Not the only stupid things, mind you – I’m only one man – but here are a handful that stuck out to me. I should note that I enjoyed the movie just fine, but it’s about as dumb as they come.
1.) It’s a superhero movie
Confession: I love the first Mission: Impossible movie. It’s a sexy little spy thriller where the stakes are clear and realistic (Tom Cruise is trying to stop a leak that would expose US spies all over the world), and there’s a great sense of kinetic, physical action. That’s why it’s so suspenseful when Jean Reno has to lower Tom Cruise down into that white room to steal data from a computer at CIA headquarters: it actually seems difficult, if not impossible, and there’s a constant threat that the smallest mistake could kill the whole team.
M:I4:GP, by contrast, opens with Tom Cruise breaking out of a high security Russian prison by punching men in full riot gear in the face. He’s no longer human, he’s some kind of extraterrestrial murder machine. And since we could reasonably expect him to rip a man in half with his bare hands, the stakes have to be “raised” as well: this time there are Russian nuclear codes at stake! Eek! Spooky!
…except that it’s not, because Tom Cruise can do literally anything without breaking a sweat (unless it’s the final scene in which he needs to break a sweat so we think he’s exerting himself). They should start calling the series Mission: Inevitable.
2.) “She left him just alive enough so I could watch him die!”
In the opening sequence of the movie, Blonde Female Assassin shoots Square-Jawed Secret Agent to death in an alleyway in (where else?) Budapest. Later, Superfluous Female Protagonist (SFP) gets all grumpy and tells Tom Cruise that the assassin shot Square-Jaw and left him alive – but only barely! – to piss off SFP.
Except that we see the shooting happen, and Blonde Assassin shoots Square-Jaw six fucking times. First she shoots him through the chest (through, mind you, not just in) three times, and then she gives him a hug and shoots him three more times in the stomach. This doesn’t seem to me like the behavior of someone who’s trying to not kill a man.
3.) RT @Squarejaw: OMG ASSASSIN!!!!!!!
Speaking of that opening scene: Square-Jaw is walking away from his successful mission while wearing a contact lens that can scan faces and display information for him. The contact lens identifies the blonde assassin approaching him and, instead of popping up a warning, it… fucking sends him a text message? Wait, really? It’s the moment of hesitation when he reaches into his pocket to get the text that gets him shot six times.
4.) “All we have is everything we could conceivably need!”
Our agents find themselves without the support of the US government, having been disavowed completely by Tom Wilkinson (this is my worst nightmare). We’re told they will have no resources at their disposal, and they’ll just have to make do with whatever they can find.
Fortunately for them, what they find is a train car stocked with a Mission: Impossible movie worth of high-tech gadgetry! This includes, but is not limited to:
- countless guns
- infinite ammunition
- magical sticky climbing gloves
- more useless social networking contact lenses
- a device that makes those neat rubber masks that look like whoever you want them to look like
- a magnetic metal suit (!) that allows someone to hover (!!) above the ground weightlessly
- a super revealing dress for that one chick
I know, I know: it’s a movie. But look back at the first M:I movie, OK? Tom Cruise crashes in some janky hotel and has to MacGuyver his own security system by scattering shattered lightbulbs in the hallway to alert him when someone’s broken in. He doesn’t show up equipped with a laser grid security system, because that would be stupid. And it’s stupid here, too.
Also: you want me to believe that the IMF didn’t rig that train car full of equipment to self-destruct? They rig everything to self-destruct. It’s, like, their thing.
5.) Have it your way (but you have to pick a way)
There are two instances in GhoPro in which someone says something stupid and then is called out for saying something stupid in the next scene. I seem to have blocked the first one from my mind (sorry), but not the second. As Tom Cruise slams down the ‘ABORT NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE’ button, he yells (at nobody in particular; his nemesis is unconscious on the floor) “Mission: accomplished!” This is a cheesy little bit of camp, but whatever: it’s a cheesy, campy movie.
So when Ving Rhames says, in the next scene (all of these movies require a Ving Rhames recap scene at the end, though only the first one was soundtracked by the Cranberries, sadly), “‘Mission: accomplished’? You actually said that? Out loud?” I didn’t find it cute. I found it grating. Which is it: do these characters exist in a universe where stupid shit happens all the time (see: the Kremlin blowing up an hour earlier), or don’t they? Are they in on the joke? If so, why? This sort of thing smacks of multiple writers having a stab at the project with different points of view. It muddies the water and makes the whole effort feel messy.
Should you see Mission: Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol? I dunno. Sure? It exists at one end of the spy movie spectrum, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy sits at the other end. I prefer my spy movies to resemble spy movies, but I’ll take what I can get.