On this episode of X-Ray Vision, Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight discuss Ethan Hunt’s crushes! First, in Strike Watch (00:49) Jason and Rosie discuss the evolving WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and standing with unions. In the Previously On (7:20), Shea Serrano joins to recap and discuss the Mission Impossible franchise. Then in the Airlock (1:31:27) Jason, Rosie, and Shea dive deep (deeep) into Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

 

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TRANSCRIPT

 

Jason Concepcion Warning. This episode contains spoilers for the entire Mission Impossible franchise up to and including Mission Impossible, seven, Dead Reckoning Part One.

 

Jason Concepcion Hello, my name is Jason Concepcion.

 

Rosie Knight And I’m Rosie Knight.

 

Jason Concepcion And welcome to X-ray Vision, the Crooked Media podcast, where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies and pop culture.

 

Rosie Knight In this episode, Strike Watch. In Previously On,. Unnamed Spy series In the Airlock, we’re talking Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One with our special guest, Shea Serrano.

 

Jason Concepcion Coming up next, Strike Watch. Okay, Why are we calling it unnamed Spy Series? One, because, you know, we’re trying to adhere to the SAG after a stipulation not to promote stuff created by strikers. And, of course, the SAG Union, the union that represents actors went on strike July 13th. I’ve seen them out there on the lines. It’s great to have them. It’s great to have their energy out there. It’s great to have their ability to communicate out there. And I just wanted to say one thing because it’s been bothering me. So the president of SAG is Fran Drescher, one Fran Drescher of the Nanny fame, who in the days before the strike, had kind of been drug over the coals for going to, where was it? Venice, to do some sort of thing, promotional thing that she’s a brand manager for something I forget what and then you I’ve you know you see comments in various either articles or on podcasts where people are like, oh, you know, but sure, you know, like the, the there’s, you know, there’s a lot of working writers and actors, but the top level, they’re all like really rich, you know, like Fran Drescher is rich and like Jennifer Lawrence Rich all these people. Rich That’s true. Here’s what I need to say. You know, on this podcast, people have heard us talk about, like, why we like the stuff we like, why do we like Marvel movies? Why do we like comic book movies, Why we like comic books in general? And it’s that thing of that that wish fulfillment of wanting to interact with a story in which the person who is powerful, who’s rich, who is influential, is strong, is actually defending people who are weak. And that’s what legitimately is happening in this strike. Fran Drescher doesn’t need to give a shit about background actors who are having their likeness. Who is in the AMPTP has proposed that they be able to just scan their likeness and then use it willy nilly without any consent for perpetuity, thus cutting out whatever they would have spent on background actors, a.k.a. actors. They don’t need to fight for extras. They’re doing it because of this fight. People like, you know, Kenya Barris and Mike Shore don’t need to, don’t. They’re going to make their money. They don’t need to fight for a bunch of, you know, baby writers and lower class, white working class writers who have just like got into this business and are working three and four and five different gigs to put it together. But they are. That’s what’s cool about this. Yes, there are rich people involved in the strike. The top levels of SAG, of course, Tom Cruise and fucking Cillian Murphy.

 

Rosie Knight Matt Damon.

 

Jason Concepcion Matt Damon and Jennifer Love .like they’re all rich, but they are in this with the extras. They’re fighting for the extras and for the extras so that they will still have a job so that there will still be a lower rung of the ladder that people can climb. And if they’re talented and fortunate and lucky enough, maybe they can get to the level they’re at. Yeah, if the AMPTP proposals go through, were to go through, that ladder would just not exist anymore.

 

Rosie Knight Exactly.

 

Jason Concepcion There is there would be there would be no way for a person breaking into the industry to get to the levels of success that are already hard enough to get to. Then other people that have made that journey in the past enjoy. So I think for me, what’s really cool about this strike, it sucks on so many levels, but what’s really great about it, what’s great about a union is you have the most successful, richest, most wealthy, most known members of this union fighting for the lesser known, the less successful so that they can can continue to make a living at this. I think that’s what’s great.

 

Rosie Knight I agree. As our friend Danny Fernandez has said regularly, the union is for the most vulnerable. Yes, I saw a really heartbreaking but vital fact. And tell this to anyone who says that thing about rich actors, rich actors, rich millionaires, there’s many incredible stories out there by people who are well known who actually don’t earn the money. But this fact I always think about. You need to earn $26,000 a year to be able to get health care through SAG-AFTRA, and 87% of the membership does not earn that money. They do not earn that much.

 

Jason Concepcion And if you take jobs away from extras, from background actors, from people just walking on, guess what? You can have even less people able to just afford going to the doctor.

 

Rosie Knight Yep.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s cruel.

 

Rosie Knight Residuals, too.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight Taking away residuals stops people from being able to earn out to get health care.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s insanely cruel. And we’ve got a bunch of links in the show notes if you want to help out. There’s the Entertainment Community Fund, which supports the. People who are not in SAG, not in the WGA necessarily, you know, the tradespeople, the craftspeople who are also impacted by the strike. You can help support them there. There’s other links there that you’ll find really useful. And power to the strikers.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, and we’ll be here talking about it on Strike Watch as we continue working out. What’s going to happen with the strike and making sure that people know how to support the strikers and be in solidarity with them as this continues, probably for a fair amount of time.

 

Jason Concepcion Just one more thing. You know, I’ve had other people argue to me, oh, you know, it’s the actors who just want to work, like who have a gig and like, they depend on this. You know, if they had had more sway in this, then there would be no strike. No, no. They are the ones who who people at the top level. Again, the Matt Damon’s Jennifer Lawrence’s are supporting in this strike.

 

Rosie Knight Who they listen to, for this to happen.

 

Jason Concepcion It is for them so that they can get paid fairly so that they can continue to have a job so that they can not have their digital likeness just out there in the world doing jobs that they would have been paid for and.

 

Rosie Knight That they may have said no to.

 

Jason Concepcion Yes.

 

Rosie Knight Because you don’t need consent. They could put you in any movie with any agenda and you would never be paid. And they would own your digital likeness for life. I mean, it is nightmarish dystopia.

 

Jason Concepcion Literally a , Literally.

 

Rosie Knight Literally a new episode of.

 

Jason Concepcion Literally.

 

Rosie Knight Black Mirror came out and year that’s very much about this. But yeah, we’re in support of the strikers and I hope they get what they need. Hot labor summer is here baby.

 

Jason Concepcion Next up, Mission Impossible. First up, the unnamed spy series, which is also the Mission Impossible franchise. And joining us to talk about the fantastic Mission Impossible franchise is four times New York Times best selling author, showrunner and creator of the Primo Television program.

 

Rosie Knight Critically acclaimed Primo television program.

 

Shea Serrano Say it all. Say all the pieces.

 

Jason Concepcion And the upcoming action Hero Scouting Report e-book. Please welcome to the program, The one and only, Shea Serrano.

 

Shea Serrano What up? What up? What up? What’s going ony’all?

 

Rosie Knight Hey.

 

Jason Concepcion Just getting ready to talk about Mission Impossible.

 

Shea Serrano I’m so excited. And I’m so excited.

 

Rosie Knight Seven Mission Impossible movies.

 

Shea Serrano So excited.

 

Jason Concepcion Well, there are seven movies, so let’s just jump into it and run them down movie by movie Quick recaps and our general thoughts. Let’s start with Mission Impossible 1996, directed by Brian De Palma. The original idea behind these movies that Cruise has was different auteur every single time, and they stuck with it for a while until they eventually like, Fuck it, let’s just make epics. So we start with De Palma, Ethan Hunt and his Mission Impossible Team, led by IMF veteran Jim Phelps, were on a mission in Prague. An agent named Golitsyn is attempting to steal the CIA NOC list from the embassy. Ethan is disguised as Senator John Waltzer, the chair of the Armed Services Committee. Now, I need to stop here.

 

Rosie Knight Let’s stop.

 

Jason Concepcion How does this? How does this work? Does Waltzer know or does Waltzer not know? Because Waltzer was, like, on a fishing trip, so he’s out of action, and we will know that he’s not in Prague. But how?

 

Rosie Knight Did they just time it right. And also, let’s talk about this because we need to bring out he’s not just disguised as him. He’s wearing the mask. Now, this is going to be a recurring part of the Mission Impossible lore, is the masks.

 

Jason Concepcion This is the introduction to the masks.

 

Rosie Knight Yes. Is he going and voting? Is he like spending time with people who think that he’s him?

 

Jason Concepcion How does he go to the Senate? Like.

 

Rosie Knight How long has he been playing him?

 

Jason Concepcion Is that is that him on the on the on firing line with what’s his name like? Is that, how deep does he get with this?

 

Rosie Knight They don’t want us to know it. It’s all about plausible deniability.

 

Shea Serrano I don’t think it matters. That’s my thought on this part. But I think once you dig two inches beneath the sand, it gets real shaky underneath there. So we just keep it cruisin. He’s got a mask on. He’s just like he’s another guy for 10 seconds. Yeah. Yeah, I love the mask. Do you love the mask?

 

Jason Concepcion And I never get tired of a mask gag. I never get tired of it.

 

Rosie Knight When you watch this movie, which is, like, quite is very DePalma ish. I love it is very serious. It’s very noir. The masks are played like very straight and you’re like, whoa, this is like quite cool and unexpected and it’s like a little bit weird. But you would never expect after watching this movie that that would become the recurring bit for like the whole.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah. They’re so effective. I fall for it every single time.

 

Jason Concepcion Every single time.

 

Shea Serrano There’s not been one mask reveal where I was in like, oh fuck, they got me.

 

Jason Concepcion And they’ve gotten trickier with it, which we will get to. Okay, so the NOC list goes out, gets out in the open because the operation goes sideways, everybody fucking dies. Except for Ethan and his fellow agent, Claire, who is also Jim’s wife. What a weird flex to bring your wife on secret missions that you lead. But that’s okay. That’s an HR violation in my book. That’s fine. Hunt meets with director Kittridge of the IMF, thinking he’s about to get extracted. But then Kittridge is like, No, you’re a double agent. I think this is all your fault. And in fact, this entire mission has been a mole hunt to catch you and the NOC list that was stolen is fake. Ethan blows up the aquarium and kills all the fish and leaves.

 

Rosie Knight Rude.

 

Jason Concepcion Here’s a scene that I love early Internet scrolling. Ethan then goes on the Internet. It’s 1996. Ethan goes on Usenet forum groups, and to find the arms dealer Max. And he finally makes contact with Max after spending all night on.

 

Rosie Knight Max.com.

 

Jason Concepcion Max.com. And he makes it. He finally, like, gets to meet with Max, who immediately is like, I’d fuck you. You’re pretty hot. What’s your deal. Mr. Guy that I met on the Internet? And Ethan’s like, here’s my here’s my deal. I will get you the real NOC list. Give me $10 million, but also give me some of it right now so I can hire some guys. And Max is like, that Seems weird, but. Okay, let’s do it. How can anybody say no to Ethan Hunt? And it also sets up a recurring theme throughout this series, which is people just get crushes on Ethan Hunt. Max is like, Wow. Ethan Hunt Hold on a second. Hottie. Ethan Hunt. And that is the case throughout the series.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, Max can sense that. Were like 20 years earlier. She is Ethan’s type, a.k.a. a skinny, white blond, skinny, white brunet. He’s going to fall in love with you, and he doesn’t even need to kiss you or.

 

Jason Concepcion That’s it.

 

Rosie Knight Like he’s just gonna see you and he’s ready to die for you. Our purest on screen romance.

 

Jason Concepcion Are you a brunet who is involved in something shady? Arms dealing, pickpocketing, international jewel heisting. Then Ethan thinks he can change you. And he has absolutely developed a crush on you. Okay, so Ethan then goes off and hires his team, Luther Stickell, the Net Ranger, expert hacker, only man to.

 

Rosie Knight Phinneas Phreak.

 

Jason Concepcion Phinneas Phreak. Only man to hack NATO ghost  comms which he does not admit that he did. And French dirtbag Franz Krieger. One of the great characters from this series. Ethan’s team then in what is I think the iconic set piece of the series that has set the template for all the various action gags that have followed breaks in the CIA HQ and, you know, repels down from the ceiling in complete silence, the nod to the great heist movie Rififi to steal the NOC list from the air gapped computer. It’s fantastic. It’s wonderful.

 

Rosie Knight It’s so tense.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s 10 minutes. It’s so good.

 

Rosie Knight They do a great job with like they have all these really over-the-top moments where it’s like Franz Krieger, like, lets him go and he’s almost hitting the ground. And then it’s like two sweat droplets are going to drop on the ground and let them know he’s there. But he’s like, Actually, no, I’m going to catch him. And also, they give a guy food poisoning. And like a big major plot point of this is that guy’s just shitting himself the whole time

 

Jason Concepcion Just like shitting

 

Rosie Knight Because it be like super tense and you’re like, Oh shit, it’s happening. And then the guy is just like, Oh, no, I’m going to puke. I’m going to puke. But yeah, it’s is so good. Also, I’m obsessed. Like when I read what she’s on the box. My review is just like Tom Cruise’s little glosses because I always think about him working on those tiny, tiny nineties glasses to do the hacking. Is so good.

 

Jason Concepcion Shea, what did you think when you first saw the scene?

