Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Blank check:

I need you to podcast with me one last time.

No, actually, we're going to do it all like every week.

Oh, right.

For the foreseeable future.

Now, see, here's why I picked that quote because I'm not buying for a fucking second this is the last Mission Impossible movie.

Oh, really?

Oh, you're throwing that out right as the story.

I'm saying this.

Spoilers.

You think more.

Much in the way that this is not the last episode of Blank Check.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

I mean, unless one of us has lost the submarine.

There is one singular conflict in the way of there being future Mission Impossible movies is the fact that this film cost $400 million.

Took five years to film based on partly for the factors beyond their control.

We'll get into it.

COVID, the strikes, all this stuff.

And they like could not control Tom Cruise, right?

Where I think there's a universe, much like what's sort of happening with the Fast and Furious franchise and Vin Diesel, which is completely bottlenecked now.

We might never get a final film.

Right.

Because the studio is like, it's gone out of control.

And if you want another one, we have a lot of like control we want to put on it.

Their wildest hope is to like make a final film and be like, Vin Diesel, thank you for your service.

We're never working with you ever again.

These movies are cheaper and smaller and easier to make now.

We're doing spin-offs.

And the problem is, much like Tom Cruise with Mission Impossible, this guy is too tied to this thing.

You can't say no to him.

He holds all the cards.

Well, yeah, there's no.

more of these movies without him.

But I was, just to get out of the way, a little bit astounded.

And I will get into the endings I didn't want to see,

but a little astounded for how hard they're leaning into like final reckoning, final reckoning all leads to this, that this movie does not even attempt to pretend that it's closing any doors.

I completely disagree.

I would say I mildly disagree with you too.

But go ahead.

Sorry, I feel very like discombobulated that we're talking about the end of the movie at the beginning of the episode.

Why that starts?

That's kind of impossible.

I don't know.

I would also argue that's almost how this movie is structured in the end.

True.

Okay, but at the end of the film, I believe that we've achieved world peace.

And therefore,

there's no, you know, he did it.

I kind of agree with you.

What if he drops the USB?

He's like, whoops.

Excuse me.

It's a 5D optical drive.

Yeah, I was going to say, what is the USB

cartridge?

The super USB.

Right.

Okay.

And the entity is so glowy that it's like, make it glow.

I think that's a good prop.

I do too.

Oh, love i love how it glows yeah um but i'm also like

why didn't he destroy it well we're gonna get to this why not i think that that's very intense but i i agree with you that like i i i have a feeling this is based on nothing but having seen the movie twice now i got a feeling that you it really feels to me like there were multiple endings that had a greater sense of finality And Tom at the last second was like, I just want an ending where we all nod our heads and walk in separate directions.

What's a more final ending that they would have abandoned?

I will get into it.

Oh, he's going to get into it now.

Oh, he's going to get into it.

That final sequence, especially seeing it a second time, looks like it is shot entirely in the volume.

Several of the actors seem painted in.

It does not feel like they are all in the same space.

They were shooting shit on this movie within the last three months.

I mean, the actors not being in the same place, I buy.

But those were real, those were real humans in Trafalgar Square.

They, I think, went to None of them were looking at their cell phones because we've destroyed Cyberspace.

Here's what everyone is happy.

Here's what I think.

I think they went to Tafalgar Square.

I think they filmed people.

I think then they filmed all the actors separately.

So we're starting out with completely, you're just out of pocket.

Just

making shit up.

As shit.

There's fucking YouTube videos of them all filming in Trafalgar Square.

All of them?

Yes.

Palm.

Yeah.

Yes.

Atwell.

Yes.

All of them.

I think they did a location day in Trapal.

Who?

Degas?

I don't know who that is.

It's Tarzan.

Yeah.

Yeah, probably him.

He's one of those guys where, even when I'm looking at him, I'm like, is he in this movie?

Oh, there he is.

Right.

Yeah.

There's a moment.

Sorry.

There's a moment in this movie.

Sorry, Greg.

Where they're like figuring out what everyone needs to do in the final mission.

And he's like, I just kind of a no-tom cruise.

I'm just going to, I'm going to die.

I got no purpose.

He says, like, I guess I'll just stay behind with Dunlow and his wife.

Right.

Where he says, I just don't feel important enough to go to that place.

Right.

I think I'll stay with the kind of thing.

He's admitting, like, I haven't earned being in that place.

I was in Maverick and clearly got along with this guy.

Like, I must be nice.

Everyone likes me.

I got a cool name and a nice face.

I'm sure I'm friendly and easy.

You must be nice.

Lovely.

Celia.

All right.

His middle name's Tarzan for crying out loud.

Look, that's half the magic.

This is blank check with Griffin and there.

He's an elementary school teacher, so he must have like a lovely reason.

That's so nice.

He does have that kind of gentle authority.

He does.

My name is David Sims.

I thought you were about to say he was in elemental, and I was going to knock him down.

Elemental wins.

Yeah, exactly.

F.

He played a Cloudball player or some shit.

Yeah, what a great movie.

Have you been keeping up with this Cloudball season?

So, yeah, it's so good.

The Oklahoma City Thunder are doing really well.

God, don't get me started.

God, the two weeks my daughter was sort of into Elemental, although I feel like she was, even she was kind of faking it.

Those are the two weeks that you put her up for adoption.

It's just a tough movie to watch over and over.

It's tough enough to watch it.

So, hey, guys, so you're Griffin and you're David, and this is blank check.

And what are we doing?

And who are you?

Oh, I'm Marie

Barty, Party, Salinas, Barty, Salinas, whatever my name is.

Who's here?

Oh, hey, what's up?

It's Ben.

I'm the Bentity.

The Bentity.

The Bentity.

And we are here to discuss Christopher Macquarie's very normal movie, Mission Colon Impossible, M-The Final Reckoning, the last

movie in this franchise, probably.

I agree with you, Marie, that I do think this movie makes the choice to basically raise the stakes as high as they could possibly be raised, where you're just like, I don't know how you do another one

after this.

Well, well,

well,

here comes Galactus.

Every time I see some piece of Fantastic Four marketing material and I get goosebumps, I immediately go like, I'm so angry at myself.

For like, it's getting me.

Forget me.

And that fucking final shot of the most recent trailer where you just see Galactus' big boot.

I'm just like, oh, God, they still have me.

They have me exactly where they want me.

Just seeing some big, goofy boot.

And I'm like, oh, he's not a clown.

Remember when there was like some, you know, one

comic book reporter, one of those guys who was like, they're looking for Javier Bardem, Galactus Latino.

Like there was something like that.

I'll never forget it.

Just the idea that Marvel in some conference room was like, I think Galactus needs to be Latino.

That's like literally that episode of the studio.

Yes.

Galactus Latino.

A podcast about filmographies.

Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby.

Now, here it was Jeff Snyder who said, The main villain is Galactus, and I'm told he will be Latino.

Just the idea.

Ian Snyder himself?

Yeah.

He thinks he was outsnide on that one.

I mean, it's a big-looking boot.

Yeah.

Well, he's a large man.

Ben, do you know what Galactus does?

Yeah, I think so.

He just gobbles up Planet.

Correct.

He sure does.

That's his food.

Some of us like turkey subs.

Galactus like Planet.

Yeah.

Oh, it's played by the dad and the Vich?

Yeah, Ralph and Nassim.

I think that is the Green Knights.

Yeah.

The titular Green Knights.

They made a choice that makes a lot of sense.

He's not Latino.

No.

Not that I checked.

I mean, maybe, maybe I

don't know something.

Did you see the promotional art that leaked out, David?

Yes, I did.

The full Galactus.

You look cool to me.

You know what it looks like?

Ralph Fundison is Galactus.

Yes.

It looks like a Jack Kirby drawing of Galactus.

And I cannot believe we've gotten this far that they're just like, we don't need to make this look any less goofy.

We're just going to own this.

I really, I'm, you know.

I'm very, very cautiously optimistic to take my first steps.

But listen, here on this podcast, on the main feed, we talk about directors and their filmographies and their careers, right?

We have a Patreon feed, blank check special features, where we talk about franchises and primarily franchises that don't have one dominant director.

But Christopher Macquarie made a little movie called Jack Reacher.

True.

That you and I love.

Great movie.

We did a podcast on it once.

This is the thing.

So early in the days of this show, when we'd be like, fuck, we've got to find more new releases to cover, get that sweet new release bump.

Jack Reacher 2 was coming out.

and we're like, great opportunity to do an episode on both Jack Reachers.

Then on our Patreon, Mission Impossible wins our March Madness thing.

It definitely did.

I think we did our Patreon.

We cover all the Mission Impossible movies there.

Then we realize, oh, if we do Way of the Gun, which we did, we've covered all

Christopher Macquarie episodes.

You weren't even on that episode.

No, but I had to watch it or I got stuck in traffic.

Something happened.

Something happened.

But I did watch it and it was god-awful.

It's not my favorite.

No.

That having been said, I have pre-ordered the 4K steel book because I'm a fucking simp.

It's a limited edition.

Did she get that Fletch?

No, the Fletch box is for you, Ben.

Uh-huh.

Chevy Chase on ChevyChase.com is selling a limited edition Fletch box.

It's actually official ChevyChase.com.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

That is a combination.

ID cards and pins and buttons.

And stickers.

Stickers.

There's seven typos.

Yeah, it refers to Gina Davis G-I-N-A.

There's a couple of things that maybe get an intern to give a once-over here.

There's a post-it note where Chevy wrote Fletch on it.

And then that's signed by Burton Gilliam.

We were trying to convince Ben to buy the Fletch box.

There's $200.

Listen, there's no way I'm doing it.

We did the Way of the Gun episode, right?

Because we were like, if we've done this, then we've covered all Macquarie and we can make it like Mission Impossible, like a sneaky mission under everyone's noses that we have retroactively now covered this man's entire career and he counts as a main feed director and so last year we talked about mission impossible colon

dead reckoning

previously part one i'm sorry mission colon impossible m dash dead reckoning space part one sure

And of course, today we are talking about Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning Part 2.

Wait, no, scratch that, the final reckoning.

The final reckoning.

This time, it's final.

Christopher Macquarie's film with Tom Cruise is in it.

Tom Cruise is in this movie.

Haley Atwell, Bing Rames, Simon Pegg,

Henry Zerni.

Are you going in billing order?

I don't know.

Okay.

Well, because I think Palm Clementef is up before.

The billing order is Tom Cruise, Haley Atwell, Bing Rames, Simon Pegg.

No, no, because there's some ands and withs, so I don't actually know.

Angela Bassett gets the ands.

Does she only get get the ands?

She's the only one that gets the and Cerni with a with.

So then it's only Bassett with an and.

So then I think that's correct.

Okay, great.

I think that's right.

That's a good job.

And you've also got

Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso, Tramel Tillman of

Severance, Shay Wiggum of My Dreams, the aforementioned Greg Tarzan Davis

of Elementary School.

Yes.

Chris Parnell and Mark Gaspar.

Charles Parnell.

Chris Parnell is Sarnell.

Carl Charles Parnell.

But no, Chris Parnell's here, too, actually.

Like, fuck, Parnell would be good in a mission.

If you could slot him in, he'd be great.

Because they had what?

Who's the Twitter guy with the mustache?

Rob Delaney.

Rob Delaney, though.

Basically, replaced in this movie by Nick Offerman.

Also, Holt McElhaney.

Holt McElhaney's there.

Also, two-time Academy Award nominee, Janet McCure.

Yeah, and she was good.

She kind of has

the presence required, I feel like.

You know what I mean?

Like,

she's playing sort of a nothing character, but like, she just, she's good at just kind of she seems really responsible.

Sure.

But all of this is even just in listening to this cast emblematic of some of the core issues of this movie for me, which is basically like you have Hannah Waddingham and Janet McTier and Angela Bassett.

Yeah, absolutely.

You have Holt McLaney and Nick Offerman.

You want two square-jawed, slow-talking, gravel-voiced men who explain how important things are in the same room.

Yeah, but what if they're sitting down?

Yeah, they're both sitting down.

You know who I really liked?

liked i mean trammelle tillman i think is sort of like secret mvp

but um a katie o'brien oh my god i love her yeah

anytime she's in a movie i'm happy i agree but we're like 20 names down on this list and she shows up and immediately i'm like this movie's not going to give her enough to do right I just like that the submarine is gay.

Did you get, I will, thank you.

Everyone on the submarine is gay.

So I said Ben and I were the first ones here today.

And so even Ethan Hunt's like, should I just like get in my briefs?

I said.

Marie, I'm just sorry.

Can we check the notes quickly?

Who is the third one here?

So, Ben, number one, Marie number two, Griffin, number three.

Interesting, and bringing up the reader.

Welcome to this debate, as I said on a different episode.

But when it was just me and Ben, I was like, I love the gay submarine.

And Ben was like, what?

And I was like, the submarine's gay.

And he's like, interesting opinion.

And I'm like, no.

Not interesting.

It's very

cannon.

That is a gay ass submarine.

Yeah.

It's just funny that Traveller Tillman's like, and who are you?

You know, he's just having so much fun with it.

Like, he could be like,

hello.

Like, I am the captain of the most important submarine in the world.

No.

Tom Cruise is like just in his underwear for most of the time that he's on the boat.

Katie O'Brien's just showing her muscles.

Oh, you want to poke the bear?

A plus.

On the band to do it.

The way he says, mister.

Mr.

Tremont rocks.

Where did that guy come from?

Like, where did he get plucked out of?

He, like, only started acting in his mid-30s, I want to say.

He was Wikipedia recently.

Well, because he was on the official severance podcast, which I very much enjoy, talking about his journey, where he was like,

he was like a pre-med.

He was like a science major in college or whatever and was like going to be a surgeon.

But I think he went to grading school for acting.

Yeah, he got an MFA in acting.

Yeah.

He did a lot of theater work.

He was the first African-American man to graduate with an MFA in acting from the University of Tennessee.

That's depressing.

It's kind of weird.

Yeah.

That's not a big program.

I don't know.

But that's in 2014.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He didn't, he didn't really start.

He got some TV roles, I guess.

Yeah.

His first theater credit is 2018.

Like he's a very recent.

Yeah.

He fucking rocks.

Yeah.

Rules.

While we're on the subject of Trummel.

Like the whole magic of severance is it's either guys where you're like, Jesus, this is like a heavyweight, or guys you're like, I've never seen this person.

I've never seen in my life.

And now I love her.

But, okay, so not only is Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham

in the show, in the movie, she's an aircraft carrier captain or whatever.

And we've got Severance's Mr.

Milchik.

Did you notice that one of the like naval helicopter pilots is played by Sidney Cole Alexander, a.k.a.

Natalie from Severance?

The woman with the crazy smile.

Who's all that speaking to the board?

Yeah, she's wonderful on Severance.

I didn't notice that.

She's great, though.

Good for her.

Which means in my head, at least, Tom Cruise watches Severance.

almost definitely with no he knows ben stiller i know he knows ben stiller yeah but i'm like i when i watch severance i'm like there are a lot of scientology vibes in this so i think it's very interesting that tom is a severance fan you mean that it's like kind of um making fun of yes certain yeah yeah sure sure you know it's another movie we know he watched the master yeah yeah sure what do you mean well but what do you mean by we know he watched well because we know we watched no didn't pta say that he yeah

and it was awkward didn't he didn't pta say it was like it didn't go well?

Right.

That's they asked him, like, how did he respond?

And he was like, that's a private matter.

Yeah.

Sounds good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm just like, I don't know.

I'm, I'm curious.

Look,

these are, yes.

As we've talked about, we've talked a lot of Tom in the 10 years, the decade of dreams of doing this show.

And we've talked all the Mission Impossible movies on top of that, right?

He is such a fascinating black box of a person.

We were texting a lot yesterday in our group chat of a lot of his like recent press interviews and his like, he's so good at being like, movies, go, popcorn, yes.

It's truly what he's cornered, right, in this for the last few years of like, I am movies.

And then it was so sad.

Someone at E-News asked me about his

Father's Day plans and it was like he short-circuited.

I watched it again.

And so sad.

They phrased the question as, Father's Day is coming up.

What would your ideal Father's Day be?

I'm like, they gave him so much wiggle room in that answer.

It wasn't even, what are you doing this Father's Day?

And his answer was, you know, making movies, big screen, adventure, live it up.

Like, it was truly.

It looked like he short-served it.

It really did.

He was like the woman in the airport in total recall before Arnold lifts his head up.

Two weeks.

Making movies, big screen, big adventure, live it up.

That's why we love him.

Because it is that thing where when he went to see Tenet, he was like, Tenant, big screen.

And I was like, did you process what an insane movie Tenant was?

Yeah.

Or are you just like, screen, big?

We were in another group text talking about the videos of him eating popcorn.

And one of our friends was like, the technique of how he's getting the popcorn in the mouth.

He's palming it.

Is any popcorn actually getting in his mouth?

Right.

So what Tom Cruise movies have we discussed on this podcast?

We have discussed because, of course, he was for most of the 90s and the early 2000s and a tour driven director.

So Mission Impossible.

And Mission Impossible is on tour driven.

We've never discussed a movie from kind of the first 15 years of his career, the earlier.

Let me see if I can get all the cruise movies we've talked about.

Jerry Maguire, Collateral.

Obviously, we've covered Ghost Protocol on

Patreon.

Minority reports.

Yep.

Reacher.

We covered Reacher.

Both of them.

Both Reacher.

Yeah.

And then obviously all the other missions on Patreon.

There's one one more two more you're forgetting a big one i'm forgetting a big one and it ain't lines for lambs yet

the malagro beanfield podcast it's coming up oh eyes wide shut eyes wide shut is that the big one yeah that's the big one and we also of course well there is one more yeah we did meet the mummy we met oh my god

on patreon who's in this coffin here

a sexy mummy I saw this movie twice.

I saw Mission Impossible.

No, Final Reckoning twice.

I've seen this twice as well first at a press screening rex reed was there it was really exciting was he having fun he he was um did superman say hello to him no but the lady who was checking everyone in the screening was like hello rex did you notice rex reed in 1978 superman i know you just watched it for the first time no i didn't know until you guys called it out on the episode he was looking good anyway

i saw this movie twice once at a press screening and once last night at nighthawk the pre-show they did at Nighthawk was like

impeccable.

Oh, yeah.

They do a good job there.

They do a great job.

They played the Ben Stiller Tom Cruise MTV Movie Awards classic bit, but then they also played the

wrong export of the mummy trailer.

Yes, which is

the no, it's just sound effects.

But then Tom Cruise goes like, oh!

It's just screams.

Right, right, right, right.

It's like there's birds or whatever.

Cause she like sends like evil birds to crash their plane.

Yeah.

But you're not hearing the birds.

No, you're just.

Instead, you're just hearing go like, oh,

ah!

And I'd only seen that on like, you know, YouTube or Twitter or whatever.

To watch that in a theater with a crowd.

It was amazing.

I just remember watching that trailer and being like, I like it.

And then they were like, it's a mistake.

And I'm like, oh, well, it's kind of cool.

No?

No, I thought it was good.

What I thought was good was the mummy, the film.

Great film.

I was thinking

what I I was doing the math on is, is that the only like complete total zero of his career?

No.

Tom Cruise?

Yeah.

I think he's got a couple others, doesn't he?

I mean, it's definitely the biggest zero sort of since entering this action movie's primarily like phase.

But you think about it, and it's like, there are some movies like Rock of Ages are like terrible, but he's like doing something in it that makes it ultimately like.

I really do think he tries his best in Rock of Ages and has fun.

That movie's definitely a cultural zero.

It's a cultural zero.

I agree.

I've never seen it, but I do think he's given some credit for he tried something he hadn't done before versus the mummy.

But the mummy has a weird tiny little bit of cachet because the dark universe became such a movie.

The cachet is the failure.

But that's not the trade.

Same with any of his babies.

What about Nick Morton?

Do we have anything to say about Nick Morton?

No, we don't.

What do you mean?

Keep your eye on that guy.

Versus Stacy Jacks.

No,

Stacy Jax.

I will say, I think Jack Reacher Never Go Back is a total zero.

I agree with you on that.

And more of a zero than either of the two movies.

Like, I think people have actively memory hold that there was a second.

I also, I find that movie more offensive because I'm like, you guys had the fucking roadmap.

You actually did a good job.

You fucked up everything you got right in the first one.

I also think that Lions for Lambs is a zero.

Lions for Lambs is a zero.

No, that's like a negative 100.

But some of these other ones, I'm like.

Lions for Lambs.

