redbox.  Blockbuster even helped kill itself by creating the Blockbuster Express kiosks housed in places like Publix.  So, the thought of going to the movie store has become a very foreign idea.  There are only eight Blockbuster stores in the entire Orlando area.  None of those stores are within a reasonable driving distance from downtown.

I am part of the reason that the stores all closed.  We started using Netflix a few years ago and it quickly became a much easier option.  Much of what we were interested in was available over their streaming option.  And if it wasn't, we could usually put it on our DVD queue and get it within a couple of days.  The newer films were easily (and cheaply) available at one of the dozens of Redbox kiosks at 7-11 or Walmart or McDonalds.  Or, I could just grab it when I was grocery shopping at Publix.

I was quite content with this plan until my decision to watch the Mission Impossible series.  I checked Netflix.  The first movie was available through streaming, but I already have it.  Neither of the other two films were on the instant queue.  They were available on disc.  I knew from past experience that there was no way MI2 or MI3 would be in the Redbox or Blockbuster Express inventory - they were too old.  So, no stores in the area.  No instant streaming.  No kiosk renting.  My options were now stripped down to buying the DVDs somewhere (uh, no thanks) or getting them through Netflix on disc.

Now, this all happened on the same day that Netflix decided to flex its money grubbing muscles.  They split their membership options into Streaming and Shipping.  You couldn't have both any more, unless you were willing to pay twice what you were paying.  Instead of $9 a month, it was $16.  I, like many others, took great offense at this proposition.  In fact, I went on my Netflix account and changed it to just streaming within minutes of learning of their sneaky move.  So, now I didn't even have the option to get the discs from Netflix.  Blockbuster kindly offered a new streaming rental service within days - and I could get MI2 through it for $3.  But MI3 still was unattainable.  The only way I could just sit down and watch MI3 was to rent it through iTunes on my computer (since I don't have Apple TV).

This brings up an interesting conundrum.  For convenience's sake, consumers have actually limited their choices.  Movie studios have to be nervous about this turn of events.  What do they do with their back catalog?  I know that Netflix and other companies have been trying to force us into all streaming for movies.  It makes sense on their end.  They don't have to pay shipping or deal with physical inventory.  Their only real cost is licensing (which they would pay either way) and bandwidth.  In comparison, that is a much cheaper option.  That is why we have seen so many companies jump into the online on-demand movie business.  We have seen companies like Netflix and Vudu and Amazon and Facebook and even Blockbuster all leap into the fray.  It is a big money move.  But, what does that mean for older movies that are not in the instant inventory?

What it means is that movie studios are going to be forced to allow their films to go that route.  The other option is that studios will have to go back to a day where their movies were not available to consumers after their theatrical run.  Yes, people still can buy the DVD and watch the movie on cable or On Demand.  But after the initial burst, it will be harder for consumers to get the film without paying full price for the physical disc.  I don't see studios being happy about losing that rental income.  That used to be what could turn a movie profitable if it was disappointing in the theater.  I remember back when the movie Hudson Hawk came out when I was in high school.  It was this big budget action comedy with Bruce Willis.  My friends and I thought it was hilarious.  But most people didn't get it and so it tanked in the theaters.  However, once it came out on video, those fans of it could spread the word and get others on board.  It actually became a pretty big hit on video - which turned the movie into a profitable film.  It was a similar story for movies like Last Action Hero and The Cable Guy.  They were misunderstood or poorly marketed in theaters and only really got the appreciation they deserved on video.

There have been tons of movies that gained a second life on video.  Films like Donnie Darko, So I Married an Axe Murderer, Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, Office Space, The Big Lebowski, Tron, and Blade Runner became huge hits thanks to their life on video.  What is going to happen with movies like that in today's environment?  The initial burst on video release will still help a film.  But it really is that period in between the point where a movie is on the "New Release" wall and where it hits the "Instant Queue" status where it gains cult success status.