 

Shea Serrano I felt the same way that you felt watching it in the theater, just being. Like my stomach was crawling out of my mouth, like it was completely quiet. He’d never seen anything like that. You’re so used to all of the big whatever the big action moment was in the big action movie was the the loudest, most startling part. And this one, they just they did like the photo negative of that. And it was so effective. I was thinking about that, and then I was thinking about the glasses as well. I don’t understand why he put them on. He never wears them.

 

Rosie Knight He never wears them.

 

Shea Serrano Ever

 

Jason Concepcion Because of the camera. He needed the camera so that he could see what he was doing.

 

Rosie Knight So like, oh, yeah, he’s doing what he was doing. Oh, I can’t. Oh, you know what? That does bring me to another thing that I think we do. Yes, this these movies do something so well. And it’s definitely the thing I like the most about them is like the tech and like the spy craft elements are so fun. Like when he blows up the fish tank, he blows it up with like explosive bubble gum.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight And like.

 

Jason Concepcion REd  light, green light.

 

Rosie Knight The whole sequence

 

Jason Concepcion Hasta lasagna, don’t get any on you.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion And you. And you get this really good before every sequence, they give you a good, like, 10 minutes of, like. And then we’re going to do this and then we’re going to do this. But it doesn’t feel redundant when you actually see it come to life. It just feels like you on the stand and a part of the planning and the plotting. And Shea, you actually bring up something really good about. Like I think that sequence that I never really thought about in this way is like an inversion of a big action sequence. And then when you get to like the later movies, Christopher McQuarrie does something the inverse again, where he puts the massive action sequence at the beginning, which is like the opposite of everything we know about blockbusters. So in that way, the franchise has always been kind of like twisting our expectations of like what we see an action movie.

 

Shea Serrano I really like during this this heist. It’s a small little thing, but it’s like secretly my favorite part of the whole first movie when they’re breaking in before before they, like, repel in, before they remove the, the, the great they, they use like a special little tool that has a little tiny hook on it that catches the screw that’s getting into things and doesn’t fall like.

 

Rosie Knight So good.

 

Shea Serrano I love how I love how they just well, they’ll give you the most ridiculous possible piece of technology. But then also they they, they just slide in some very practical little things in there.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah.

 

Shea Serrano It always makes me happy that part. Especially you watch a screw unscrewing. Oh, it’s going to drop into a little cup drops right in there. They’re good. We’re safe.

 

Rosie Knight Satisfaction.

 

Shea Serrano THey thought of everything. They thought of everything.

 

Jason Concepcion I also love that Krieger couldn’t have just let the rat run by.

 

Shea Serrano Just let them cruise by.

 

Rosie Knight No, no, no. But that’s true. That’s like. That’s one of the weirdest things about this movie that I think made it so great is like, there are weird moments of realism. Like in a cooler version of that scene, you would never you would just have it like, I’m cool. I’m staunch an out but he like, gets freaked out, drops them like there’s these kind of real human moments. Krieger is also fucking struggling to pull him back.

 

Shea Serrano He’s having a hard time.

 

Rosie Knight This is not some situation.

 

Jason Concepcion He’s having a really really hard time.

 

Rosie Knight He’s looking his age. It’s like me trying to pull someone up on a rope is never going to happen. And I think those that mixture of like the bombastic, like you’re breaking into Langley, like that’s never going to fucking happen. But with those little moments of realism, it makes it like Edge of your Seat filmmaking.

 

Jason Concepcion So Krieger, After the heist, Krieger then tries to extort Ethan because he thinks he has the actual disk. But then Ethan does a wonderful David Blaine thing where he’s like, Oh, you mean this disc? And then he’s like, cooking and doing close up magic.

 

Rosie Knight Which, by the way, is a major point of the movie that we didn’t know much Close up magic.

 

Jason Concepcion We will get to it. But yes, the latest movie has a lot of Ethan doing some close up magic. So he does all this close up magic. And then Kruger’s like, Don’t don’t mess with my money. You better watch it. And then he throws out. That does. But guess what? That was the disc. And Luther freaks out. Ethan then decides, Well, before I can meet Max, I need to go to this. I need to, like, go to a train station to make a phone call. But then when he’s there, Jim Phelps shows up and he’s back to the from the dead. And he’s like, Hey, I just barely got out of Prague. I’ve been on the run this whole time, and maybe I can help you find the mole and. Oh, my God, you’ve been looking for Max. You got anomalies? Holy shit. Fucking sick. And meanwhile, the whole time, Ethan is like you killed the entire team. I know it was you, bitch. It’s 100 percent, you.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, he knows. He knows.

 

Jason Concepcion And I will.

 

Rosie Knight And we know.

 

Jason Concepcion And I will say, when this movie came out, I remember reading reviews of it, and a lot of them were like, It’s confusing Now, for my money, these movies have only gotten more confusing, which is to say, I’m not confused by them. But but if you think about the plot, all of a sudden you’re like, Wait, what are we doing?

 

Rosie Knight If you laid out in bullet points.

 

Jason Concepcion Right, Right. But.

 

Rosie Knight It might seem confusing.

 

Jason Concepcion I think that those original critiques of Mission Impossible one were about this particular scene because Jim shows up and they start debriefing and then Ethan is they show this flashback where Ethan is imagining Jim killing his entire team. And I think that really fucked people up where they were because I just kind of instinctively it was like, Oh, this is Ethan imagining what happened. But I think everybody got really confused by that one scene.

 

Rosie Knight I think. I think it’s like open for interpretation because it’s Jon Voight, Jim, and he’s telling you what happened and what the mole did. But the movie is showing you that it was actually him.

 

Jason Concepcion Right. And it’s clearly Ethan’s thoughts.

 

Rosie Knight Is also meant to be understanding as he says it, that it’s him. So it’s like a really interesting we both know that’s very DePalma every two parts, very mad confusing. He makes a weird ass movie.

 

Shea Serrano I think. I think in that one. They set that up when he talks to Kittredge earlier when he walks in.

 

Rosie Knight Oh.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah.

 

Shea Serrano He walks in and he’s like, and he clocks everybody and like, that’s. That’s. Yeah. For me, that was the first time you got the sense that, Oh, Ethan Hunt is like a really special kind of person.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, he’s got a photographic memory.

 

Rosie Knight His mind works differently.

 

Jason Concepcion He can memorize bank codes.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah. Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion Like a, yeah.

 

Shea Serrano So when he does. When we see him do that earlier, we know. Oh, that was the actual scene that was really happening. So when we see him.

 

Rosie Knight I love that.

 

Shea Serrano When we say what Jon Voight, in my head, I was like, Oh, this is the real thing. This is what’s actually happening. Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s a great call out because one of my favorite bits in this entire series is when they unveil some crazy little talent that Ethan has, like in.

 

Rosie Knight This man is talented.

 

Jason Concepcion In Ghost Protocol when he draws Cobalt like a purple.

 

Shea Serrano Real fast on his hand.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, have you seen this man?

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah,  have you seen this guy? Anyway, okay. So Ethan goes to the meet. It’s it’s on the channel train linking England and France. Ethan then uses a Phelps mask. Wonderful mask gag to trick Claire

 

Shea Serrano Got me.

 

Jason Concepcion Who Ethan has like probably been fucking into.

 

Rosie Knight Earlier on in the franchise, I feel like one and two, they’re like Ethan has sex.

 

Jason Concepcion Right.

 

Rosie Knight Ethan fucks. But after that.

 

Jason Concepcion They’ve dialed in back.

 

Rosie Knight Crushes. Yeah, they’ve falls in love.

 

Jason Concepcion So, Ethan, he gets Claire to admit that she knows that Jim is the traitor, and she’s trying to, you know, talk fake Jim into not killing Ethan, but it even removes his glasses, like, Hi, it’s me. Then real Jim shows up. Ethan puts on his glasses, the wonderful little glasses with that wonderful little. I can’t believe that Jim didn’t just fucking shoot him. Like, why are you reaching in your pocket, man? Like, I guess he just really wanted to see what he. That’s.

 

Shea Serrano That’s. That’s a good.Move when you do it. This happens all the time in action movies. They’re like, Wait. And they. They just do it slow. And as I could take away, it takes away all of the threat. He’s like, very clearly about to bust here.

 

Rosie Knight Every single time.

 

Shea Serrano And he just real slow up on his head and you’re watching like, Oh fuck, dammit.

 

Jason Concepcion So now. So he puts on the camera glasses and now Kittridge knows that Jim Phelps is alive, which was going to be Jim’s whole thing was going to get away with the money, and no one’s ever going to know that he was really alive. And then Phelps shoots Claire. She dies. And frigged, she dies in Ethan’s arms. And Ethan is like, You were going to betray me, but whatever. I probably love you. Phelps then plans to escape by helicopter with Krieger is the pilot, but Ethan is Ethan. He looks the helicopter to the train, kills Phelps, kills Krieger, and then later, the end of the movie. Ethan’s like, You know what? I’m not going to do this MI shit anymore. It’s going to crazy. I’m going to settle down. I’m going to fucking get out of here. I’m going to have a private life. And then he’s on the flight home. And I love the way you watch Tech evolve over this movie. They come with this little mini VHS, which is probably like pretty baller in 1996. Yeah, Yeah. And I’m like, Would you like to watch a movie? How about the movie? You know, the the cinema of I forget which country it was this time, but it was clearly a.

 

Rosie Knight It’s like the Carribbean or something.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, it was clearly an IMF phrase. And guess what? Ethan is back. And our thoughts are around the table thoughts of about Mission Impossible, the initial movie that launched the series.

 

Shea Serrano This is the best one in the franchise.

 

Rosie Knight It’s a banger.

 

Shea Serrano This is the number one. The number one movie. It’s a to me, it does all of the things right. It sets in place everything we get. I love how they do the thing in the very beginning of like Ethan Hunt belongs on a team. This is his team. And then they just kill them all instantly. It’s so much fun to watch him set up. His new team is so much fun watching him do all of the pieces again. You mentioned the Langley heist is a number one set piece across the history of the franchise. Tom Cruise has never looked hotter. They introduced the mask.

 

Jason Concepcion He looks so great.

 

Shea Serrano It’s like the close up magic thing I thought is such a, like, close up magic is the dorkiest possible thing.

 

Jason Concepcion Yes. So dorky.

 

Rosie Knight Is tells you so much about Ethan, outside of IMF.

 

Shea Serrano That’s hours and hours and hours of practice. Practice. Yeah. And I was so, so much, so happy I did it. Like, it’s just. It’s perfect. It’s a perfect.

 

Jason Concepcion I know what you’re thinking. I was up there, he was down here, and he’s just.

 

Shea Serrano Really.

 

Rosie Knight So good.

 

Shea Serrano And this is a small thing and something that you pick up on after having watched all of the Fast and the Furious movies 25 times, they never shy away from Ethan Hunt being short. Like when you. Yeah, like never. They never do any camera tricks. They just in every movie. And he’s always like he’s when he taps him on the head with the, with the thing, he’s way up here tapping them and like this guy fucking Oh this is the best. I love this shit. Yeah, it’s the best one.

 

Jason Concepcion They also another thing they do to your point, Shea, is they show him, walk out of doors, full body like you can measure him against the door if you wanted to stop.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Shea Serrano Always hide that shit.

 

Jason Concepcion Rosie,  your thoughts, Mission Impossible, the first one.

 

Rosie Knight I think it’s so great. I love how it like melds the weird no hostilely stuff that DePalma does so well. There’s loads of shots that are just like drenched in reds and purples, like you’re watching like a giallo horror movie or something. Yeah, it’s totally unexpected and strange when you watch it and. Contrast with like the contemporary nine E’s like action canon and also as well like it does a good job of distilling what people liked about the show, like the Cold Opens where you’re like putting the team together. That’s the beginning of the episodes of the show. Now I only know that because there is a show that I love that also has that opening, which is the Street Fighter cartoon. And I was like, I need to know if this is like I was like, I need to know if this is like something. Mission Impossible. Movies ripped off from Street Fire or Extreme Fire ripped off from the TV show and they ripped off from the TV show. But like, I love the way that at the beginning of every movie, it’s like Ethan’s just chillin and someone turns up and they’re like, Here’s like a little special message for you. You got to go on your trip. It would be really easy for a studio to say, like, Don’t do that. That’s a TV thing. Like, that’s something you do every episode to show where the character is. You don’t need to do that in a movie. But I love that they kind of stick to that. Also, it sets up I really love the cold open and then the big credits with that Lalo Schifrin, kind of this incredible score, which, by the way, I do feel like if that school wasn’t so iconic, these movies probably wouldn’t have gotten to seven because just every time you hear it, you’re just like, yeah. Like you want to be screaming in the movie theater. They are like the little things going off. Yeah, I love this movie. It’s so watchable. And, you know, for a movie made in 1996 is very cool.

 

Shea Serrano Is very cool.

 

Rosie Knight Still very cool.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s just such a cool movie. And it’s I agree with everything you said. I think it’s for me it’s the best in the series of what is a very, very excellent film series. And I think that and it’s the most and it’s the most rewatchable one and it’s the one that I go back to the most. X-ray vision will be back.