He wanted to take a supporting dramatic role in a robert redford movie i'm like that movie's a zero but i get the move right meryl streeps in it that movie's i agree with the movie's a zero but it no it's it's a it's a major disappointment and how boring forgettable and whatever it is but the mummy is the one where i'm just like why are you doing this and why is

uh

alex kurtzman directing this awhile is he the one who died no that was the other one okay

the other other one is the really weird one.

American Made.

America Made Rock.

Kind of fun.

America Made's good.

It's weird that he's in it.

American Made

is like Cruz deciding to make a porch classic.

I know.

At a moment where all of his movies are like so big.

And he gets kind of scummy in it.

Yeah.

He's a little scummy.

What's the biggest zero from like early in his career?

I guess it's like.

I haven't seen all the right moves.

No, it ain't that.

That movie rocks.

Okay, cool.

I'll watch it.

Also, I'll tell you, that movie's not a zero.

It's got about six inches.

Far and away.

But you know, far and away, which is bad, was definitely a hit at the time.

But yeah, I mean, far and away is pretty close to kind of it's sort of forgotten these days.

He's really bad at it.

This is my bigger point.

It's like all the other zeros like that, you're like, well, he wanted to work with Ron Howard and he met Nicole Kidman.

Like the movie's nothing, but there's power surrounding the movie.

No, but he did he meet Nicole on the set of Days of Thunder.

Oh, you're right.

That was their

victory level.

Yeah, because I was going deep through Tom Cruise's Getty Image archive this week, you know, pulling out all my favorites.

You found a really good one of Tom and Sidney Pollack at a UN conference?

No, it wasn't a UN conference.

It was like the John Houston symposium.

It was when the, it was when Ted Turner started colorizing movies.

And so it was like, we need to band together to protect artists' rights.

But they're wearing like UN like translation headphones.

Everyone's like leaning in behind them.

It's like a panel and it looks really serious and they're, they're looking really serious.

Tom has an unbelievable look.

He almost looks like he has an ombre.

Yeah.

He's got he's like kind of grunge era.

It's like really cute.

But it's him and Sidney Pollack sitting next to Amy Heckerling and Twink Kaplan.

Just eagle eye Marie Barty.

I will post a photo the week between look who's talking to and this episode

because, you know, as to mark the transition.

But

there were like photos of, and I could be like misremembering the timeline here, but it it was like Tom Cruise and Mimi Rodgers at NASCAR races, which I'm like, oh, so he's in Days of Thunder mode here for sure.

That's when he's talking about

that.

She divorced him in 1999.

Yeah.

Mimi Rogers, normal lady as well.

Look, let's just get ahead.

Let's get at, let's just say this.

This movie's a mess, right?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

You can say it's a mess, which I agree with.

I think it's a mess.

I just want to get out there and say, like, I don't care.

So

in a nutshell, the first time.

I would say that I care quite a bit.

David.

David and I saw this at a press screening as well.

Kind folks at Paramount helped us out all getting in to see this movie early, which made our lives a lot easier in terms of record schedules and such.

So thank you for that.

David and I saw it a press screening.

I went again last night

for like the fucking IMAX fan first, whatever.

It is officially coming out today on the day that we're recording it.

Going into the screening, we had two friends who had seen it in advance.

And one was like, it's good.

And one was like, it's bad.

And I was like, huh, no middle ground between these two, right?

Was really worried.

I sat there, was so fucking stressed out during our screening.

I had this feeling that I

was stressed out because the movie wasn't working for you.

I was like, this feels like a bumpy takeoff on an airplane.

I just felt myself just not, holy shit, this is going to crash.

Yes.

Oh, I was just more like, why am I not, you know, doing the thing I do with Fallout or whatever, where I'm like, yep, up, up, up, up.

You know, like, yes, yes.

I never got out of like second gear.

I was feeling that.

And then the longer I wasn't feeling that, I, the more I got worried of like, is this a disaster?

Like, I started having that sinking rise of Skywalker feeling.

The best thing I...

Well, the best thing I can say about this movie is it does get better as it goes along rather than worse.

So it ends on a pretty good note.

And I came out of it and I was like, first hour is like a total wash.

The second hour is okay.

The third hour hour is really good.

And then I saw it again last night.

It's three hours.

It's very long.

I saw it again last night.

And the stuff that really fucking bugged me the first time didn't go down any smoother for me, but I had removed the stress of being like, is this thing going to fucking crash?

Which made me a little more analytical about it.

I got a little bit more into I don't care mode.

I find this very disappointing.

I saw with a group of people, including our friend Ben David Grabansky, past and future guest, and he said, I cannot cannot think of a movie with higher highs and lower lows, like where the best stuff in it, I think, is like as good as modern blockbuster filmmaking can be.

And the stuff that is bad in it is like so emblematic of the cancer of what drives me crazy about modern movies.

And I feel that kind of way.

I come out, I'm like, this movie ultimately lands on the positive for me.

Some of it is, I just like Mission Impossible movies.

I like these characters.

That's why I was basically always engaged and these outfits and their locations and whatever.

My bar is really high for these movies.

And it like ultimately delivers just enough of what I want out of them.

And yet there's so much of this movie I find so maddening that is like so sloppy in a bizarre in a way that just kind of boggles my mind.

Like most of all, I felt this the first time.

I felt it even more the second time.

And I really like studied it to see if this held up.

I basically think you can lose the entire first act of that movie.

Everything in the first hour other than Luther dying doesn't need to happen.

Here's the bigger take.

And the movie's three hours.

But here's the bigger take.

Yeah.

The two movies are one very good three-hour movie.

Yeah.

Here's, let's zoom all the way back.

The moment they decide we're making one two-part movie.

Disastrous.

Fausty and Bargain screwed all of them.

They obviously

work.

Have anticipated fucking global pandemic and multiple industry strikes on top of that that made this thing just like a cursed production that took half a decade.

But that was the original sin of this film.

I mean, for this movie to basically, for Rebecca Ferguson to be publicly like, I had to get out of there.

Like the way this, these things work, it takes too long.

You can't do anything.

It sucks up all your life.

And she exited in the seventh movie.

She's in it.

Like, and even then she was just like, no, I didn't want to even wrap like one more movie no no no i had to go god bless tom and chris and all those folks right i just kept about the two-parter of it i keep thinking about i kept thinking about wicked

where again heaven unlimited do you think tom cruise said to paramount this production is unlimited

he should have said that together we'll be the greatest team there's ever been and like sherry redstone play

like what i'm picturing tom cruise in a bed and netflix Netflix in the bed next to him.

He's going, little thing.

But, like, you know how everyone's like, why the fuck are they splitting Wicked into two movies?

Because the second act is boring and all the good stuff, all the good songs are.

Yeah, but then I saw Wicked and I was like, oh, I understand why.

No, you understand why, but you're like, I'm just anticipating Wicked part two to not have as much of the juice.

I'm no longer anticipating that, but you can say my joke.

David had the joke that I think about all the time and quote back to people all the time.

I think it was on our Thomas Crown of Pear episode with the great Amanda Dobbins, where you said the splitting the wicked into two parts is like when I make dinner and decide that washing the dishes is a Tomorrow David task.

That's Morning David's problem.

Right.

Yes.

And you're like, the wicked part two is like, I have to wash all these dishes, though.

I'm sorry.

Right.

But you're like, tonight is incredible.

Right.

I made a meal.

I ate it.

It tasted great.

And I didn't have to do any of the cleanup work.

I'm in bed padding my big belly.

It's perfect, 10 out of 10.

And then you wake up the next morning and you're like, oh my fucking God.

This movie has a ton of Tomorrow David business it has to take care of, where it's like, oh, Jesus fucking Christ.

We passed all this stuff on to part two.

And a lot of it, they just go like, never mind.

Well, that's the thing.

And then some of the sloppiness is being like, you're not even going to fucking talk about this thing.

But the movie

starts.

It's caught up in, oh, gosh, we have to figure shit out that we never figured out.

But then, right, it doesn't actually.

even try to figure everything out.

Just to speak on wicked, just to make my point clear.

Wicked for good out this Thanksgiving or whatever, right?

By the way, I think them calling it for good instead of part two is because they want to keep making these forever.

Maybe.

There's a bunch more books.

Yeah.

And they'll loosely adapt them, but they'll just, they want this to be an everlasting.

Wait, there aren't a bunch more books.

There's tons of the books.

They just did a new one.

That guy's that guy.

A print required?

Yeah, he pumped it.

I thought he made only one book.

No, no, there's lots of them.

It's all serious.

They'll steer off in weird directions.

The books are not sold.

They will barely adapt them, but I think they will

be doing

alphabet.

Interesting, because I only read the first book book when I had a stomach flu in high school.

That was the other thing.

They announced overall deals with Arivo and Grande and then retitled Wicked and took the two out of it.

And I'm like, that's them being like...

Wow.

Oh, my God.

You want them playing these characters for 15 years.

News to me.

And also, maybe building a land on the theme parks.

Go on, Dave.

Oh my God.

Everything's got to be a land now.

We should have Mission Impossible Land.

Okay.

You just die.

No, it's, I get to wear like a fun mask.

No, I want like Leah Sidou to shoot me.

That's my Mission Impossible Land.

Or Bomb Clementia stabs me as well.

I'm just like, I just want some lady to burn.

But

Reed for Good, when I watched Wicked part one, which I enjoyed, I was like, I can see now what they've done, which is that in Wicked, the stage show, they gloss that the Wizard of Oz is Oz is happening in the background of Act Two.

They will not be able to do that in the movie.

People would be like, what the fuck?

And so they clearly were just like, there's way too much plot in Act Two, as much as there's less songs.

But Act Two kind of yada yada zone.

We can't just cram it into this movie.

People will be baffled.

Like, it, like, it's a Wizard of Oz prequel, like, or sort of sideways.

But it does make it risky that it does seem like part two is going to have the fucking, like, tin man and the cowardly lion and scarecrow and Dorothy.

Well, but it's in the, it's in the show.

But sort of like, but again, they're kind of like, and he's actually the tin man if you think about it.

And people are like, whatever, it's 11 o'clock.

I want to go have dinner.

You know, like, right.

So I get it.

I'm, I'm excited.

I liked Wicked One.

It was good.

Okay.

Well, let's just say Mission Impossible, Final Recording, feeling very

my worst case scenario for little happy birthday sign.

Yeah, yes.

It's very happy birthday sign.

And also, it is nowhere near the catastrophe of Rise of Skywalker, but there are certain similarities of this same kind of self-imposed pressure of how are we paying off what had been set up in the last two movies.

And also, now we want to put the sense of importance on the entire series.

That is what Hamstrings did a little bit, right?

Is Macquarie deciding like, I need to explain the rabbit's foot.

I need to bring in Mission, you know, I want to bring in Mission Impossible One, where I'm like, cute ideas, but you've already got so much stuff to do.

Now, the thing I want to say about Rise of Skywalker, because you keep invoking it, a terrible film, is not a good film.

In my opinion, unsuccessful.

Is almost entirely joyless.

Agree.

I hate that movie.

I don't think anyone really likes that movie.

It's a bummer to watch.

Right.

It's a bummer to watch.

It's a bummer to now that I'm, I'm having a bit of a Star Wars moment, guys.

As your child getting into it, no, no, no, no.

Because of Andor.

I'm watching Andor and it's just like, I'm like, fucking love Star Wars.

It's so good.

I'm enjoying Andor so much.

I started Ahsoka.

Wow.

I was like, I never watched that one.

I started.

And I was like, pee you.

But anyway, moving on, Rise of Skywalker is not doing what this movie does.

What this movie's doing is like, well, we still got the entity.

Do you guys like him?

Whereas Rise of Skywalker is like, forget everything that happened before.

It was the Emperor all along.

And there's like someone running in with like an emperor's standee.

And they're like, put in there.

Like, yeah, see, it was him.

It was him.

And you're like, no, it wasn't.

And they're like, yes, it was.

Yes, it was.

Don't, you know, pay attention.

Well, the problem with that movie is it is so panicked and it's not delivering the things you want it to be.

What is that movie deliver one thing that made one person happy?

That's the only one.

He is my answer.

He is always my answer.

He is the only thing in that movie that makes me happy.

Hey, hey.

it's like, but the thing with Rise of Skywalker is they're like, well, actually, maybe Finn should have been a Jedi.

So he is one.

And you're like, can you like set that up or make that meaningful?

And they're like, no, like, no, but we did it.

So are you happy now?

Like, so much of Rise of Skywalker is just kind of like, are you happy now?

Can I just quickly say, talk about Star Wars moment.

Our friend David Ehrlich, friend of the show, past and future guest, recently showed his children all the Star Wars movies.

Yeah.

And they have gone berserk for them.

Yes.

They love them.

Asa loves them.

But Ray does.

Ray Ray is Darth Raider.

Yes.

She does her little

Williams themes.

That's the crazy thing.

They're hummable.

She's like, two years old.

You kind of went off with those.

It's like

kind of popped off.

I wasn't questioning his power, but to watch Ehrlich start humming a Williams theme and have it be like the 10th theme in Star Wars Importance and see his two-year-old finish it.

I'm like, this shit hits.

But Asa is just fully Star Wars-pilled, right?

He has this picture book of all the nine Star Wars movies.

And

or like out of town for Cannes, I was doing a little pickup, sort of babysitting kind of business.

And I was like trying to stop a meltdown.

And I was like, ASA, I have a question for you.

I need you to help me here.

Which character is this?

And I just started going through the book and pointing at all the characters.

He knew every character's first and last name.

It was like

everybody.

I'm trying to think of like Rogue One wasn't in there.

It was only episodes, probably.

Who is Carrie Russell Russell called in that one?

She's not in the book.

Zori Bliss?

Zori Bliss.

There you go.

I was just kind of impressed by how deeply he knew it, but I just need to let the record show on Mike.

It was the greatest compliment I've ever received.

I point.

I go, who's this?

He goes, Podameron.

And then he looks at me and he goes, you kind of look like Podameron.

What?

Does Asa

get Asa a vision check.

But that is so cute.

Very nice.

Well, you got a little, you got kind of curly, darker hair.

Sure.

I got the facial scruff.

You're a little shorter.

Podameron's a little on the shorter side.

You seem like a hero.

Thank you.

And you really seem like someone who'd be confident behind the wheels of a moving vehicle.

In the air, no less.

Much like Podameron.

Is this guy quietly fucking everything up?

Yeah.

Podameron does knock over a lot of Jenga towers in the third movie.

He's also like always 15 minutes late.

David, yes.

This episode is brought to you, the listener by Mubi, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe.

From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover.

With Mubi, each and every film is hand-selected so you can explore the best of cinema streaming anytime, anywhere.

And here's a hand selection.

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Everything's

turn the spotlight on i've put my glove on to select by hand

through the creak of the door we have three different visuals going on what the glove to hand pick oh of course david mussolini colon son of the century

it is it looks it's an exciting project but it's really funny to be like guys Mussolini!

Here's what's funny about it.

Just to peel back the curtain for a second.

We get like messages that are like, hey, you guys good with this ad?

Yeah, here's the copy for the ad.

And as shorthand, it was texted to us as, you guys good with the Mussolini ad?

And I was like, Mussolini sponsoring the podcast?

What do you mean?

To be clear, we decry Il Duce Mussolini, Benito Mussolini, the terrible dictator of Italy.

But we celebrate Joe Wright and his newest project.

The filmmaker Joe Wright in quotes has created

an eight-episode series about Mussolini's rise to power.

And I will say, not to sound like a, you know, a little nerd over here, but it is actually very interesting to consider Mussolini's rise to power in these times.

You know, he was sort of the original fascist, and the way that he sees power in Italy is

unfortunately something we should probably have on our minds right now.

I don't not try to be a loser right now.

He's still like me right now.

This is the kind of thing I say.

It's a very interesting part of history, and I feel like because, you know, other World War II things became whatever, the history channel's favorite thing, you don't hear quite as much about Mussolini's.

Yes, no, you're right, unfortunately, sadly, tragically, frighteningly, he's not a hugely this is a hyper-relevant time, and this is a theatrical, hyper-visual tour deforest starring Luca Marionelli, Martin Eden himself, remember that?

Beloved member of the old guard, that's right, a movie I love, an episode that people considered normal,

sequel

checking notes here, great.

Calling it a towering performance of puffed up vanity.

It features an era-bending score by Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers.

That's cool.

Imagine Techno Beats scoring fascist rallies.

It just sounds kind of Joe Wright-y.

It does.

Joe Wright.

You know, he won't just do a typical costume drama.

He likes to, you know, think about things in a different way.

Got futurism,

surreal stagecraft, cutting-edge visuals.

Guardian calls it, quote, a...

brilliantly performed portrait of a pathetic monster.

It's part political burlesque, part urgent contemporary warning about how democracies fall.

This is heavy ad copy, guys.

Usually it's kind of like, eh, shorts, they, you know,

critics are raving words.

A gripping, timely series, The Guardian, Remarkable, The Telegraph, a complex portrait of evil, Financial Times.

Yeah.

No, it's Joe Wright,

one of the scarier people I ever interviewed.

I've told you that story, right?

He knows he's kind of a cool guy.

We've bad at him already.

He's certainly gotten interesting.

He's very interesting.

He's very interesting.

And he's made some great movies, and he's made some big swings that didn't totally connect.

totally that's really interesting he actually is a blank check filmmaker unlike a lot some people get suggested you're like sure it doesn't fit the model this one does this one does look to stream great films at home you can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com slash blank check that's m u b i.com slash blank check for a month of great cinema for free you can watch mussolini or you can you can watch non-mussolani things yeah they got lots of movies i got a lot of things bye

David!

Okay, okay.

I'll be very quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

Hazzy boy is

getting some

multiple dashes.

What's he sleeping on?

He's sleeping on one of the new beds we got from Wayfair for the studio for our podcast naps.

But this is a big opportunity for us.

We get to do the first ad read for Wayfair on this podcast.

No, no, Griffin, you're clearly not listening to past recordings.

Ben did a Wayfair ad for us recently.

You listen to past recordings?

Yeah, sometimes.

That's psycho behavior.

It is.

Look.

He did that when we were sleeping.

Look, apparently, we need to talk about how when you hear the word game day,

you might not think Wayfair, but you should.

Because Wayfair is the best kept secret for incredible and affordable game day funds makes perfect sense to me

absolutely and just try to david just if you could please maintain a slightly quiet we don't have to go full whisper i just want to remind you that hoz is sleeping i mostly just think of wayfair as some a website where you can get basically anything yeah of course but wayfair is also the ideal place to get game day essentials bigger selection created collections options for every budget slash price point you want to make like a sort of man cake

okay fine okay all right Sorry.

You know, Wayfair

stuff gets delivered really fast, hassle free.

The delivery is free.

For game day specifically, Griffin, you can think about things like recliners and TV stands.

Sure.

Or outdoor stuff like coolers and grills and patio heaters.

Like that's, you know,

all the winter months.

David, you have like basically a football team worth of family at home.

You got a whole team to cheer up.

This is true.

You need cribs.

Your place must be lousy with cribs.

I do have fainting beds.

I have cribs.

Sconces?

Chaise lounges?

I'm low on sconces.

Maybe it's time to pick up a few.

That's the kind of thing that would make your home team cheer.

Look, I'm just going to say that Wayfair is your trusted destination for all things game day, from coolers and grills to recliners and slow cookers.

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David, there's only one shame to this ad read.

Don't wake Aussie.

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Okay, that's the end of the ad read.

You talked about the cuteness of the callbacky shit, right?

I just

was thinking about this, watching it last night, where I'm like, there are things in this movie that I like where I'm like, I'm fine with this, but you've done four of the same thing in the one movie, and I would take one of these.

Okay, let's vote.

Which I liked Dunlow.

Yeah, to me, it's 100% Dunlow.

That worked so well.

And that did kind of just like kind of slide into the movie nicely.

And then him being a big wife guy, like kind of rise.

Oh my God, she is, she is a queen.

To Pilsa, whatever her name is.

I mean, it is really funny.

Love her.

Ethan's like, hey, I'm sorry you were kind of collateral damage.

He's like, no, no, Ethan, you too saved my life by having me meet my wife on my it's all a matter of perspective.

one of the people i saw it with last night turned at that point and said

ethan don't question a single thing you've ever done every decision you've ever made

has helped everyone you are literally god chill out yes the fact that he still has the knife too

i was a little cute here's that was a little cute here's truly maybe the single biggest issue with this movie i i do kind of want to at some point in time stopwatch this film i think there are truly you better get a big

at least 25 minutes of flashbacks in this movie.