Let's look at Shawshank Redemption as an example.  It was criminally mishandled when it came out in theaters in September of 1994.  The biggest thing that it was marketed with was the line "from the short story by Stephen King."  If you see that, what do you think?  Horror film.  That's what I thought when I saw it.  I passed that movie up several times in theaters because I had no clue what in the world it was about.  A prison?  Stephen King?  Some actors I am not really emotionally attached to?  It got nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture - which gave it some box office bump.  Still, the movie grossed under $30 million.  It didn't win any Oscars because it was nominated in one of the greatest years ever.  The Best Picture films were Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Shawshank, Quiz Show, and the inexplicably included Four Weddings and a Funeral.  Other films that came out that year included: Lion King, True Lies, Natural Born Killers, Nobody's Fool, Ed Wood, Speed, Interview with a Vampire, Maverick, Legends of the Fall, Hoop Dreams, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber.  It is little wonder it got overlooked.

On video, though, it gained life.  People remembered that it had been nominated for Oscars.  In the Blockbuster model, they could stroll through the store and look at the case and read it.  They could see that it wasn't a horror movie.  They started to hear other people who had watched it.  Word of mouth overcame the horrible marketing.  Other movies would come out and have their videos cover an entire section of the wall for a couple weeks.  But, soon, they would be forgotten.  Shawshank sat there in its smaller numbers and were constantly checked out.  The popularity on video led TNT to purchase it to show.  It gained a HUGE popularity on that channel.  Even to this day (fourteen years after it first aired), TNT shows it at least every other month.  The movie is on most Top 100 lists.  It is hard to find someone who hasn't seen the movie - and most of them agree that it was incredible.  That never would have happened without the video opportunities.

That is a movie that is going to be hurt in this new model.  So will movies that came out before there was such a streamlined DVD process - ones from the 1970s and 1980s.  I remember the headache of trying to find the original Tron before the sequel came out.  It wasn't available anywhere.  I couldn't find it to buy at Walmart or Best Buy or Target.  It wasn't available at all on Netflix (streaming or DVD) or in Redbox.  On Amazon, it was only offered on VHS or some lame DVD transfer - usually for a ton of money.  (Disney really dropped the ball on that whole process.  I know they wanted to reintroduce it on DVD and Blu-Ray when the new one came out that way.  But they probably cost themselves a lot in box office income by not having the original available.)  The only place you could get Tron was at a video rental store that had held onto its copy - something that there were none of in Tallahassee.

We are kind of in an in-between phase.  I'm sure that movie studios will have to buckle and make their whole film inventory available through streaming.  Right now they are really losing out on exposure.  A lot of people are only going to go with streaming options.  So, movies that aren't available that way are toast.  Honestly, I'm not sure how much that will help, though.  You lose the "walk by" factor in this new model.  What you see is limited by logarithms and computer generated suggestions.  When you have a whole family sharing an account (like we do), those suggestions get very messed up.  My kids watch a ton of Veggie Tales and Cosby Show.  So my suggestions are peppered with kids shows and 80s television.  (Personally, I don't want to watch Punky Brewster when I have a free moment.)  I will miss out on movies I would like because I lose space to dumb suggestions like Phineas and Ferb.  And, if I hear about a great movie, chances are I won't be able to get it.  [To show you what I mean.  Let's say you read my list of great 1994 movies and wanted to see Quiz Show since you missed out on that one.  Too bad.  Not on instant streaming on Netflix.  Not in Redbox.  Not streamed or rentable on Amazon.  Not available on iTunes.  You can buy it or try to find a rental store.]

Personally, I hate what Netflix did.  I think they are trying to force the hands of the movie studios.  They want the cheaper streaming option on all films.  And they were willing to hurt consumers to do it.  They knew that very few people would completely dump Netflix over the move - most would do what I did and just drop down to either DVDs or Streaming.  Either way, they only lost $1 a month per person.  But did they really lose anything?  Now, they are offering half the service and still getting 88% of the pay.  And, there are going to be people who would bump up to the $16 option just to not lose their selection.  And, over time, there will be more people who do that because they will be frustrated by the inability to find older movies.  In the long run, they will make more money.  And I still will have to jump through hoops to see Mission Impossible 3.