 

Unidentified <AD>

 

Jason Concepcion And we’re back. And that brings us to the year 2000’s Mission: Impossible 2. John Woo on the ones and twos. This time and I will say John Woo had a wonderful moment in the nineties coming over from Hong Kong action bringing that style and this movie is the moment where. You know, I think this is probably the worst movie, although it’s not on the worst one on my list. And yet there are moments where his style is like transcendent. And then there’s moments where it’s like a telenovela crossed with a Cologne commercial.

 

Rosie Knight I just I’m like, No, I’m a number one John Woo stan. And I do love this movie. I can understand this objective discussion of like, what’s bad or not bad. But I think you’re right. There’s certain things that translate really, really well here from John Hughes style. And there are certain things that don’t. And also, I think working within like a franchise space is very different because if you watch something like Face Off, like one of the best movies ever made just fucking insane shit. When you have that whole full freedom to just explore and tell the story how you want and not be worried. And it’s all read. John Woo just goes crazy. Like I saw that in a movie theater recently and it was literally it was a video and it was literally a sold out screening. And it was like watching The Avengers. Like the way those drops hit. But you can’t necessarily have that same space and scope when you’re making like a franchise movie with a star. So I think you’re right. Some of it is transcendent and you get those crazy movies that I think this might be the movie with the most doves. I think it really brought up the dove count.

 

Jason Concepcion John Woo loves  a dove.

 

Rosie Knight He loves a dove. And this he really bought the dove count. But like, I also think you make a good point. Like some some of it doesn’t translate as well.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s I’ll get to it, but it’s in. I will say that there’s certain things here that are in bad taste. Anyway. So one of Ethan Hunt’s context is a scientist named Vladimir who only knows Ethan by code named Dmitri. And he tells Ethan that the bio safe pharmaceuticals company has a plan, or at least a supervisor is called Chimera, so it can extort the world for a cure or with its other product, Bellerophon. He then injects himself with the virus in order to steal it, to give it to Ethan, along with the antidote, which he also has. But when but when they meet, Ethan is actually rogue IMF agent, Ambrose. Ambrose plans, are. I. Here’s what’s crazy about this movie, Amber, you actually don’t know what the fuck Ambrose wants until, like, the end of the movie.

 

Rosie Knight The end of the movie. It’s like thel ast 10 minutes. But it’s like, the irony is.

 

Jason Concepcion Why is he stealing this?

 

Rosie Knight Dude. The plan is actually, like, pretty legit. So, like, why didn’t they just bring it up, like, earlier on in the movie? Also, I just. I just think this cold open is so good because that first movie sets up the mosque and it’s a tool that allows them to win. And then this movie, you get this really slick, kind of almost like smarmy Tom Cruise performance as Ethan. And then the mosque is the thing with Sean Ambrose pretending to be Ethan Hunt. The mosque is the thing that then sets off the conflict. I just think that’s such a cool narrative choice.

 

Jason Concepcion So Ambrose again. Ambrose No idea why he’s doing this, but.

 

Rosie Knight Just want to.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, he just wants to have it. He’ll later have a plan and I’ll go into like, why? It’s weird that he then has a plan. Ethan gets Ethan’s on vacation in Utah, just like rock climbing without any harnesses or fucking and.

 

Rosie Knight Free climbing baby.

 

Jason Concepcion Like an absolute psycho.

 

Rosie Knight How good is the cinematography in that shot, though?

 

Jason Concepcion It’s wonderful

 

Rosie Knight Like when it’s going all around like.

 

Jason Concepcion You know, John Woo was .

 

Rosie Knight Climbing.

 

Jason Concepcion Who was like, losing his shit, shooting this. This is like the greatest moment in John Woo’s life. Anyway, he then gets one of those self-destructing messages, which is delivered by helicopter, which shoots a pair of Oakley sunglasses at him, which he then puts on to tell him the message. Shea

 

Rosie Knight Unbelievable.

 

Jason Concepcion Is this the craziest message delivery of his tires?

 

Shea Serrano Yes, it really is, because all the other ones are like pretty normal. Here’s a here’s a little tiny VHS. Here’s here’s an album you put on the record.

 

Jason Concepcion Oh, yeah.

 

Shea Serrano These are some sunglasses that if you don’t remove them immediately, your body.

 

Rosie Knight They will blow  up.

 

Jason Concepcion Your dead.

 

Rosie Knight This is actually like the most zeros, obviously. Like it’s the most. It’s 2000. So it’s a very 2000 movie. You have like the metal, like reimagining of the soundtrack. I think that that was like a Metallica video, where they were like playing on top of the rock in Utah that was like connected to the movie. And the Oakley sunglasses is like.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s so.

 

Rosie Knight 2000. You just can’t even imagine that Somebody was like, Yeah, that makes sense.

 

Jason Concepcion Literally, like Hype Williams was like, Get me a pair of those for every music video I do for this decade.

 

Shea Serrano When they shoot that moment, though, even more than the even more than the rock climbing which is shot in this really like very John Woo way where it’s just like swooping around in and out of everything. But even they shoot him, taking the glasses off and throwing them in a very dramatic stylized where you’re like, Oh, every single moment is going to be like this no matter what. He’s going to walk into rooms and it’s going to. Do this like it’s.

 

Rosie Knight Dude.

 

Shea Serrano It sets up the language instantly.

 

Rosie Knight That’s so true. And there is like, so much slow motion in this movie.

 

Jason Concepcion And it’s John Woo. It would be John Woo without the slow moving me just like talking.

 

Rosie Knight And it’s slo mo like it’s oh, he was like, I’m doing it.

 

Jason Concepcion So the message on the glasses is read by the voice of the new IMF director. And the new IMF director is Anthony Hopkins. In one of the great money grab roles of.

 

Rosie Knight Oh my God. Hannibal Lector shows up, gets the money and leave.

 

Jason Concepcion He was he was on set for like, I don’t know, 8 hours and he was done. Incredible shit from my guy, Anthony Hopkins, who tells Ethan that he tells him all about what Ambrose has done. He stolen the virus, all that shit. And he says, Okay, what you need to do is you need to recruit Ambrose, his ex-girlfriend, Nyah, a globetrotting jewel thief. So Ethan is like, okay, I’m on. And I put my team together, even then goes to recruit Nyah. Bye. In order like staring at her over a flamenco dance fucking up her roobery.

 

Rosie Knight Which is in slow motion.

 

Jason Concepcion Which is in slo mo. Fucking up her robbery. And then like trying to run her off the road, which is.

 

Rosie Knight You know, we’re talking about Ethan’s like, amounts of cover that he has. Yeah. Yeah. He’s like, somehow he is already undercover as the head of security of the place that she’s trying to rob. So, like.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight He can, like, fuck around with a robbery because they just think he’s, like, in charge of. Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion This was a test.

 

Rosie Knight That’s a level of planning, bro.

 

Jason Concepcion So of course, after Ethan almost runs her off the road multiple fucking times, Nyah falls in love with Ethan and they have sex.

 

Rosie Knight Only sex scene, I think.

 

Jason Concepcion In the entire franchise.

 

Rosie Knight Series, where you see them in bed.

 

Jason Concepcion Ethan then tells Nya that, okay, here’s listen, you need to get back together with your ex-boyfriend Ambrose, because he’s got this super virus and we need to figure out what’s going on. And she’s like, What? Really? And he’s like, Yes. Ambrose then goes to Australia to extort the CEO of bio site, and later Ambrose, using another Hunt mask, figures out that Nya is working for Hunt. He gets her to admit it. And meanwhile, Hunt figures out that Ambrose doesn’t actually have the virus. So Ethan figures if he can break in a bio site, kill all the virus, the whole problem is solved. But then, Ambrose, you just, like, hits Ethan for. I don’t know why, but he fucking really hates him is like, I know that Hunt is going to do this because Hunt loves doing shit like this, and we’re going to ambush him there. So bio site is creating super viruses and their vent goes straight to the atmosphere.

 

Rosie Knight Terrible idea.

 

Jason Concepcion The vent in the top of the lab goes straight up into the atmosphere.

 

Rosie Knight Shocking.

 

Jason Concepcion People, what are we doing?

 

Rosie Knight No planning. No planning.

 

Jason Concepcion So Ethan kills all the virus, has a shootout with Ambrose’s people. There’s some incredible slo mo here. But then Ambrose reveals that he has an idea and he knows it. And he’s been working for any throws He shoves are in there and is like he’s slut shaming her. He compares it to a monkey. And one night.

 

Rosie Knight Is like, Yeah, very bad. Very bad stuff. Also as well, like, I love Thandie in this role. She does it. She plays it really well. But like, she really does get the shit and.

 

Jason Concepcion There is nothing for her to do here.

 

Rosie Knight Not even that. She gets like it’s before they really start writing great action. And for the women of this franchise, which later on does happen very, very well, but also like the U.S. government, a shadow agency of the U.S. government, essentially coerced this into getting back with her abusive ex-boyfriend who has like a crazy fucking virus. And Ethan didn’t originally hire for that. He’s like, oh, it’s just cause you’re a cool, like, Catwoman style thief. We’re going to be thieving stuff together. And he’s like, actually, like, can you just go and sleep with your ex? Like, I’m chill with it.

 

Jason Concepcion Ethan at one point says, Listen, if you got to if you had to fuck him again, you got to like, there’s a world’s on the line here, which is why I said.

 

Rosie Knight And then Sean says the same thing to Ethan Mask to double down.

 

Jason Concepcion Which is why I say there’s. There’s something distasteful about this movie, and it’s this stuff. I love my guy, John Woo. But my guy John Woo is always been he’s got two things that he does with his female characters. One, this over-the-top romance soap opera ish, almost plot. You see it in the killer. You see it in all many of his Hong Kong movies where like the hardboiled anti-hero just, like, falls head over heels in love with this week, Woman who can’t protect themselves. And this is this is Tandy Newton’s character here. And then and then secondarily, to your point, does not give them much to do except be like a damsel in distress, essentially. So this is John Woo’s M.O., sadly, Night Live, and it doesn’t translate well.

 

Rosie Knight I would love for the day like he was going to do that female version of the killer with Lupita Nyong’o. Like, I want to see something like that because I know he can do it. But yeah, I think that Thandie brings enough to this character that you are still invested in what’s going on with her, but the script does not give her that and like, the way these dudes treat her. But I will say I definitely had like, a funny Mandela affect fact man like with this man. Because, like, I was sure that she died, I was like, they just kill her off because it’s Mission: Impossible. But she actually doesn’t die.

 

Shea Serrano Was good.

 

Jason Concepcion We will get to that. Oh, I’ll get to it in the movie. I’ll get to it because I’m very excited to get to that part of it. So Nyah , Ambrose was like, Go get that last, very last vial of of Chimera that exists. Go get it and bring it to me. And Ethan was like, you know, she doesn’t know what to do. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. And Nyah’s like, ha, I figure the way out, I’m going to inject myself with the last.

 

Rosie Knight Why didn’t she just stamp on that?

 

Jason Concepcion Well, she. Because I guess that would destroy. I don’t. That’s a good question. There’s a lot of questions like that. So she injects herself with the virus, and now Ethan knows he’s got 20 hours to save her life. And now Ambrose knows that the only way he can, like, go through with whatever again, whatever his plan is, we don’t actually know at this point what his plan is, is to keep her alive because she’s got the virus in her body, which let why can’t you just take her blood and make more of the virus?

 

Rosie Knight That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know. I don’t necessarily know. Like his little Typhoid Mary plan. I think it comes more from a place of vengeance because he’s like, You’ll always be remembered for being, like, patient zero, like the worst patient there. But surely I thought this would actually be good for him because now he would have a living version of the virus like and he could, you know, take it to by his side and get whatever he wanted. But sure. Shawn Ambrose, He’s he’s unhinged by his plans. None of us can. Normal people cannot understand him.

 

Jason Concepcion You mentioned Ambrose’s new plan, which is to just let Nyah walk around and get everyone sick. And then? And then. So now he unveils his plan. Let Nyah walk around. She gets everyone sick. I give the antidote the bio site in exchange for like 10,000, 10 million shares of stock. And then I sell the stock, which will go through the roof because bio site has the only antidote and I become a billionaire. Okay, but like, bio site was already going to release the virus. So why don’t you just, like, buy bio site stock. And don’t do any of this stuff like that? Like you.

 

Rosie Knight He never any money.

 

Jason Concepcion Is going to happen.

 

Rosie Knight So he doesn’t have any money.

 

Jason Concepcion Through with all of this just by bio site stock. Let it happen.

 

Rosie Knight Because I know when you work for the IMF, it’s like being Sam Wilson and Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It’s like I’ve been doing black ops for the government, but like, my banks empty, they don’t pay very well. You do it for that. You do it for your country.

 

Jason Concepcion Shae, if you find out that bio site is about to release a virus into the air so that they can then sell everyone the antidote, do you tell people or do you buy bio sites stock?

 

Shea Serrano And I’m going to buy so much bio site. I’m not telling anybody.

 

Rosie Knight You’re not telling anyone. You’re actually telling people.

 

Shea Serrano You’re going to get so rich.

 

Rosie Knight You’re like bio site kind of sucks. I had that stock is going to drop soon. Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion Short bio site. Short bio site.

 

Rosie Knight Short bio site. Short bio site.