Oh, the flashbacks are.

Well, okay.

Do you think the studio is at times like, we need more flashbacks?

The audience is too dumb.

They won't get this.

They won't get that.

There's an article in GQ that I guess got published today by Zach Baron, which I think is the same.

The Great Backs.

Mary Baron.

Amanda Dobbins.

As I was on my way here, I was starting to read it, but they were talking about they did a test screening in Paramus, New Jersey.

It has to be.

Where they were like, the audience doesn't know what's going on.

They can't follow this.

They need to follow.

It is 100% by the most panicked shit in the world, but like down to the Dunlow thing, right?

We see the flashback to Dunlow and Langley, I think five separate times in this movie.

And he's got such a fucking distinctive face.

And they keep underlining it, being like, remember, this is the same guy.

And then after he hands Ethan the knife that he's been holding on to, it cuts to back again.

And we're like, yeah, we know.

It becomes this inception level thing where when the movie is doing a flashback to something to one of, from one of the previous movies, in most cases, it is then the second or third time we've seen that exact clip in this movie.

So it's almost a flashback to a flashback.

Remember when we showed you this flashback two hours ago?

But it has three separate streams of, it is doing flashbacks to previous movies, right?

It is doing flashbacks to things that happened earlier in this movie.

And it also has scenes that you didn't see the first time that happened earlier in the narrative that it's giving you later as flashbacks.

Like Luther has two dialogue scenes after he died that are the Lutheran

is the most egregious, like what happened here thing in this movie.

I have so many questions.

These movies, for people who do not know, are constructed strangely, do not really go into production with a proper script.

It's not a good way to make a movie.

And like, I've gotten increasingly exhausted by Macquarie's kind of like, ah, but I pull it off thing where I'm just like, well, you stopped pulling it off.

Yes, this is like the luck, you know, ran out on this movie.

They built like a trap for themselves that was too big they couldn't solve.

I also think, I know I'm much more into those six-hour breakdown podcasts than you are.

That's, I think, a hot take for me, but

they really annoy me.

But you're saying that because he's not revealing anything in them.

It's like 12 hours of him puffing himself up.

There's a lot of stuff.

And I think he's a smart guy and a great guy.

I think he's incredibly smart.

Right.

But I also think you are misreading slightly that all of those things have this energy of this has like destroyed me.

He's not like, look at me and how smart and clever I am.

I've listened and I know he says a lot of that.

And then he's like, yeah, I'll never make another one.

Right.

And then they keep catching him back in it.

There has been this fascinating thing of like the production of these movies mirroring the content of these movies and the character of Ethan Hunt mirroring the reality of Tom Cruise and the obsession with like, I cannot let go of this position.

I'm the one guy who can do this.

I need to keep doing this.

And it all just becoming like the Venn diagram becoming one perfect circle.

And then this is the movie where it all just collapses.

And they kept sort of making it higher and higher risk for themselves and stacking the deck more and more against themselves for this working.

And like signing on to try to do two movies back to back or shot concurrently would have already probably been a disaster had the outside circumstances of the world not impeded it.

But this just feels like these movies are not built from the ground up.

They basically like start with a block of marble and start chipping away.

And then over time, go like, fuck, I guess it's this.

You on the other side, start chipping this instead.

That's a, that's not an elbow, that's a knee, right?

And like refitting everything.

So much of what they shoot is like, this is meant to be act one.

And then they're like, never mind, it's act three.

We have to shoot the dialogue scenes, reshoot them or ADR them to change the context of why this is happening, because now this is happening before, after that.

Part of the magic of these movies was that they always just kind of worked, right?

And this one, you feel all of that 100%.

It absolutely feels like a movie that was made that way.

And there's so much shit like that where you're just like, every scene, you're thinking, what was this supposed to be originally?

I assume he's, is he going to do another of these, you know, with the Empire guys for this movie?

I'm assuming.

Will he cop to things a little bit more now that, like, I don't know, it's all done?

If I'm him,

I'm like, I don't think I can talk about this one for three years.

Sure.

But maybe he will.

Maybe he'll be like, look, let me tell you why it is sort of the way it is and what did change.

And maybe I'd love it if you truly lay it out.

It's going to be so much cagier than usual.

And as you said, there's always a bit of like magician in him where he's like, I'm telling you everything, but a lot of it is, look at this, I'm distracting you away from this and I'm covering this.

And you told me that on the Dead Reckoning ones, he's like, and this is going to get answered and this is going to get answered.

It's like, none of that shit got answered.

And also he was really cagey about Ilse's death, a thing that upset people a lot in the last movie, and was clearly, he's always trying to protect all of his collaborators, right?

But then she came out and interviews and was like, why am I not in the last one?

Because in the time

since I rapped Dead Reckoning part one, I have done three movies and two seasons of a TV show and they're still shooting part two.

I've entered the silo.

That's why I'm not in it anymore because I was tired of this.

And he wouldn't say that.

It just, well, because

fans were hoping till the end, maybe she's alive.

But he also doesn't want to throw her under the bus and i think he's like i'll let them speak for themselves right and there's a similar thing with like bingram's health is not great these movies are increasingly boxed in by things like this where they're just problem solving so this is what i was going to ask i i normally when one of these comes out i try and watch all of them in preparation i didn't do that this time I thought about doing it as well, and I still might do a marathon order, but there's a lot of movies at this point.

It's a lot of movies, and I've seen them all multiple times.

And we just went to the Museum of the Moving Image that has a really great exhibit

on the Mission Impossible.

Can we shout out?

Yes, they gave us a tour.

It's an incredible exhibit.

It's running through the end of the year.

Yes.

So we want to give a shout out to

Kawamoto, who is our

PR contact, and Barbara Miller, who was the curator of the exhibit.

They showed us around the exhibit.

It was so cool.

Costumes, they had mannequins that were 3D printed to look like Tom Cruise, but not too much like Tom Cruise.

It's fascinating.

And he's the poses of the mannequins are all in the poses of the stunts.

But they're suspended in the air.

And so it's, it's like, it looks to size where you're like, huh, okay, maybe it actually is pretty close to how tall he is.

Actual, actual humble brag, they very nicely let us in before the exhibit opened.

So we had like two hours to walk around before it was open to the public.

So we really got to do circles.

And my number one priority was, I want to get a sense of how tall I am in relation to a screen-worn Tom Cruise costume.

And it feels very deliberate that they don't let you get too close to any of the mannequins.

They're all propelled from the ceilings or like on a slant or something like that.

I did size myself up against Pum Clementev.

We seem to be roughly the same height.

If you remove the heels, I just want to put that out there.

We did the math.

We We did the math.

One of the fits,

it was jeans that were quite dirty.

Yeah.

Authentic

was so

buried, but not clean.

No.

But we were walking around this for like two hours.

And Marie, as I think you're setting up, like we were, it felt like sacred.

Like we were looking at these masks and the props and the cruciform key.

When I saw the cruciform key, I literally like yelped.

Yeah.

Cruciform key is cool.

It rules.

Great prop.

It's one of the

best key artists.

Yes.

What about one of those really old ones that's big?

Yeah.

That goes in like a big wooden door.

But is it called a cruise?

Well, you would like that because those are skeleton keys, right?

Yeah.

I mean, skeleton keys are also pretty.

Cruise might clap back to you.

You're saying clapping back to you.

What about a big giant key that goes in a wooden door?

I'm like, you know, it'd be cooler if it was two giant keys that fit together in a cruciform.

Well, what about the big key Superman has to open the Fortress of Solitude?

And my response to that was in the movie.

What if he had two keys?

You can't just say, what if he had two?

It's not going to work.

Yes.

No.

Cruciform.

I mean, it's good, though.

I love the prop.

It's a great prop.

Yes.

Now, famous keys.

But yes, they have these mannequins that are the screen-worn costumes in the most iconic stunt of each movie in the position with this sort of stylization.

You know what's a great key?

What?

The little button key in Coraline.

That's a great.

That's a cute key.

Yeah.

It's great.

Let's not call it.

It's great.

It's great.

I'm going to keep looking.

I'm Googling great keys in movies.

Keep going.

Mystery Impossible: The Final Reckoning.

This is the film we're talking about today.

I saw it only the one time.

I

let me try to do.

You guys saw it more recently.

You have the plot in your head.

Yeah.

So let me try and do this.

See if you can do it.

A couple months have passed since the last movie.

Right.

When the movie starts, it feels like it's years have passed.

And then they reveal late that it's only been two months.

Which sort of makes sense in that AI is just moving so fast.

Did people laugh in your theater when that line?

Yep.

Yep.

Both screenings.

The, oh, it was only two months ago that the events of the last movie took place.

People giggled.

People laughed.

So the entity, the evil AI that was once in a Russian sub, but

that was me.

Thought leader.

Right.

The king of the marketplace of ideas in the film is taking over

just asking questions.

All of the world's nuclear armaments.

One by one, like a big ticking clock.

That's the ticking clock of the movie is like, he's taking all of the country's nukes, starting with the little ones and getting all the way to the big ones.

He thinks that the way to improve existence is to annihilate it, to wipe it clean.

The entity has decided essentially, right, to just nuke the earth clean and then the entity will just live for a while, doing nothing, and then I guess reboot humanity.

He tried to book the entity for this episode.

Didn't work out.

Well, he's been doing so busy with like press stuff.

I was going to say, he's doing the whole like Manosphere circuit.

Like, he was on Theo Vaughn last last week

hot ones

in the coffin yeah he came out dumber

somehow

he was like all right man she doesn't know how old theovon is i don't know uh well he wouldn't i don't think about it that much he was on road rules when i was like in middle school yeah i'm gonna guess he's but he was young on road rules 42 he's 45.

all right i just saw someone i followed tracks when do you think he was older or younger someone i followed was spiraling and being like this whole time i thought this guy was 32 years old right Right, because he's kind of like, hey, bro, what's up?

And they were like, Mulaney going on Theovana.

I was like, this is kind of nice that he's supporting the younger generation of comics.

This guy's three years older than Mulaney.

He's had a long, though.

He's had a long time up and down, right?

That's his thing.

So, so that's like the ticking clock of the movie.

It's really the only thing they have to deal with, right?

It's like, we must stop the entity before he nukes the earth.

Yes.

It nukes the earth.

The entity has control of five nuclear stockpiles.

Out of 13, and it's all

whatever.

It doesn't matter.

It's like, you know, that's the ticking clock.

You start them to be a deaf time three.

Measure that.

Who fucking knows?

Who knows?

And

the Gabriel, once the entity's ally, has kind of been kicked out by the entity because he sort of doesn't need it anymore.

Right.

He sort of failed to contain Ethan anyway.

So now he's out for vengeance and kind of wants to.

He's trying to kind of get the entity under his control.

Yeah, he wants to control the entity.

He wants to win it back.

But the one thing that, you know, Ethan understands that no one else does, to think you can control the entity fools Aaron.

Sure.

America was sort of trying to do that in the first movie.

They're still trying to do that.

They're somewhat, but it's they're kind of Carrielle was just dead, so like that's a little less of a high priority.

And it feels like they lose the thread of Kittridge wanting it until the very end, and then it comes back again.

One of one of my bigger notes of the movie, certainly.

It's like they don't.

Right.

They don't really have a handle on this.

This movie seems to forget that the last movie is like Kittridge is crooked.

He's a problem.

Right.

So

Gabriel is trying to get the entity back.

There are so many doohickeys.

Tom has the cruciform.

Sorry, Ethan has the cruciform key.

Ving Reims Luther has made a thing that will kill the entity.

A poison pill.

And Gabriel

has or is trying to get the thingy the poison pill will go in.

The podkova.

The podkova.

He wants it.

They have the podkova.

Who has it?

The podkova is in the sub.

It's in the sub.

Right.

That's what he has to get.

And the only person that's got to be in the middle of the morning

from the sub is Ethan.

You've got to get the Podcova from the sub using the cruciform key, put the poison pill in it while near the entity, and then, you know, it's later revealed we'll trap him in a USB.

They need the world's best USB drive, the biggest one.

They said it couldn't be done.

A 5D optical drive.

It couldn't be done.

And they need the world's best pickpocket to do the best USB plug.

It's not a USB.

It's not a 5D optical drive i'm not saying that every time it's a usb uh

cube sb yeah it's a cube s b i mean you are and that's kind of it right like that's the main drive of the movie right like now here's a problem with this film there are literally four scenes in a row that take up most of the first hour that are extended dialogue scenes where ethan locks in with someone and says please i need you to trust me the entity thinks we will never work together i need you to trust me.

He says that to Angela Bassett, who's president of United States.

He says it first to Shea Wiggum.

He says to Shea Wiggum, who says it revealed to be the son of Jim Phelps.

Right.

Just they mention that, and then you're like, okay.

And then it just has no bearing on anything.

Right.

Which, like, getting back to earlier threads.

It's like, why?

This is how this movie is structured, where it keeps circling back and going, like, fuck, we forgot to set this up, right?

The callbacky shit is Dunlow is brought back and actually has a significant role and I think is used well.

Right.

He's fun.

Yeah, he's a fun callback.

The guy from Mr.

Marshall.

Shea Wiggum's character, whose name was Briggs, which is the name of the original team leader in the original TV show who was later replaced by the Phelps character, turns out to actually be Jim Phelps Jr., son of John Voigt, out for vengeance.

Although he claims, I'm not out for vengeance.

He's like, no, I'm over it.

I just love rules and doing my job.

I don't like you, but not because of that.

Right.

Then you have the sort of retcon notion that the rabbit's foot was actually

the source code.

The pod right

that the entity was built off yes right right and he handed it over so like Ethan is somewhat responsible here in that he got the rabbit's foot and handed it over to save his wife or Carrie Russell or whoever he was trying to say not the Hannah Waddingham character who is no it was Maggie Q really he was like oh god get

get her a CW show the Hannah Wadingham character who the president writes a note to that has a date on it that's like do you know what happened on this date something really bad happened and we lost people and we never recovered we didn't take a risk or something like that.

The date that's on the note is the release date of the original De Palma movie.

So both times

just masturbatory.

Right.

I've been like, is it supposed to be that she's connected to something that happened?

I think that's just them doing a sort of like pat on the back.

That feels so fucking dumb.

And the exact kind of thing Macquarie has always stood in opposition to.

And I think is one of the best at explaining why that shit is bad.

Yeah.

He does press tours for this movie.

He literally just gave an interview saying that he thought fan service was a cancer.

I was like, I can't believe he has the gall to say this when this movie is coming out.

And then I realized that was an interview from the last movie that's being recirculated now.

Okay.

But it's such a stark contrast of being like, he's usually so good at identifying.

And I think we'll say other things that I like a lot about like.

Tom and I both agree that there's this problem in like blockbuster filmmaking where you do these kind of jokes that like defuse the main characters where everyone's kind of like cutting everyone down to size and belittling them, not in like a back and forth repartee way, but in a way where the movie's like, we want to make the joke about ourselves before the audience can make it.

So we don't seem corny.

And he's like, when you do that, it makes the audience think less of your main character and dislike the person that's making the joke, which I'm like, that's him nailing a core problem with like fucking Marvel movies, right?

And he talks about the fan service thing.

The thing that he brought up in this interview is that like, when you do that kind of shit, 50% of the audience is patting themselves on the back for recognizing the reference, which then takes them out of the story of the movie.

And they're thinking about a different movie rather than the one they're watching.

And then they have to re-enter.

Or the other half of the audience doesn't know what it's a reference to.

They're confused.

And they're now in their head about what is that?

What do I not know?

Am I not getting something?

And they're also not paying attention to the movie.

And this movie not only does that exact thing to the audience so many times, but it keeps showing flashbacks over and over again, being like, we want to make sure you're not confused, which then takes you out of the movie.

It does.

You see

May 22nd, 1996, written, they flash back to that piece of paper like five times

information gained.

But I think it's just supposed to be like, you know, they've been taking the ultimate risk on these movies.

I don't know, something like that.

Also, just like, the whole time I was like, she mentioned Serbia.

So I'm, it takes me out of the movie because I'm like, exactly.

They didn't go to Serbia in the first Mission Impossible.

Maybe they did.

You know what I mean?

Did they?

I don't remember.

What's her last name?

Did any other character have this last name?

Is she like Emilio Estevez's like ex-girlfriend?

Yeah, that's what she is.

She and Emilio had a lot of movies.

I don't know.

I don't fucking know.

That's on the movie, not on us, because by this point in time, they've already set up the other three things, and we're in a mode where we're like, what does this connect to?

You keep connecting shit.

Emilio Estevez is how many years older than Hannah Wanningham?

Guess.

15.

You were pretty close.

13.

She's older than I think she is.

She's young.

She might be younger than you think she is.

Wait, really?

How old do you think she is?

1,000.

48?

I think she's 60.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I'm right.

She's almost five years older than Theo Vaughan.

She's 16 years younger than Angela Bassett.

So I'm not quite sure what the connection is there, but whatever.

The motion picture sinners.

A runaway success.

An artistic triumph.

Someone making something personal and awesome and exciting within the studio system.

I have heard a lot of people complain about.

what they feel like is an overabundance of flashbacks in Sinners, which they're like, it feels like the movie doesn't trust the audience to remember.

that's coogler believing in testing like kugler tests his movies rigorously and like he does he takes notes but there there's lots of reporting that kugler was like i'm playing ball i want this to work like because there was all those things of like how dare this man want ownership of a film like he's gonna destroy cinema that's also what the movie's about but i know right but um But my point is, I saw it a second time, right?

And the flashback thing didn't bug me the first time I watched it.

And even if it's just him doing the best execution of that note of the audience is confused, can you remind them?

The way he actually executes those flashbacks and edits them in in terms of like the rhythms and how he like uses the score in connection with them, it genuinely feels like he is finding a creative fix for a story problem that ends up playing more like a fucking like malachy, these are echoes of thematic like memories.

And it does feel like when the things happen, it's less like you need to remember this plot detail and more like, I'm trying to remind you of the connection between these two moments in terms of the emotion of the story.

He's using the flashbacks as a vibe check versus in this in Mission Impossible

stems from a test screening note.

It ends up working that way.

It's a more successful film.

I agree.

I'll just say it.

Whereas this, I'm like, this is just truly being like, remember, remember, remember.

in a way that is so confusing and disorienting.

And especially when you're getting scenes that are like, wait, Luther died.

What is is this scene?

Did this happen earlier?

Did they just not show us this?

Okay, let's go.

Disaster.

A couple of that's the thing in the movie that kind of irked me the most.

I largely enjoyed watching this.

And I, the way I feel about the Luther that I'm glad they killed him off.

Like, I'm like, sure.

But I feel about the execution of that, similar to the way I think a lot of people got pissed off by the Elsa death, which I kind of defend the execution of more.

Sure.

The Elsa death is more tense.

The Luther thing where he's like, he's rigged this and I have to stay behind where you're just like, there's no tension to this.

Like, whatever.

Okay.

First up,

Luther has a little hospital room set up in tunnels underneath the London Underground.

It has been two months.

At the end of Dead Reckoning, Luther goes, Ethan, I need to go off and do something by myself.

Good luck.

Right.

And like, it is just.

Your Uncle Luther's getting a little tired.

They have talked about the fact that like, even in these globetrotting movies and with pandemics and all these restrictions, like every single thing Ving Rain shot for the two movies was in London.

His health is not great.

His mobility is not great.

They had to lock him into one city.

They had to build around him.

They had to bat shoot his stuff, right?

So they do that thing at the end of the last movie where he's like, I got to go off on a solo mission.

And I'm like, I get it.

Macquarie needs to come up with some structure for him to be off on a solo thing so that they don't have to work everyone else's schedule.

The idea is what he's doing is he's making the poison pills within the context of the movie.

But then this movie starts.

It's one of the things that makes you feel like, oh, five years must have passed.

He looks like shit.

He's in some private, like, black site hospice care.

He's in like some government-controlled, like, hidden tunnel hospice.

But he's gotten deathly ill.

Yeah, but my thought with my husband, who's like, wait, so

when did this happen?

And I'm like, I don't think it did.

I think that, like, this is the real, like, Ving Reims being sick in real life or something trickling into the movie, but in a way that, like,

is really

confusing and

blurring the lines.

Like, the first chunk of the movie is so rushed that I'm just like, okay, this is an elegant, but I guess I just got to keep up with this.

Ben David turned to me 10 minutes in and said, I feel like I'm having a stroke.

With like the intensity and the speed at which they're throwing information at you, very sloppily and frantically.