 

Shea Serrano First, the first thing they’ll hear from me about it is how rich I got off of it. That’ll be the first time.

 

Rosie Knight Two years later.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So one of Ambrose’s guys captures Ethan, which is, let me tell you, this is mistake number one that Sean Ambrose is about to make. Ambrose, then, is like, Guess what? You got to die. He kills, he shoots Ethan. But Ethan, of course, was one of Ambrose’s. Guy is in an Ethan mask and real Ethan is now escaping on a motorcycle. The first motorcycle chase of the Mission Impossible. Ambrose Yes. And he’s got the antidote. Ethan Kills of all of Ambrose is raining guys. Beats Ambrose’s ass in slow motion on the beach, killing Eve, too. And while all this is going on, I was like, I don’t know. I guess I’ll jump off a cliff so I don’t get everybody sick. But that would still get everybody sick anyway. But then Ethan comes through with the with the antidote, just with, like, minutes on the clock, and then Ethan and Nyah live happily ever after. That’s it. Ethan and Nyah are together forever, right Shea?

 

Shea Serrano They’re together until part three, and then they’re not together anymore.

 

Rosie Knight So they decided no more Thandie. She’s like, I would have loved to see her come back and, like, get a cool action role.

 

Shea Serrano Then she thought she was going to pop up in this one. I really did. I was waiting for it.

 

Rosie Knight That would have been cool, actually. Yeah. And give. I like that big, chunky Rebecca Ferguson style action sequence. Yeah. She never really got that. You know, this is. It was so funny. I could have sworn in my head like I was. I was logging on LightBox. Then I’m like, Oh, I’m going to be like, This movie’s really fun. Except for like when the government coerced a woman into, like, giving myself an evil virus made by our abusive ex or something. And then she died. And then I was like, Oh, she’s just chill like that virus. No, I have any problem. And that would be like, it didn’t cause anything. She’s just like, It’s fine. And then they’re just in the park, which I feel like is a dangerous place. Mad to be.

 

Jason Concepcion Shouts also to Brendan Gleeson for being in this movie for 5 minutes. I did a guy dying of Chimera.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah. And he’s, he’s and then he’s fine as well because he’s the head of biocides. So. Yeah, so making a lot of money.

 

Jason Concepcion Shea, your thoughts on Mission: Impossible two.

 

Shea Serrano We went from the the best of the franchise to this is the least best of the franchise. There’s not there’s not let me say they scrubbed pretty much all of Mission Impossible two from the franchise afterward. You don’t find much of what was in there like you do in Mission Impossible one. The one thing they do keep is a motorcycle, stuff like that. They put Ethan Hunt on a motorcycle. We should be thankful for that because that one that one, much like the masks, always works. Just put them on there and let them go 135 miles per hour down an alley. And it’s great. That’s awesome. It’s wonderful. But beyond that, this is this is this is in my last place. If we’re putting them all in order, that’s why this one set and I love John Woo, a big John Woo guy. He perfected his style in 92 with hardboiled, hardboiled, put it all together. He shows up in America, he does hard target and it’s like, not quite. But then he does face off. Ah I think that’s Broken Arrow after that. But then face off and you’re like, There it is. That’s what I was looking for. Thanks very much. Thanks for playing John Woo. And then he gives you Mission Impossible. You’re like, All right, whatever, and I’ll see you later. But it happened like, you know, it is what it is. It’s it’s the last place on the list.

 

Jason Concepcion I think Mission Impossible is proof that you can give a director too much. You can level up too quickly. And I think he had too much money, too many resources, too much slo mo, too many doves. And it just became too much.

 

Shea Serrano You know, what is what is cool, though, and I’m sure we’ll get to this when we get to five, six and seven. The thing that they’re doing when they’re bringing in a different director each time, it’s really from 1 to 2. You see it the most and part one. Ethan Hunt very rarely, if ever, has a gun in his hand. Like it’s not a thing he does.

 

Rosie Knight Yes, yes, yes.

 

Shea Serrano Even all of the rest of the characters in the movie too. And then for this one, it’s like every single person is always pointing a gun at somebody else for the entirety of the movie. Like that sort of stuff is as fun to watch in retrospect when you’re going to like, I’m going to burn through all of them and like mark the differences and whatever. But yeah, this is this is this is last place.

 

Rosie Knight Is very interesting, actually. You bring that up because something that I thought is really wild when you watch these movies and too definitely is the big turning point. But then they kind of it goes back and forward. So like when you’re a comic book person, right? One of the biggest arguments is like, does Batman Kill? Because allegedly he has this rule where he says he never kills and the Mission Impossible movies. I can have a pretty strong argument after watching these. These are essentially Batman movies and Tom Cruise’s Batman and the Villains Eyes, Rogues and blah, blah, blah. But like the first movie, they establish this idea that, like, he doesn’t want to kill anyone innocent. That’s why they don’t just kill that guy, right, and use his body. They they make him sick. And there’s even jokes throughout the franchise about how, like, Ethan would go out of his way to not kill a security guard. And, like, people are like, that’s his weakness. But in to that law is not there. Yeah. So I think that that is actually a big part. Like, like you said, Jason, he kills so many people and I will say it gets a bit murkier as you go on because like, he gets this kind of more vengeful streak, I would say, and he’s like, got more people to care about. But I do think that’s one of the most interesting things, which is the idea that in this morally gray space, he does always have this moral where he’s like trying to save people.

 

Jason Concepcion We moved to Mission: Impossible three. 2006. Just kidding about Ethan and living happily ever after. Ethan has moved on. He is now engaged to the true love of his life. Julia, a nurse who knows nothing of what Ethan does and thinks, in fact, that he works for the Department of Transportation and I guess has to leave like in the middle of the night because of transportation emergencies or something.

 

Rosie Knight It’s really weird.

 

Jason Concepcion He does a great job selling it and rhapsodizing about traffic patterns and being like, air traffic is a memory. It’s fucking amazing. It’s really, really fun to watch Ethan pretend to be a normal guy. Now I will mention what is so fucking crazy about this movie to me. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Davian.

 

Rosie Knight Killing it.

 

Jason Concepcion He is incredible. He is the best villain of the series, in my opinion, and I think that. JJ There’s a lot of director churn in this. Fincher was supposed to do it and Joe Carnahan quit, and they eventually got JJ to do it. And I think JJ must have been looking at this movie and been like, Holy shit, the best thing we have is fucking Philip Seymour Hoffman. So they do something totally insane, which is put the end of the movie in the beginning. Yeah, they open.

 

Rosie Knight They do it in Media res, like the most extreme version.

 

Jason Concepcion They open with 5 minutes of the confrontation between the hero and the villain from the end of the movie in the beginning, which is so nuts. You don’t think I’ll do it? You know I’ll do it.

 

Shea Serrano Oh, fuck.

 

Jason Concepcion Where’s  the rabbit’s foot.?

 

Rosie Knight Only one thing is more unhinged to me in this movie than that choice, which is the needle drops in this movie are so insane. Like, I guess they had a lot of money, and because they wanted him to be like, a normal guy, they were like, What songs the normal people listen to. But it’s like the most famous songs in the world. There’s literally a chase sequence where he’s running down the street and they’re playing We Are Family by Sister Sledge, and he’s just like, What is going on with the music direction in this movie? Like, every song is like a cookout banger that like your uncle would play. It’s like and it makes no sense tonally is very strange.

 

Jason Concepcion So Ethan gets called to a meeting with IMF ops guy, John Musgrave. They meet in a convenience store, and he tells Ethan that one of your colleagues who you had mentored and maybe you’re in love with, maybe have one of these famous. This is the movie that establishes Ethan as a guy who just gets crushes on on people he works with.

 

Rosie Knight Everyone.

 

Jason Concepcion So your ex-colleague, Lindsey, is currently the prisoner of evil arms dealer Owen Davian. So even has a team assembled for him by John Musgrave. He goes to get Ethan out, but beforehand he gets her out. But before they can get all the way away, this explosive pellet in Lindsay’s head detonates and she dies. And Ethan is really, really pissed. It’s a gory, shocking scene.

 

Rosie Knight I will also say this sets up with the legend, Keri Russell.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight This does set up women getting good action sequences. Because her and Ethan at the sparring scene, where he’s escaping her as well. And then they get, they kind of have to shoot their way out is like a very classical action sequence. I would have liked to see her stick around longer.

 

Jason Concepcion Same. Maybe we’ll do a flashback.

 

Shea Serrano They got another quick when she when the thing goes off in her head. I love that it doesn’t just explode out gory Quentin Tarantino style. It’s just her eyes go and you’re like, Oh, fuck that. That’s not fixable.

 

Rosie Knight It’s really scary. And they they keep the camera on it for a long time.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah, it’s it’s very unsettling.

 

Jason Concepcion Lindsay mailed Ethan a postcard from Berlin before she died, and it contains a microdot which no one can read. Luther shouts to Luther. Straight up, asks Ethan, like, What did you. When are you in love with Lindsay? Fucking Lindsay? And he’s like, No, she’s like my sister. But the 100% again, they fuck. Okay, so they take the microdot to Benji. His first appearance in the movie series. And he can’t do anything with it either. But he does get some stuff off a hard drive that tells them Davian will be in the Vatican doing a deal for something called the Rabbit’s Foot, which we never really find out what It is.

 

Rosie Knight Incredible that they never tell you.

 

Jason Concepcion I love that.

 

Jason Concepcion The whole movie.

 

Shea Serrano It’s great. It’s a great idea.

 

Jason Concepcion That’s great. I love it.

 

Rosie Knight In the end they give him an option to find out and he won’t do it. He doesn’t take it. So you never know.

 

Jason Concepcion Ethan then tells Julia that again, we’ve got this traffic emergency somewhere and I got to go. She’s like, Do you not want to marry me? And he’s like, Oh, yes, I do. Watch this. And they get married right there in the hospital. Ethan then breaks into the Vatican with his team, which includes, like, the least believable Italian road rage incident ever. And the moment he says when Ethan climbs, the wall of the Vatican lays on top and says Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

 

Rosie Knight What did you get from that? Like, who wrote that.

 

Shea Serrano 100 percent he improved that. There’s no way.

 

Rosie Knight He did, right?

 

Shea Serrano No way somebody wrote that.

 

Rosie Knight He did not make it past the script pass. He improved it.

 

Jason Concepcion Ethan in a scene, captured Davian. Ethan interrogates him. But Davian just talks about like, I’m going to kill your wife. You know your wife, girlfriend someone you care about, I’m going to kill her. And Ethan is like, Oh, yeah, watch this. I’m going to hang you at the fucking back of the airplane. But Davian doesn’t crack because Davian knows that Ethan won’t do it. But he does figure out what Ethan’s name is because Luther keeps going. Is it stop. Musgrave then tells IMF director Morpheus that Hunt picked up Davian. And unfortunately, we think that his real name is Brassell. We think that Brazile’s working with Davian because that’s what the microdot says. They finally decrypted the microdot. Sadly, Ethan just gets this info too late, and there’s an ambush of his convoy, and Davian escapes from the chopper, and he’s staring at Ethan the whole fucking way. Oh. Meanwhile, Damian already has a guy kidnaping Julia from the hospital. Like, that’s happening in, like, in that moment. And Davian calls. Ethan is like, Get me my fucking briefcase because it has the location of the rabbit’s foot. You have 48 hours. Start your watch now. And if you don’t get it, Julia fucking dies. Brassell then has Ethan arrested, tied to a table, but he fucking escapes with Musgraves help, and Musgrave points him to apartment in Shanghai, even in his team. Locate the rabbit’s foot. Ethan. Spider-Man’s into the sky, into the building, steals a rabbit’s foot base, jumps to the street, and then calls Davian with 5 seconds on the clock, gets in a limo where he’s, like, ordered to drink pure roofie juice. And when he wakes up, we’re in the beginning of the movie. This incredible confrontation between Davian and and and Ethan Hunt, and it’s really like a fucking masterclass. Like, I watch this scene a lot just to figure out how. How did. How does Philip Seymour Hoffman create this much intensity? Just repeating stuff. It’s amazing.

 

Rosie Knight Also, can I just say we get a rare moment. We didn’t like it. It’s kind of passing. But there is a sequence in this movie where Philip Seymour Hoffman is playing.

 

Shea Serrano Yes.

 

Rosie Knight Tom Cruise playing Philip Seymour Hoffman. And it’s comedy Like he was somebody that brings this like real understanding of physical body. It’s so good. You just immediately buy it. Like he can go from that to doing this, like you said, this super intense, terrifying thing. And because we don’t know what the rabbit’s foot is and we know that Ethan is telling the truth that he doesn’t know, it’s really scary. It’s very because Ethan thinks he gave him the right thing.

 

Jason Concepcion There’s that He does this thing, Tom Cruise, where he’s like, He’s trying to bluff. He’s trying to bluff. Get it? It’s in Paris. And then finally he just like. Like he’s he’s can’t come to the chair, but he just, like, shakes it. His head coach says it’s like I’m going to break it. He could get out and get to Davian and strangle him. But he can, of course. And Davian shoots Julia instead of Ethan. But guess what?

 

Rosie Knight Dun, dun, dun.

 

Jason Concepcion Is a fucking mask trick and one of the best ones of the whole series because they had me.