It was in the beginning of the movie where it's they're cutting between two two conversations, yeah, but Tom is in both of them, yes, and it is so confusing, and then you're also cutting to like flashback images of other things, so it's like Tom explaining something to someone about the poison pill, and then you're cutting to Luther and Benji explaining what the poison pill is to Tom.

And you're like, this happened a week ago, but the movie didn't show me, yes, it is just it is so inelegant.

Which look, these movies they talk about they figure out the plot like last, last, right?

They retrofit it onto everything else that they figure out, which is why they often have these sort of sloppy intro scenes in which they get the message.

And that's the thing that's like figured out finally

with ADR to then explain what they're doing for the rest of the movie, right?

This movie starts out with like the clunkiest one yet, which is just opens on Tom in tight close-up, silently reacting.

We'll fill in the dialogue later.

Angela Bassett monologuing for like eight minutes.

Pause.

I am so glad that we're talking about this.

Yes.

Because

I love that the little, the mission briefing device is Ben's porch TV.

It is.

Yeah.

Isn't that fun?

It's a TV V star combo.

It is.

It is.

Although he's, I guess, kind of for the first time ignoring.

His mission a little bit.

Angela, because she's completely.

No one's been able to reach you.

You're not responding to anything.

I thought you might respond to the president, right?

I thought you might respond.

So does she send him the porch TV?

Does she just send him

Best Buy?

This feels like this.

That's actually a great question.

Yeah.

Does someone have to eBay

a combo and get it set to that?

Or is it that, like, this is how Ethan is consuming media now because he's so afraid of the NC?

Like, you've established that in order to skirt the NC, you have to go analog.

This feels like

he's doing just watching VHS tape.

Two years ago, I heard, and these things changed so much, but two years ago, I heard on good authority that that was the big conceptual hook to the entire part two, was the entity has reached so far

that this is the first Mission Impossible movie where they can use no tech.

And I was like, that's kind of an interesting thing.

I think I remember you saying this when the last movie came out.

Yeah.

And there's elements of that.

Yeah.

Like their big base where they're pushing around.

Down to the biplane that being right.

Yes.

That's kind of it, though.

Yes.

Yeah.

Which, like, the biplanes were something I think they largely shot in 2020.

They shot that really early.

But that whole sequence really slides into the movie really well.

I brought two planes.

It feels like it really fits into the plot just like so like snug.

Maybe it was a little later than 2020.

I know because they did not shoot this concurrently, right?

Like that got abandoned.

Yeah, it essentially became a back-to-back shoot, but

the train from the end of the last one was supposed to be in this one.

They They did a swap of sequences.

I'm going to need to see some reporting on this.

Some stuff got sloppy.

Here's what I want to say.

Angela Bassett speaking to him on TV VCR combo.

This looks like it was shot in Tom Cruise's trailer one month ago.

It is two close-ups.

We've seen so many versions of this scene where, like, Ethan's in some weird safe house, and then a guy delivers a thing and whatever.

There's like no even attempt to place him in any environment.

The GQ article gets into it a little bit of like Macquarie just has like this like repository of crew's reaction shots.

Right.

That's right.

Where he is like, give me that one.

Right.

Right.

Just collect it.

He doesn't say anything and they keep coming back to him and he makes like hmm interesting face and then I'm like, I don't know about this face.

And it's clear he's reacting to nothing.

Angela Bassett monologues for so long.

I'm like, this is sloppier than usual, but if this is what they need to do to get the movie off and running, then so be it.

Totally forgivable.

Exactly.

And then the movie spends an hour basically repeating this scene.

But he gets to do, remind me.

Okay, so here are some examples of some other episodes.

Because I agree with you that I felt a lot of throat clearing in the first hour, but I don't really remember what actually happened.

This scene, also, by the way, is crazy because when you're watching this and like no one's been able to reach you, you're like, oh, it's been five years.

When you find it's been two months, you're like, why is the president freaking out?

Because the entity is evolving so fast.

Sure.

Okay, fair.

Yeah.

It's gotta pretty rare out that day.

Half of the world's nuclear silos are already in the entity's control.

Or DEF CON three sure sure uh which is insane we would be a defcon one she spends whatever she spends almost 10 minutes setting stuff up right yeah then when he goes into the entity's coffin i would argue the entity does another version of this version

the entity does another one with a little bit of sort of previewing uh things in the future and he similarly cut into tom reaction shots of his eyes in the coffin going it can't be true the entity of course is telling him that goes on time about the nuclear armament thing but it's so long it goes on way too long so long especially when we've already had one of these info dumps and there hasn't been an action sequence yet.

And then I would argue when he gets into the war room with Bassett and all the other stuffed shirts, there is a third version of this.

And it's like, you can do it.

And it's again, him being like, I know, I know, I know, but you have to try.

Totally.

And you're like, this is the kind of thing Macquarie is usually good at is looking at the footage and being like, fuck, you know what we need to do?

We need to reshoot.

and combine the information in these three scenes into one scene.

And instead, this movie has this thing where it's like making a dish with two preparations of the same protein, right?

It's like you're eating a taco with like fucking like roasted and fried chicken in it.

And I'm like, pick one.

In the same way, we're revealed that Luther is in this fucking hospice site.

I immediately go, huh, okay, this is sloppy and this is moving too fast.

I'm very confused, but I can kind of see what they're getting at here.

This is interesting.

If Luther is dying and Ethan, whose whole thing is, I won't let anyone die, especially my whole team, right?

You cannot sacrifice one, is facing a thing that he can't solve.

Luther has a terminal illness and Ethan is going to have to accept that he can't save this guy's life, right?

I was like, this is an interesting new test for this character.

And then they have him die in a saw trap.

And I'm like, then why is he sick?

It's a good question.

Why he's sick is to soften the blow of his death, right?

Is to have it be like, he's like, look, it's time for me to sacrifice myself because I'm near the end of the

day.

It's unemotional to me where I'm like, I'm eating it.

I'm going, why is there chorizo and bacon at the same time?

You know what?

It would have been, it would have been so good if Luther died of cancer.

If it doesn't, yeah.

If Luther like dies of cancer, we get a, which is something that Ethan Hunt can't fix, we get a bit of a bedside repeat of the magnolia scene.

Tom, emotional.

You want us to shift into magnolia mode?

You want the boat to take the car to turn into a boat?

One of the things that bothered me in this movie is all the time, like, Tom gets emotional in the movie.

Like, Ethan's not a real person.

It doesn't make sense.

But Tommy's movie is adventure picture.

Let's go.

Ethan gets emotional twice in this movie.

And the two times it happens, it's with fucking Shay Wiggum.

Well, hey, Shayla.

And it's like, I am so sorry.

I ruined.

He keeps doing this kind of like very clenched.

Like, bro, Luther, the only guy guy who's been with you since 96 yeah but look dies and it's just like okay i wrote this in the atlantic it's always been hard for these as they progress and have built more serialization into them to be like ethan hunt the guy i'm like he's not a person like he's tom cruise he's tom cruise he's this kind of mythic force like everyone in the movies just think about him yeah like he's like bald the living manifestation of destiny yes exactly and it's sort of like you know right i'm not i'm never gonna like that.

I love the idea that he's like, I'm gonna marry Michelle Monahan.

And it's like trying to put magnets together where it's just like, no, you're not allowed to do that.

You are Ethan Hunt.

Like your job is just to be Ethan Hunt.

I yeah, I don't know.

I did re-watch Dead Reckoning part one

after seeing this the first time.

A movie I like quite a bit.

It is imperfect coming off of a couple nearly perfect movies.

It's a really fun movie.

I fucking by and large.

I love it.

Yes.

And like there's one sequence in it I wish was better.

The nightclub.

The nightclub is the one sequence where I'm like, this could be better.

You mean the entity's party?

And look, I'm not dissing the guy's party planning.

Because that's rude.

Well, he did.

Well, I don't like the entity.

He's mad he didn't get in the fight.

Someone didn't get the portable.

Macedonia, where are they in that movie?

I don't dislike that sequence, but that is the one.

It's just the one where I'm like, it feels that good.

It's the most COVID-affected to me.

It feels COVID-affected.

It also feels kind of like also sort of filled with a bit of adr and explanation and all that you know um but here's what i like about elsa's death in that movie knowing that it probably came out of necessity of rebecca ferguson saying like i want an early out because this hearing out well in this movie in the in the last movie she's got stuff going on i in this one i'm just

yeah in the last one in the last one in in final reckoning i'm like this is just elsa this should be elsa everything she does saves for the two times she picks someone's pocket Feels like it's supposed to be an Elsa scene.

When she rescues him from the ice, I'm like, this scene makes sense if it's Ethan and Elsa.

They don't have the history for this conversation.

They have the chemistry for these big moments.

And once again, she has only been an agent for two months.

Well, she accepted the choice.

I get it.

But like...

What I like about her arc in the last movie is this is the first time we're seeing someone start the pipeline through this.

They've lost any sense of her still learning on the job in this one.

She's as qualified as Benji.

She's just right.

She's just in the team.

Part of the team.

There's like nothing.

Two months.

Two months.

Two months.

Like truly, some of the issues in this movie are immediately solved if that ADR line is five years ago.

It doesn't solve all the problems, but it makes certain things less galling.

The Elsa death, what I like about it is

Gabriel kills her, right?

He can't save her.

He's there crying on the bridge.

And then it cuts to all of them in a safe house, sort of standing in silence, mourning.

And then they start planning the next mission, right?

And I've heard a lot of people be like, This is the most important character, this is the heart of the franchise.

Rebecca Ferguson across these three movies was like the secret sauce.

How is the rest of the movie not existing in the wake of her death?

Like, everyone should be so emotionally affected by it.

And what I think was a good choice in terms of characterization is they're in silence, and then Haley Atwell, I believe, is the one who breaks it and says something like, I don't think I got her name.

Who was she?

And Luther kind of explains to her: like, this is our life.

We like lose people like this all the time.

This is the choice we make.

Death is part of the job.

Like, I'm worried about Ethan, but also you have to understand, like, this thing you've gotten yourself into is

someone dies, and then we go to a safe house and we sit in silence for like five minutes and we plan the next mission.

We don't get to mourn them.

There's no funeral.

We don't have human connections.

And that makes for me her final choice to accept the mission, right?

At the end of the film feel more impactful.

That's why I think they make her death meaningful in that way is they're acknowledging these people don't have time to grieve and they have to compartmentalize the notion that they even care about each other and try to move on.

Whereas I think they're trying to make the Luther thing more of an emotional thing, but it doesn't work.

I want him going Magnolia mode, not because it feels like the depth of that relationship has been written, but because he's literally the only guy who's in every other movie.

Absolutely.

And it's the one opportunity to acknowledge, like to let Ethan break and be like, fuck, I do care about this guy more than I ever want to let on, right?

And that's why it doesn't need to be some crazy mission death.

It's better if he's just fucking dying in a hospital bed and Ethan goes to visit him and he gets the poison pill and that's the final thing.

I like him having the pre-recorded message at the end.

It feels nice that the movie ends with fucking Luke.

Everything is fine.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

But they mishandle the death so much.

You're so confused by what's going on with him.

Then he's fucking trapped in the catacombs.

Then he's flashed back to two more times you just like do not know what is happening all right that's true well i i have of course always know what's happening i'm so locked into everything um but i feel like you kind of do the the luther thing you do kind of not know what's happening or it doesn't fit into the plot very well and the fact that he made a poison pill out of nowhere which has not come up before the last movie is like he needs to get in the sub to get the thing and i'm like i got that and they're like he also needs to put luther's Luther's thing into the thing.

I'm like, Okay,

it's another thing, who cares that McQuery is usually really good at of just like it's one object, and this is what they need to do with it.

And you're like, it's like three to four objects, right?

Like it, it's so simple.

What the overarching mission is, and this now, as you said, it's like four different devices four devices because it's the key, the thing, the pill, and the uh, the

help me out here.

Oh, the 5D optical drive, Optical drive.

And that's it's full.

And what, pray tell, is the fifth dimension of this drive?

I have no idea.

It's cool.

Friendship.

You're right.

You're right.

It's the friends we made along the way.

The impossible mission friendship.

So when

does this movie kick off for you then?

If you're talking about the first hour being very

slow.

For me, I feel like what should basically be the cold open of this movie and the only thing you need to solve is like, how do you get the Luther thing in here?

And I have a thought on that is him being brought in in handcuffs in front of Angela Bassett

and them being like, here are the stakes.

And him being like, I need you to trust me.

And then after that, he says, I need you to get me to this fucking aircraft.

Yeah.

George H.W.

Bush.

Right.

And you're like, oh, cool.

Tom's going to go fucking top gun mode in Mission Impossible.

He lands there.

He has one intense conversation with Hannah Waddingham.

That's the third conversation like this in a row we've heard.

It adds nothing to the movie.

I think she is good in it, but it adds

nothing.

Except all of that is just like, wait a second, you're saying you need to be here when this is happening and this is how, you know, they're again trying to pump us up with us being like, not going to do it.

And then they turn out chopping broccoli, which is weird.

And then also John Lovitt shows up behind her and goes, I can't believe I'm losing to this lady.

You know who was a master of disguise.

you know who was what if tom cruise announced i am stepping down for the mission impossible franchise and handing it over to dana carvey the truth i recognize there's only one master of disguise i'm it just dana carvey we should shout out i should say in the first hour the only action sequence that there really is is the rescue of paris where they do do masks for a sec they have like an afterthought there are a bit of an afterthought there are two deeply abridged oh right the other one right and the other one is torture is the the the loony tunes like tom Cruise massacres people off stage.

Yeah, but it also, right, it cuts away like fucking wet hot American summer to Joe Lettrulio going like, oh my God, he's doing it.

No, what?

Master.

It's kind of funny.

It's kind of funny.

And then that becomes the Light the Fuse moment, right?

Where the credits hit.

And Ben David, who fucking loves these movies, I love the Light the Fuse moments as much as I'm sure he does.

Logo tattooed on his arm.

Ben David.

Oh, he's doing the thing.

People have been asking for a photo of this.

The double jointed stuff.

The double jointed stuff.

Okay, thank you.

People need to see it.

People need to see it.

I'll post it shortly.

Ben David has the fucking IMF logo on his arm, right?

You hear the da kicking in as Ethan goes like, good job surviving it.

And they walk off.

And he looks at me like this.

Like, that's the light the fuse moment.

And I'm like, I agree.

As much as these movies do not have some like sacred fucking like

rule book, sure.

I'd say the greatest consistency across all of the movies is the music kicks in after Ethan has done something so fucking awesome and you're like, I cannot believe he pulled this off.

And in this case, what he's done is faked a cyanide pill and then punched a bunch of people off camera, stabbed them in the chest.

He killed them.

He cleavered them.

He murdered them.

Okay, so I love the Light the Fuse moment in Ghost Protocol so much because he literally says Light the Fuse.

And it's then the visual presentation of that's so cool.

Obviously in five, it's just him pulling the shoot on the plane thing, which rules.

Which rocks.

And you're just like, hell yeah.

What does it involve?

In Fallout, it's fucking the Wolf Blitzer moment, where they've tricked him into giving up the code.

Right.

In Dead Reckoning, I remember it being cool.

I remember being pretty pumped up.

Yeah.

Why am I not remembering what it is in Dead Reckoning?

And I watched it recently.

I mean, two, obviously, it's the free climbing.

Yeah, which is fine.

Which is like the pinnacle.

No, no, but no, it's window.

No, but it's when throwing the two losses.

But I'm saying it's off of that.

It's so cool.

Yeah.

Dead Reckoning opens with the submarine, and then it goes to him getting the message.

It happens deep in.

The first thing after that is the airport sequence, which I fucking love.

Oh, it's him breaking into Kitrich with the mask.

Oh, and putting the mask.

That's great.

Putting the mask back on.

How do you expect to sneak out?

And then he puts the Kitrich mask on.

It's you want to.

I think Ghost Protocol Rogue Nation is maybe the peak of like the fuse moments, I think.

Sure.

Yes.

But you want that feeling of like, that son of a bitch, he pulled it off.

Right.

And this movie is like faking it where it's like, we don't quite have it, but if we don't put it here, it's not going to happen for hours now.

We need to do the credits.

Truly.

Right.

So then he has the very brief fist fight there that largely, and the knife fight,

mass murder that happens largely off camera.

He has the very brief sort of like sneak in to get Paris out of jail.

Pom Clementeff,

I would learn to make pasta from scratch.

it's not that hard, you just need like eggs and flour and stuff.

Well, but let's tell her it's really hard, and that took a lot of work.

He,

those are the only two things of any kind of like action adjacency, but beyond that, we're also not getting a thing that I think is wholly lacking from this movie, which is one of my favorite things of Mission Possible, not the stunt sequences, but the sort of like puzzle game, how do we solve this?

A million kind of tasty things.

We don't have anything like Ethan Ethan and Benji breaking into the Kremlin with the weird screen.

We don't have anything like the airport and who's got the key.

Yep.

Like this.

And those are always my favorite crown levels using their smart

shit.

Is the problem that the stakes are too high?

Yeah.

That like now that it's nuclear armageddon, it's sort of like, well, we can't be having as much sort of silly fun.

At the end, they have like assembled a makeshift version of this where there are like five concurrent actions and you have like Dunlow with the bomb.

Right.

Haley's got to do the quick grab.

But that's different.

Harris doing the surgery.

It's not quite the same.

But it at least gave me the juice of every member of the team has to be able to do it.

Like, why am I not cutting to Jar Jar like, you know, got a big orb?

What if they did that?

That's one of my favorite things in the Mission Impossible franchise is that every movie has Jar Jar juggling an orb,

dropping it, feeling like a klutz, but actually

in the process, knock out a bunch of battle droids.

Good job, Jack.

And that's what Mission Impossible is about, if you ask me.

It's about Jar Jar Binks.

Yes.

And another thing that's totally missing from this movie is people forget that Jar Jar actually, in his his power as a senator, is one of the people who granted Palpatine the power.

Not one.

I think he's the one.

That is a pun.

That is totally dropped in this film.

I just am in such a Star Wars mood these days that I'm like, we got to do the prequels again.

Guys.

David, motherfucker, you motherfucker.

I have pitched that so many times.

And every time you make your stinky poo-poo face and you go, I don't want to do Star Wars again.

I pitched it for 400 for episode 500.

I wanted it to be our 10th anniversary episode.

And

We revisit Phantom Menace with context, and we didn't do it for our 10th anniversary because you went stinky poo-poo.

And now you want to do it.

Okay, maybe we slotted it.

What did we do for our 10th anniversary?

Nothing.

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

We released the last Crusade episode.

That was a good episode.

I just have some

notes that I took at my screening last night that I just want to make sure we address.

Ethan was born in Madison, Wisconsin.

Yeah, JJ

potentially

fired for being too excited about this.

Yeah.

I said, but that's literally, you just see it in his file, right?

Yeah, but it's interesting character.

No one's like, what was it like?

Cold Madison winters or whatever.

You should also mention that like multiple, in terms of like talking about this movie having like repetition of the same beat over and over again, five different characters across the three hours of this movie fire JJ.

That is true.

Ethan looks into, he shoots the length.

Kit Ridge is like, and fire that guy.

JJ, you are fired.

And he's got tears in his eyes.

You have to trust me on this.

You're fired.

Angela Bassett breaks the biscuit and the note inside on the presidential stationary.

Fire JJ.

Fire JJ.

USS Fire JJ is the name of the submarine.

But he gets in the Entity's cough and the Entity is like, and above all else, JJ must be fired.

I'm so excited.

We haven't really talked about this.

We're all going to meet JJ for the first time.

None of us have ever met JJ in person.

I've known him longer than you guys.

And

I too have never met him.

Our upcoming live show, Town Hall.

Live show.

Oh, it's still available June 6th.

That's right.

Yeah.

Blank check finally requests an audience.

With King Ralph.

With King Ralph.

Yeah, it's going to be like a live episode.

We're not going to watch the movie.

No, we're going to talk about it.

We're going to talk about it with a lot of, you know, fun little

interactive bits.

A lot of fun little talking.

Let's not go.

Let's talk about drawing.

It's going to be a lot.

But anyway, yeah, we're going to meet JJ for the first time.

We're going to do a lot of fun little interactive bits.

We're going to explain Gabriel's backstory.

We're going to tell you who that woman was.

oh yeah well that's coming what if mccori's like now i'll uh we'll do a knife movie i'll explain it then we'll answer all that in jack reacher 3 okay

coming back

um some more notes uh i like that they have a defibrillator in the torture chamber is that standard you know how they bring him back to life after his fake right and then he he flips it on them yeah i just thought that was interesting better safe than sorry loot luther's nerf

what's she thinking about all this?