 

Rosie Knight You never even had me so many times. And when I rewatched it this time, I was like, Wow, I can’t believe they killed Julia.

 

Jason Concepcion They had me.

 

Rosie Knight I’ve seen it before.

 

Jason Concepcion Musgrave pops up. And guess what? He’s the real traitor.

 

Rosie Knight Twist.

 

Jason Concepcion A  great traitor move. And apparently Julia was Damian’s translator who, you know, failed him at the Vatican. So he decided to have her killed with a fucking cold hearted bastard he is.

 

Rosie Knight And he’s put her in a mask.

 

Jason Concepcion Put her in a mask. Musgrave has been secretly working with Davian to deliver the rabbit’s foot so that the U.S., I guess, would have. Reasons to, like, nuke al Qaeda. Okay. Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight America is always, I have to say, do love this. America is usually the bad guy in this movie. They do a really good job with that way. The U.S. government is always up to some shady shit that ends up causing these problems.

 

Jason Concepcion Well, it’s actually like his Musgrave, who, by the way, is a piece of shit and says that Brazile only got the job because of affirmative action. Racist. But also like his his whole thing is we’re not doing enough against her. We actually should just Newcomb Like, we should just fun him like Newcomb any way he wants. He’s like, Listen, I will give you Julia, but you got to tell me what’s on the microdot. He no one knows what’s on the microwave. He still has no idea. Also, Musgrave is the reason Lindsay got captured. Blah, blah, blah. Ethan then asks for proof of life. Musgrave calls Julia and Ethan is like, Well, guess what? Now I have the location of where the cell phone that is near Julia is and I’m going to break free. So he breaks free. He gets to Julia. He kills Davian by holding him in the path of a fucking truck. And little Julia shoots two guys after electrocuting Ethan to stop the bomb in his head from detonating. And then they get married, and she takes a tour of the IMF building, which is. Wait, hold on a second. You’re letting her see the IMF?

 

Rosie Knight Not just that, but like, IMF has a building. Because I will say, as you as you keep watching these movies, what I am asking is becomes more clear and more unclear. So I am f is really just whoever Ethan chooses it to be. Like it’s just the crew and it’s crazy. So like, how do they have a building? And also like, yeah, how are you just taking your wife around the building.

 

Jason Concepcion Of the IMF building? Shea, your final thoughts on Mission Impossible three?

 

Shea Serrano There is a there was a roller coaster in Astroworld in Houston called Greased Lightning. And the way that that roller coaster worked, you sit in it and opposite of like a normal roller coaster that takes its way up and then you drop down. This one goes from zero to like 80 miles per hour in 3 seconds, Right? Just takes off. It’s some sort of magnet technology or whatever come out of there, gone. That’s what this movie feels like. The way that it starts, you go from the credit to this to to to maybe the best back and forth that we get across the entire franchise.

 

Jason Concepcion I think so.

 

Shea Serrano With Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is arguably the greatest actor of his generation, and Tom Cruise, who you forget because you’re so used to watching him pirouette on a motorcycle. Oh, he’s a really fucking good actor, too. And it’s just these two people going back and forth. You get that great opening. This is the movie that introduces the idea, Oh, we can be like, Let’s be funny sometimes. That’s kind of.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, we can be funny.

 

Rosie Knight There’s campiness in this one.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. They do. They set it up really early with the party. When Ethan gets a call and he just throws it, they just show him real quick, throw the ice jars out anywhere and. Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, yeah. That’s a really good gag.

 

Shea Serrano You get the best, you get the best villain in the franchise, you get the introduction of the movie being the series being funny. Yeah. The most surprising betrayal which you mentioned with, with that with Mushroom or whatever his name is, you have the fucking mask trick again. You also you also have this is. I think this is the first time they do the like they try to make it look like a one shot where they’re panning around while they’re putting the mask on. Because it always looks fake in their hands and then they press it down.

 

Jason Concepcion Phillip Seymour Hoffman mask.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah. Yeah. And they, and they have some really cool tricks that they did like practical where they would have a different act that whoever the mask is supposed to look like, like sitting in front of him and it looks like it’s a mirror. Yeah. It’s one of the earlier ones and it’s like. And he’s putting on as really cool man. I do. I feel like narratively. This movie is like a little bit jumbled. Like, that’s the one thing when I was watching it where I was just like, it’s kind of like you said, rollercoaster is a great description, I think, because I totally agree. The opening is like, Boom, you’re out there. But then there’s like it meanders and it’s is still super fun. But there’s definitely some moments where I was like, I feel like they edit it differently, Maybe because they wanted to bring Philip Seymour Hoffman that stuff earlier in. So that’s the one thing. But it’s just like such fun. Again, these movies are also fun to me to watch.

 

Jason Concepcion Great action scene on the bridge. One of the I think one of the coolest action scenes in the movie to where the drone attack on the bridge. Just fun movie.

 

Shea Serrano This is the fifth place movie.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah Yeah. That’s your in your ranking I would I would out yeah this is definitely down for me in the in the lower tier but like I said I think that all good it’s a very for for franchise consistency. This is probably one of the most consistent franchises out there of any genre.

 

Shea Serrano It’s the best movie franchise we’ve ever gotten.

 

Jason Concepcion I think it’s an incredibly consistent movie franchise. There’s no bad movies in this. Not really, except two anyway. Yeah, exactly. Which is bad, But.

 

Rosie Knight Then you can still enjoy watching it. You know, it’s not like so bad. You have to turn it off.

 

Jason Concepcion Well, now we will go to what is personally. I admit that two is the worst, but this is my least favorite movie in the series. It’s Ghost Protocol 2011. Ghost Protocol. Mission: Impossible four. Ethan, As things look so great with Julia, he had come clean, told her his whole life, showed her the IMF building where he teaches. Here’s the break room, honey. Now, Ethan is divorced and in jail, we open on a wonderful jailbreak where the IMF is getting Ethan in jail because they need him to figure out the identity of Cobalt. Cobalt is some terrorist who has stole a bunch of Russian launch codes because of a failed mission that involved Sawyer from Lost. Ethan uses the jailbreak as an opportunity to do a side mission, getting his buddy Bogdan out to Ethan and his team now, including Benji, because he passed the fuel exam in June. Carter infiltrate the Kremlin, where they hope to find Cobalt identity. But Ethan finds the drawer where the fucking thingy with the Cobalt identity supposed to be. It’s fucking empty. And Cobalt gets on the radio is like, Hey, what’s up? The IMF is here. And then the Kremlin entirely blows up and all of the IMF has been outed. They’re on the hook for what is surely an act of war with the destruction of the of the entire Kremlin in Moscow.

 

Rosie Knight Starting another important franchise trope which is touched on in the first movie. But the idea of like the IMF being disavowed, the IMF being shut down, and then the rogue nature of Ethan Hunt’s missions becomes like a part and parcel of what has to happen because nobody’s supporting them. Also, the jailbreak scene is fucking sick like that. It’s great.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s really really  fun.

 

Rosie Knight They did such a good job. That one, I feel like, is you’re really starting to see the hand-to-hand combat.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight Influence come in in a way that hasn’t before.

 

Shea Serrano That’s also. That’s also the moment where they where they, like, make it as loud and obvious as possible that Ethan Hunt is not Superman. He can’t beat up every single person like they have there. And it’s a really great moment when they’re during the jailbreak scene and he walks into the cell and then you just see him come out backwards with a bigger guy.

 

Rosie Knight Seven foot tall guy

 

Shea Serrano And he’s like, No, no, you go ahead. You got it. You got like they start giving you those those moments which they play to great effect as this franchise goes on and on.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion So everyone now thinks the IMF blew up the Kremlin. Ethan escapes from the hospital. Jesse. He’s about to be interrogated by this Russian cop. I will get to this whole Russian cop plotline in a second at the end of this thing and explain to you why that is part of why this is my least favorite movie. The thing even then goes to meet IMF director Arthur Edens from Michael Clayton and his chief analyst Billy Brandt, aka Hawkeye. From the Marvel movies. Ethan draws a fucking great police sketch of Cobalt on his hand. What is it like in fucking credible. In 5 seconds he draws Cobalt.

 

Rosie Knight On his sweaty hands and.

 

Jason Concepcion His sweaty hand. And brand is like, Yeah, that’s Kurt Hendrix.

 

Rosie Knight I love the way that they were like, We’re going to have to do a lot of exposition in this movie. So let’s introduce like an analyst who if you show him a picture of anyone he knows who is like the best weird character. So silly.

 

Jason Concepcion So Brando is like, Yeah, that’s that’s Kurt Hendrix. He’s insane. He’s got 190 IQ, former Swedish Special Forces. He’s crazy. He wants to blow up nukes. He apparently blew up the Kremlin, so no one would know that he stole whatever the thing is that launches Russia’s nukes some device. And the president has, as you mentioned, initiate a ghost protocol, meaning all of the IMF is disavowed, the director tells Ethan. That you’re going to fucking go to the chair for the attack on the Kremlin unless you, like, maybe escape you and escape. And then you go to this safe house which is hidden in a train where you’ll meet the rest of your team. And then maybe you find. But I don’t know. It’s crazy, right? Here’s like, you drive with all the stuff you need that you took off me. But, you know, you put me in a headlock and you got it off me. And just as he’s telling this whole spiel, they really are attacked. Russian security forces attack the SUV, the director’s killed, and he’s in a brand escape where they meet the IMF team at the at the safe house disguised as a cargo train. Jane and Benji are already there. Ethan tells them everything that’s happened, and they go to the Burj Khalifa, where the plan is to steal the codes from the super assassin Sabine, and also drink Cobalt side into thinking that he actually has the guts at the Burj. Benji discovers that the team needs to get into the server room by climbing on the outside, which is purely created so that Tom Cruise can be on the outside of the Burj Khalifa. The only reason that this plot exists and they don’t need to do it, but they did it so he could climb out there.

 

Rosie Knight And this one establishes again, like this is a major turning point in the franchise because this becomes the part where this big stunt that Tom Cruise does becomes the talking point of the movie. So it’s the it’s the fast five, you know, the reboot of the franchise that people kind of And I think that’s why for other like for people outside of this room this one is really ranks really high is also on the lower end for me. But I do think like I like that because, you know, I’ve watched I watch a lot of broadcast TV and a lot of old Wade movies on broadcast TV and the amount of time that they spend on both real broadcast and on like glue. Oh, like fast stuff. Showing a making of documentary that was like two and a half minutes long about Tom Cruise doing the motorcycle stunt in the new movie. So, like, that is how they’re marketing it. It’s not even a trailer. Look at the crazy shit he did. And that doesn’t happen without the Burj Khalifa sequence. And this that. Like you said, it’s just that Tom Cruise can say he climbed it in real life.

 

Jason Concepcion So Cobalt henchman Wickstrom arrives and he’s brought this cryptographer guy who can apparently look at codes and be like, that’s fake or that’s real. So now the team has no choice but to sell Wickstrom. The real Codes branch is like, don’t do it. But then the mask machine breaks, and so then they have to do this double ruse, double by ruse with their real faces. Ethan Is Wister meeting Sabine? Jane, is Sabine doing the worst French accent in the history of this film series? Meeting with Shrem and the crypto guy and Benji plays a waiter with fake with a fake arm. At the end of all this, Wickstrom gets away with the real codes and it’s bad. Ethan then is like, I know what we’re going to do. I got a guy in town. It’s fucking Bogdan from the beginning of the movie who introduces ease into an arms dealer, who moves things along for them, gets them to Mumbai, where apparently Cobalt is going to buy a satellite so we can launch the nuke from the satellite. This guy’s name is Nath, and he is incredible chewing the scenery.

 

Rosie Knight Oh, my God. He is going crazy.

 

Jason Concepcion Fucking crazy chewing his.

 

Rosie Knight He was like, I’m in on scene? I’m going to make the most of it.

 

Jason Concepcion Tom Cruise, baby. I’m going nuts.

 

Rosie Knight In 15 years, when people are talking about this on a podcast, they’re going to talk about my scene and they’re not going to skip over it.

 

Jason Concepcion He’s like, Jordan Poole, like going to pull up every fucking shot that he can use. Get a fucking take half court, shut your bank off the glass, whatever you can do. And here’s what you don’t need to know about Nath. He’s a billionaire. He owns a media company, he has satellites and he’s so horny. He’s so horny that it, like, derails his entire life.

 

Rosie Knight And his plans.

 

Jason Concepcion And his whole plan. So that’s how Gene gets close to him. And then she puts him in a headlock, gets the codes for him. Ethan and team pinpoint Cobalt. Before they can get to him, he launches a nuke. Long story short, Benji and team get the equipment needed to transmit the new code to disable the nuke up and running. Ethan gets the code and then everything is saved. Ethan has a big, big fight with Cobalt in a carvana car. Fucking one of those car vending machines. And I have to say. I think Cobalt fights a little too well. Like, he’s just a scientist nerd and he’s like, really hanging with Ethan. But then he jumps off the thing so that he’ll die and can be used to disarm the youth. But of course, he’s in punches in the code and everything is saved. Their their reputations are washed. Ethan Injury Chute introduces Luther to the new crew. We find out that Brant, who is guilty about failing Julia and Ethan on their honeymoon and lead it, which led to Julia’s death. We learn that actually the death was totally faked, which Brant is like, weirdly relieved. And then Ethan gets a voicemail that this new terrorist organization is on the scene. The Syndicate. Share your thoughts about Mission: Impossible four, a.k.a. Ghost Protocol.

 

Shea Serrano This is a sixth place one. Second to last.

 

Jason Concepcion Okay.

 

Shea Serrano For me, it feels.

 

Rosie Knight I agree.

 

Shea Serrano It feels when you watch it like they started to put together the thing. Like what you were saying about the. All right, we got some big stunts now. Like, this is going to be the thing that we’re doing. But they hadn’t all the way figured out the railroad track to go from one moment to the other to keep it moving. It felt like they start in stop, start and stop start now because the Burj Khalifa thing is really great. The jailbreak thing is really great. Even in that last fight, which is like a whatever fight, he does that thing where he has to get to the bottom really fast. So he’s like.

 

Jason Concepcion He drives the car.

 

Shea Serrano I’m going to drive a car down 80 feet, just right in the concrete. Like, that’s a great, great.

 

Rosie Knight That’s so fun.

 

Shea Serrano Moment in the in the in the series. This is not a bad movie. This is one like I will I will happily rewatch but it’s six place for me.

 

Rosie Knight You can just feel that it’s like it’s it’s is in between the old era and the new era and you feel and you feel it.

 

Jason Concepcion So I agree with that. Exactly. Rosie So here I was explaining to people when I put this on Instagram, this is my least favorite. First of all, if you’re going to watch four, why not just watch five and six? There’s no connective tissue other than they mentioned the syndicate at the end of the movie. No, Jeremy. Jeremy.

 

Shea Serrano Jeremy is there.

 

Jason Concepcion Jeremy Renner is there. But you don’t need to know any of this stuff. You don’t need to know that. Julia Cruz You don’t know any of that stuff to just plug in with Brant in the next movie. And and here’s really the thing that just sticks in my craw. The cop storyline sitter off this this Moscow cop that pursues Ethan across the world thinking that he is like this master terrorist that blew up the Kremlin in what is like a disastrous act of war, an American agent blowing up the Kremlin. Right. He pursues Ethan, gets all the way, the end meets him at the bottom of the Carvana vending machine where Ethan’s fucked up because he drove the car down there and he’s, like, concussed. And it is revealed and then reveals to him, Hey, we’re actually he says to he says, like, we’ve been on the same side. I’ve been leading you all the way so you could see all this stuff. And Sidorov says, We are not enemies. And Ethan’s like, No, no, we’re not enemies. We’re we’re totally on the same side now. And then they just make up. Now, this is akin to if a New York cop tracked bin Laden to Tora Bora, in the in the in the weeks after 911 and then bin Laden was like, no, I actually led you here. And like, it’s all like, I didn’t actually do that. I’m innocent. This is a whole thing. And you should just go back. And then all we know about the story is the cop comes back from Tora Bora and says, Yeah, the main suspect in the destruction, the Kremlin, whatever. I let him go. I talked to him. He seems like a legitimate.

 

Speaker 2 Like a cool.

 

Jason Concepcion He seems like a cool guy. And we talked about it and like and he’s innocent. You just take my word for it. I know I pursued him, like, across the fucking globe, but, like, I’m coming.

 

Rosie Knight Department like hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, but now I’m coming back empty handed. I know there’s, like, thousands of dead at the Kremlin, but, like, Yeah, I don’t. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t him. That’s this. This film series is full of ludicrous things. That, to me, is one of the craziest things that could ever that this cop would just be like, Yeah, you’re right. I’m not going to take you back.

 

Rosie Knight Also, it’s like they are. They’re there half the time. They’re meant to be like serious antagonists, and half the time that comedy relief is like, you could just cut them out. You would be fine.

 

Jason Concepcion You could have cut the whole cop thing out. We didn’t need it anyway. Rogue Nation 2015 Up there for me, one of my think times when I mean, it’s my it’s.

 

Shea Serrano Yes, now we’re cooking.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s a favorite of the new year, right? We are in the city.

 

Rosie Knight This is the game changer.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. The game changer. So we’re in Minsk. Ethan sees it a pallet of nerve gas. And here is that Here is the stunt that sold the movie, which is Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a C-130 aircraft. Really

 

Rosie Knight And they put it in the first five minutes.

 

Jason Concepcion It really hanging off. He gets the nerve gas off the plane, but the syndicate respond right away. The syndicate was going to buy this nerve gas. They respond right away. They take Ethan captive in a record. For forcing him to watch them murder this IMF agent who Ethan had developed a crush on within 30. I just. I was in love with her. You could just tell. In D.C.. CIA Director Hunley, new character, proposes that we’ve got to get rid of the IMF. They’ve fucking everything up, and it’s crazy. And we can’t have this anymore. Ethan, meanwhile, is being tortured by the bone doctor.

 

Rosie Knight Unbelievable that that got in. Unbelievable. And they play it completely straight. No puns.

 

Jason Concepcion Yes.

 

Rosie Knight Nothing like it’s just like the bone doctor.

 

Jason Concepcion But here’s. Here’s the thing about Ethan and the bone doctor. He’s putting on a brave face. He’s putting on a brave face because he’s in the midst of developing a completely other crush on Ilsa Faust, who is sitting in on the torture. Her introduction to the series, she breaks him out. Ethan then realizes that the syndicate is made up of ex secret operatives from around the globe, all of whom are presumed dead. But now he’s got to go on the run, with director Hunley vowing to catch him six months pass. Benji is lying on his his polygraph tests all the time. And meanwhile he’s been working with Ethan to to uncover the syndicate. And Ethan sends him operate tickets in Austria. He is in D.C., so he gets on a plane to Austria to go to the opera.

 

Rosie Knight Cash. Not even a thing. He won them. He won them in a contest.

 

Jason Concepcion In a just like. Yeah, like, like WPLG 95.5 WPLG. Like answer, who is the lead singer of Led Zeppelin? And you get like, like tickets to the opera in Austria.

 

Rosie Knight One of my favorite things about this movie is like, it’s so fucking good that there’s so many, like, suspension of disbelief, things that shouldn’t work. But one of my favorite things is like, nobody will believe, Ethan, that there is a secret organization of undercover agents working, even though that’s what Ethan does. So they were considering that might sound.

 

Jason Concepcion Crazy.

 

Rosie Knight Ethan is proof that this is like Benji says it’s the anti IMF. And I love the fact that everyone in the government is like now that could never exist. Thanks. I heard it sounds really legitimate, like it could happen.

 

Jason Concepcion So at the opera they Ethan and Benji almost foil the assassination of the Austrian chancellor. But his car blows up and Ilsa also escapes with Ethan and Benji help Ethan and thinks he’s slick when they got it. So Benji is driving the car. They’re escaping from the opera house. And Ethan is like, I got. I got a I got to pat you down. No, you don’t. She. She’s a spy one. You just saw the sniper riffle. 100%. She’s got weapons. Let’s just call it that. Like. But Ethan is like, I got to patch you down. That’s how it goes.

 

Rosie Knight He’s like, That’s just what I do, man.

 

Jason Concepcion Hunley goes on the warpath and says, Kill Ethan and Benji on site. Ilsa also in trouble because she’s, you know, in hot water with Lane at the Syndicate. He’s wondering if he can trust her. That leads us to Morocco, where Ilsa tells the boys that, yup, The Syndicate is real is created by Solomon Lane, former MI6, And we are all here to break into an underwater skiff containing the names of all the syndicate agents that one of my colleagues stole before he died. But. And so they get the disk. But then they lose it because Ilsa Dorking leaves. But it’s fine. Because it’s fine because Benji made a copy. But. Why don’t you need the Prime Minister’s like biometrics in order to open his voice, his eyeballs, all that shit. Ethan. The boys then figure out that Lane needs this information. He must need the Prime Minister, too. So he’s going to seize the Prime Minister. Ilsa brings the disk Lane because IMF told her, like, Yes, you stole the disk, but, like, you’re too good at your job. You need to go back. But her boss also secretly erased the disk. Snell Lane is super, super, super pissed at Ilsa. Ethan impersonates the director of MI6 to steal the Prime Minister’s biometrics in the passphrase. This is one of the greatest mask gags in all series. Once. Just a great mask gag.

 

Shea Serrano So good.

 

Rosie Knight And they have. This is also a truth serum gag, which I really can’t get enough of, which I love. Like they have the truth serum and it’s just like. So it’s really easy for them to find out exactly what they need. Also, I would say Ilsa introduces a very fun noir thing that we haven’t really seen since the first movie. So I guess Reintroduces, which is like, she’s a real femme fatale. You know which side she’s on. As you’re watching the movie, they do a really good job of showcasing her playing both sides, but they don’t judge for it is is very good. Rebecca Ferguson smashes it.

 

Jason Concepcion She’s incredible. We then find out after Luther decrypts the file that it’s not a list of agents is a couple of billion pounds in cash in various bank accounts. Ethan gets the director of MI6 admit that he created the syndicate, but then lost control of it. Which Lane seized control of it from him. And he’s been trying to frame Ilsa Faust for it. Lane has a bomb strapped to Benji, so Ethan will have no choice but to hand over the disk. But Ethan says, guess what? Here’s a here’s the crazy new talent that we’re introducing now for this movie.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, baby.

 

Jason Concepcion I have memorized in, like, 5 minutes. I have memorized hundreds, if not thousands of.

 

Rosie Knight Hundreds of thousands.

 

Jason Concepcion Of like, there’s £2 billion in here of bank account numbers. And now I am the disk. You can’t kill me. Let Benji go and you can take me, yadda, yadda, yadda. You can only stands by his friends. And next thing you know, Lane is in a box. He only goes back to DC to spend. The whole thing is an elaborate IMF plan from the start, and he is now the new director of the IMF. Fantastic. Shea your thoughts on Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

 

Shea Serrano Man Listen, so if we look at this series, each movie objectively, I know that Rogue Nation not the best one. It goes 1,6, 5. That’s the top three one. The original, then Fallout and Rogue Nation. But when I rewatched Rogue Nation, this is the best one. That’s what I feel like in my in my chest.

 

Rosie Knight I agree.

 

Shea Serrano If we if we run through just that, the pieces you have that you mentioned, we have the cold open with the plane where he hangs onto the outside of the plane, where he has to wear special giant contacts in his eyeballs because it’s going so fast. We get the introduction of the syndicate, which which saves the series in a way, because nobody I agree, nobody was ever going to be as good a bad guy. Philip Seymour Hoffman. From then forward, you had to do it by committee. You need a thousand bad guys.

 

Rosie Knight You need a collective.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, yeah.

 

Shea Serrano You need Philip Seymour Hoffman. So you get that. We get the introducing of Alec Baldwin’s character, who’s basically just doing his character from The Departed, which fucking rules.

 

Jason Concepcion He really is.

 

Shea Serrano We get the introduction of of Ilsa Faust, the single best non Ethan Hunt character in the franchise. Nobody has ever been has ever been better. We get the underwater scene where he or Ethan Hunt dies, and then she saves him out of nowhere. That is the first time that the franchise was able to recreate the magic of the Langley heist, where it’s just like we’re going small and quiet again. They figure out how to do it. Well, I remember watching in a theater and just being like. Like, almost hyperventilating, watching him run out of energy. And then you see him floating dead and they let him go around and you’re like, Fuck, there’s no way out of this. And then out of nowhere, Ilsa Faust. The music comes in. She doesn’t have a mask on or anything. She just grabs them and saves them. And you’re like, Fuck, yes. So we get that part. We get the motorcycle chase where she where he’s chasing after Ilsa, which is wonderful. And she does that awesome trick where she just is like, Fuck it. I’ll stand in the middle of the road. He’s not going to kill him.

 

Rosie Knight And throw him off.

 

Shea Serrano Which is wonderful. You get the massive reveal where we have probably What is the definitive Ethan Hunt like a cool thing someone says about Ethan Hunt when you when you have him doing the whole the manifestation of Destiny speech. Yeah. And then you have and then you have the glass, the glass box call back at the end of the movie because that’s how long Solomon Lane traps. Ethan Hunt In the beginning they just ruin. Yeah. So it’s so fucking good.

 

Rosie Knight It’s so good. I love that glass box too, because that was one of my favorite things about this movie, which is like that these movies do, which we get the beginning of Fallout two ways. Like in the moment when Solomon is trapped in that box, it seems like it’s this unbelievably terrifying. Scary. Where is he? He’s in the box. Like this is the end of his life. And then the lights come up when he’s passed out. And that just seemed like a cop out.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Rosie Knight Because that’s just where they could put it together. Like, I love that kind of on. They make you believe that they’re doing this stuff on the fly, even when it’s the craziest. Most intricate plan and you feel that you are part of it because you get to see the spacecraft, you get to see the planning, and you get to spend time with the crew. Ving Rhames In every movie, I love this for him. I’m so happy he’s still there. Every time. I’m like, Where is he?

 

Jason Concepcion My secret favorite part of this movie is. So after they introduce the the sketch artist talent that Ethan has in Ghost Protocol, and they do it again here where he draws Lane and Ilsa Foust and Luther figures it out.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah. Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion Ethan is really into Ilsa Foust because he’s like, Look at these two drawings. Laine is like a stick figure drawing, and then Ilsa Faust is like, he’s like a shading

 

Shea Serrano Like, a fucking Rembrandt drew it.