Great question.

But this is where I'm like, what is weird commute?

Yeah, hanging left at the dungeon.

Did go to Charing Cross Station and then into the dungeon.

Ben's eyes just lit up.

He's googling nursing school.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then

this whole the entity is counting on you hating me.

So we have to do the one thing it doesn't expect, which I got a lot of problems with them i mean and they say stuff like this all over the movie of like well this is the one thing the entity won't predict like and i'm like doesn't it predict everything the entity's like learning so did the entity not watch mission impossible no dead recognition no it didn't have time you know that movie underperformed because the entity didn't buy any tickets you know i marie this is a great point and this gets into the repetition of story beats right he keeps saying to people i need you to trust me and for us to work together because the entity isn't expecting that and that's the only way we can but they work together in every movie He says later, like the entity isn't intelligent.

It's only working off of what we've done in the past.

It doesn't have ideas of its own, right?

Which I'm like, I like as a conceit shit.

Sure, I like as a let's make fun of AI thing.

Totally.

And I'm like, that's the potential of having the villain be AI rather than a human is this idea of it thinks it's smarter than him because it has the data.

Ted Sarandos, fine.

Totally.

But he keeps saying the entity thinks it knows what I'm going to do and I have to get ahead of it.

The entity is never fucking like doing that.

The entity tells him at the beginning, here's exactly what I'm going to do.

And he's just like, I'll meet you there in five days.

And Ethan keeps saying to people, we need to do this.

So the entity doesn't, there's no feeling of like, fuck, the entity anticipated this and it cut me off at the past.

People complained about this in the last movie, and I kind of gave the last movie a break, but it's tough to have your villain be a screensaver with no personality, that has no motivations, that has no particular like personality.

There was one point where Ethan says that, and it's when he's talking to Shay Wiggum.

And

they're leaning into each other, and it's like, there's the one thing the entity doesn't expect us to do.

And I was like, kiss me.

And I really thought that might happen, but of course, it didn't.

So when he gets dragged in front of Bassett and Co.

Oh, Lord, can we move on?

No, no, no.

In handcuffs, right?

I'm like, that can be the info dump for the entire fucking.

And then it's like, we got to get you on this up.

When When they're saying you got to go to Hannah Waddingham, I'm like, oh, is she going to, he needs her approval to do some cool action sequence?

Doesn't happen.

But we do see some naval plane, naval troops land and take off.

You see that.

Right?

But like.

Danger zone plane.

You got some danger zone.

No fucking set piece.

The movie doesn't really kick into gear until he gets on the submarine.

Part of this is that.

Which the movie should be starting basically, like you're saying, with the submarine, because that's how the last movie ends is we got to get to that submarine.

It should start with Bassett being like, here's the briefing, and and then the plane drops him in the middle of the ocean.

He gets on the submarine.

Like everything else before that doesn't fucking matter.

I also think this movie makes the mistake of being like,

well, Ethan's been off the grid for two months.

The president sends him a message.

He has to get the team back together, right?

He reconvenes with Benji and Grace.

He recruits Degas and Paris, and then he goes in the coffin.

Luther dies.

He goes in the coffin.

And almost immediately he's like, guys, I got to go solo.

Benji, you lead the team and i'm like why doesn't this movie just start with ethan's been off the grid and benji's leading the team without him i think simon pegg is very good in this movie i think he's doing yeoman's work watching it the second time it stood out for me even more he doesn't really have an arc to play but what i think he is doing very well is this quiet man we have been watching benji for 20 years he's evolved and in this movie he actually has to lead the team he's not trying to be ethan hunt he's not trying to be an action hero but when he's doing the briefings and and the plane and shit, I'm like, I buy that this guy who is a fucking tech nerd behind the desk, comic relief character, has the authority to tell people what to do, right?

And like, there's a history there and it's good.

And I like him with the junior members.

I think all of that's fun.

Let Ethan just go to the fucking president, go to the submarine.

The second he gets in the submarine, the movie starts to have a little juice.

It's gay as hell.

Oh, love the gay submarine.

Everyone in this submarine is good.

And Tramel Toman is like fucking magical.

Well, Well, he really in this movie.

He's a really great performer, just full stop.

But I think he really gets how to bounce off of Tom Cruise in an interesting way.

And not to do God bless Hannah Wadding.

I'm a good actor.

I like her.

But she's more just kind of doing like I'm a Stern Authority figure.

And instead, for him to have this kind of weird personality,

which kind of tracks for someone who lives in a sub where they can't ever go outside and like, where you're like, yeah, these guys are all little like sort of off-kilters.

I truly, yesterday and IMAX, three of his line deliveries got applause.

Yeah, because he rocked both screenings.

I mean, that's what he's like in Severance 2.

It's just where you're just like, I, what an interesting way to read that line.

You know, like, yeah, and he's so good.

And you're just like, I don't need three other authority figures being like, I guess I'll trust you.

It's so much more fun to just have him give the hard sell to this one guy and the one guy be like, dude, I was on board the second you broke into the submarine.

Like, all right, let's fucking basically like, I'm a madman.

You're a madman.

Yeah.

You don't have to sell me a bad thing.

They match each other's freaks.

Like, yeah.

Ben David turns to me at one point and goes, I assume this is a bad time to go to the bathroom.

And I go, now's actually a great time to go to the bathroom.

He thought it was a bad time because it's when Katie O'Brien and the rest of the team is showing him the equipment of the fucking fun oxygen.

Oh, this is his lungs are going to end.

It's kind of the classic thing where they're like, you can't let this, this, this, or this fail.

And I'm like, so all those things are going to fail.

He was like, so this is important.

And I was like, go to the bathroom now.

He comes back.

One scene later, they're about to launch him out of the submarine and they basically repeat all of that information again.

And I turn to Ben David and I go, everything you missed is being said now.

I went to the bathroom during the Heine-Waddingham scene.

I'm like, nothing lost here.

There's so much shit like this.

And then when you get to the submarine, the submarine rules.

If this movie was truly.

Christopher Macquarie and Tom Cruise showing up on video and being like, hey, we want to apologize.

This one got away from us.

We didn't figure out the story.

Here are two great set pieces.

And you literally just showed me the entire submarine sequence and the entire biplan sequence.

I would be like, I strongly endorse spending $25 to go see that Nymax.

Like the movie, those two things are so fucking good and top level that this movie cannot be a complete failure because they are executed so well.

I found the submarine sequence very interesting.

It is very good.

Very upsetting.

I was so, I was so, I kept thinking about the Titanic submarine people who got

on alive.

They did get on alive, but I mean, they got liquefied, right?

Like, it's like, at least there's no like weird frozen quarters.

They got kind of more scanners.

Okay, wait.

So before we get really into the submarine sequence, I am going to watch the hell out of that Netflix documentary that's just

cobbling together shit I already know, but just people being like, and then that crazy guy thought he could get in a fucking soup can and like just drop it down to the PlayStation controller.

And I'm like, yeah, he did.

And did he pay the price?

Like those fucking documents.

Sometimes Netflix will put something on their main carousel like that.

Yeah.

Where it's like, hey, here's a cup of poison.

Do you want it?

And I'm like, yeah, I want to drink the poison.

Of course, tasty poison.

This is going to be horribly made.

It was made in two minutes.

Right.

And also, it's like super like morose and creepy that I want to watch this.

Why would it's like, but like, it's like me like being like, I need to read a Wikipedia entry about some disaster.

Yeah.

Which I love.

That's like my sweet spot.

Anyway,

before we get too into the underwater pieces, I want to talk about what's happening at the Sosus listening station with Dunlow, which is, by the way, another thing where I'm like,

if the movie is president, then the rest of team arrives at Dunlow's cabin, then Ethan gets dropped off its submarine.

I'm like, the first 15 minutes of this movie are hidden.

Yeah.

I am obsessed.

What's her name?

Like Tapilsa or something?

I mean, look it up.

Dunlow's wife.

This, of course, is the man who Ethan gave diarrhea.

Yeah, they didn't talk about the diarrhea.

Topisa.

Tapisa.

It has always made him one of my favorite characters in the Mission Possible franchise.

Because he has tummy troubles like you do.

He has tummy troubles and it fucked up his entire life.

Yeah.

Ethan put diarrhea juice in his coffee through a pen.

Remember that I squished the diarrhea?

Yeah, I remember.

And it does look a little, you're like, yeah, I don't want that in my coffee.

All right.

First of all, my cup of coffee is ruined.

It's not going to taste good.

Second of all, I'm going to shit my brains.

I'm going to make my own coffee, if you know what I'm saying.

My own hot brew.

Anyway,

to get the knock list, the infamous Mission Possible Drop.

Here is the guy.

who that movie sets up is going to be fucking reassigned because of right and he got reassigned to the Bering Sea and now he listens for you know maybe the Titan exploding or whatever and he did happen to hear when the Sevastopol exploded, so he'll know where it is, maybe.

But his department is also getting like doged.

Yeah, it's getting dog.

They keep cutting it down.

They keep taking equipment away.

They never update the systems.

He's working on a very analog level.

When he's introduced, I was like, okay, is this a little too cute?

I was so pleasantly surprised that he is in the rest of the movie.

Oh, yeah.

I'm like, it is what transcends it being dumb fan service shit.

is that you're like, no, we're actually going to make this a real character and a real guy.

And also, now that Luther's dead, he kind of fills the Luther role, right?

Like, he's really good at.

He's the, I can explain how something works technically.

I can strip some wires.

He's Rolf Saxon.

He's got an incredible voice.

He's done a lot of voiceover work in the last 15 years, I think, especially in video games.

And he just clearly has that authority where he can be like, Ethan, there's two wires.

We must cut them.

He's great.

Cool.

I mean, I agree.

Totally agree.

Seems to do, yeah, he does some theater.

He does some, yeah, I don't know.

He's, he's definitely worked less in recent years, so it's nice for him that he's back.

Um, but uh, they got a lot of bookcases in their home.

I like their house,

it looks cozy, it looks really good burns down.

I was feeling for their house, their house is really cute.

Unfortunately, it's been occupied by Russians.

Uh, who's the Russian guy?

I like him, too.

Who's that guy?

He's in a lot of stuff.

I don't know, but I know his first name is Captain.

It's another example, though, of like these sort of fun little side-supporting guys.

Pacha link linchikov we like him we like trammel we like katie brian all these people are taking an hour to enter and no one is fun for the first hour of the movie like no new performers are popping for the first hour

period uh yeah he's in miami vice he's in a crystal skull i remember him in crystal skull he's got such a face he's not the ants guy I think he's not the ants guy, but he's in that.

Okay.

Right.

In that group.

Is he the ants guy?

Let me see.

I know the ants guy's name.

i'll recognize it it's not he's russian soldier roosevelt that guy's name is like it's something with a k i want to say but like romlin commander in star trend yeah he was in he's in the the abram star trek do i know him from a tv show maybe he's in a lot of tv yeah i mean look he's playing a lot of like yuris and ivan deadwood he was on 16 episodes of deadwood as blazinov oh fuck that's right that's a minor character but he is like uh around

yeah yeah okay yeah so great actor i'd love to see it.

Yeah, lovely.

But there's, yeah, there's an action sequence here.

It's a, it's a little,

you know,

they have like another set of keys.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's reviewed.

Which is kind of like kind of like it turns out there are two really

annoying deflating reveals.

It's the fact that the Russians have a dupe of the cruciform key.

So the whole cruciform key thing becomes irrelevant.

And the other thing is that Dunlow, you know, like halfway through him and Benji trying to put together a drive, He's like, yeah, so by the way,

I can just give you the coordinates.

I haven't memorized.

I haven't memorized, but it's my

Rolf Saxon nails the delivery of like, you know, the coordinates.

And what does he say?

He says, like, down to the centimeter.

No.

Yeah, down to the last square meter.

Yet, yes, yes.

His, like, that's.

Another thing I love in Mission Impossible movies is just a really good character actor saying something with such importance

down to the square meter.

There was another line in this sequence that made me laugh the second time I saw the movie where Haley Atwell is trying to

talk to the Russians.

Yeah, she's trying to be like, right, like, can we, you know, you know, let's forget, let's forget the sides that we, but she goes, forget about us being Americans and you being Russians.

We're just humans.

And I'm like, girl, you and Simon Pegg are British.

Yes.

Like,

Paris is French.

British as hell.

So why are we insane?

Right.

Right.

You should be like, hey, by the way, fuck America.

None of us like America.

I'm not here for America, Brad.

To America.

But he's got his good joke where she's like trying to appeal to like your family.

Like the world's a single.

Not even Don.

Not even Don.

I look, I'm obviously horny as hell for Palm, but I do like what they do with her character in this movie, which is like none of these movies in their team have had a wild card.

And I like that they're sort of like, she's part of the team and everyone kind of doesn't trust her.

She's drinking all the time.

They know she's a madman.

She just kind of feels like if you accidentally said, like, you should kill that guy.

She like, you'd be like, I was kidding, but she's already like buried a knife in his skull or whatever.

Right.

She's like Wolverine or whatever.

And she keeps making like French quips.

I like that they commit to her only speaking in French and that the other characters now have to be bilingual.

But right, what's happening, right?

If I'm, it's like those guys are at the cabin trying to get the coordinates because Ethan is under the water with the sub and he needs like, they need to know where to find.

The signals need to match up.

And they're basically like, we're about to enter a dark zone where we won't be able to send a signal.

If we don't send you out now, we never will.

And like your team needs to be able to find you in order to save you from the other side of the ice.

But what's so cool about Ethan and the sub is that there's no dialogue.

It's scary.

It feels like a swerve for the series.

Yes.

It's cute.

Like to not have

so long, to not have like Peg, you know, Benji being like cross-cutting.

You got to go to level three.

And you're watching it and it is like every single shot.

You're like, how did people not die doing this?

I was like holding my breath.

Not just crews on camera, but like, how did no crew people die doing this?

Anytime, the thing that really got me was when the nukes would

like just bump into each other or that would fall into a specific pattern that would make it impossible for him to go around them.

Or, you know, I was just like, oh my God, like, this is, this is

nightmare.

It's the kind of like very subtle sort of escalation that they're so good at building in these movies of like watching silently him having to do the math of like, fuck, my only way to get through this tunnel is to lose the oxygen pack, right?

Oh my God.

I'm going to be caught on this blade unless I get rid of the suit.

Like making these sort of sacrifices that like raise the stakes over and over and over again.

It's so good.

I kept thinking of the fucking Soderbergh quote that I'm going to paraphrase about watching Mad Max Fury Road, where he's like, my whole life is trying to figure out thinking about how to stage sequences.

And if you asked me to do one sequence in that movie, I would put a gun in my mouth.

I'm like, like, I actually don't understand how you make this.

Then the fact that the I'm not acquitting myself to Soderberg, but I like watch it and I'm like, I don't understand how they successfully

sub is on a like a shelf and it keeps turning.

Have you ever seen the Jameriquai video?

Oh, of course.

It's kind of like that.

It is.

It is.

It's kind of like that.

But right, it's like, it's got this inception thing where because the sub keeps tilting on its axis, where the water is in the sub that is like half sort of

keeps changing directions.

I think they just do a good job communicating all of the changes happening without anyone being like, Ethan, the sub has moved and now it's filling with water over here or whatever.

Which, like, we enjoy when the movies do that kind of thing, but it's all the more impressive that they pull off the sequence without that, which gives it a different tone than anything we've seen in the movie.

But it also is make it puts the first part of the movie in such stark relief because it's them over-explaining explaining everything with dialogue versus in this sequence when they're just relying purely on visual information and staging.

Did you know that Jamiraqui's third album, Traveling Without Moving, is the highest-selling funk album in the history of the world?

No,

isn't that hilarious?

That is actually shocking.

I mean, they are, though.

They're a pretty huge band.

Well,

that's the virtual insanity moment.

I think that's their peak.

There, it's just just him.

JK.

Him and that hat.

Big hats.

Maybe you should, maybe you should do some big hats.

Just walk in one day with a big furry top hat.

I kind of feel like you just don't comment on it.

So I feel like a big hat accentuates that I have a big head.

David, what?

This episode of Blank Check with Griffin, David, a podcast about filmmaker's is brought to you by Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what I was about to say.

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God, I'm trying to think of anyone in my life, perhaps even in this room.

Ben, who's like, what's an example of someone I know who maybe has a very particular set of demands?

Bringing me in, and there's only one other person in the room.

Who's one other person in the room right now?

This is so rude.

I sleep easy.

i'm definitely not a someone who insists on 800 thread count sheets no that's a that's a an example of a fussy person look people have different demands and you know what if you're traveling that's your time to start making demands you know you've got uh a partner who's sleep light rise early or maybe you know like you just want someone who wants a pool or wants a view or i don't know maybe any kind of demand traveling and i need a room with some good soundproofing because i'm gonna be doing some remote pod pod record.

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Maybe you're in Europe and you want to make sure that's very demanding to be in Europe.

You got air conditioning.

Well, think of one person in particular, although it's really both of you.

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You got to have air conditioning.

I need air conditioning if I'm in the North Pole.

Look, if I can find my perfect stay on Booking.com, anyone can.

Booking.com is definitely the easiest way to find exactly what you're looking for.

Like for me, a non-negotiable is I need a gorgeous bathroom for selfies.

You do.

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As long as I got a good bathroom mirror for selfies, I'm happy with everything else.

Look, they're, again, they're specifying like, oh, maybe you want a sauna or a hot tub.

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

Yeah.

Please.

Can I check that button?

You want one of those in the recording, Stupid?

That'd be great.

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I was going to say, you want to be the Dalton Trumbull podcast.

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You wouldn't be good if I had a sauna and a cold plunge and while recording, I'm on mic, but you just

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Ben.

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

And I'm just, I'm not, this isn't a humble brag, it's just a fact of the matter.

Despite you being on mic, oftentimes, when sponsors buy ad space on this podcast, the big thing they want is personal host endorsement.

Right.

They love that they get a little bonus

on the ad read, but technically, that's not what they're looking for.

But something very different is happening right now.

That's true.

We had a sponsor come in and say, We are looking for the coveted Ben Hosley endorsement.

This is laser targeted.

The product.

We have copy that asks, is the product a porch movie?

It certainly is.

And what is today's episode sponsored by?

The Toxic Avenger.

The new Toxic Avenger movie is coming to theaters August 29th.

Macon Blair's remake of

reimagining, whatever.

Yeah, reboot.

of the toxic avenger now david and i have not gotten to see it yet but they sent you a screener link.

Yeah, I'm going to see it.

We're

excited to see it.

But, Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

Let me read you the cast list here in billing orders, they asked, which I really appreciate.

Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Tremblay, Taylor Play Page, with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard of them yet.

Okay.

You got dinkledge is fantastic yeah he's talking plays it with so much heart yeah it's such a lovely performance bacon is in the pocket too man he's the bad guy he's the bad guy there's a lot of him shirtless okay looking like david david sizzling yep and then elijah wood plays like a dang ass freak he certainly does he's having a lot of fun tell us some things you liked about the movie Okay, well, I'm a Jersey guy.

I just got to say, the original movie was shot in the town where I went to high school.

Yes, yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches.

Yes.

With my sleazy and sticky friends.

It informed so much of my sensibility.

Your friends like Junkyard Dog and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader jokes.

And so when I heard that they were doing this new installment, I was really emotionally invested.

It was in limbo for a while before our friends at Cineverse rescued it and are now releasing it uncut.

But I feel like there have been years years of you being very excited at the prospect, but also a little weary.

They're playing with fire here.

Yeah, it's just it's something that means a lot to me and they knocked it out of the fucking park.

Okay.

It somehow really captured that sensibility, that sense of humor, even just that like lo-fi, scrappy kind of nature that's inherent in all of the trauma movies and the original Toxie movies.

And they have like updated in this way that it was just, I was so pleased with it it's gooey

gooey tons of blood tons of goo

uh great action it's really fucking funny it just it it hits all of the sensibilities that you would want in an updated version cinniverse last year released terrifier 3 unrated yeah big risk for them there i feel like it's a very very intense movie and one of the huge hit more interesting yeah theatrical box office phenomenons the last five years want to make that happen again here

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Yup.

And Ben, it just says here in the copy, Wants to call out that Elijah Wood plays a weird little guy who says summon the nuts.

Can you tell us anything about that moment without spoiling it?

Summon the nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band.