 

Rosie Knight You actually call out a good point. This is really where they start to build the crew as, like, a found family. Do you get where you get those little moments of like it’s already already been there with Luther? But this is really the Walmart. It’s like, what do you care about the most? Who are these people? How well do they know each other? And then that obviously makes Fallout and that Dead Reckoning so much harder.

 

Shea Serrano When when I was rewatching this one, this is probably the one that I revisit the most out of all of them. She’s like, I’ve seen fun. Want to throw on the part at the end when they Lane in the box, this always stands out to me. And then I go and research to figure this out. This is bulletproof glass or bullet resistant glass that they trap him inside of. Right? So I’m going on the Internet reading all about it. At minimum, it’s like 20, 25 millimeters thick. Right. And at 25 millimeters thick, that means per cubic meter per square meter. There’s like 119 pounds. The box itself that they put them in is like six feet by seven feet on each side of the wall, which means this is like 19 square meters total, which means this this glass box weighs over 2,160 pounds. At minimum. At minimum, it’s 2,160 pounds. And at the end of it, Ethan Hunt just puts two hands on the side of it and pushes it over like an empty refrigerator box. Like it’s nothing for him. It’s the same weight as much as a Ford Focus. And he’s just like, boom, like nothing and everything. Like, Goddamn, I love this movie. I love Yeah.

 

Jason Concepcion That brings us to Mission: Impossible Fallout. The syndicate has gone freelance since the capture of Lane. They are hired by terrorist named John Lark, who just wants to blow up more nukes.

 

Rosie Knight Loves killing people.

 

Jason Concepcion Loves that. Ethan fails in a mission to seize plutonium that is going to go to Clark. But they do manage to trick a nuclear scientist working for hacking into unlocking his phone so they they can get a location on the terrorist. Don’t go. Great. I just like coming in so hot with one of the great, like, ruses in this series. With the mask gag only playing like a minor part with Benji being like, Wolf Blitzer, listen, it’s so fucking good. And they.

 

Rosie Knight A ruse.

 

Jason Concepcion They got me again. With this, you feel heartbreak.

 

Rosie Knight You’re like, Oh my God, I can’t. It happens to me this time. At the beginning I was like, I can’t believe that they didn’t save it. And then the attacks happened, and then I was like, Oh no, is this part. This is so it’s so much fun.

 

Jason Concepcion New CIA Director Sloane forces the IMF to take her agent, August Walker, on the mission to Paris to intercept Clarke, who is meeting with his contact the White Widow. Ethan and Walker accidentally killed the guy they think is Lark with an assist by Elsa Fast, who actually fucking shoots him. Surprise, surprise. What’s she doing here? Ethan then goes to pretend to be Lark to meet the White Widow, and she’s kind of into him, Of course.

 

Rosie Knight Also in the White Widow is Max’s daughter. I only realized that this time I was like, Oh, throwback to the first movie. Like, I love this. Very weird choice. Sure.

 

Jason Concepcion The White Widow then tells Ethan that he can who she thinks is Lark, that he can have the plutonium. But you have to help us break Leanne out of prison. Ilsa won’t tell Ethan why she’s there. And she reminds him that I said, Let’s run away together. And you said no. So this is. You just have to deal with this. Walker then tells Director Sloane that Ethan and the White Widow are going to break out. And by the way, I think that Ethan is secretly Lark, and he’s now leading the remains of the syndicate. You should look into this. And Sloan is like, I think you’re on to something. Ethan participates in the convoy attack, but he, as Rosie noted, is Batman doesn’t like killing innocent people, and so he figures out a way to do it that doesn’t kill any cops. And then he leads the police on probably the best motorcycle chase in the series, like through the streets of Paris.

 

Rosie Knight Oh, it’s so good. He also does fall in love with a brunet cop momentarily.

 

Real fast.

 

Jason Concepcion For 10 seconds.

 

Rosie Knight For 10 seconds. For 10 seconds.

 

Jason Concepcion Like he speaks French to  her and as he falls in love with her. Absolutely Falls in love with her. And then here we go. I think this could be the best gag mask gag in the whole thing. Ethan and friends then use an incredible switcheroo. Here’s Lane. And now here he’s gone.

 

Rosie Knight This is the slickest one.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s very, very slick to get Walker to admit that he is Lark, and he’s working with Lane. But apparently the CIA is so rotten with Syndicate people that they all the when they’re called in to take fucking Walker away, they then help him escape. Ilsa joins the team. They head to a glacier where Lane is planning to blow up nukes in order to destroy the water supply of one third of the world. Also, Julia, Ethan’s ex and her current husband works there with Doctors Without Borders.

 

Rosie Knight Because they were called there maybe by the syndicate to fuck with him like it’s very bleak.

 

Jason Concepcion The team and Julia then managed to defuze the bombs while Ethan fights Walker on yet another vertical action scene on a helicopter in the side of a cliff. Ethan kills Walker slash Lark Lane goes back to jail. That leads us to the next movie. Shea, your thoughts on Mission: Impossible- Fallout.

 

Shea Serrano It’s a masterpiece.

 

Jason Concepcion I agree.

 

Rosie Knight No question.

 

Shea Serrano Beginning to end action pieces. The the plot itself, the dialog, the way that it’s shot. Every single thing about this is just as good as it can possibly be. Henry Cavill is incredible in this role.

 

Rosie Knight He needs to be more villainous in his roles. Like He’s always a dick.

 

Shea Serrano He’s so much fun.

 

Rosie Knight From the beginning.

 

Shea Serrano They have like 1000 one-liners in there that are just really fun.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, there’s so many good ones.

 

Rosie Knight Obviously the famous moment where he Cox’s muscles before he starts punching, you know, you fight like so good.

 

Shea Serrano The part of him getting tricked by the Solomon Lane mask is just really, really great because they set it up early in the movie when they introduce in the first time. Yeah, and it’s like people really fall for this and you’re like, They’re going to get you then that’s still going to happen.

 

Rosie Knight A shadow.

 

Shea Serrano And it still surprises me.

 

Rosie Knight When he realizes, when he realizes he’s like, it’s just a bunch of people wearing masks and he’s like, Oh shit.

 

Shea Serrano And then they get the they, then they have that great moment when Ethan is riding around with Solomon Lane in the car and Ilsa shoots at him and then he sees and then Solomon with that, like his voice is just like this acidic spray that comes out.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah.

 

Shea Serrano He just goes, that was Ilsa. Interesting.

 

Rosie Knight Interesting.

 

Shea Serrano The world doesn’t shut up. And then they just go. Like it’s fun. So. So you have Superman versus Ethan Hunt in a helicopter fight. Half of his face burned off in acid.

 

Rosie Knight Two faced.

 

Shea Serrano It, so. Oh, my God.

 

Jason Concepcion It’s so great. I believe that Alec Baldwin was like, Hey, let me fuck up Superman a little bit. And they gave him that very, very short sequence in after the last gag where he only, like goes toe to toe with Walker for like a period of time, before getting Even before getting stabbed.

 

Rosie Knight He’s like, If I’m going to get killed off, you got to let me do this movie is very important to me. Not because it is obviously, like Shea said, a masterpiece, but also because it is add to my favorite subgenre, cannon, which is bathroom fights. Like this is one of the, I think great bathroom fights.

 

Shea Serrano This is the best.

 

Jason Concepcion Probably the most brutal fight in the entire series. Guys go to walls when Walker flips. Not Lark through the window, through the fucking mirrors.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah, it’s like this, Eastern Promises, Street Fighter: The legend of Chun-li. It has a legendary bathroom fight. As bad as the movie is, like, you know, there’s just so many karate kid, like bathroom fights. It’s such a weird, specific thing, but Warrior is. Oh, yeah, this one is just so grotesque with it and, like, brutal and bloody. And you get a great moment with Elsa when the guys come in afterwards and she pretends that that Lark has a having a nose bleed?

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Rosie Knight But it’s like the hugest bloody part. I mean, this movie is, this is the one I think where they, they work. I love Rogue Nation. I feel like that’s a really great spy thriller. This is the one where I think you can really say, like, fun, like they knew these movies could be fun and they were probably going to make this one as fast as possible.

 

Shea Serrano This is this is the one.

 

Jason Concepcion And it’s fun.

 

Shea Serrano If you’re ever going to argue that one of them is better than the first one, it has to be this one.

 

Rosie Knight Yeah. I think for most people this is the top of the ranking.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah, yeah, yeah. It also has in there. What I would argue is the single greatest line across the franchise’s history. And it’s Angela Bassett when she’s talking with, with Alec Baldwin and she tells him you use a scalpel, I prefer a hammer. And she’s like talking about two humans that are standing right there. Like this is just instruments I use to bludgeon people to death. I prefer a hammer. So fucking cold.

 

Jason Concepcion Up next, Mission Impossible. Dead Reckoning, Part one.

 

Unidentified <AD>

 

Jason Concepcion Stepping out of The Airlock to talk about Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which we have all recently seen. Well, great movie. Let’s start with you, Shea. Share your thoughts on Dead Reckoning.

 

Shea Serrano I loved it. It was absolutely worth it. It was absolutely worth rewatching all of the movies again.

 

Rosie Knight Mm hmm.

 

Shea Serrano The it was like it felt for the first time in a long time. Like a movie event is what it felt like. Like I found myself as we were getting ready to leave. That we do that. And this summer, my family would do summer movie club. So, like the five of us, we go every week to go watch a movie. Everywhere we went yesterday and watched The Flash. Woof. So bad. So bad. So but the week before that, we went and saw Mission Impossible. When it came out on that Thursday, we got like early tickets. We were already. And I caught myself preparing everybody because I wanted them all to, like, understand the lore, understand that we had a piece of my son’s especially. And I’m like, Hey, when he jumps off, there’s going to be part when he jumps a motorcycle off a cliff. He did that for real. That’s real life. Like, I need you to understand this isn’t like I’m explaining that stuff. We’re sitting there watching it. This is one of the few times when I look down because I always sit on the far left. It’s me, Laramie, my baby, who’s ten, about to be 11, and then twins who are 16 and I and all the other movies. When I look down, they’re on their phones or like, you know what I mean? And I look down on this one and they’re not on their phone. And I was like, Fuck yeah, they’re in. And we get to the the cliff jump and he fucking jumps. They show you like 25 different angles, like this is really about to happen.

 

Speaker 2 They’re like he did it.

 

Shea Serrano And then he goes off and it just goes quiet. Just quiet.

 

Rosie Knight It was silent in my theater, too, just like absolutely silent.

 

Shea Serrano You felt everybody go in, like holding your breath, watching to see, like, you know, he’s not going to die. But this is a guy doing this completely, completely quiet, completely quiet. And then out of nowhere and it just comes back in. You hear the wind, you feel it’s, oh, my God, I fucking love this movie. And then that’s not even the best part of it. The best part of it is the train, falling piece by piece. Fuckin forget about it.

 

Jason Concepcion They so the train is my favorite part because they, you know, ever since the first movie, vertical action scenes have been a big thing. We mentioned the Carvana vending machine you know various other the Mission Impossible two, the bio site thing.

 

Rosie Knight All the train like helicopter dropping past them.

 

Jason Concepcion Helicopter jumping thing and here they’ve figured out a way to do it again in a manner that we’ve never I’ve never seen this like it was kind of stuff from like inception where, you know, but it was not.

 

Rosie Knight It was done for like real as well. Like you feel like you did Gravity Moment.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. It was clearly in like they had, I guess built a fucking train car and just hung it on its side and it was just really, really, really cool. And I, I was sitting there going, Fuck, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before.

 

Rosie Knight I feel like Christopher McQuarrie really loves Jurassic Park, The Lost World, like the second Jurassic Park movie, because there’s that really famous trailer sequence where Julianne Moore gets knocked off the cliff in the trailer by the mom T-Rex. And this is like, What if you did that in-camera ten times? Because you just get that one.

 

Jason Concepcion I know you just kept going. It was like, Now.

 

Rosie Knight This one, is like every time the train is falling and I have to shout out as well, like I think something that this movie does that so brilliant. I love the Hayley Atwell character in this. I love like the shifty English pickpocket who kind of tests him. And by the time that you get to the train sequence with the two of them, their chemistry and the way that they kind of intuitively understand what the other person is going to do makes this action sequence so believable, even though it’s so ridiculous, but it’s so good. And also, I will say. This is like edge of your seat cinema. Like, I was so worried about the fate of these characters, even though I know they’re going to continue on, you know? But it has you feel in that visceral feeling of like, Oh shit, can they do it? Can they land it? Are they going to survive the train like it? It’s so good. And is it? That’s a two hour, 40 minute movie. That shit, it passed in the theater. Like I never check my watch. Yeah, it was not like when I saw Indiana Jones where I could really feel the time. It was like when it got to that ending and I knew it was going to be the part, too. I was bombed. Like, I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to know what was going to happen next.