Hell yeah.

Who are also mercenaries

and drive a van

with a skeleton giving two fingies up on the grill.

And that's all I'll say.

Okay.

And they are the most dang-ass freaks of dang-ass freaks.

I'm excited to see it.

And your endorsement i think carries more weight than anyone else's in the world on this seriously get your tickets now go to toxicadvenger.com slash blank check do it do it

owen gleberman's review of this for variety he spends like half the review just talking about the biplane sequence but everything he says about it

feels like it also could apply to the submarine.

And the review feels very indicative to the response of this movie, which is like, you walk out of the theater being like, holy shit, that biplane sequence, two thumbs up.

Like, you end on such a high.

But what he was saying, which I think this is like triply true for the submarine because it has zero dialogue, is the ultimate miracle of what Tom Cruise is pulling off isn't just that he's like putting himself in these crazy situations and not dying.

It is that he is acting, that he is actually successfully emoting in a nuanced way.

And in a sequence like this, where he's conveying all of this without words on his face while wearing a stupid helmet.

I love it and you're seeing it to have a mask

because I love how it exaggerates the features of his face, which feels very like unvein.

They talk about it.

Even though we talk about this movie as being kind of a vanity problem.

Totally.

I mean, they talk about this with the Halo Jump in Fallout.

that they like needed to design a special helmet to make his face readable.

So A, it needs to have the lights inside of it.

Otherwise, his face would get lost on camera.

And B, it feels like if they don't magnify it, you won't see his expressions.

But speaking of lack of vanity, you feel the fact that this movie has footage shot across five different years in like his face changes a lot.

Like when they greenlit this movie, he was 58

and now he's 63 or 60.

I mean, whatever my math is.

Yeah, you're just like, you're really acutely feeling in this one, like he is pushing against the absolute absolute limits of like staying young and looking like

you know he doesn't want to be fucking as much as he keeps saying that harrison ford playing indiana jones is an inspiration to him and what he wants to keep doing and keep making these movies into his 80s you're like harrison ford's like fuck it i'm gray i'm old these movies are about me being old he was so ready to make that transition, Harrison Ford, to be a grumpy old man.

And this movie is Ethan still just like holding on to the final embers of the idea that he is like youthful.

One thing I want to address, also just looking at my notes, we haven't really talked about the doomsday cult that's because the movie doesn't

really get into it.

But you're just like, that exists.

People, and it's, they're setting it up right at the start.

We're like, people are so under the sway of the entity that anyone could be a threat.

And that basically just comes up once on the submarine.

It manifests twice.

Twice.

Any other time?

A secret service agent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But

we have to bring up the time on the submarine because Tom beats the shit out of Guy by saying, you spend too much time on the internet.

That line makes me laugh.

I think it's funny.

It feels a little

cute.

Yeah.

It makes me laugh and then immediately go like,

it made me laugh, so I don't want to be too much of a groan.

Yeah.

I also want to note that I love Tom's little podcova bag.

Oh, sure.

He's got a little podcova sack.

He got a little podkova sack.

I like how he has to like take the little podkova out and put it in the little plastic bag and zip it up and carry it with him and make sure he doesn't drop it i'm like oh that's cute i really think the sub-sequence is great i just

i wanted a giant octopus

so true

that's like that's just one of those things where it's like it's been buried at the bottom of the ocean right right right right and there should be a big creature inside we're going to atlantis there needs to be like well you know those angler fishes the ones that got like the big scary teeth that has a light yes oh my god that's a great call but we might not be deep enough in the ocean this was another thing that was confusing me because I'm like,

he can't physically be down that deep.

No, it's on a cliff.

But it's honestly.

So it's pretty close to.

But also, if it's that close, how come no one could find it?

Totally.

No one was looking.

That's another thing.

No, everyone was looking.

This movie ends with Ethan having both parts of the key and being like, I'm going to the submarine.

I know where the submarine is.

And the final shot is the submarine.

And you're like, he's going straight there.

It takes him 90 minutes to get there in this movie.

Actually, wait.

Sorry, guys.

I can't.

I don't have the coordinates.

I forgot.

After the thing,

and right.

And like after the submarine, he exits.

They heal him in the puffy tent.

Haley.

Haliel has this very odd sexually charged scene with him.

Harry Booby.

Where she's also, well,

not to humana, hummina, hummina, but this is a movie that features like three of the most beautiful women on the planet, in my humble opinion.

There is the shot of her rescuing him that is framed as her bosom coming into frame first.

That did get me a little hot and busted.

Well, I was just re-watching my favorite scene from Mission Impossible 2, which is when,

I guess it's when Tom and Tandy meet for the first time, where they're in the bathtub together when she's doing the heist.

I know the senior duck.

And there's a shot where it's from like her perspective.

She's on top of him.

And he's in the bathtub like this with his like arms behind his head, but you see her tits in the foreground.

Like, so they populate, like, her cleavage populates the bottom half of the frame, which I am like, oh, that's a really funny shot.

Crazy shot.

I mean, this is Tom in like fetal position, and you're like, oh, he's got the bends, he's dying, no one's going to rescue him, and then in slow motion, boobs lower down.

Well,

good-looking lady.

She has a good look.

I was talking about this with my husband yesterday.

Wow, humble wreck.

Yeah,

we talk.

We're married.

We submission of that.

Good lines of communication.

the decision to make Ethan asexual

that happens

when after Michelle Monahan basically I mean in two he's too horny and I think no one really it's an over

oh I did I love how horny he is in that movie but that is that is the divorce doesn't work for me right that is the post-divorce movie and it's also like the um

I my my take on Mission Impossible 2 has always been that guy's having a mental breakdown over the death of of his team.

And he's like, I'm so good.

Look at how cool I am.

I grew my hair out.

I have sunglasses.

I'm listening to the lady.

I'm lying biscuit.

I actually like being alone.

And then in three, it's like, he's going to settle down.

He's met a nice lady.

There's

a team.

He's working on her.

And then four is like, he's not allowed to love.

She must, he can only look at her from afar.

You know,

but don't they also introduce like a bit of a Paula?

Like, isn't it?

No, Paula Patton is

her dead love in the same way that he is is until you realize that

she only got eyes for Sawyer.

I think Paula Patton is a misdirect of

Ilsa.

But that's the whole Ilsa thing that I love is that you're like, part of this is almost them recognizing, I get you, and both of us know we could never actually be with another person.

That it's sort of just like the creative juice of being like, fuck, we're the same.

And then, but then, like, we talked about this when Haley Otwell was introduced in the last movie, where we were like, there's got to be something more.

I thought she was going to be his daughter.

Yes, yes, especially.

I thought Haley Atwell was going to be Ethan's daughter because of how much they were hiding her name in the previous movie.

With his daughter, yes, with who?

With Marie, with the dead lady, Barty, yes, with me, my child.

Yeah, I know the math doesn't totally work out that Marie is Haley Atwell's mother.

Yes, but you know what?

It doesn't completely like

this.

this this franchise is all about impossible.

Oh, but that would that would have stunk

it would have been really stupid, but it's like okay, so they she's not his love interest.

He's treating her as more of a like mentor-mentee sort of thing, but then also you have these scenes in this movie where they are like cuddling in bed, but also he just doesn't.

I mean, this is Macquarie backfire stuff, right?

He talks so much about like, we shot a lot of scenes with Marie.

She had her own character poster and then we decided to save that stuff for the second movie you'll get a lot of answers on her and the idea of gabriel being a guy from ethan's past is i relevant in this movie gabriel could be anyone he could be a new character i'm willing to believe that they did film stuff and they did have stuff planned and that everyone kind of came to their sense and was like i don't think anyone cares enough and the way these movies are made this movie's over stuff the way these movies are made it's not even like oh they filmed a bunch of stuff and cut it out it's that they probably shot three different versions of them and then used none of them like people asking why this movie cost 400 million dollars and saying like but it doesn't even have cgi characters like how could it cost this much the answer is that the amount of stuff that is not on screen is mind-boggling not just the alternate versions and possibly entire action sequences that were cut out wholesale there's like paparazzi footage of stunts shot in major cities over the last five years that there are not elements of in either of these last movies

it might have been, it was either the biplane sequence in this movie, or it was like the helicopter chase with Henry Cavill.

It's what opens the GQ article that just came out where they talk about how they shot.

It's the Cavill helicopter.

They shot 80 hours of footage of that stunt, and it is 12 minutes in the movie.

Right.

I mean,

I heard there was a 40-minute version assembly of the opening Sevestopol disaster from Dead Reckoning Part 1.

There was 40 minutes of dialogue.

Like the amount of shit they throw out on these movies is crazy.

And also, like, these movies shot in insane circumstances, world events, and like they continued to pay everyone during shutdowns of production.

It's part of why these movies are so expensive and why actors desperately want out of them and keep begging to have their characters killed off is because when someone signs up for one of these movies, they're like, here's the deal.

You have no script and we own you for two and a half years.

At any moment, we might call you up and say, you need to get on a plane to Bulgaria right now because we've written a bunch of shit.

And then you get to Bulgaria and they go, never mind, the sequence is cut.

And you have to reshoot things 10 times to fix the plot.

So people get so aggravated working on these movies and he keeps losing, especially like his above the line crew.

There's a reason these movies don't hold on to DPs, you know?

is because even when they come away from it and they're like, fuck, it did work for what a nightmare it was.

It was a triumph.

Those people still walk away and go, the fucking life's too short.

I don't need this again.

I want to see my kids, right?

Lauren Bolf, who has scored the last three movies and rules.

Or six and seven.

Five, six, and seven.

No, he didn't do.

He didn't do five.

He did Rogue Nation.

No, he didn't.

Who did Rogue Nation?

Joe Kramer.

Really?

Yeah, I listened to it all the time.

It rocks.

Wild.

That is a grand score.

Joe Kramer was the guy who did Way of the Gun Jack Reacher.

He was Macquarie's original guy.

He was announced as doing the score for this one.

His name was taken off the movie.

Although he has like a score consultant credit or something.

His name was taken off the movie eight weeks ago.

There is a weird credit in this film that's something akin to like score produced by, and it is two of like Lorne Balf's associates who usually help him on his work, but it doesn't even have a traditional like composer or score by credit.

It is very clear that they were changing stuff so much and needed so much new material and redoing it that a certain point he walked away.

That's wild considering he's such a workhorse.

Totally.

And that's like a post-production job.

Like, and there's stuff like the submarine sequence that plays out silently that doesn't have any underscoring which on top of the lack of dialogue i think lends it this weird power it does work the rest of the movie is like largely overscored and you feel that they did not have time to develop new themes and they're just like we need another version of the chifren score right to your point of there should be an octopus as much as i like the silence of the submarine and let's speak back to that point i love the octopier i do kind of wish that when he's in the the suburbs, it's Neptune, God of the Sea.

Here's my pitch.

Oh, shit, Manta Ray.

Those things are big.

I was thinking of the guy from

Black Manta.

Aquamanta.

That's cool, too.

A Manta Ray, just a huge one.

Just a big one.

You can't fail with this.

He just flies at Time Cruise.

He's like, eh, that's it.

First half of the Sevestopool, dead silence, right?

No dialogue, no music.

Right.

Second half.

As things are getting

worse and things are tilting, right?

And it's like, oh, man, how could this situation become even deadlier?

You hear a little...

Oh, no.

There's a hot crustacean band.

Oh, Sebastian's there.

But they're all wearing puffer coats.

They're under the sea.

Right.

Wailing.

Right.

And they're telling him to stay down there and it maybe tempts him.

He's like, maybe it is better down where it's wet.

Right.

And they have Mermaid Marie, the ghost of his dead girlfriend.

Me, yes, oh, yeah, I'm sorry, literally, me, yeah, yes.

Um, these are the kind of story decisions I don't understand why they abandoned in this film.

The mermaid

band, mermaid Marie, it's actually Marie out.

Marie, he's out as the this is what I was trying to do.

Uh,

where it's like, okay,

everyone's united.

All the devices have been recovered.

We're going to South Africa.

There is one clear plan for the rest of the there's a magic like digital tomb that the entity wants to go inside.

We have to put it there.

I think the movie is basically good from this moment on.

There was very little gripes, bits and pieces of gripes I have, but it basically works from this moment on in just giving me the basics of what my lizard brain wants from a Mission Impossible movie.

Can I tell you my favorite part of the last sequence of the movie?

It's actually, it's not part of the

imf crew stuff it's when it's from the uh

the mount weather virginia crisis command center the fail safe or no it's

they have to come up with an american city to sacrifice have you ever seen failsafe the lame movie no this feels in failsafe they nuke uh New York essentially is an apology for accidentally well, I'm spoiling Failsafe.

It's an apology for accidentally nuking Moscow.

Wait, so they, so something as big as New York?

Because I'm

fails literally New York.

They don't tell you what it is.

They just were like, let's just be honest.

It was Houston.

Well, my guess was Phoenix.

I was going to say Columbus.

I think Phoenix, everyone would be like, okay.

It is funny that the line of dialogue is, President, do we have your approval to do the thing to the city that you chose?

Yeah.

They go out of their way to New York.

They're like, she chose something off screen in between cuts, and they're repeating it back to her while not saying the name of the city.

That city that you selected.

Such a funny choice.

Failsafe.

It is literally New York, and it's the same kind of thing of like, we will be seen as hostile and blamed for this if we don't make ourselves look like we were also part of the attack and the president has to make that kind of decision.

It's a fucking awesome movie.

I also feel like the way those scenes are staged from the moment they propose this idea, shot and edited, feels very like much referencing

the Lumet sort of like classic close.

Are they really sweaty in FailSafe?

Because I like how sweaty they are.

Failsafe has the fucking 12-angry men thing where you're like, these are the most exciting close-ups I've ever seen in my life of people discussing things.

And it's got that, but there is something kind of silly about the sort of like cut to Offerman, cut to Macalani, where I'm like, yeah, these aren't characters.

No, and also.

So I don't really.

I mean,

I'm complaining and I feel like I'm being

only one cube-headed man.

Like, I'm complaining, and I feel like I'm being a grumpy guts because I was very involved for basically all this movie, but especially the latter half.

I'm sitting next to you.

You're biting your nails.

You're cleaning forward.

You're in a hot dog.

I do.

Submarine and biplane.

And then I rolled right from there to Planet Hollywood.

Get a biplane of hot dogs.

Planet Hollywood coming soon.

To different feet.

Those are the two sequences I saw you lean in.

And when they got to the fail-safe stuff, we looked at each other and we were like, this is kind of fun.

Fail-safe.

This is kind of fun, the fail-safe thing.

But it was taking a while it takes a bit of a time but no i basically like all this the biplane stuff what can you say it's crazy if you read the zach baron story it's the classic like tom met with like wing walkers where he's like i want to like hang between the wings and like be in zero g and like they were like that's not possible and he was like Find me more wing walkers to talk to until someone who tells me it is possible, right?

Like, and you're like, oh, Tom, you're so crazy.

One of, one of my favorite parts.

How low to the ground it is is so that's what scared me

the most.

But when we were at the Museum of the Moving Image exhibit, there is a like digital biography of Tom Crees Tom Cruise that you can swipe through.

That's you can like sort of like touch screen, open the fact file on Tom Cruise and Marie takes me and she's like, how are they going to describe Tom Cruise as if this is like you reading this fact file is your first exposure to the guy?

It is like there, there's like one page about his like movie career, and then the remainder of it it is all about the different certifications he has and crazy

the the specific planes that he's licensed to fly uh his free diving training the fact that he's one of only 36 civilians made an you know an honorary naval aviator and there is absolutely nothing about his personal life they have like a 10 plus minute a straight to camera interview with Tom Cruise in some undisclosed screening room that plays in a a corner of the Museum of the Moving Image exhibit that they said was basically shot just for this.

Yes.

And he keeps saying stuff like, when I'm not making movies, I'm like learning things that I can apply to movies later, right?

You're like, this guy, and I know when we talk about him this way, people are like, why do the blank check team love to fucking sanctify Tom Cruise and make him a deity?

I think what we find interesting is like the balance between how admirable it is and how sad and broken it's

human being, that there's nothing else.

and like he has i at some other interview i saw with him recently and obviously like post fucking couch jump every interview he does is so controlled he has like the number of anecdotes that he wants to say and he only wants to talk about the process i felt him being a little more vulnerable in this obviously within guardrails There was some interview where they were talking about like, so you just like live for this stuff.

You love it.

Like you're there every day.

And like this idea we have of like Tom Cruise gets a rush from the things that everyone else would be terrified by.

And they're talking about the biplane sequence.

And he was like, I remember one day we woke up and we were supposed to film like our 10th consecutive day on the biplanes.

And I saw that it was raining.

And the interviewer is like, oh, and you're Tom Cruise.

You must have been so angry.

You must have been like, let's go out in the rain anyway.

And he was like, no, I was like, oh, thank God.

I need a day off from this.

Now, then, of course, he immediately filters it into a Tom Cruise way of like, I'm not going to be able to do 10 more days unless I give my body one day to recharge.

He wasn't like, I'm going to lounge on the couch and like fucking watch young Sheldon.

Maybe he does.

Maybe.

But he was admitting, like, no, of course I'm a human being and I'm getting to a point where I'm not invincible.

But yet,

what else is going on in this guy's life?

And like, I feel like Rebecca Ferguson, there's an interview that's circulating around recently that we posted in our group chat where she's just sort of like, when we had days off, he would just like go to set.

Right.

And like seeing the movies.

And when like the movies got shut down because of like COVID and the strikes, it didn't feel like it was just this feeling of like, I have to save the industry.

It was, I don't know what I'm doing if productions aren't happening.

In a way, which really tracks with Ethan Hunt as a character.

Absolutely.

Which is what has made these movies increasingly interesting.

But it's also out of hand.

And I think there is no

way to top things anymore.

Not that he couldn't make more Mission Impossibles where he does some crazy stunt, but I'm not kind of like, what do I need Ethan Hunt to do at this point?

Okay.

And so it's what Marie's also saying about nuclear Armageddon is, you know,

how we really do this.

Like the only other thing that could is like, we have to introduce like kaiju or aliens.

Right, but then you're in other franchises.

You know what I'm saying?

Like that's squids back.

I agree with you that like

the only way you can hide from this is like pulpy sci-fi concepts, which then feel like they're betraying what makes it.

It would be something to do with space and it would be a disaster.

Right, it would

suck.

It's why I think this movie should have a slightly greater sense of finality is you almost feel like the only way for him to come back and do this again is if they actually put it to bed for a bit and he makes one in like 10 years and he's older and it's a different movie.

What I actually think they should do is never do one of these again.

I think they won't.

I think they just like have back themselves into a corner where they can't fucking top themselves.

And you feel that panic in this movie.

And like what I want from the end of this movie, like from the literal ending of this movie, I don't want him to die.

I don't give a shit, right?

When the parachute catches on fire, it does feel like there is certainly a version of this that they shot where he dies and he fought them on it, right?

There's the notion of like, is he going to become the IMF director, which feels like the cleanest, neatest way to do a thing where you're like, and then the doors open where he could still be mentor if they did spin off movies, but also he can always come back.

You know, I was like, he's going to give us some ending where there's a sense of a closing of a chapter, but also he can come back whenever he wants and be like, hey, you guys miss me, right?

In my heart of hearts, I was hoping that even though, like, I know Ilse's dead,

that it would be like, okay, well, he's off.

They're both.

It's a Dark Knight rises.

Yeah, they're both dead, but no, they're.

Even if it would have been too cute, it is the only happy ending you can imagine for this character.

What I actually felt I wanted is when he lands in the middle of the field and you see the cowherds, and I'm going to pitch this badly because I haven't quite cracked the right version of this, but you have this moment where you're like, oh, everyone thinks he's dead.

The rest of the team who are all sad.

So maybe he actually gets to walk off Jack Bauer style and be like, I'm presumed dead.

I can go do whatever I want.

That's what I kind of want.

I want an ending where he's just like, I'm not retired.

I'm not dead, but they think I'm dead.

I can walk away.

And there's this sort of mystery of like, what is this guy going to do?

I kind of hate fucking Kittridge and Phelps meeting him in the field.

The handshake is so absurd.

This sort of like, hey, I love you, man, moment.

Save the world.

But Phelps points a gun at him, then turns the gun around, turns it into a handshake.

And it's

a predator shake.

It's the predator bro.

Then it's like a pat on the back.

Hey, you're all right by me.

It is another example of like, it's three beats in one.

You could get away with one of these.

The audience starts laughing at how overstated it is.

He hands the pod cover to kitrich who seemingly thinks that that is what the entity is stored in but it's busted and it's burnt and he sort of has this disappointment of like oh you destroyed it i can't control it well it is what it is they don't know that the entity is stored in something else 5d optical drive and then it's like we cut to london and all of them meet there and give each other a nod and haley atwell opens a case and the drive's in there and she hands it to him the thing that he says he doesn't want like i like that in that scene where she saves him he's just like i'm not god no one should have this it should be destroyed and at the end the movie feels like it's being like no he is our god and he should control right and what if it stresses me out i'm like yeah why does he still have it he should destroy it

smash it throw it under a he should just go to like an apple store and just be like

just plug it in and just be like what's up i'm what if in a way you're maybe the best friend i've ever had right right can i go back in the coffin um some stuff i want to address because we're we just talked about the end of the movie, but there are some things that we're going to do.

I just wanted to mention that I don't like the actual finals

notes.

But we can circle it.

I like how Gabriel gets his head bisected.

Yeah, that was really great.

I loved that.

He's annoying.

He's so annoying.

And he was doing like mustache twirling shit, which I'm like, no, we don't need that.

I also like that they set up on the plane the sort of like, here's the crazy plan.

We need to get Gabriel to work with us.

And it's a classic mission impossible.

That's so risky.

And he's like, but it's the only way.

And then you get there and immediately everything goes wrong.

gabriel's guys shoot kitty kittred's interrupt all this and you're like now the the difficult plan they had outlined for us even crazier and harder um we've got another bomb that needs to be diffused and i like that dunlow and his wife volunteered to do it we already talked about this but tarzan's like i guess i'll hang out with you.

It's like a chaperone.

I like that.

Anytime the wife is like, I'll see you again.

You believe her.

Right.

And she's always right.

And Dunlow's basically like Luther, like, this is a suicide mission.

In order to like defuse the bomb i'm gonna have to die but also he's like i don't know how to dismantle a bomb right i always like someone being a little like over their skill the lady who plays the wife the wife is um called uh tapisa is called lucy tulukajuk i believe her she was sex and get a split with card they do which i and she was in that film do you remember that film um Atana Jarut the Fast Runner.

Yeah, yeah.

Which she's the lead of that movie.

Okay.

Which was like a Canadian Inuit movie that like maybe didn't get an Oscar nomination, but was at least like kind of in the right in the running and was this cool Inuit movie where you don't, you know, you never see anything.

Anyway, she's, um, she's, she's cool.

Uh, he has a line where he's like, wait a second, there's maybe a way out of this.

And they're like, what?

And he goes, the wires are repeated in triplicate.

Or he says triple redundant.

The wires are triple

kind of like how the exposition.

Exactly.

I was like, this is a metaphor for the movie that he's like, actually, they built this wrong.

There are actually three wires serving the same function.

I can cut one of them.

We have 10 seconds to work.

Right.

We're not even talking about, of course, how like Benji has been shot in one of the crossfires here.

It turns into, it turns into pit.

Right.

He's having surgery done on him.

They got a

recognition impossible escalation.

And he hides the bullet from Ethan because he doesn't want him to get upset.

He treats him like a little child.

But I think it's also like, well, Ethan will fucking probably try to do something.

Right, no, he's not a human being.

We have to like.

Because Ethan just like, won't let him get

running somewhere and he just runs in a circle

plays this really well palm plays

when she's like really upset and stressed and also like i kill people tears come to her eyes i'm like oh my god girl like you did it but that dialogue exchange of does anyone here know surgery and she says i kill people and he says good enough yeah love it love it um

And then all of the like back and forth of like using her flask both to like chill themselves out and to disinfect all the objects is really good.

Yeah.

And right.

Gabriel says to him, You're gonna give me the control and I'm gonna get out of here on a biplane.

It's analog.

It's a perfect plan.

It's such a perfect plan.

I have a backup.

And you're like, oh, wow.

Wonder what that backup's gonna do.

Wonder who's gonna drive that

little guy.

But

right, that's the fucking poster and it's the thing they've been selling the trailers.

And when you get to it, it is thrilling.

And it is thrilling, much like the submarine sequence, how long it lasts.

Yeah.

Like in babysitting, the aforementioned Acer Ehrlich and trying to calm him down.

He was like having a mini meltdown in the back of a lift.

And I started going, like, hey, ASA, do you know about Tom Cruise?

Tom Cruise is this guy who does crazy things.

And I started showing him mission impossible stunts and just being like, he's a good guy and he's trying to stop the bad guys.

It's all fake and it's really safe, but isn't he silly?

And I was showing him stuff like the plane from the beginning of Rogue Nation, which to me is still one of the craziest shots.

And yet that lasts for like 60 seconds.

And in in this, you're like, there are 800 setups, it feels like, from so many angles of him relative to this plane, where you're like, how, did this shoot for four months?

I think they, I mean, like the way it's described in the Baron interview, not that sequence, but the helicopter sequence, just of like them having to radio Tom Cruise being like, a little left, a little right.

That's your shot.

Okay, stay in that.

You know, they have to be telling him over the radio, like the camera's here, all that.

They have to do it.

And he has to act while he's flying the planet.

That's the magic.

Which is crazy.

But they have to do so many months of prep and rehearsals and practice and like coaching before they can ever put this in front of camera.

And then how hard it must be to get multiple takes, right?

Like if the take doesn't work, it probably is like four hours before they can get another one up.

And then you have time for one more take before the sun sets.

It is,

it's just, it's wild shit.

And as we said, he's like emoting during this and he's like maintaining a continuity of like the character's emotions of like the arc of what he's trying to solve.

And there is such good kind of like,

you know, Gabriel's monologuing a little bit, but like largely silent telegraphing of like the thing's on his neck.

He's got to get the thing.

The cockpit's here.

Where's the other pilot?

That's one of the shots that almost astounds me the most is when Ethan finally ejects the other pilot and you just watch him slowly fall out of frame to the ground.

And I'm like, I know that guy just pulled the parachute the second he was out of frame, and that guy's a stunt diver or whatever, but it still feels unreal.

My favorite is always going to be the Burj Khalifa.

It's my favorite.

Here's a gripe.

Saw it in IMAX.

Our friends, the Doughboys, have been doing a Mission Impossible series.

And they were talking about how Burj Khalifa and IMAX is the greatest shit in the world.

And there is a sanctity to it of it, they don't even try to replicate it, the aspect ratio thing on home video or streaming releases, because that thing only works if you have this crazy tall screen and suddenly the world of the movie goes like

and it expands in a way you can't imagine.

You see shots of the Burj Khalifa in this.

I'm seeing the movie in IMAX.

I'm like, why aren't you showing me this IMAX footage?

If you're going to do 8,000

flashbacks, at least give me the flashbacks in IMAX because I'm seeing sequences that I know.

I wonder if it's a good idea.

I wonder if there's an interesting technical reason.

Possibly.

Or like this movie was finished five minutes before they had to deliver.

Probably.

Yeah.

But I was like, man, this would have been my chance to see two seconds of the Burger Khalifa.

You know, these movies went very digital with the last one.

And Macquarie explains why, at length, at Empire Magazine, you pay 50 bucks, you can hear him say it, or whatever it is, right?

You have to pay money now.

And it's probably partly because it's so insane how they make them or whatever.

But I do miss the look of the earlier movies.

Do you?

Well, yeah, these two basically had to be digital largely because of the pandemic and and just workflows becoming so much more complicated and longer.

Do you folks know what they did with Final Destination Bloodlines in IMAX?

No, I saw it at Diolamo.

It is the only time I can think of where the filmmakers have used the aspect ratio change as a deliberate storytelling tool with rules that they do not break.

I saw it in IMAX.

Hunger Games don't even

catch fire when she enters the arena, it's just IMAX.

Oh, that's one of the things that's in the elevator.

I've ever seen it.

What is the thing in Bloodlines?

I don't remember.

I saw it in IMAX.

I don't remember.

Every time death is present, the screen stops.

That nasty guy, death?

Slowly grows.

Isn't the best part in Bloodlines when the grandma's like yelling at death, like, I see you.

But it's so good.

They don't do the like hard cut stuff.

No, that rocks.

That rocks.

They do the

slowly

gross, and it's usually coupled with a camera move and the score going a little off.

And so you're still going to be able to do that.

Those guys who made the impossible Disney Channel movie or whatever, they mocked off.

Favorite contestants on On the Lot.

I referred to them as the Jennifer Hudson of On the Lot, where when they got eliminated, it was like, what the fuck is this show?

And I'm the only person who was still watching that show at that point.

And it is so satisfying to see them make good.

You have not seen this movie yet, Ben?

No.

Final Destination Bloodlines is.

You're going to love it.

I was kind of shocked that you guys were like so hyped up.

It is so fucking good.

And it also pulls off some of the shit that like fucking Final Reckoning is trying to do of tying back to previous movies in a way that is really smart and doesn't feel fan servicey feels like deepening.

Like I, on paper, I have no problem with the idea of making the rabbits foot the like origin of the entity.

Because the rabbit's foot thing is still so annoying and is brought up all the time as JJ being way too cute and in your face about the MacGuffin.

It doesn't actually matter.

Right.

In a way where I'm like, I get that it doesn't matter, but the second that you're making jokes about the fact that it doesn't matter, you're telling me to not take your movie seriously.

You're like saying like, and by the way, this is all fucking bullshit.

Where I'm like, I'm into you retconning the rabbit's foot to have been something so that that feels less galling and glib, but

too much going on in this movie.

Like you, you can't have that be one of 8,000 elements that's sort of just like thrown at you and then never talked about it can i ask a question about the ending of this movie that i'm like lit i'm truly confused about and this is like i don't think of myself as a particularly stupid movie watcher i think you're a very intelligent person and a very film literate person i like how we had opposite opposite answers but thank you griffin and you david um you know marie and i are very close yeah our desks are close together our birthdays are our birthdays are really close yes we're really similar go on um we're both the same age as the look who's talking baby Hey, do you know that Marie and I?

You guys both just looked at me like I was supposed to go, like, whoa.

Do you know that Marie and I are really close to Mikey, baby Mikey?

What a, what a dream.

Yeah.

And his desk is in between the two of ours and his birthday.

Are you guys having like a mental episode right now?

It's called friendship, David.

Try it sometime.

Okay.

But okay, the whole

plan to defeat the entity.

Does cyberspace go offline?

Marie, you are not stupid.

This

This is a thing the movie does.

Multiple critics asked me this as like after the movie screened.

When they're like, wait, so does cyberspace go away or not?

Because everything seems fine.

The final sequence basically.

But no one has iPhones.

No.

Okay.

The final sequence is centered around.

Like if cyberspace, like if like the internet went away, like that, I think.

that would be fairly bad because like a lot of stuff is sort of like tied to that right right yeah including freaking podcasts we'd be fucked we'd been fucked.

Let's get the entity.

We have to plug it back in.

There's just one podcast that's just the entity going like,

like the entity would have been.

This episode is brought to you by Manscaped.

The promo code entity.

I feel like the entity already kind of seems like a podcaster.

Yeah, whoa.

And he has very, very, very aromatic balls, thanks to his Manscaped wipes or whatever.

That you're always just like, oh, do you have shaving cream deodorant?

And you're like,

50 ball wipes.

Crop duster.

Crop protector.

I think that early in the film, obviously, they're like, you can't do that.

You would destroy cyberspace, which is so bad.

And at the end of the movie, it's either just like, no, that didn't happen because of what they did.

They did it right.

Because it's basically this underground archive in Africa that controls all of the information of the internet, which is why it's protected.

No, but it's only the things that someone's library of creativity.

It's like a backup.

It's like a big backup.

It's like a big zip drive.

Right.

Remember those?

Right.

But, but that if the entity gets in there, he'll have access to everything.

So the, I mean, this is the whole final setup of it that I do find effective where it's like

they need a Haley Outwell because the difference between a good pickpocket and a great pickpocket is a blink of an eye.

And basically, if she pulls it,

if she pulls it a millisecond too early,

it won't work.

They don't capture the entity.

And I was worried that she wasn't going to do it.

Me too.

I thought she was going to find it it satisfying.

The shot of her doing the yank, it's cool.

Got me both.

It's great.

But again, I'm like, I kind of would have liked it if he killed cyberspace.

Because then that would have felt like, okay, well,

we're done.

I wanted to see him fight

like a fist fight.

Yeah, I think we needed a lawnmower man style.

Like, he's like, wow.

Look out.

It materializes.

Superman 2 has a version of that where the evil computer turns it into a light.

3.

Superman 3.

Oh, I'm sorry.

You're right.

But you want, you want that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't, I, I, as I was watching the final scene, I'm like, okay, so we did like a hard reset on tech.

No one in Trafalgar Square is looking at their iPhones.

They're just people living in the moment.

You know what?

And that's all we want.

And then I was like, you know what?

That's so nice.

I vastly prefer the greatest ending of Recent Memory, which is Ready Player One, where they're like, you can have your phones, but can you take like one to two days off a week?

And everyone's like, okay.

the greatest moment in recent the ending in recent memory is bloodlines the final moment of bloodlines yeah it's great believable it is i mean i loved it and i was very satisfied by the final moment of bloodlines that is what every final destination movie does i look i rewatched in the run-up to this did i and it's that always hits that every final destination moment movie ends with someone being like we're in the clear And then the worst thing happens.

Bloodlines does acknowledge that Mary Elizabeth Winstead or no, is it two?

No, the girl from two.

AJ survives.

AJ.

Yeah, AJ.

She survives, but there's a similar ironic ending.

There is, but like, she's the only one.

Tony Todd does shout out who actually pulled it off.

I like the fucking the way Bloodlines handles the canon.

Me too?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really good movie.

I'm really impressed.

The only movie I've ever been to where a child dies and the entire audience like celebrate.

The only thing I'll say and everyone's saying is like, I don't like the CGI gore.

Not in a way where I'm like,

i won't look at this but i'm just like i understand why this is what we do now i understand it's way easier it also is basically a trademark of that franchise it is they they've been doing cgi kills since the whole time basically since one right certainly since two yeah two absolutely and like but it never quite

you know it's why final destination will always be a sort of b tier for me because let's say it those movies are not scary they're fair they are not mostly the movies i don't think they better ever be scary no like that you know all right i'll i'll take it back because things like the plane crash sometimes will be visceral enough for a minute or two.

Do you think you find the plane crash upsetting?

Um, or the logs,

well, yes, but like for a minute or two, you're like, this is intense.

This is scary.

I think it's intense more than it's scary.

I think the movie will sometimes get thriller-type jolts.

Yes.

But there's never like fucking slasher movie, like, oh, fuck.

In this one,

I had to look away anytime, like, the piercings came into play.

Totally.

I like that.

They get the thriller tension.

You know, there was that tweet of like Don Draper in the movie theater, right?

Where it was like watching Final Destination and like a screw starts to come loose.

Oh, like

anytime.

But like, specifically, body piercings are like a big ick for me.

Like, not, I'm not like trying to get

personally.

Just if, like, that is a fear of mine to get yanked when that piercing like MRI goes into research mode.

Oh, they shouldn't be in a research mode.

And by the way, and let this be a listening state to all of our listeners, never put it in research mode.

No, no, no, no, no.

Ben, you're going to.

I do love that Final Destination posits that every MRI machine could implode the hospital if left

turned on.

That's why you never get a Prince Edward Piercing.

It's Prince Albert.

It's Prince Albert.

Fuck.

We're going to talk about this when we cover Game.

Excuse me.

Maybe Prince Edward Piercing is a different one.

No, but I'm assuming we're going to just do a lot of royal family digressions.

I'm reading a really great Diana book right now about Diana World.

David, am I allowed to say, especially if this helps move tickets, we are in advanced negotiations to unretire the bit for one night only?

Live and one night only.

One night only.

We will retire the bit.

We are also in advanced negotiations to license the entire Dream Girls songbook, which we plan to perform from.

We're going to do that one where about how we're a tree.

Yeah.

There's that one for me.

We are a family, like a giant tree.

Yeah, where you're like, isn't this supposed to be a Motown musical?

Tom Cruise is in this film.

This is his only film this year that I know of.

Wait, let me just check IMDB to make sure you're right about that.

Next year, he's in what's been described as a comedy being directed by Alejandro Gonzalez.

Described by

comedy?

Really?

Huh.

But it's also.

Now, it's being described as a comedy by that crazy Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez-Inoritu.

Yeah.

What was it the Sean Penn called him on the Oscar stage?

Well, he said, like, he was like, someone check this man's green card and call ice.

Let me find the exact interview because he spoke very highly of Tom Cruise

in an interview.

I guess he was at Cannes because

they're doing a 20th anniversary for a Morris Peros screening or something.

And he said, okay, well, let's move past all the Tom Cruise, all the Morris Peros talk.

This is the last Beetlejuice ring pop.

The final reckoning?

I'm so glad.

We need to get some proper snacks now.

I know.

Costco.

Is it okay if I have it?

Yeah, of course, you.

I just want to make sure.

He says, this is what he says.

Hey, Ben, how are you going to fit that ring pop on your hand when you got a fucking wedding ring on there?

One night only.

One night only.

Producer Ben is married.

He is a family.

Here's what Mr.

Inyorichu says.

This is a wild comedy of catastrophic proportions.

It's insane.

Tom makes me laugh every day.

The range I discovered working with him is unprecedented for me as a director.

I was so fucking

Jesus, Alejandro, impressed and happy.

So that's fun.

The second you said Giant Comedy, I turned into a fucking Looney Tunes puff of dust so I could refund my tickets immediately.

I think Tom is really brutal comedy.

It's a wild comedy of human nature.

I like him at comedy.

You know who I don't trust making comedy?

Alejandro Gonzalez New Jupel, one of the great comedies of all time.

Okay, like what?

I think I'm.

Maybe Birdman had a joke or two in it, I guess.

Oh, that movie's absolutely considered a comedy.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I really like that I find everything he does in Tropic Thunder to be really cringy.

I agree.

I don't like, I don't love that performance performance, whatever.

Whatever the fuck he's doing.

I don't like Tropic Thunder that much.

I like Tropic Thunder.

I've re-watched it recently and I liked it

a little more than I used to, but I do feel like it's all overstated.

It's just

care about subtlety, but it is like so, everything's so overcranked in it.

It's just like there is a good movie in it, and it kind of annoys me.

Like, some of the Cruz stuff, like, out of context, is kind of funny.

I think that.

And him dancing at the end is funny.

McConaughey is like on fire in that.

Well, that's because McConaughey was just on fire in life.

Why at the start of the McConaughey that no one gives him credit for?

And I'm like, Makanah to me is doing a more

incisive, like damning portrayal of Hollywood bullshitters than Cruz is, but Cruz just has the fucking makeup and the hands.

I know, but it just, it feels like.

And I'm realizing I never saw Bardo.

I have not seen any of these

movie.

Well, I assume someone did since

you're looking at me right now.

False Chronicle of Truths right over here.

Yeah.

Isn't that what it was called?

I love, okay, back to Mission Impossible.

Love when Tom refers to the entity as the Lord of Lies.

That part's good when he's like, we can get one over.

I want that kind of self-serious shit.

But it's a tightrope.

and like these movies have walked it fairly well.

And I do feel like this one is just not quite as good walking the tightrope, but I still liked it.

Yeah, as I said,

everyone's got so mad at me for putting it seventh on my Mission Impossible list.

The floor for me is like four stars

on Mission Impossible movies.

Like I don't like they can be stupid and I just love them.

I think you and I ranked it the same way and people on our side.

I think people are mad that we put it below three.

But they were also getting mad about it before they had seen it.

And I was seeing this.

I'm also on the Mission Impossible subreddit.

And as early reviews were coming in, everyone was like, well, we don't have to trust them.

Maybe they're insane.

The Lord AIS.

Right.

Well, there was this feeling of like, we literally saw a lot of panic.

We talked, we, before you guys saw it, and at Ben's wedding celebration, Ehrlich was there and he had seen it.

We were panicked.

And he was like, it's bad.

And we're like, fuck you.

You don't have good opinions.

I just say that to him right now.

Yeah, I mean, yes.

At the same time, he speaks, really.

It's still kind of crazy to me that you threw a wallet at his head.

You fucking deserved it.

I should do that all the time.

You do it all the time?

No, I should.

I'm saying.

I should do it more.

Every day he's been at Can, he's been at Cam for what?

I mean, he's back now.

Yeah, he's back.

He's in 12 or 13 days.

His wife, who is single parenting, as the Griffin, just would just text me like.