 

Shea Serrano The train thing, I think, is if you’re trying to show somebody what makes the Mission Impossible franchise special, you pull, you pull that up and you show the knife and all you can. And I tell them is that this train is about to go over a bridge. It’s going to explode because we’ve seen that exact thing in a hundred different action movies. And what happens is that the bridge explodes, the train goes over, the people make the jump at the very last second and it’s over and it’s done. And they do it this way where they just stretch it out for several minutes and you’re like, Yeah. Like, I can’t believe nobody had thought to do a version of this the way that they do this.

 

Rosie Knight Right?

 

Shea Serrano And every single car presents different obstacles. They’re in the kitchen car and everything is slipping.

 

Rosie Knight That’s why I was going to say, Yeah, I was like, Why did they pick the Orient Express? That seems like very specific. Like, is this an Agatha Christie riff? No, it’s so you can have a kitchen car, so you can have a dining car, so you can have expensive china falling towards them when they’re running through and they have to avoid the oil.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah, it’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Rosie Knight By the way, this is the last 15 minutes of an incredibly exciting movie. And this is the part we’re talking about because when you leave, you’re still thinking about that train sequence.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when, when they are separate of that. When they are. We haven’t even talked about Esai Morales, who is like.

 

Rosie Knight Oh my God.

 

Shea Serrano Just a great evil face. But when he has that, when he has the showdown on the bridge with Hayley Atwell and Rebecca Ferguson and Ferguson shows up and he says, I was hoping it was going to be you or something. Yeah, I remember when that part happens again. Ilsa Faust, my my favorite ninety ninth character in the movie. She’s so great. All the way through. I was like, They better fucking she better not die right now. She better fucking not die. I was watching that like I was watching a playoff game and I was like, Don’t you copy? Like, don’t you fucking do? I couldn’t. I couldn’t believe watching that you get to the end of this movie. She is gone. Hayley is there now, and I just remember watching it and being like, What the fuck was Dr. Strange thinking killing her off? And like, it’s like she. They kill her off, like, What are you doing? She’s incredible.

 

Rosie Knight Dude, she’s so good, and she can do the action. I loved her costuming, which was like the super, like seven E’s weird costuming, but she always seems. Yeah. And like, the big blouses. Yeah. Yeah. Like doing. And the action in this movie, like that bridge scene, where else is essentially like fencing with Esai Morales, but he only has a short knife. Yeah, that’s like, such a inventive, weird way to do it.

 

Jason Concepcion I was like, where the sword come from? It’s like, she pulls out a sword.

 

Rosie Knight And you don’t question it. You’re like, She carries that thing around. I believe it. But also, you know, I thought was really good about this movie that I didn’t think it would necessarily work. The main plot line is like, you know, about AI, I actually thought the way they did it was like, really cool. I loved the moment where they went into the party and the party just was AI, like the entity was the party. And I kind of like the idea that, you know, the that Gabriel, the Morales character, is like, I really like the idea that he’s almost like a fanatic about the possibilities of what that could entail. I just that could come across as super corny and dated, even though that was only made like two years ago. But I thought they did it in a way that was fun enough that it felt like quite relevant and scary. And there’s a lot of good betrayals in this movie too. That was another thing I like.

 

Shea Serrano What’s the what’s the woman’s name who plays Paris?

 

Jason Concepcion Pom Klementieff.

 

Rosie Knight Pom Klementieff.

 

Shea Serrano Yeah. Incredible.

 

Jason Concepcion So since she did so much, I think that’s what I wanted to talk about because she did she has barely any lines in this movie, although she’s in it for quite a bit, but she transmits like so much about her character and terrified, excited the way she drives the truck and the looks on her face when she’s fighting Tom Cruise. And she’s fucking fantastic in this movie. And and one of the great. I now have developed a crush on Ethan Hunt. The plot twists in the whole series. Hunt doesn’t kill her after the killing, and all of a sudden she’s like, You know what.

 

Rosie Knight Seems pretty cool.

 

Jason Concepcion I think I have a crush on this guy. I’m going to help him at the very end of the movie.

 

Rosie Knight It’s, like, so rare to see a relentless Henchy character who is a woman and she’s like, fucking running down a train line does not stop her.

 

Jason Concepcion Like, she’s so great.

 

Rosie Knight Driving that crazy van in, like, a tiny kilt would like Dr. Martin Boots. I love this character. I think one of the things this movie does that I think is really exciting and works really well, essentially sets up like a new crew or additions to the crew. Yeah, I think in part to the crew’s going to be expanded and I think we can definitely expect to see POM. I love the choices that she or the makeup artist or whoever to get the collaboratively made. There’s so many shots just of her face. Yeah, yeah. Like the.

 

Jason Concepcion Grey face.

 

Rosie Knight The slightly kind of, like, blurry, like, almost like the crow, like makeup with the kind of greasy hat it could have been. It feels like one of those great roles. Kind of like Ripley in Alien, where it’s like it feels like they didn’t necessarily gender cast that character.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah. It just. Just killed it.

 

Rosie Knight Best performance.

 

Jason Concepcion Again, that that scene where she is chasing them, they’re in the Mini and she’s chasing them in like this armored car. And they keep cutting to her, like being excited about the chase and being in and it’s.

 

Rosie Knight Like, and just like necessarily smashing through like 50 combos.

 

Jason Concepcion And, like, laughing about it. It is so compelling. She’s so good and she makes just makes the most.

 

Rosie Knight Definitely the harlequin of the of the Mission: Impossible, Batman lore.

 

Shea Serrano One of the one of the things that I really enjoy about what they do with these characters. And you saw it especially with Ilsa when she showed up and that it’s in that first fight in Rogue Nation when she’s helping Ethan Hunt escape and she’s doing like a bunch of, like, aerial jujitsu, just like, yeah, like getting legs around heads and flipping. Yeah. Like using, using the momentum of gravity to fight. And they do the same thing with with Paris here when she’s fighting with Tom Cruise, Like, the one time she really has them is when she’s up in the air and she’s got her legs and she’s pinned them against. Yeah, that it’s such a smart move to do with a person who is like has a slender body frame because it’s still scary and like, oh, fuck, if they get when she’s fighting Esai Morales, you like, just get you just get your legs around his neck and wrap. Like, just get her like you’re just praying for it to happen. It’s such a such a fun thing to watch.

 

Jason Concepcion Thoughts on the return of Kittridge back again after after a 20 year absence from the series.

 

Rosie Knight So is he is he the buyer? Like, was he trying to buy it? And does Hayley Atwell’s character know? And she’s just acting to save her own skin by being like Ethan told me I could trust you because she didn’t mention to Ethan that he was the one trying to buy the entity. So, like, I’m interested, like, is he antagonist? Is he ally? Like, I think that’s going to play big into the next movie.

 

Jason Concepcion I agree. And I will say a notable lack of betrayals in this part one of Dead Reckoning. So you do wonder like. Who is going to double cross Ethan because it has to be coming yet more.

 

Rosie Knight It’s actually more like the betrayals. Are the people betraying people to be on Ethan’s side?

 

Shea Serrano Yeah.

 

Rosie Knight Which is kind of an inversion of what we’ve come to expect, where everyone’s always betraying Ethan.

 

Jason Concepcion Let us now do our rankings, our final rankings. Shea, you’ve done your so rosy, your rankings of Mission Impossible movies.

 

Rosie Knight  One, six, seven, five, two, four

 

Shea Serrano You missed three.

 

Rosie Knight Three. Oh, you know what? This is always narratively. I counted them, too.

 

Jason Concepcion That’s on top to bottom. Right? From. From.

 

Rosie Knight Yes. Yes. So one is the best for me. Six is next. Then five, then three. No, seven’s so good. I don’t know. I have to write it. I’m going to have to write it visually. Jason, what’s yours? Okay. Here I go. Note it down.

 

Jason Concepcion One, six, five, seven. Although six, I need to let seven sit a little bit more. But I’m going to say that one five, six, seven, three, two, four. I have four as my I acknowledge that it is technically a better film than two, but I’m just going straight emotion. I’m going to be so mad. And and the movie that I that I will rewatch more and frankly like I if I ever I’m like, do I want to watch Ghost Protocol? Then I just skip immediately to five or six. Like I’ll just skip ahead to Syndicate Era because I just, I don’t need it. Shea, your your, your final rankings.

 

Shea Serrano One, six, five, seven, three, four, two. It sounds like we’re all pretty much aligned.

 

Rosie Knight Yes, it’s pretty similar.

 

Speaker 2 All very much aligned.

 

Rosie Knight  I’m basically I’m one six, five, seven. So same. And then I’m probably going to put two higher because I just love that John Wick style. And then three, then then then three and four I’m going for and then three. Three is for me the narrative nature of it and Philip Seymour Hoffman not being in it enough, push it. But honestly, I really do like grading on a scale. These movies are all like one or two percentile difference until you get to that final new ones where they kind of just blow up to a whole different level of quality.

 

Jason Concepcion So part of the reason we’re having you on here is, one, you’re a huge fan of the Mission Impossible Series two, You’re a huge fan of action movies.

 

Shea Serrano Yes.

 

Jason Concepcion And three, you have a new project that marries those things together. Tell us about it.

 

Shea Serrano Yes, it’s called the Action Hero Scouting Report. It’s much, much like how they do scouting reports for basketball players. You know, with regard to basketball, this player is good at this and bad at this and good at this and better. This is like that, but it’s action hero. So it’s with regard to action movies Now, this hero is good at this and bad at this and good at this and bad at this. And there you go. It’s 27 of them. You get it at halfway. Bookscan. Ethan Hunt is in there. Should. Yeah, check it out. Every action hero gets an action hero score. The way that we that we set that up is we have like, grading rubric that has six factors in there. There’s the inciting event. Like what’s the thing that thrust this action hero into action? Like, how compelling is it? How interesting is it? There’s the determination an action hero is going to be tested, put in impossible situations with him, with impossible odds. How determined are they? There’s the skills training. What sort of skills does this person possess? There’s a cool factor because action heroes, above all other things need to be cool. There’s what we’re calling wish-nificance which, it’s a it’s a made up word that we’re defining as like that feeling you get when you’re watching a movie, when you’re like, I want to be I want to be be a trickster.

 

Jason Concepcion Yeah.

 

Shea Serrano I want to be Ethan Hunt. You know what I mean? Like, how significant is that? You look at if you look at like Jett will use gently as an example, Gently was in a movie called Romeo Must Die. And in Romeo Must Die, he flirts with Aaliyah and he plays he scores a touchdown playing park football and he karate kicks a guy in the head so hard that the guys shine, spine shatters. That’s a very high wish-nificance level versus another Jet Li movie Unleashed, where he’s just a human dog. Know I don’t want to I don’t want to be, I don’t want to.

 

Rosie Knight Make choices.

 

Jason Concepcion Very, very straight shut.

 

Shea Serrano And then and then the last one, the last category, legacy level. So like, how did this action hero effect alter move forward, the action movie genre or the action hero as a as a character in one way or the other? You add all those up, you get your action hero score. But there you go.

 

Rosie Knight Okay. Can you tease just because I’m obviously going to read this because I love action. Can you tease like, who are some of your top who who sue us? Some of the ones who scored highest?

 

Shea Serrano Oh, man. Okay. Well, Rambo is in there. Rambo scores, of course, very high.

 

Jason Concepcion Jonathan Rambo.

 

Shea Serrano John McClane. John McClane score is very Jonathan McClane. Who else is in there? Furiosa.

 

Jason Concepcion Nice Ferio.

 

Shea Serrano Nice high score. The bride, Neo.

 

Rosie Knight Of course.

 

Shea Serrano But we, we bounce around. What I didn’t want to do is I didn’t want to be like, this is a 27 best action heroes all over the place. We have Chep Cheliose from Crank, he gets a scouting report .

 

Rosie Knight It’s about the wierd shit. Now that’s what I like.

 

Shea Serrano We get we got we got Mike and Marcus from Bad Boys two. We got Cameron Poe from Con Air. Like, we’re all over that. We’re all over it. Come, come, come grab a copy. HalfwayBooks.com.

 

Jason Concepcion Well, Shea, thank you so much for joining us.

 

Rosie Knight Thank you. This was an incredible time.

 

Jason Concepcion A big thank you to Shea Serrano. That’s it for us. Rosie, Any plugs?

 

Rosie Knight Yeah. Come see me. San Diego Comic-Con. It’s almost time. It’s going to be a weird year, but I’ll be there. Check my Instagram to see where and obviously come back and just listen to us talking about cool stuff.

 

Jason Concepcion Catch next episode of Secret Invasion Friday, July 21st for more Secret Invasion.

 

Rosie Knight You can watch full episodes of the podcast on YouTube and check out our Twitter @XRVPod. Follow us there and also join the Discord to hang out with bunch cool people who love all the same cool stuff as you.

 

Jason Concepcion Five star rating, five star reviews. We need them. We got to have them.  You got to give them to us. Here’s one from DCEagle123. Dark Knight episode was truly amazing. I love this podcast. Thanks for creating something that brings so much joy to so many people. Just awesome. Thank you. Thank you DCEagle123. X-ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin. And Executive produced by me, Jason Concepcion. Our editing and sound design is by Vasilis Fotopoulos. Video production by Delon Villanueva and Rachel Gaewski. Social Media by Ewa Okulate and Caroline Dunphy. Thank you to Brian Vasquez for our theme music. See you next time. Bye.

 

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