Another day.

You know what I mean?

Like every morning.

We're just like,

he should, he should hang his head in shame.

Yeah.

Well,

he saw 30.

He's a review movies.

Exactly.

It's disgusting.

On the beach, no less.

Yeah, these are things you hate doing.

Going to screenings, going to the beach, credit reviews.

Honestly.

People hate.

I hate when people complain about Cannes.

You mean complain about going to Cannes?

Yeah.

I'm like, fuck you.

Yeah, it seems kind of nice.

It seems like if you're going to go to a busy film festival, it seems like a pretty fun one.

It's the best one to go to.

You get to spot Jeff Wells.

Everywhere.

Jeff Wells, it seems also, by the way, he did the opposite of Erlick.

He saw like five movies in 20 days or whatever.

Ehrlich landed in the movie.

He'd be like vlogging on Hollywood elsewhere, like, feeling a little tired today.

It felt like Ehrlich sent me a picture of Jeff Wells within 45 minutes of him landing at the airport.

Like he was just like, immediately, here he is.

Who is funding like Jeff Wells' like Patreon that gets him to can?

Like, who's great?

Question.

I don't know what that is.

Shadowy entity.

It's the entity.

It's the entity.

You're an entity.

You're not subscribed to HD Plus.

I'm not.

Was I supposed to be?

Yeah.

It was a government decree.

We have to support small businesses.

Well not only.

Yeah.

No, I find this movie very frustrating.

I still I think you're more frustrated than I, but I'm not disagreeing with you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If that makes sense.

It is just

so sloppy, and I would forgive a lot of its

messiness if it were also trimmer.

Like it's not like, oh, there are scenes that are badly executed or like threads that are like poorly tied together.

It's also just like, guys, do less.

Do less.

Fucking take most of this out.

I think Macquarie's a better filmmaker than Abrams.

Speaking to this, ranking me ranking this below three.

But three, for its flaws and occasional kind of, you know, lens flary, I can't even see what's going on stuff as Philip Zeymer Hoffman.

It's got Philip Simur Hoffman.

It's got very fun kind of team stuff in it generally.

It's got a fairly complete idea.

Right, exactly.

It's got a story it's telling in two hours, pretty compelling cruises, very locked in in it.

Hoffman alone is like giving it a full star.

It's a totally entertaining movie.

Like, I have it below

to me, it's sort of like Fallout Ghost Protocol.

That's where it's just like the madness just came together so perfectly.

Rogue Nation's right up there.

Yeah, and then it was three for me at the top.

And then the De Palma movie is so special and silly and fun.

I think people slightly overrate it.

I think so, too.

Because De Palma is such a madman, and like it's so fun to watch any De Palma movie.

But that's right, I put that and Dead Reckoning

on

the same spot.

And then, and And three is at the bottom of that tier.

And like,

this and two are the only ones that actively frustrate me while I'm watching this.

I like this way more than two.

I don't like two.

There's been a lot of two revisionism out there, including from Marie Bardo with her false chronicle of truth.

I mean, two is another, like, the good stuff in it is great, but there's less good stuff in it than in this.

The villain in it is disastrous.

He's so bad.

Sorry, Ducre.

I don't know what you're up to right now.

But at least he made a great Wolverine.

We all saw him play that character to wild success for 25 years, and everything worked out for him.

What is he doing?

He's married to Claire Forlani.

I did know that she can get her.

Seriously.

I got no complaints about that.

They both are like Scottish actors who like had a moment at the end of the 90s, beginning of the 2000s, and then were never seen from again.

Do you think they just sit at home and talk about that, go like, man, it really almost happened, huh?

Crazy how we're Scottish.

Yeah, she was, she was the spokesperson for some

doers.

Yeah.

I think she still is.

I think that's pretty much like funding their entire life yeah i like those commercials those doers tracks he played arthur miller in my week with marilyn which was a real kind of jump scare casting of like oh fuck you're still around

and then he went like a yeah he pulled the mask off

it was really fun to see the some of the masks at the momi exhibit they got the wolf blitzer mask they got the blitz they got the fucking this was another thing we saw that we commented on they have a couple of the life casts right and like the hoffman mask and we we were talking about, especially in an era where you still literally had to do plaster head casts, now they can do the head scans.

So you don't have like, you're not suffocated and your skin isn't being pulled out.

It's all jowly and depressed.

It looks like a death mask.

Right.

So they all look like death masks because people like the wolf blitz are one especially haunting.

Right.

They're just like so blank and like gravity's fighting against them and whatever.

And then you look at the Tom Cruise head cast and you're like, fuck, that has presence.

Yeah.

Like he's staring straight ahead.

The man's famous.

The man just

got whatever weird.

yeah

he sacrificed everything at the altar of being able to turn it on and get it done we're wrapping up here in my opinion but my point that i was trying to make a million years ago when i brought up pinoritu is like cruise making that movie whether or not it's good whether or not it's a laugh out loud comedy i'm hearing it's actually secretly wedding crashers 2

it's like it really feels like him very consciously announcing to the world like okay and him signing the deal with deluca like this i'm done with yep last 10 plus years of stunts and action and all that.

I'm making a movie where the second lead is Sandra Hooler.

Like, you know, I'm making something that's auteurist and interesting.

I mean, you know, it's a fascinating thing of like Top Gun was supposed to come out in 2020.

I think they did some serious re-editing with the delays and figured out a way to improve the movie, but it wasn't like they did reshoots or anything.

They made some structural changes that I, Macquarie talks about being like, with the little extra time, we cracked a couple of things, right?

But that movie was basically in the can in 2019, obviously doesn't come out until 2022 and saves the theaters.

But he has spent the last five years of his life just working on these two movies, which is insane.

They have taken him from his late 50s into his early 60s.

And I agree with you that it did feel like him throwing down a gauntlet of being like, I'm making a deal with DeLuca.

I'm going over to Warner Brothers.

We're retiting, titling Dead Reckoning Part 2 into the final reckoning.

Maybe this is a transition point in my career.

I'm in my mid-60s.

I'm in my mid-60s.

And there are all these other movies that he and Macquarie keep saying that they want to make that are original films that keep getting pushed back because he'll wrote Macquarie.

So go make them.

Yet another.

Yep.

I do not want another one.

I want it to be done.

Yes.

I want it to be done.

Fast XI.

Let Leterier cook.

It is a let Mamoa cook.

No, but here it is an analog for me where I'm like, F9, I was like, oh my God, they got this thing back on tracks.

I'm happy with this movie.

you know.

Yeah.

And then, you know, Lynn is back.

I think he drilled back into what I missed.

And then 10, like X is such a deflating experience for me where I'm like, guys, I'd actually be happier if you never finished this.

But I'm like,

so weird if that was the end of the franchise.

Right.

But like, it's just like a damn exploding.

It truly feels like it's been three years and they are no closer to making the next movie.

It certainly seems like it's still at the Vin Diesel Instagram post stage.

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I mean, the fact that the rock is in the post-credits of Fast 10

and now is just kind of like, I'm making A24 movies.

Like, it's like, he's not even around for this.

Rock being in the post credits of Fast X, everyone was like, oh, so he's back for Fast X 2 or whatever.

And then he, within a week, posts on Instagram, by the way, what this is setting up is a Solo Hobbs movie.

I'm not coming back to mainline Fast and Furious.

The next Fast and Furious film is going to be Solo Hobbs.

Something that also seems nowhere closer to happening.

No director, no writer attached.

Nothing's happening on that franchise.

Box office game.

Let things die.

Well, we can do it.

We can, we can do it.

One's going to be number one.

Yes.

The number one.

We have the Thursday numbers.

Yes.

I think

Lilo Stage is going to be number one.

That one.

Sure.

There's no think about it.

That thing's making a ton of money.

It looks like it's going to make at least $150 million.

Yes.

I'll tell you what also looks like.

Pooh poo.

David is pretending to smoke a pink pen.

Poop.

Are you smoking the poop?

Sure.

Number two at the bottom of the street.

I just want to remind people:

one of the first moments of being like, fuck, is Tom Cruise losing a little bit of his heat.

It's not the same circumstance, but it is.

Is Lilo and Stitch beating Mineral?

I know it opening weekend and domestic final week.

You can't keep Stitch down.

That's why we're learning.

I'm just like, 23 years later, Cruz went up against Stitch again.

This time, it feels like he has the confidence of being like, I know I'm not going to beat him.

I just need to do well.

Maybe Final Reckoning should have ended with him saying Ohana means family.

Probably.

As he meets Benji again.

Probably.

I think like.

Or like Ilsa comes out of her grave and is like, Ohana means family.

Yeah.

And then you bring Ving Rames back as Cobra Bubbles.

God, this is a great performance.

I'm Luther's brother, Cobra Bubble.

This is all making sense.

This is good screenwriting.

And the Hod Crustacean band is there.

Yes.

Number two at the box office is going to be Mission Impossible.

The Final Reckoning, it's tracking for like around 100.

Oh, 100?

I think for the Ford Day.

Well, we'll see.

Because it got a Memorial Day.

Right.

It's going to make somewhere between 80 and 100, hopefully.

Although, Dead Reckoning greatly underperformed the expectations even of a day or two before release.

It did.

Yeah.

It did.

So we'll see, I guess.

Number three in America will be Final Destination Blowline.

And without a doubt, a huge hit.

Kick an ass and take a name.

Pretty much guaranteed to be the biggest in the franchise, right?

It almost outgrossed domestically every entry in the opening weekend alone.

All the Final Destination movies have basically topped out under 60.

Yeah, it was just uh the that made 66 okay so yes this movie's already outgrossed all of them by making it's already made 70 and it's gonna make more it's a great movie lots of fun i don't know tarder create really really really good like one of the most satisfying popcorn movies i've seen in a long time

had a great time had a great time i was at almo ate like chicken wings got so many applause breaks and i felt last night at mission impossible i max people trying to start it yeah and it wouldn't really take and final destination bloodlines had like 10 spontaneous, everyone just being like, holy shit, that was so cool.

You know, it's also right.

That's a movie just made out of the applause breaks, right?

Like everybody.

We got applause for the beginning of Tony Todd's scene and the end.

And the title card.

Yeah.

Well, he should get an OS combination.

Number four, the box office will be sinners,

which I'm told has bankrupted Hollywood.

One of the most ruinous financial follies ever released.

I mean, we've gotten.

What were they thinking making that?

We've gotten ourselves into a state right now where, like,

as much as once again, four months ago, everyone was like, is Hollywood finally dead?

A story that's gotten repeated the last four years in a row, right?

Anytime there's a bad season of box office because no movies are getting released.

There is now like an absolute war for IMAX screens where you're like, Sinners was too popular on IMAX screens that now they need to bring it back.

Like when Thunderbolts went on IMAX, people were like, boom!

Final Destination only had one week because it has to hand over to mission impossible which is then shortening its run to bring sinners back to imax

if you make movies that people want to see they will go see them well no i i don't i don't just i don't agree with you at all and i think it's disgusting that sinners was made and they should have made um uh Black Panther 5 instead.

David, I never noticed that property of Ted Sarandos tattoo on your neck saying people don't actually people can't walk to theaters.

They can't get to them.

They don't exist anymore.

It is elitist to think that people like sitting in rooms together.

Sinners,

I'm so thrilled for its success.

I do think it's just like it was a shameful moment when that movie opened well and everyone was like, well, it doesn't matter.

Yeah, all those people should be like fucking eating crow pies.

They really should.

They should turn their cameras on and for 12 hours live stream eaten crow pie.

Humble pies for all.

Number five at the box office is a little success story called a Minecraft movie, where the only question now is, will it hit $1 billion

despite being stupid garbage?

It is another funny thing that, like, three months ago, it was like Mike DeLuca and Pamela Abdi are going to be fired within two days.

And now they are on such a fucking hot streak.

I mean, fucking Minecraft centers and Final Destination in a row.

Some other hits at the box office right now.

Accountant 2.

Haven't seen it yet.

A film that Warner Brothers gave up and let Amazon make?

A really good movie I've heard about called Hurry Up Tomorrow with the weekend.

I'm hearing that's real fun.

Oh, Lord.

I want to see.

I watched the idol and I was

I'll tell you what I want to see.

I just wish the weekend would make something about how he's really horny with a young starlet.

I wish I don't care if it's a TV show, a movie, or both.

I just think there's this part of this personality that hasn't been explored.

And he's such a good actor.

Number seven.

My joke is that he's doing the new version of the Pete Davidson.

I can't stop making movies about myself and my mom.

Does it work as a TV show instead?

A movie that's performing really well in an exciting way is Friendship.

People are going to see.

I want to apologize to people.

Um, in the most recent, well, by the time this episode comes out, it'll be like a couple weeks old.

In the checkbook in the checkbook, I was like, wonderful sub stack that you run.

I'm going to talk about two films that are, you know, accessible for everyone to go see this weekend.

And I didn't realize that Friendship wasn't in wide release.

Community is now

getting, it is getting wider.

But I, you know, I'm sorry for being a coastal elite.

I truly didn't know that Friendship wasn't wasn't wide yet because it was in like week two when I said that.

It was going semi-wide.

It feels like we're in that flux state where I'm like trying not to get too excited, but it feels like that movie is working.

And my fear is that it's going to like hit 2,000 screens, no one shows up and they're like, oh, we've hit the ceiling of this, which keeps happening anytime.

They're trying to like platform a comedy in the last five years and have something catch on as a word of mouth hit.

It feels like it's going to work for this one.

I'm I'm praying it does.

If this movie makes like $20 million, it will be such a fucking victory.

Yeah.

That's all.

I mean, there's movies like The Amateur and Until Dawn, still sort of

working.

Yeah, The Amateur is pretty boring, huh?

Yeah, I like when he does the amateur thing.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I'm just an amateur.

Yeah.

Until Dawn,

just a weird doesn't exist movie, like an activity from a very popular video game with a big director.

Well, it got to it was very popular, it's strong.

I would say

somewhat popular.

It had its moment, like,

I don't know, like eight, nine years ago.

Exactly.

Kind of old news.

The movie got delayed for so long.

Yeah.

But didn't like Larry Fessenden write that video game in that spot.

Larry Fessenden and Graham Resman.

Yep, absolutely.

And I'm like, maybe you should have let them make the movie.

No disrespect to David Sandberg, who I like quite a bit and I think he's stuck in a rut.

He's in this rut.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But maybe like let Larry and Graham make that.

Here's a little bit of house business business I want to just quickly talk about.

Let's do the house business.

I want to talk a little bit about our Patreon, just because, as people know, we tend to record this episode very far in advance.

And a thing like this that's coming out in a quicker turnaround with a new release and probably will have

a good opportunity to talk about these things.

So, over on our Patreon right now, we are doing a series on the Superman films, going from Reeve straight through to Corn Sweat.

We will be doing a new release episode on James Gunn Superman.

It will be on Patreon as the end of that series.

Not a commentary.

Not a commentary.

It will be, we will go see it.

We will offer our commentary.

We will.

But it will be

the same format as this.

Yeah,

it's a regular episode.

Superman the movie to Man of Steel.

We're doing it as commentary watch-alongs.

After that, it is what won our March Madness series, which is 90s indie comic heroes.

We have,

for a number of reasons, decided to add

two more titles.

By popular demand.

By popular demand and it's our scheduler.

David's going to chronological or relaxed men.

Judge Dredd, relax, David.

Barbed Wire, relax.

Griffin?

Added.

A film I've never seen.

It's not very far.

The next one is the Relax Griffin.

Yeah, yeah.

No, no.

Spawn, relax, everybody.

Yeah.

Mystery men, relax, Griffin.

And then just because we have to, in my opinion, it's not really P.

Travis is Dread.

Great movie.

And then we're going to do something else for for the end of the year.

But that's what we're doing.

The last two slots stand out the holiday season.

Just want people to know that we battle.

No.

No.

And also not the many straight-to-video Crow sequels and all that.

There's only one Crow movie worth fucking with at all, right?

And it's the one we're going to talk about.

But we're very excited for that series.

Fun.

Feels like a good moment to talk about Pamela Anderson, too.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe I'll make myself available for that episode.

Oh, Marie, you have to watch Barbed Wire.

I'm looking forward to it.

Like, wait, you never, you want to see Casablanca with fucking Pam Anderson?

Yes, I do.

Cyberpunk.

I'm looking out for it.

Sounds like Udo Kier is like Julie Wilson.

Amazing.

It's one of those movies that, like, not even Vinegar Syndrome has touched, but like, Australian distributors have made like eight-disc 4K ultimate cups.

It's not a good one.

And I'm like, am I going to fucking

am I going to pay tariffs for a 4K hardback slip cover barbed wire?

Possibly.

But here's the other thing I want to say.

We kind of very quietly launched what we're calling the no ad bits tier.

It is an ad-free tier due to also popular demand of people for a very long time asking for that.

It was a thing that we did kind of suddenly after going back and forth on it for a lot of years.

We never really got to message about it.

I just want to very clearly say what it is because there has been some confusion.

Our basic $5 tier is still what it always is, the three episodes per month for blank check special features.

For the $10 tier, you get the entire history of blank check.

All of them.

The entire back catalog and all new episodes all without ads.

If you get the $10 tier, every single episode is going to be in that one feed ad free.

If you want to listen to old episodes and want to listen to them for free, you still can wherever you get your podcast.

They will have ads that tell you about very normal things.

A lot of podcasts these days, especially ones that have been running as long as we have, put older episodes behind a paywall.

We're not doing that.

We're totally independent.

We're constantly growing and hiring new people and trying to pay them well.

But all of this to say, you know, we rely on the ad money.

We get that they can be annoying to listen to.

And we just went back and forth on the numbers.

And this is sort of where it landed for it to be sustainable for us.

So if that is the thing you care about for $10,

you're getting all the special features content, every new episode and every past episode in one feed minus ads.

That's what the deal is.

I need you to trust me one last time.

Next week, we are talking about Look Who's Talking, The Final Reckoning.

Next week, we're talking about a little film called Clueless.

Right.

Our guest on that episode is Heidi Gardner of Saturday Night Live.

Of Saturday Night Live.

It's a very fun episode.

We do briefly talk about Kansas City to everyone's total surprise.

Yeah.

She has a really good clueless origin story.

She does.

She does an awesome episode.

She's got a great story.

You know how we love asking guests, like, what's your history with this movie?

Heidi came locked and loaded is one of the best stories.

It's a very blank, checky story.

I think anyone who listens to this podcast will love the,

will relate to having that specific a memory of the circumstances relating to seeing it for the first time.

So yes.

Look who's talking, the final reckoning will be happening on the aforementioned Patreon, which of course is Look Who's Talking now.

but look who's talking to will have just

come out last week for max mangella so that's what's going on here i just watched that movie and you are so happy right it's

it's dog shit would you be surprised to hear i mean it's it feels like an easy pun to call it dog shit and yet it feels like the only accurate way to describe that film Would you be surprised to hear that this is one of those instances where Ben showed up to a recording and was like, wait, you guys don't like this?

I thought the dog stuff was fun.

I liked everything about it.

Well, that's.

His name is fucking Rob.

Well, I haven't watched the dog one yet.

I'm talking about the one with two.

Two.

Two is fast.

Two is like bad, but it's also

weird stuff.

Two is like Larson Trier's Antichrist.

Yeah.

It's so dark.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a little dark.

Yeah.

I kind of love it.

All right.

Look, we've beaten the film's running time.

Let's be done.

Good night.

Thank you all for listening.

Good night.

Good luck.

Goodbye to Ethan Hunt, possibly forever.

Keep a hold on that 5D drive, please.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like, look, go make a real movie, Chris Macquarie.

Not these aren't real movies.

Tom Cruise.

Not non-you know, make something else.

Let's let's put this out there, okay?

I hope we will be covering Tom Cruise much more in the future with upcoming projects he makes with a tour directors.

Possibly people we previously covered, possibly people we'll cover in the future.

But I'm just like, I want him to get back to making the kind of thing that we talk about outside of this one franchise.

Yes.

Thank you all for listening.

And as always, you have to get the cruciform key to the Sevestopo to unlock the Podkova and then use the poison pill in the podkova to force the entity into the five-dimensional drive.

The key maker.

That's that's

he's the king of keys.

But there's not one particular key.

It doesn't matter.

But it's so many keys.

So quantity over there.

And that's that.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.

Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley.

Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J.

McKeon.

This show is mixed and edited by A.J.

McKeon and Alan Smithy.

Research by J.J.

Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell.

Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.

Our production assistant is Minik.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.

Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

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